The Collective Theft of a Nation

In 1870, when Riel’s Métis Provisional Government negotiated the entry of the Red River Settlement into Confederation as the Province of Manitoba, the Métis numbered roughly 9,000 in Red River and 2,000 in communities in today’s Saskatchewan and Alberta tied by kinship and trade to Red River. These are the historic Métis communities that existed before the transfer of control to Canada.

In withdrawing from the Metis National Council, the MMF warned of a “third invasion” of the historic Métis Nation. The first invasion took the form of federal troops dispatched to Red River in 1870 to crush the first Métis Provisional Government under Riel. The second invasion took the form of a massive Canadian military expedition to the Saskatchewan Valley in 1885 to crush the Northwest Resistance of Riel’s second Métis Provisional Government and its First Nations allies.

Today, the third invasion is taking the form of tens of thousands of self-interested, like-minded individuals banding together to claim Métis identities, rights and benefits that don’t belong to them.

In Atlantic Canada, Quebec and Ontario, there has been an explosion in the number of individuals self-identifying as Métis and of organized groups springing up to wrap themselves in our flag, appropriate our symbols and lay claim to our Section 35 rights without any historic or kinship connection to our people. They falsely assert rights as Métis in order to encroach on the rights and benefits of First Nations.