’The women encourage me to be what I already am.’

“’The women encourage me to be what I already am.’”

Strong Women Stories
Carole Leclair, Lynn Nicholson, Elize Hartley

Elize is a Metis elder in The Metis Women’s Circle- “founded in 1995 by Metis women as a response to a need expressed by women of mixed-blood and Metis heritage in Ontario.
Together the women in this group confront issues regarding their Nativeness, their identity, their place in the world, and their rights. Together they combat pressure and denial from both heritages. Together they are searching for their niche.
“Metis people still wait for this part of their story to be told. Records are lost, sealed or forgotten about by individuals who refuse to be defined by generalities of race and cultural inferiority.
“We work to recover documents written on stone, on paper, on bodies and preserved in family stories.”
Here, once again, this book reminds us that their identity is controlled in part by Western rules regarding one’s ability to define it and claim it.
“Colonialization required that documentation takes precedence over the authority of our mothers’ words or their pained silences surrounding the specific details of their Aboriginal heritage.”
The Circle offers women of mixed blood and culture a place to discover who they are and what that identity means. However, although women are not required to prove they’re metis with documentation in order to belong, colonialization is stamped with them.
“A woman may join the Circle on the basis of self-declaration as Metis or mixed-blood and community acceptance… [but]… Those without documentation of Aboriginal heritage are unable to hold executive offices.”
Food for thought: Can you ever really remove from Western systems of structure and identity? Is it fair to call the way things are an evolution that remains because it is best suited for large populations? Is there a separation of blood and culture? What does it mean to be Metis? Indian? White?