February 27, 2024 • 40 mins
Join us as we explore Métis culture with Jean Teillet, an influential advocate and descendant of Louis Riel, who intertwines her legal expertise and artistic passion in championing Indigenous rights. In this conversation, Jean delves into the Métis' rich history, their fight for recognition, and how recent legal victories are shaping their path toward self-governance, offering insights into her book, "The Northwest is Your Mother," and the vibrant future of Métis advocacy.
Jean Teillet, now retired and named Emeritus Counsel at Pape Salter Teillet LLP, is renowned for her pivotal role in Indigenous rights litigation, including R. v. Powley, and her contributions to Métis and First Nation communities, along with receiving numerous accolades such as the Governor General’s Meritorious Service Cross and authoring "The North-West is Our Mother."
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Aaron Pete (00:00):
Welcome back to another episode of the Bigger
than Me podcast.
Here is your host, aaron Pepe.
Thank you so much for tuninginto another Bigger than Me
podcast episode.
Don't forget to like, subscribeand comment to show your
support.
Today we will be exploringMétis culture, their language,
their art, their music and howthey fit into Canadian history
(00:22):
with the author of the Northwestis Our Mother.
My guest today is Jean Taillet.
Welcome, jean, thank you somuch for joining us.
I'm wondering if you would beable to do a very brief
introduction and backgroundabout yourself to get people
familiarized with you.
Jean Teillet (00:40):
So my name is Jean Taillet and I am a recently
retired lawyer, and that's like11 days retired.
I have been for the past 25some odd years an Indigenous
rights lawyer, mitigating at theSupreme Court of Canada and all
other levels of court, as wellas a treaty negotiator I work
(01:06):
for mostly for First Nations andfor Métis nation, and I've also
.
I'm also an author.
I've written the Northwest isOur Mother, which is a history
of the Métis nation, as well asa book called Métis Law in
Canada and multiple otherarticles, and I also do a lot of
public speaking and writing.
(01:27):
So that's me in a nutshell, mylegal life anyway.
Aaron Pete (01:32):
Brilliant.
Well, I'm going to ask you totake us all the way back to the
beginning, where you were awriter, a dancer, a
choreographer, a director, aproducer.
Would you mind taking us backto those 20 years of your life
and some of the highlights thatyou experienced?
Jean Teillet (01:48):
Well, I was a premier and I'm back to being an
artist again.
I've always been an artist andI like making things.
It's really what it comes downto.
As you can see by the threadbehind me, a lot of my work is
in fiber arts, so.
(02:09):
But I started out when I was ateenager writing for a radio
station in Winnipeg and that wasbroadcast over through Ontario,
saskatchewan, manitoba andNorth Dakota, minnesota and, I
think, into Montana, and so Iwrote a one-minute editorial
(02:32):
every day and it was my firstinput into writing and it was
basically it's write anything Iwanted and so I did, and they
never edited me or told me whatto write or said I couldn't say
whatever I wrote.
(02:52):
So I did that.
For you know, I think it wasabout four or five years, maybe
less, I can't remember.
But I also was very interestedin dance.
So I did that, really dancedfor quite a few years.
I danced as a modern dancer.
I danced with Toronto DanceTheatre, primarily on a few
(03:14):
other companies, as a sort of,you know, occasional dancer.
I choreographed for theatreworkshop productions quite a few
other places in, mostly inToronto, and I also had a have
had a long career as visualartist with works hanging in,
(03:40):
you know, some privatecollections in the United States
and a few public and privateplaces in Canada.
And then I went to law school at38, and that was a big change
and, mind you, I wanted to.
I wrote the law school examswhen I was like 20, at the same
(04:04):
time as I was auditioning fordance companies, and I decided
that dances, like being, is anathletic thing.
You really have to do it whenyou're young.
In my mind I said well, you canbe a lawyer when you're 40,
which at that time was about asold as I could imagine being.
And so, sure enough around,it's at 38 that I went to law
(04:27):
school, so just kind of movedover to the other side of my
brain.
And then I've spent that sincethen in law and now I'm back in
my creative mode again.
Aaron Pete (04:47):
There's one piece I'd like to ask about
specifically, and it's the tworow wampum belt sitting in the
University of Toronto.
Would you mind sharing with thelisteners the meaning behind
that belt?
Jean Teillet (04:59):
Yeah, it's a Haudenosaunee, that's sort of
the Six Nations tradition.
