Before I start today’s blog, I’m going to hyperlink one of my favorite graphic novels of all time, “Louis Riel: A Comic Strip Biography” by Chester Brown. I’m a visual learner and years ago when I first learned about Louis Riel, this comic let me see that there is more than one side to Canadian history. Hint-Hint: There is an evil depiction of John A MacDonald from the shadows that surround him to the things that he says.
When Louis Riel and his Metis led government of Manitoba attempted to negotiate directly with the new government of the confederation of Canada to establish their territories as a province under their leadership after the Red River Rebellion, the Metis did not get the land rights that they desired, and eventually Riel ended up being hung for treason in the aftermath the North-West Rebellion.
The reason that the Metis did not get the land rights that they desired according to the Canlitguide’s article assigned for this week is that “Canada at the time was not willing to accommodate more than two founding nations.”
Firstly, Canada was reluctant even for the second nation that it held as a founding nation. According to those who had power in Canada at the time: British, Protestant, Caucasian Males, the ideal future of Canada was Caucasian, Protestant, descendants of Brits. The reason why the French were kept on in Canada was mostly for their population density, as Roman Catholics tended to have many children. The proof in this last statement was in that loyalism was more colonial than national at the time. French Canadians are still largely separated from English Canadians to this day. It was not until Pierre Trudeau launched multiculturalism as a ploy to enact bilingualism that that French Canadians started thinking of themselves as not so separate from the rest of Canada.
If it took that long for the French, who were as Caucasian as the British, to be accepted into Canada, Louis Riel had little chance of creating a third founding Metis nation. After confederation, the future outlook of Canada saw Indigenous peoples, which somehow included the the Metis in the minds of Canada’s first Government lead by John A MacDonald, as a trading partners to make money from rather than allies in the future of Canada or as peoples to be assimilated in residential schools. Residential schools were already taking away the identities of Indigenous youth then years before the Red River Rebellion and Louis Riel’s provisional government.
Thus for racial, cultural, and political reasons it was incredibly unlikely the Louis Riel’s Metis Government would get to represent a third founding nation.
Works Cited:
“A Timeline of Residential Schools, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.” CBCnews. CBC/Radio Canada, 16 May 2008. Web. 28 Oct. 2016
“Louis Riel.” Drawn & Quarterly. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Oct. 2016.
Awesome blog. Mine focuses on the fact that Riel and the Metis were not white, so they never stood a chance…has some similarities to yours. I’m curious about your comment about Trudeau…I have understood that he did not want Quebec to leave Canada, and his intent was to bridge between the two cultures…
I learned about Trudeau’s ulterior motive to his multicultural policy in a course in summer semester (History 104.) If I can find the scholarly articles about it used for the course, I’ll post them here. They basically stated that Trudeau did not want Quebec to leave Canada and set up bilingualism under a guise of “all cultures in Canada being treated equally and fairly”… which hasn’t happened as we know.
Hi Sarah, nice post! I particularly enjoyed the comic that you linked – very interesting and helpful (I am a huge visual learner also!!). Going off the conversation above: Did the French Canadians feel more included within the nation after Trudeau’s call for multiculturalism? I think to this day there is still huge frustration and Quebecois pride in the province. Perhaps because they were being told by authorities how they should feel now, as if it was just a small bandaid over a huge wound.
I also agree that Louis Riel was far from establishing a third founding nation, the importance of race during this era was too powerful to really overcome. The Metis were not of this ‘white’ class and were thus not going to recieve recognition. Perhaps the two founding nations believed that if the Metis became recognized as a founder, maybe other Natives would begin a revolution to have their names represented? Maybe it was easier to keep all visible minorities on the same playing field.
I agree that there is still much to be done about including French Canadians into mainstream Canadian culture. Multiculturalism helped Quebec stay in Canada, but today, on the west coast of Canada the only French that I see on a day to day basis is on packaged food products. I only remember a few words of the French that I learned in elementary school.
I also agree with you that other cultures besides the Metis in Canada at the time of Louis Riel would have began to advocate for their rights if the Metis had become a ‘third nation’ founding Canada. That was part of the reason why the Canadian Government could not represent minority cultures at the time (not that it does much of that today.)