Métis Heritage Celebration 2018, Oshawa, Ontario

(June 23 - 24, 2018)

Métis Heritage Celebration is an annual gathering in Oshawa, Ontario, a city situated on the north shore of Lake Ontario. The event is organized by the Oshawa and Durham Region Métis Council, a local of Métis Nation Ontario that was chartered in 2004. 

The first Métis Heritage Celebration was held at the Brooklin Community Centre, in Whitby, Ontario (a city immediately west of Oshawa). The day-long event featured a drum circle (the Shwa Singers), two members of Métis Fiddler Quartet, fiddler Alicia Blore, fiddler and luthier Ruth Wagner, local elder, knowledge keeper and storyteller, Joe Paquette, and Ojibwe fiddler Laurence “Teddy Boy” Houle. The event also included Lacrosse demonstrations, jigging lessons, a jigging competition, a one-person theatrical piece about Marguerite Riel (Louis Riel’s wife), cultural displays, and vendors.

The following year (2008), the Celebration was moved to Oshawa’s Memorial Park and became a two-day, outdoor celebration. Over the next few years, the Métis council connected with Métis musicians, dancers, and event organizers from western Canada, where such events are more commonplace. Jigger and contemporary dancer Yvonne Chartrand (who is Métis from Manitoba, but lives in Vancouver) was invited to teach a dance workshop, leading to the creation the Olivine Bousquet dancers who performed at the Celebration in the years that followed. Métis fiddler JJ Lavallee was also invited to Oshawa by the Council in an effort to revitalize fiddling. The fiddle group that grew out of the original group taught by Lavallee—now known as the Gravel Road Fiddlers—began performing at the Heritage Celebration in 2011 and have performed every year since. Métis event organizer Dan Goodon was also invited, bringing out a Red River cart which is now part of the Celebration's cultural displays.

Although I was unable to attend in 2018, I have wonderful memories of the event from 2015, 2016, and 2017. One of my favourite memories was of the first year, when the second day of the event was cancelled due to torrential rains that had collapsed some of the vendor's tents. This might seem like a disaster, but organizers and performers joined together under one of the larger, remaining tents, to chat, listen to music, and dance across the muddy earth. It was one of those impromptu moments that makes cultural events not just performances but an embodiment of community sharing and spirit. 

Below are a few photos that I took in 2016. 

Train ride from Kingston to Oshawa, with view of beautiful Lake Ontario 

Memorial Park, Oshawa, Ontario, where the annual event has been held since 2008  

Traditional Métis embroidery and bead work on display

Impromptu jigging, Auriele Diotte (front) with members of the MNO's Summer Youth Cultural Program (wearing strap dresses) and audience members 

Teaching traditional Métis dances to attendees. 

Audience at the outdoor event, with Red River Cart and Métis flag in background

Jam session 

All My Relations Métis Drum Circle, led by Cecile Wagar

Street signs advertising the event 

For more about this event, including short videos of performances, follow this link. 

Métis Music and Art Festival 2018, Choteau, Montana

From June 8-10, 2018, the Mitchif Heritage Keepers held a Métis Music and Art Festival in Choteau, Montana. With a population of about 1700, this small town—located 32 kilometers east of the Rocky Mountains—marks a stopping place near Flathead National Forest and Glacier National Park. Métis people moved into the area beginning in the 1860s, following conflicts with settlers and the Canadian and American governments, as well as the rapid decline of bison herds farther east. 

Elder Fred "Jiggs" Charette told me that the festival was started to provide a space for people to get together and share music. But it has turned into much more. It is now a space to come together as kin and celebrate all aspects of Métis history and culture, and to pass Métis knowledge and ways of life on to the next generation.     

Below are a few photos from my travels to the Festival, along with some brief comments detailing their significance. 

View of the landscape, just a few minutes northeast of Choteau

Community Centre (the Pavilion) where the annual Métis Music and Art Festival is held

Sisters Kathy and Julie Moran (Turtle Mountain Métis) performing classic country hits and fiddle tunes

Downtown Choteau

Rabbit rubaboo, cooked by Reno Charette

One of the many jam sessions held over the weekend

Métis flag flying outside of the community centre during the Festival

Blackfeet/Métis ethnobotanist Dr. Rosalyn La Pier discussing Métis in Montana as well as the use of local plants for food and medicine

Students from Bynum School, led by prominent folklorist Nicholas Vrooman, performing a song they wrote in honour of Chippewa Cree Mitchif people

One of the many items showcased by Métis Elder Al Wiseman. This item was used by his grandmother to crush chokecherries (seeds and all)

Métis cemetery about a twenty minute drive northwest of Choteau. Elder Wiseman (cemetery caretaker) took a group of attendees to the cemetery on the final day of the Festival 

The first burial took place in 1890

Stones and markers of various types indicate the graves. Many were made long after the burial (including this one, which was made by Elder Wiseman) 

Wild strawberries are scattered throughout the graveyard

View from the cemetery

That's it for now! Be sure to mark your calendars for next year's event, scheduled for the weekend of June 14, 2019. 

Pierre Falcon's "La chanson des Bois-brûlés"

Pierre Falcon (1793 - 1876) is the earliest known Métis singer/songwriter. From his account of the Métis victory at Seven Oaks in “La chanson des Bois-Brûlés,” to his gentle mocking of Lord Selkirk and William McDougall in his songs titled “Li Lord Selkirk au Fort William” and “Lii tribulations d’un roi malheureux,” his compositions provided—and indeed provide—a means to remember and share Métis history, and to strengthen Métis national unity.