And so what happened was I, myfirst day of law school at the
University of Toronto.
I walked in and there was avery large, big brass plaque on
one of walls and I mean large,like you know, 12 feet high by
(05:19):
you know, 10 feet wide and ithad statements about the law
from the Torah and one of thestatements said there should be
one law for you and the strangeramong you I might be misquoting
that slightly, but you get thegist and I remember standing in
front of that on my very firstday of law school, thinking,
(05:41):
well, that's not right.
What you know I'm, I'm I shouldhave said in my introduction.
I'm also a member of theManitoba Métis Federation and I
am, as my one of my elders,maria Campbell, says introduce
yourself by who are your peopleand where you're from.
(06:01):
I'm a member of the Riel family.
My grandmother was Sarah Riel.
My great-granduncle, her unclewas, was Louis Riel, so my
great-grandfather was Louis'slittle brother and I was born in
up right on, literally on thebanks of the Red River in.
So I am your classic Red Rivermatey.
(06:23):
And I stood in front of thatplaque that day and I said well,
that's sure not what I thoughtor was taught.
You know, I had always believedthat there were.
Indigenous people have theirown laws and and I also knew
that there's.
You know, there's military lawand there's there's Catholic law
(06:43):
and there's Jewish law, there'sall kinds of law.
There's not one law for you andthe stranger among you.
And then the other thing thatbugged me about that statement
was well, if there's one law foryou, the stranger among you,
then surely you settlers are thestrangers and she should be our
.
That should be the one law,right?
So I really didn't like it andit really bugged me.
(07:05):
So I after that, you know, inthe first week or so, met the
other indigenous law studentsthere.
There were nine of us, or nineof us, or eleven of us, I think.
That year we were the, the, thepeak, that's, the most
indigenous students U of T hasever had was that year.
And then I think they were likenine or something the year
(07:26):
after and there were three orsomething the year before us.
So we were at that.
You know, in those years I wasthere, then we were the biggest
amount of indigenous students atthe University of Toronto ever.
And so we did things.
So the, the Wampum Belt, Istarted talking about it with at
(07:47):
the.
We called ourselves the NativeLaw Students Association.
I started talking to them aboutthis thing.
That bugged me, and we just westarted talking about it, all of
us, and we said, well, but whydon't we try and get another
symbol of indigenous law in thelaw school and put it up?
And so we, but we didn't wantto appropriate another
(08:09):
indigenous people's symbolwithout, you know, talking to
them in permission.
So we invited the Holder of thetwo romampum belt To the?
U of t from six nations and hecame and he talked to us about
it, what it means, and and.
(08:32):
Then we asked him if we made areplica of it, would that be
Wrong?
And he said no, no, no, not atall, as long as you say it's a
replica, and and and then wesaid, well, and if we put a
plaque under it that saysdescription of it, um, can we
send it to you so we get thewording right, and then you can
(08:54):
send it back?
And he said, absolutely.
So I went off and beated it.
So what it is is it's um, awhite row and a purple row, thin
purple row and another whiterow, and another thin purple row
and another white row, and soit's called two row because it's
the two purple rows, and reallythe symbolism behind it is that
(09:16):
indigenous people have theirlaws and customs and um and live
in the one purple row and thesettlers have their laws and
customs and they live in another, in the other purple row, and
the white rows in between areabout respect and trust and
honesty and communication andall of those things, and the
(09:38):
belief was that the two rowscould live in parallel with each
other as long as there wasrespect and honesty and and
dignity afforded to each side.
And that's the idea of it.
So two laws that work inparallel with each other.
So we I beated it Marty Bayer,who was from managed to to an
(10:03):
island Ojibwe guy, brought backbeautiful birch bark rods and
hawk feathers and Deer skinstrips, and so we took my wampum
belt and we sort of uh, made asort of a leaf, did into a frame
and hung the hawk feathers fromit, and then we Drafted up a
(10:25):
plaque and we sent it to the um,the I'm sorry, I've totally
forgotten his name um, and hesaid no, that sounds great.
I think he made a, maybe made acouple of changes to to it, and
then we gifted it to theuniversity of toronto and, uh,
to the dean then who was bobsharp, who was later on the
(10:48):
court of appeal for ontario, andum, uh, then they hung it in a
really prominent place, just asyou were coming out of the
library and down the steps intowhat was called um lavel hall,
which was, you know, they justrebuilt u of t, but um, anyway
it was, it was given a veryprominent um position there.
