 So tonight we're talking about the Métis question in Eastern Canada and we are going to attempt to the extent that time allows to debunk some of the myths about the existence of Métis and other Aboriginal rights-bearing communities in Nova Scotia today. I have with me Professor Sebastian Millet, just a little quick bio. He is a professor of indigeneity and law at Carleton University in the Department of Law and Legal Studies. He earned a political science degree at the University of Victoria and then did a post-doctorate degree at the University of Melbourne. His post-doctorate was in university relations and Dr. Millet, or Professor Millet, or Dr. Millet, Dr. Millet is an expert in the subject area of the French Canadian Métis in Nova Scotia or in the Maritimes in general. So that's why I've invited him to come and speak here tonight. I'm going to talk about some broader concepts first to just kind of put things in context and to maybe encourage people to think about these issues in a non-legal or a less legal and limited way because I think often we get trapped in that dialogue without a real understanding of the history or the cultural context and I think that that's quite important as lawyers and as future lawyers or members of the community. If we're going to have a discussion about this I think that we should really have a more fulsome understanding of what it is that we're talking about. So I'm going to just do a few minutes maybe 15 or so and then I'm going to turn it over to Professor Millet to educate you specifically on Acadian Métis culture. But before I start I would like to acknowledge that we are on unseated Mi'kmaq territory as part of the territory of the Wabanaki Confederacy so we'd like to honor that. The main point of tonight's discussion, the main focus of the discussion is the concept of Aboriginal identity and treaty rights. Specifically the population of the maritime provinces who are as yet unrecognized as being members of that rights bearing Aboriginal population. We recognize that there may be some rather strong and conflicting opinions on the subject matter either for or against the concepts that are being presented here this evening. But I would like to emphasize that Professor Millet and I have discussed this and we are endeavoring to discuss this in a very conciliatory manner so that we we seek not to offend or exclude anyone or their identities but rather to make this a more inclusive discussion. Because we are trying to present in a conciliatory manner because of course we are doing this in a professional context in an academic setting we ask that everyone's comments or questions be delivered in a respectful manner whether or not you agree with what we're saying and that you show respect for the views of others as well. So just to start on the topic of identity I think that we could agree not just in this area but generally that identity is a fluid concept and it's unique to each individual in each community whether or not that concept is shared by others right. It's come to parent however through the course of public dialogue and litigation that the concept of Aboriginal identity is very very contentious and controversial and that there is discord not only between the general public's perception of what an Aboriginal identity is and that of Aboriginal people but even between communities of Aboriginal people. So that's the purpose of this conversation this evening is to try to address some of those differences of opinion and come to a greater understanding of what that means. As of right now and since the coming into force of section 35 of the Constitution of Canada 1982 there are three categories of Aboriginal identity to which one can ascribe. Those are status, non-status and Metis. Status and non-status Aboriginal identities are the byproduct of categorizations of entitlements created under the Indian Act by European legislators who clearly lacked an understanding or concerned for how Aboriginal people have traditionally identified themselves and with each other. The Metis are viewed as the people who have a combination of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal usually European ancestry and are the only constitutionally protected Aboriginal population who have a right of self-identification. However it's that very right of self- identification that gives rise to the controversy over who the Metis are and what rights they have and what right they have to self-identify as such which is interesting to me and Professor Millett and I were having this conversation in my office earlier that the Metis or people who identify themselves as Metis are the only population of mixed ancestry or mixed ethnicity or culture however you choose to define that that have to justify their existence. For example about three and a half years ago I had spoken in Senate at the legal the Senate committee hearings into the legal and political rights of the Metis and as I explained to them at that time you know if I were Irish and English or Dutch and French or you know German and Polish I could go into either community be completely accepted as a member of that community embrace either aspect of my identity and culture and I would never be challenged on that. It's the issue of Aboriginality and what that means in terms of rights or potential rights that seems to create the conflict and the controversy. In fact Canada under our Constitution is the only country that creates the separate category so for example there are mixed blood populations all over the world even in my ancestral territory of Massachusetts and in surrounding area but there is no separate category for people who are of mixed ancestry so this this is something that's unique to Canada and as Professor Millet's going to expand on later it's because of uniquely Canadian history and how that term evolved and where it evolved. Traditionally and this goes back to what I was just saying about this being the only place community acceptance and community membership was determined by the community itself it wasn't determined by legislation or by treaties or by policies or anything else and this this categorization of identity through Eurocentric instruments who lack an understanding of Aboriginal culture is exactly the problem that's in my opinion the genesis of the problem right there. Traditionally one was either a member of an Aboriginal community by marriage birth adoption or their presence so in the traditional Aboriginal concept of community if you were accepted as a member of that community it didn't matter how you became a member of that community you just were and that underscores my point that the distinctions and Aboriginal identities have been created by Eurocentric legislation and policies and not by Aboriginal people themselves and therefore those categorizations are arbitrary and discriminatory that don't