Métis Erotic

The Métis are the people the fur trade made and then could not sort back into either side of it. From the early 1700s, French, Scottish and English traders working the rivers west of the Great Lakes married Cree, Saulteaux, Dene and other First Nations women, and their children grew up as neither settlers nor band members. By the Battle of Seven Oaks in 1816 those descendants had a name for themselves, a flag carrying a white infinity loop, and a homeland centered on the Red River near present-day Winnipeg. That homeland spans Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta and reaches into Ontario, British Columbia, the Northwest Territories and the northern plains of the United States, where many Métis descendants belong to the Turtle Mountain and Little Shell Chippewa nations. Louis Riel led the 1869 resistance that produced the province of Manitoba and the 1885 North-West Resistance that ended at Batoche and on a gallows in Regina. The scrip system that followed stripped most Métis of the land they had been promised, and for decades many families lived as road allowance people, squatting on strips of Crown land beside country roads, recognized by no government. Canada's constitution has counted them among the country's three Aboriginal peoples since 1982, and the Métis themselves draw a sharp line: mixed ancestry alone does not make someone Métis. Belonging comes from descent from the historic Métis Nation and acceptance by its communities.

The clearest marker of that nation is Michif, a language that grammarians still find hard to believe. Its verbs are Plains Cree, while its nouns and articles are French, and the two systems sit side by side in one sentence rather than blending. Only a few hundred fluent speakers remain, though revival programs run on both sides of the border. Religion followed the French side of the family: the Métis were and largely remain Roman Catholic, with Anglican threads among families of Orkney descent, and the church shaped everything from the long river lots of Red River to Riel's politics. Material culture is where the nation is most visible today. The finger-woven arrow sash, tied at the waist, is the national garment. Floral beadwork so dense that the neighboring Dakota called the Métis the Flower Beadwork People still covers jackets, bags and moccasins. A syncopated fiddle style drives the Red River Jig, and the screech of the all-wood Red River cart, built without a nail, is remembered as the sound of the old trade routes. Most Métis now live in Prairie cities, Winnipeg above all, while the eight Métis Settlements in northern Alberta remain the only Métis land base in the country.