The popularity of Falcon’s songs among his own people is attested to by historian Joseph Tassé who in 1882 noted that they were sung throughout the northwest. Fifty-six years later, historian Margaret Complin wrote that some consider his earliest and most renowned song, “La chanson des Bois-Brûlés,” to be the Métis national anthem. 

Although little is known about Falcon, and some of what is written about him is contradictory (e.g., the ancestry of his parents and whether he was literate), he has been the subject of numerous works of fiction and non-fiction. (As a side note, some of the supposedly non-fictional accounts are written with the flair of fiction--i.e., without too much attention to factual accuracy.) The earliest published reference to his work dates back to 1863 when “La chanson des Bois-Brûlés” (referred to as “La gloire des Bois-Brûlés”) was included in F.A.H. LaRue’s book Le Foyer Canadien.

However, it is a second reference to this song, published in 1871 in J.J. Hargrave’s book titled Red River, that I want to discuss here. This reference is particularly interesting because it’s included as part of Hargrave’s more detailed discussion of the Battle of Seven Oaks, an event that took place in 1816 and that has often been used to mark the emergence of the Métis Nation. As Hargrave notes, he was “fortunate enough to secure from the lips of its author [i.e., Pierre Falcon] a metrical account of this battle, composed on horseback while on his way home from the scene of its occurrence.” The song was therefore included as a way to detail the history of the event.

It’s important to note that Hargrave adopts some of the prejudicial attitudes many held (and still hold) towards Métis people. Hargrave notes, for example, that Falcon’s biases undoubtedly “interfered with the accuracy of his description of the battle.” (Maybe, but didn't his own biases, and those of other settlers, also shape their writing of history? This, of course, is not acknowledged.) And in Hargrave's appendix that includes the lyrics to Falcon’s song, he takes seeming delight in republishing Alexander Ross’s (inaccurate) account of the battle and the “amusingly horrible” fate—the violent and sudden deaths—of the men who took part in the Battle of Seven Oaks in support of the Métis.  

Hargrave nonetheless notes in this same appendix that he has no doubt that the song is “a truthful description of the light in which the author, along with doubtless the majority of his comrades, regarded the appearance and intentions of Governor Semple and his followers.” In other words, Hargrave acknowledged that this song tells a Métis version of events that took place at Seven Oaks, even as he assumes that this version is a biased account of the events.    

What we do know is that the song conforms to evidence in William Coltman’s report—a report commissioned in 1818 by the governor in Lower Canada to investigate what happened at Seven Oaks—and challenges the account penned by Alexander Ross whose writing about Seven Oaks was eagerly accepted by post-1870 historians even though there was little evidence to support his version of the battle.

This song is therefore not only an important corrective, it’s also an example of the power of Métis oral/song traditions. Although there are numerous versions of the song today (as is typically the case with oral music traditional), they all present the same basic details of the skirmish, pointing to the value of the oral Métis song tradition in maintaining an accurate account of key aspects of historical events. The version of “La chanson des Bois-Brûles” below is taken directly from Hargrave’s book Red River.

Chanson Écrite Par Pierre Falcon

Voulez-vous écouter chanter une chanson de vérité!

Le dix-neuf de juin les “Bois-brûlés” sont arrivés

Comme des braves guerriers.

En arrivant à la Grenouillière

Nous avons fait trois prisonniers

Des Oroanais! Ils sont ici pour piller notre pays.

Etant sur le point de débarquer

Deux de nos gens se sont écriés

Voilà l’anglais qui vient nous attaquer!

Tous aussitôt nous nous sommes devirés

Pour aller les rencontrer.

J’avons cerné la bande de Grenadiers,

Ils sont immobiles! Ils sont démontés!

J’avons agi comme des gens d’honneur

Nous envoyâmes un ambassadeur.

Gouverneur! Voulez-vous arrêter un p’tit moment!

Nous voulons vous parler.

Le gouverneur qui est enrage,

Il dit à ses soldats—Tirez!

Le premier coup l’Anglais le tire.

L’ambassadeur a presque manqué d’être tué.

Le gouverneur se croyant l’Empereur

Il agit avec rigueur.

Le gouverneur se croyant l’Empereur

A son malheur agit avec trop de rigueur.

Ayant vu passer les Bois-brûlés

Il a parti pour nous épouvanter,

Il s’est trompé; il s’est bien fait tué.

Quantité de ses grenadiers.

J’avons tué Presque toute son armée.

De la bande quatre ou cinq se sont sauvés.

Si vous aviez vu les Anglais

Et tous les Bois-brûlés après!

De butte en butte les Anglais culbutaient.

Les Bois- Brûlés jetaient des cris de joie!

Qui en a compose la chanson?

C’est Pierre Falcon! Le bon garcon!

Elle a été faite et composée

Sur la Victoire que nous avons gagnés!

Elle a été faite et composée

Chantons la gloire de tous ces Bois-brûlés!   

Further reading:

Giroux, Monique. 2015. “Singing for Frog Plain: Representing Canadian/Metis Relations through Falcon’s Songs.” Ethnologies 37(1): 43–64.

Hargrave, Joseph James. 1871. Red River. Montreal: Printed for the author by John Lovell.