honor our traditional concepts of our own identities in our communities and community membership. The fact remains though that the treaties that were made across North America between Europeans and Aboriginal people included all members of those communities it didn't matter what blood quantum they had how they became a member of the community who they married who they didn't marry if they lived you know within the boundaries of the community or outside the boundaries of the community it didn't matter if they were accepted as members of the community then they just were and the treaties encompassed all of those people who were living within the territories that the treaties covered and didn't matter if they were mixed blood or not. In fact there's historical evidence to prove that many signatories to those early treaties were of mixed blood and that many of the chiefs who signed those treaties not all signatories were chiefs right sometimes they were delegates or they were just respected community members who could go but the point is that there's evidence that there were some mixed blood people whether chiefs or delegates who did sign those early treaties we have examples of that right here in Nova Scotia so a following my notes because I could literally write a book on this and if I don't stick to the notes I'm going to go on for five hours so I don't want to do that. The only difference for the purpose of Aboriginal and treaty rights is whether or not they are recognized by government and by members of the larger Aboriginal community as being members of the Aboriginal community because we've come so far from how we conceive of that we're so far off of our traditional concept of who is one of us and who isn't and who's okay and who's not so the thing is about treaties is that there are agreements between independent nations that regulate relationships between the leaders and the citizenry of those nations and sometimes and in particular more so in the numbered treaties that you know out West it was about the use or the interest in a particular parcel of land you know because in the West the script system was in the West where you would trade your originality for some type of compensation and therefore give up your rights to the land and your rights to identity and otherwise that didn't exist here but nations whether under treaty or not and in particular under treaty do not normally presume to control one another or the rights of the citizenry or certain aspects of their existence unless those rights are specifically seated and it's a well-established principle of Aboriginal law that treaty rights cannot be extinguished unless they are unless it is expressly done through a future treaty or some type of a legislative instrument or unless they are ceded by the Aboriginal people themselves and in Canada and in this area in particular that has never happened that is absolutely not the case it's clear from the early treaties that our rights to harvest engage in trade or use and move freely on the land have also never been extinguished or ceded yet over the years the predecessors of the current colonial government I'm speaking more specifically to the federal government but also provincial governments have sought to quantify monetized limit or otherwise eliminate the rights of Aboriginal people along with their identities and these interferences have been justified with reliance on the assumption of European control however just to give you a I guess an anecdote I walk into your home I just arrived one day completely unexpectedly and I say okay this is a nice place you've got here I think that I'm just gonna make this my house and from now on you're gonna do everything my way it didn't work then it doesn't work now right the Aboriginal people we never we never ceded control of our identities of our lands of our resources it was an assumption based on a normalized Eurocentric standard of colonization I think we can all agree that control is not established by just establishing a presence in a particular place and I would argue that Aboriginal people have never agreed to it either and that's why there's been so much litigation that's why there was so much conflict over the years that's why there was never a law in place if you look history and I've looked to see what were the laws of the early colonial governments in Nova Scotia and even as far down as the Massachusetts province which is more relevant to me for my particular history but there were no laws in place to control Aboriginal people or their rights or their resources back then the only law the only system of law that was in place was European law to regulate the citizenry of the European state they did not apply to Aboriginal people or their activities until much much much later on and I would argue that the first clear example of that would have been the Indian Act in 1876 I mean there was you know the famous scalping laws and things like that but that had nothing to do with rights furthermore the treaties of the maritime region are very very different as I alluded to earlier than the treaties in other areas of Canada and the United States the treaties of the maritime region covered the entire eastern seaboard from just north of what's modern-day Florida all the way up into the gas bay region so the treaties of peace and friendship in 1725 actually was first signed at Boston in December of 1725 and then later ratified by the Mi'kmaq and the colonial government in Halifax in 1726 so everyone every nation between and by nation I mean Aboriginal nation okay because they were otherwise referred to as British colonies every Aboriginal nation from north of Florida to gas be z was encompassed in those territories those treaties were meant to confer protection and rights upon all the members of those nations and their ancestors for future generations forever more and therefore it is my view and I don't think it's just my view but I'm speaking so it's my view that every person who is a descendant of the beneficiaries of those early treaties by virtue of ancestry is also a beneficiary of those early treaties and the rights that were contained there in also importantly nowhere in those treaties do the English expressly claim control over Aboriginal people or their lands or their rights they were reciprocal treaties in a sense of mutual trade and settlement and to you know and conflict now clearly that didn't work very well because the conflict went on well into the 1700s and the treaties had to be ratified again in 1749 1752 1760 and 1761 part of that for the in the purpose of Nova Scotia or for the area of Nova Scotia was because of conflict between the English and the French and the alliance the historical alliance of the Mi'kma with the French people who were here which of course led to mixed blood children right very well documented the fur trade started here