MidlandToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected] or via the website. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). MidlandToday received the following letter from reader Pauline King in response to a recent column from Jeff Monague.
While I agree with much of what Jeff Monague had to say on the "Métis" issue, I have another viewpoint to add. My mother was a full status Dakota First Nation until she married my father (a white military man). She immediately lost her status, meaning her children lost theirs too.
After her death in 1976, the rules changed in 1985 giving status back to those women. I fought for about five years to get her status back, so that me and my siblings could regain our rightful statuses. I had to get documentation of my mother's (and my) birth certificates, marriage certificates and her death certificate in order to file that claim; a long and exhausting process.
In 2010, I married a local Métis man and worked for about one year to trace his lineage to secure his Métis card. Once again forced to research and provide documentation of his and his ancestors' births, marriages, deaths (as is usual for most Métis in the Penetanguishene area, his lineage comes from the Drummond Islanders).
While I do not decry the Métis from acquiring their statuses and their own sense of 'belonging', I do have issue with them claiming a full 'Native' heritage and all of the so-called 'privileges' therein.
As Jeff points out: "this runs counter to Canada’s Indian Act policies of blood quantum for status Indians."
First Nations (full blood and status) in this country were forced to sign treaties with our government, which controlled every aspect of our lives (where we could (or could not) live; what schools we could (or could not) attend; where we could (or could not) hunt and fish; even who we could (or could not) marry).
Now we (full-blood status nations) must 'compete' with another class of people for those same 'rights and privileges' found in the treaties that we signed with our government?
As Jeff so rightly wrote: "So the road to 'our' natural resources can be more readily paved through 'our' traditional territories?"
Pauline King
Penetanguishene