there were relationships between the French and the Aboriginal people the first such recorded birth was in the early 1600s actually and I was the Dillator family yes yes in the area of Keepsable Island I don't remember all the historical facts all time so the first such birth in recorded birth in the Massachusetts province was actually around the same time now what I'm emphasizing the fact that it's recorded because things weren't recorded until the European settlements and European settlers became entrenched in these territories until they had people who were capable of reading and writing and had an interest in documenting things because Aboriginal language and Aboriginal knowledge is passed on with symbols and with stories we didn't document things so that's not to say that a hundred years earlier there might not have been mixed with children I'm saying the first ones that we know of were in the early 1600s and they were because of more intimate relationships between settlers and Aboriginal people however the relationship between Aboriginal people and Europeans and I would suggest the blending of the culture of Europeans and Aboriginal people would have started with those early trade relationships just by virtue of the fact that the Europeans were passing on pots and and knives and other implements that were used in European society to the Aboriginal people in exchange for the furs and things like that that the Europeans were taking back to their communities so already we have a mixing of the implements and the the trappings of each other's cultures going back and forth right so when we argue that you know there has to be a historical demonstrated blending of the cultures and specific identities and specific this and specific that that started a long time ago that started as soon as the first boats hit the shores whether or not there were settlements in my opinion so it's also reasonable to conclude if that that being the case then it's also reasonable to conclude and I think there's demonstrated evidence of such that the children of those bicultural relationships would have adopted aspects of both cultures and therefore develop their own culture now there's been some talk that certain communities that are not here coined the term a T and that theirs is the only true culture not so cultures arise and doesn't matter if it's Aboriginal culture may T culture English culture doesn't matter culture arises at a specific point in time in a specific place under certain sets of certain circumstances and then there are all kinds of social and political and historical factors climate the accessibility to resources the nature of the resources that will shape that culture and how that culture develops and in fact the term me T and I'm not going to get too far into this because this is Sebastian's area of expertise but it's also documented that the term me T or me such was first used in Nova Scotia by a Jesuit priest who was baptizing the child of an Aboriginal woman and a French man so for anyone to say and in knowing that the first rate started here and then the Côte d'Ibois went that way for anyone to say that the term me T could not be appropriately used by the people of anyone outside of Manitoba and in particular the Red River Valley is absolutely historically inaccurate. Okay so I flipped all over the place here I'm gonna turn it over in a minute but my point my point is this and the reason that I'm saying the things that I'm saying is because I think that in my view one of the one of the most harmful things that we can do is Aboriginal people is to try to exclude each other and try to deny each other's culture. There has been a long history of that by virtue of the actions of European centralized government and institutions beginning with the categorizations and the Indian Act of status non-status and more recently Metis the residential school system the reservation system I mean we could go on and on and on and on and on about the denial of identities and the denial of cultures and the discrimination that's existed against Aboriginal people. I don't think in my message here today is that I don't think that it serves us as Aboriginal people to perpetuate that conflict against each other because while we are focused on the divisive categorizations that have been created by the European governments and legislations and policies we cannot focus on empowering ourselves and each other as people and I don't think that we're serving our own interests by putting our focus on the negative. Okay so that's my message so Sebastian's going to do his thing a little more academically. Okay well thank you for that introduction and that talk it looks like a gift I will know it later I'm assuming but it's already looked like a gift. I'm really pleased to be here for the first time thank you so much and I also acknowledge that we are on Mcmall land and I've called home to the community and I said to the client mother there so what should I say when I am gonna get to Nova Scotia in that territory and it tells me well the Wabanaki Confederacy it's pretty whole and it's pretty safe to say that they should be acknowledged and honored but also make sure to salute our aka and Metis cousins down there for their presence and their ongoing fight and I'd like to acknowledge that right off the bat. So today I've created a busy presentation and I'm gonna try to go at this usually I like to go orally at this and really be at ease with the material but because of the lecture today I wanted to bring like primaries evidence and some documents that will exemplify the points that I'm trying to bring across in terms of Metis identity in the eastern part of Canada so I've created this template from you and and just just I'm speaking French so sometimes I may look for my words a little bit right from the get-go I would like to say that I'm not here on record to say that the Red River Metis are not entitled to their nation form of politics inclusion exclusion or whatnot I'm here to suggest another thought to say that the term Metis actually needs further precision it's not just Red River Metis I'm from Great Lake Metis community from Ontario the southern tip of what they used to call the Middle West in the furor trade triangle between Montreal Detroit, Cascasquilla and Mayotte town which was after my last name Mayotte or Mallette destroyed by the Michigan Militia in the context of the 1812 war in the aftermath completely destroyed all the houses burned something familiar with the Acadian experience community were destroyed people were killed women were dishonored according to the term and children often enslaved so we can connect through our common experience common language common aspects of what we went through in terms of what certain people coin now in terms of mixed ancestry heritage or whatnot and we're going to get to the bottom of this so I'm not here to district at Red River Metis nation and actually I got a lot of friends in Red River in Saint Boniface and on camera as well I would like to salute Elder Paul de Rosier and Dolores Goslin from Union National Metis Saint-Joseph the society that was created in 1884 by Riel and after his execution by his brother I go there I often visit these communities or you know brothers and sisters and having a lot of fun okay but I also visit other communities across Canada including in the Supreme Court while we're waiting you know for sometimes decision or whatnot we we blend with each other right and people from northern Saskatchewan from the Metis settlement from different places in Canada all have their different identities their own spin at things their own politics their own conflicts their own vision and it has evolved when I was sitting in the in the Supreme Court for for the Daniels case before they went into decision that we're now waiting I saw a great diversity of Metis people there a very great diversity but now the language is hardening by some key actors especially in the academic and my own experience has been of such as well I did my PhD at the University of Victoria so coming out of that PhD I think some assume that I was a Western Metis well in fact I was more a central or whatnot Metis and so they tell me oh great and you you know a new PhD warriors in line something like that and I was I introduced for the very first time a bit of that more advocacy line that these guys are not Metis were the real one Metis and that just conflicted with the teaching of my dad and with everything that I knew from my experience with other First Nations and Aboriginal Indigenous people right and it shocked me in terms of the arguments of nationalism that I heard of like really our core form of exclusion inclusion built on the homogenic understanding essentializing almost understanding of Metis culture I was like what is this what is this about why do we need this where I came from I thought that we were and I still believe that at the bottom of my art are relational people see at the bottom of the argument that I'm gonna get today it's that there's an academic actor out there that wrote a book about Metis right to name it in 2014 Dr. Chris Anderson and we're gonna review his argument in a second but just as a teaser Dr. Chris Anderson suggests that if you're outside a certain form of nationalist ticket no genesis happening in the Valley of Red River if you're outside of that emergent crystallization of a collective consciousness you're not a meaty and if you claim you are a meaty your rush a lot you you're like I'm making a racist statement about meaty identity you think of meaty identity in terms of mixed race and I think if I'm reading him correctly that this is really bad you don't want to get there you don't you ever don't you know you don't you don't want to have this racial racist label on your back so you get a move away from those racial categories of mixed people and what not that has like killed the meaty nation spirit in of itself by bringing them down to just a mix af braid or what not residual something aboriginal to something nationalistically pure and intact and strong so is the language well I want to challenge that to the core by showing you evidence today in Louis Real's writing among other things but also in other actors that tells you that the valuation of mixed heritage per se is what characterize meaty culture or at the very least it can be one of the multiple interpretation of meaty identity you may value your aboriginal ancestry and your european ancestry coming together to create that beautiful unique culture in a way of expressing itself according to ecological modulations and different circumstances in time I will suggest what is wrong with that it's not about being racist is about understanding that people are not about quantum but they're about relationship and I truly hope that at the end of the day Chris Anderson Adam Goodries other actors that you know we've been playing ball with one another since a while now we're going to come to a common understanding that we may agree to disagree on this but still we're about relationships we're we're about you know I would hope kinship's location celebration of differences inclusivity and the possibility to survive furthermore challenge according to the legislation and illegal and framing that we're still enduring to this day so far am I clear or I'm off the rail already it's clear okay so I've created a bunch of circle for you guys that you're going to see on screen now not don't be scared these are just backup evidence yeah I came I came loaded right but I'm not gonna use them all obviously but if we need to go into further discussion I can have in my back pocket some interesting stuff that I may share with you okay but just some of the objectives I have three main objectives today as I'm I am truly hopeful that we're gonna do this I'm gonna offer an early description of what may be a cadian me tea I'm gonna interrogate why new tensions around the word me tea it's no secret that my conference in my presence here echoes a conference not long ago I think here too in that institution it was at the library right where where a doctor Adam Godry did it did a talk and and suggested that Eastern a meaty or a cadian meaty were wrong essentially I don't want to misquote him I was not at his conference I didn't read his conference but I think it's fair to assume that he suggested that the people that are a cadian me tea are actually in the wrong and are deluding themselves by using the term me tea and that they're not only deluding themselves hence in a form of double ignorance they are actually hijacking the identity of another person right and hence they are guilty of the ultimate sin there is out there in native study of cultural appropriations I mean you don't want to get their either right there's two labeled you don't want to have on your back racist and cultural appropriator that is like anathema right it's like really bad you smell bad forever with those things don't worry you may survive them I've been cast those label all over my self in my community for now two years because I'm producing what I'm speaking to you today has been targeted by a number of key actors including on lines that weren't just like well Sebastian because you're saying so you're an appropriator you're a white meaty you're a fake me to your ancestor where rapist and whatnot I heard them all right so I managed to survive to present this to you today hopefully with a smile so don't despair to get ever caught into those crossfire they're not as bad as they look okay that being said so and the last point that I want to discuss if I can make it there it's a legal point for the legalistic people among the crowd about the possibility of hammering down the need for liberal interpretation if we go to Pauli criteria okay so the conference was publicized in a newspaper had him with Goodrie's conferences about you know his claim that in me tea in the east never existed and you know basically I'm just going to take one quote here go three from this is from the article said that they are a group in eastern Canada and I quote that are only just emerging and these organizations should not be describing themselves as me tea and a quote so I'm just going to take that and perhaps another quote from the article to run with it right I mean dr. Goodrie can defend himself after that I believe saying he'd never said so in such a way that that's fair but just for a sake of creating a problem in a conversation and I will argue a further point is that his line was in fact you know all his argument can't be finding encapsulated in the book me tea by Chris Anderson dr. Chris Anderson University of Alberta which you can read and have like you know a 200 explanation page on on this argument but for sake of expediency today I've kind of fleshed out that book as a primer of our conversation in four points okay so if some people are interested about that that PowerPoint presentation or that pretty you email me after you reach me okay well you know okay so I'm aware that you guys cannot read all that material and you're like are you crazy Sebastian it's after six right so basically the dr. Chris Anderson suggest in his book that raising out of hysterical struggles out in the Red River there were the emergence of some collective memories that have been created right we can read in history books that there has been a number of memories collected okay these memory collected the second point say give rise to a collective consciousness a meaty people hood and I'm putting you know a quote after like documented please because we need hard evidence that this hysterical events did take place we need history books we need narrative that tells so and I'm gonna get to this point further the rise of collective consciousness of meaty people hood is out of those those those social events that create the context of a social consciousness and the term meaty should be attached to that collective consciousness alone exclusively right outside of that collective consciousness that moment by a witch meaty from mixed blood or merely mixed blood becomes a subject of nationalisms emerge only at Red River according to the argument outside of that your ancestor might have been have blood or aft cast or jackatars or whatnot they were not so goes the argument aware of themselves as an indigenous people hence they were frequently either adopted by the indigenous people by which they have connections or they were included or assimilated by the so-called white predominant settler society so it's kind of a a bevelant logic right either white either indigenous or the term meaty only appears in specific circumstances leading to the exact sociological conditions that would mimic those two first categories I don't know if you get me right so three three part point the argument goes that outside of this and the term soup kitchen has been used by dr. Anderson to to to points to all these disenfranchised aboriginal people that are looking for a legal shot at the government or anything these guys are in fact hijacking the terms meaty that they never use before in order to to do to advance their cause in their politics so that is in a nutshell the arguments okay I would have to do like a 45 minutes on this alone to do justice to his book but in a nutshell I think we have a good primer okay so now I want to challenge that break by break or at least tree break right first one right on the early descriptions of so-called a Katie and me tea yes the word meaty was used out east I'm sorry to say so but we'll have to come to terms with that now you can put a sociological spin on it to say that it didn't mean the same thing out west I will reply this is fine you can spin it the way you want and it can be different in the Great Lake than in the Red River and northern Saskatchewan you know northern Saskatchewan in the northwestern territories or whatnot I don't mind it a different spin I'm just suggesting here that no one should have the exclusive spin on that word right so here are you know pictures I don't know if my prison presentation will allow that yay right this is a representation of om accadian depicted it wow right depicted in the 17th century okay so you can see some of those feature of that om accadian especially also dark tone the skin that one can say and also the you know the the one could say is strictly to have savage kind of costume right so here's the reference for future conversation here's a woman accadian and here's another depiction so I just wanted to bring you guys like some sense of the picture a story for that it's going to disappear in a right this is a fam accadian with the pipe smoking tobacco right and less arguably less you know showing some signs but nevertheless really interesting in their feature so fam accadian and om accadian were already kind of displaying indians way and their way of dressing and ability in themselves now I'm not just going to go with pictures for you to trust me on this we're going to go to hysterical evidence that suggested so right so I got a few square down there just for us to have fun the common quote and knowledge the one that you can find on google you know that right I called the people this is a description of the accadian the people are tall and well proportionate good on you guys they're the light much and wearing long hair such as you know many first nations arguably they are are of a dark complexion in general and somewhat of the mixture of indians but they are but they are some of the light complexions right so you get like a mishmash of different complexions they retain the language and customs of their neighbors the french with a mixed affectation of the native indians and of course I'm going to stop it there right so you can see the blending of two culture you can see for external observer that looks at this and reports this and this is Charles Morris by the way very famous right is is is seeing the accadian is like whoa this is a weird bunch right here right I'm gonna I'm gonna apply two of those categories and I'm going to try to understand what they're all about a bit but these are you know this is a cheap shot right you can go and go on you say Sebastian did you really do your homework in terms of going on google and well I did a little bit better hopefully a great numbers of mulatto's some accadians distinctive by virtue of the indian blood this is a portion of this book here from Jane A. N. E. history of acadia 1879 that shows in text that they're described as mulatto's which means you know had any indian blood in them and they were fearing the scalp proclamation so at this point like you know rain was going down on the mikmok communities and under indigenous communities of this island by the British and the mikmok and the sorry the acadian arguably meaty were intermarrying with them so much often in different places of acadia that they were like man we're going to taste it as well so they made a special mention of that in the literature but that tells you again that the appearances and not only the appearances but the treatment the way in which people treat you due to your physical differences is important right so community identification I'm going to go further than this because at this point you can say look Sebastian this is nice and pretty but these guys are just mixed individuals they have like social consequences because of such but where is the collective element that Dr. Chris Anderson and others would ask me where is the sense of community that really makes an indigenous people an indigenous people because let's make no mistake folks these days communities serve as a fold to police aboriginal people right the first question that people ask you is what's your community and they assess you according to your communities all the time right the problem with that is that sometimes not in all case but it leads to strong essentializing tendency right you should be looking and in line with your community or else you're going to get in trouble right so we are always constantly looking for that external validation by or a communitarian aspect but I wanted to abide by it so I've looked at a couple quotes that may satisfy our appetite for that a body of me tea from la heave in Acadia now let me state for the record that I'm not as of yet an expert in Acadia I have a huge interest in Acadia my ancestor Mallette married Joseph LaBerge and Joseph LaBerge is connected to pit pit is collected to Melançon to Robichaux to Terrio to Godreau to hence I am connected with the beautiful Acadian family and proud of it for the record but I'm not an expert yet and with your help perhaps I will become this is just out of an interest with people denying the existence of me tea in the east that I was like I have something to say about this right I can do further but look that's not really complicated this is from just this uh death breeze a history of Leningberg 1895 anyone heard of that evidence before so justice here saying in the quote here states that there was also a body of Mick Moss from Chebukto and Métis from la heave right a body of Métis right from la heave under one legend Zebriar courrier des bois so we have a description of a body of Métis right at the heart of Acadia using the term Métis in 1895 so why can we suggest how can we suggest that the term Métis was not used and literature that were describing people as such not convinced okay let me just get to to that one this is a french one the term bois brûlée is used by Rameau in 1888 suggesting that la plupart de ses membres in french I quote et été de l'origine sa fondre avec les bois brûlés which means the bois brûlés is a very specific term also used out west in the song of le grenouillère when they won their their first battle in 1816 if I remember correctly so they say in that little quote Rameau there suggests that la heave again is a head quarter of the bois brûlés so he described the Acadia Métis as bois brûlés and furthermore he specifically pointed that la heave region again as a quarter like as a it's a general quarter of those bois brûlés so you have a sense of like I would suggest a sense of community that could be argued from such quotes right especially if you pile them all over together right so these uh one last quote here the word people was even used people in this quote that I've translated for you and I quote a colonial institution in emergence where once lives out later a small people a new french province beyond the ocean several of his companion I'd indeed form it with indian squalls I'm sorry for the term irregular household giving the rise to Métis family the term Métis family is used the description of the small people is used all this historically in 1889 so all these evidence are just there to you know brush the water a bit in terms of the term not being used in the eastern culture as per these historical evidence the word Métis was used to describe the akkadian or at least some branch of the akkadian people arguably not to suggest that all akkadians will self-identify as Métis that's not what I'm suggesting but it certainly suggests that the term was in use from a historical perspective which links to your point here's a letter from Monsieur de la Varene to a friend at La Rochelle 1756 I've quoted in yellow in here I'm going to make bigger for you they were a mixed breed and I quote that is to say most of them proceeded from marriage or concubinage of the savage woman with the first settlers who were a various nation but chiefly french and other where english scotch switch and dutch the end of quote this is a statement of people discussing what did happen to the akkadian following in line with the deportation right like this quote here say ask your question and I quote sir about the english being in the right or wrong in their treatment of the akkadians or descendant of the european first settled in akkadia right this is the the intro of that letter that portion of that letter and then the author said let me tell you what the akkadian are and this is the descriptive of the akkadian and mix it breed the term mulatto is coming in the term meaty is used bua brulee is used historically speaking now my argument to you is that all those terms that is I will show you is linked to shame later on right that is linked to the need to hide that you had any indian or meaty or whatnot ancestry due to some form of some consciousness of impurity all these were already there in the historical records okay so that in my opinion have most likely shaped the way in which people understand themselves how can you say that 200 years ago people were described as meaty and never impacted people here in Nova Scotia in different place in in this highland this is a stretch right by the way because i'm presenting these kinds of evidence i've been also called an archivistic meaty as an insult oh we're tired of Sebastian he's just an archivistic meaty he's got he's got no culture nothing he's just all like these old quotes from old leaders and dusty things right when frustration gets to a boil i mean i'm proud of those quotes i've searched them hard and i've shared with them with many community member by the way but uh and he doesn't please anybody right so there's even a distinctive lifestyle here i'm going to go a little bit quicker but distinctive lifestyle linked with fur trade right here as per your suggestion earlier right fur trade right here i founded the evidence of fur trade of like akkadian described as meaty or rough you know the term meaty as we are now we can start arguing about this it was used historically right so if it was used historically i would suggest you have a right to claim that word per its historical usage in akkadia perhaps in a specific way to you guys as i as i'm aware there's akkadian meaty representative in room not to say that it's red river but wait wait meaty meat shift was never used east so goes the argument i'm sorry to say but the term meaty appeared in 1760 in that record right here in baghazi report that it goes into gaspay pabbot and he said that there are 17 family normand and mitchiff the term mitchiff even mitchiff is used this constitute 100 people by the way it's not like oh 17 family well no it's 100 100 people together right server aid as mitchiff now i know that the argument will say well these people were identified by outsider as mitchiff but did they truly understand themselves as meaty i'm gonna do a lot of soul searching to go 200 years ago and tell you did you really on affidavit can you prove me that you were talking about yourself in terms of the meaty now that's a harsh claim to make and i dare a lot of people out west where i got a lot of friends to go in their own ancestry and look for those affidavits i mean they're rare right okay you can go for script but afbreed script by the way they were not exclusive to people from red river so-called afbreed travel all across the land including we have gathering evidence of that including some laundry and some familiar name that travel out west in order to get a fair shot at this and had a script so they were not like are you from red river afbreed yeah then you know as long as you were prior to a certain date in manitoba you're good to go as an afbreed right so even that is disputable so some people will say look Sebastian all what you're doing right now is really wrong because you're racializing you know like you're putting a race type of argument forward you're just spinning it again i would argue that those early description of race and mixed race and whatnot were more in line with an understanding of like that you can see in montaing for example writing right or Montesquieu when he describes people according to their their meurs in french their way of life their culture their the climate that shapes their behaviors what race at that time was like the french race or the english race it was not purely biological it was always meant to mean something more than biology this argument that you are either culture or biology this is more recent in estuary i would argue right priors to that those distinction were kind of blending in together a little more right so that is just a technical point so i'm just going to move along here but wait we are told no can do meet you were either assimilated in mikma or acadians there is no third category here what i call the colonial law of excluded middle but i have evidence here in journals and look at those i like to call them babies here are evidence from 1886 of community of meaty of paspis piac right now used in a in a in a trial in trial court okay so this exemplified that there is a bunch of people called akkadian meaty or the meaty of paspis piac and they are rioting because they are starving in 1888 minds you those dates it's after louis reels right were deep into the maritime and kebek side of things and these people people are described it as a community and they're described as having leaders chiefs okay and not only that look the word are there the meaty of paspis piac i'm not inventing this my friends you know the meaty of paspis piac and you know why they are so called the meaty of paspis piac because the people of kebek called for a repression of the akkadian meaty again and they said you should send the military and kick their ass but make no mistake the french are good the anglos are good and the mikma well you know be nice a bit but the meaty akkadian these are the ones that you need to elbow down right so in those papers they're making kind of all the distinctive feature that dr chris anderson is arguably looking for 1888 right if you're not satisfied and this i'm going to go quickly here in laminar there is distinctive right the distinctive aspect of the akkadian meaty are even described in newspaper and i quote les français et les anglais ne prendront possiblement pas par cet agitation which means the french and the english won't take part to this right that difficulty the problems are raised by the meaty which are the descendants of akkadian and mikma i don't know to me it's pretty it's pretty telling right you have communities describe it as a mixed ancestry of akkadian and mikma with leaders which show social cohesion doing an action of starving together and fighting for their lives it's pretty telling right especially and these are all other articles because they were you know six different articles speaking of this six meaty fishermen rings a bell meaty fishermen back in the days also described as meaty fishermen lurking around looking for another riot those shady meaty katie and fisherman okay i mean hey nothing changed right so that's 1888 right laminar so all these evidence are now used in in court by the descendant of the meaty akkadian people now right now in kebek in the gas bay coast okay because these guys are in court right now fighting for their rights or some out west disregard them all together right so i find that harsh sometimes i won't but going back to dr's anderson argument i'm just going to put a few line for you here abc right as a scholar we got bad habits like that don't you think that naming out a group like that in a newspaper in kebek with six different articles won't affect the sentiment of themselves won't affect the treatment of others to themselves don't you think that these types of literature don't shape the perspective of people that are pointed out and do you really want to say hey you got to find me some writing these people that lives in the bush and in the boat and fishermen and are struggling to survive they must have written evidence that they say i am a meaty i understand myself as a meaty and i will be forever a meaty in all my years there now i can go back fishing and my descendant will be all right arguably this is not the way it worked right most of these people didn't have access to books and pens and all that they were you know fishing hunting trap line so i'm suggesting that this pressure to argue for evidence and discarding the oral evidence because let me be clear about that when i said to those people and i'm having a discussion with i said guys man at first i was trying to be nice with no evidence none of that heavy stuff right say guys man we're we're we're second cousins sometimes our communities in the middle west half is the red river the other half is not right we're blending we have our old traditions with the yaketyan we have the our old tradition with other communities across this land with other first nations we're very connected to different networks no you don't you don't have our old tradition you're fooling yourself you're an opportunist say what yeah yeah you don't you don't know what you're talking about now it's because of that constitution thing in 1982 and 1983 that you're not calling yourself a meaty in order to pick some rights and you're you're scavenging on the identity of another person i was like really we have our old tradition no you don't bring me uh evidence sebastian that's what that's what i was told point blank so i did well i've started to and now i'm called an archivistic meaty and so i'm just waiting for a next next problem to come up in order to serve it right so why am i too long right now am i are where are we doing on time all right so okay i'm just gonna try to go there and after that question and answer perhaps we can play and dance a bit okay why policing the term meaty anyway why why and i'm just gonna try to conclude with that before serving my legalistic kind of trust at this why should we police the meaty argument when 30 different ethnonyms were used in red river alone why this big fuss about like meaty is a word for us when back in the days in red river that was not the case the word meaty was not just that exclusive things right and here i got a quote for you if you don't believe me because people don't believe me nowadays they don't they just don't this is a quote from 1879 the french half braid of the northwest that describes them i quote the designation of french french is often indifferentially applied to canadiens meaty of all grades and even pure indian who associate with the meaty and speak their patois it should also be stated that in manitoba in other places as you know a certain proportion of mixed blood from english and Scottish farter bearing the name as grand grey southern land and whatnot are classified as french so even the anglows are classified as french everybody there is a french and that's not a good thing let me tell you sometimes being a french i mean you're gonna get in trouble just as you're a negadian right those dirty french shady french half braid french what not french right so this is just to tell you that there were no modulating terms of the name nobody was like i am a meaty and only a meaty i'm carrying the flag like what is this this is a new mythology now polishing out east and out west now so now north by the different type of scholars that are going everywhere and say you don't have a right to claim that i'm like i'm i'm flipping the table on these guys on which basis are you claiming that historically speaking because where i'm from that's pretty different right second when some meaty from out west themselves refuse the homogenizing terms of red river meaty and i have a quote here this is from arcap a meaty from northern Saskatchewan if i remember correctly i for one and i quote him i've always stated that that's not who we are saying the red river meaty we are saying the meaty of western canada i come from northern Saskatchewan i'm not part of the red river i don't subscribe to the label of red river and so on so you see that even out west there's a broad diversity of meaty identity so why should we kind of narrow it down to that homogenizing nationalistically spin that wants to homogenize it all that's a good question i would like to cast forward for another day and finally my plot of resistance when rielle himself acknowledged the existence of eastern meaty in 1885 don't believe me while going his writing this is rielle when it comes to the eastern province of canada many meaty lives there persecuted under the attire of indian indian costume their village or village of indigence their indian title to the soil get that is however as good as the indian title of the meaty of manitoba rielle here is make the explicit distinction between the meaty of manitoba the meaty of the eastern province of canada he understand what meaty are arguably right he wrote a bunch of stuff on that and he says that their right to the soil is equivalent to the meaty of manitoba and rielle furthermore in his writing says we have to value our identity as mixed heritage he goes into his writing suggesting we are as proud as being french as we are of being of indian parentage is the fact that we honor both together that bring the distinctive aspect of our people in all its definition it's the cultural valuation of this it's not a bad thing it's the cultural valuation of this which is at the heart of the meaty experience i would suggest that makes me going to your house and saying i value my dual triple ancestry or whatnot in the constitution of my meaty identity and you will say to me so am i and we're going to relate to different historical process and experience and hard time and good time and all that and we're going to share fish over it and we're going to bond and rielle had this project of unifying all meaty across northern america all af braid preferring the term meaty because he said in one of his quote now that the grade of blood has mixed to such a level and such a different degree that it's no more important of saying af this and af that it's suffice to have one drop of each bucket and to proudly call yourself a meaty now if rielle himself said those things on top of all of the other things that i've you know shared with you today i'm asking why why are we pursuing this hard road of like trying to snatch away the possibility for other people to have their interpretation based on their history based on historical records based on their oral tradition blessed by rielle himself and the aspects of sharing that future and that political possibility now i'm asking this why and i'm out for asking and i'm out for answers so basically this was a bit of my spin and these evidence are you know to me very important to gather into suggesting that the court should go for a liberal interpretation of paoli okay because if all of this is true and i didn't have the time but it's also linked to a process of shaming in terms of the academy t then the case should be brought perhaps before the court if some of you are getting there right that all of that treatment that 200 years attempt to suppress the different communities to blend them to force them to stimulate them this argument alone should drive the liberality of a paoli test a paoli test mind you that were applied to the paoli family that descend from wisconsin not connected to red river and not necessarily only connected to so saint mary but nomadic people i'll leave it at that folks i hope it was a good teaser for further discussion and hopefully we can discuss some of that later as i said i have many more evidence in banks so we can discuss and see your opinions about it thank you so much