(11:11):
Um, and one of the interestingthings is that they put the new,
the new law school now Up andthat brass plaque is gone, uh,
but the two were one pump beltsstill there, yeah, so that was
the story and I think it wasgreat that u of t accepted it
and and placed it and did allthat.
(11:31):
So it was all was um, it was agood.
I believe very much thatsymbols are really important Um
to have so because people,people look at them and they
absorb them.
Aaron Pete (11:45):
That's a beautiful story.
In the beginning of thenorthwest is your mother.
You talk about how there's arisk of the matee being treated
like the forgotten people, thatthey walked so lightly on the
land in so many ways thatthere's a risk that they don't
get the acknowledgement, theunderstanding, the recognition
that they deserve.
Would you mind describing fromyour perspective, who the matee
(12:08):
people are?
For people who may just bestarting to learn about matee
people now?
Jean Teillet (12:14):
Yeah, the the word itself, matee, is very
confusing.
So I think to anybody who'slistening, if you're confused
about who the matee are, you'rein good company and you're right
to be confused because it isconfusing.
So, and that's because, um,what happened really is in the
1960 era, people start to becomevery aware of language.
(12:37):
A lot of this comes out of um,a man named francis farman, who
was an african writer, whostarted writing about naming um
and how we use words likemulatto and half breed and um,
you know, negro and all of thosekinds of things, and the fact,
uh, how discriminatory thelanguage is in the naming.
(13:00):
And so people became very awarethat are english people let's
put it that way who had alwayscalled matee primarily half
breeds, became aware that halfbreed was a very derogatory term
.
So, and it is derogatorybecause it really means that you
are half of something, you'renot.
You're not a whole anything,you're just half of this or half
(13:23):
of that, these the word breedis also very Troubling.
I mean, we breed animals, wedon't breed people, right?
So if you're calling a person ahalf breed, you're calling them
half an animal and it doesn'ttake a lot to guess which half
is the animal right.
And the other part of it isthat a half breed connotes
(13:46):
almost like a mule, like youhave nothing that you can.
You're neutered, you havenothing that you can pass on.
And it also completely createsyou as an individual and not as
a member of a collective.
So it's just that one wordalone just completely severs
that person from any collectiveat all, especially an indigenous
(14:10):
collective.
So the Métis, of course, inFrench and the bulk of the Métis
nation have always calledthemselves Métis or Métis or
Métifs.
That has been the language thatthey use, but of course the
English never did that.
The English people always callthem half-breeds.
(14:31):
So who are the Métis?
As far as I'm concerned, theMétis are the people who are the
members of the Métis nation,and the Métis nation is
primarily the people who cameinto existence in the late 1700s
, in the prairies primarily.
Now that territory kind ofspills over a bit into Ontario,
(14:55):
a bit into the United States, alittle bit into BC, maybe a
little bit into the NorthwestTerritories, but the bulk of it,
the real bulk of it, iscentered on the prairie
provinces, and so they're thepeople that we would today think
of as Louis Riel's people,although Louis Riel was not the
first leader by any means.
He's three or four generationsin to the creation of the Métis
(15:21):
nation.
But that's who I'm talkingabout.
I do not use the word as asimple reference to anybody who
has mixed ancestry.
I don't use it to refer toFirst Nations people who lost
their status or whosegrandmother married a white guy,
(15:42):
or any of the people in EasternCanada who have lately picked
up the word Métis and arestarting to call themselves
Métis.
So I don't think that that'sappropriate.
But what I think about the useof the word is absolutely
irrelevant.
The horse has left the barn onthat one.
It's just out there andeverybody's using the word, and
(16:06):
that's why everyone's confusedabout it is because anybody who
has so much as a never-so-greatIndian grandma from 1702, now
maybe they didn't even knowabout for 300 or 400 years is
suddenly calling themselvesMétis.
Well, I think that's just afantasy, but that's what's
(16:27):
happening.
So my solution to this would beto suggest to the Métis nation
that we should call ourselvesthe Métis nation and let
everybody else fight over Métis.
But I'm not a public politician, I'm not in power, so I doubt
that that's going to happen.
But it is a problem.
The word so that's what I'mtalking about is the people that
(16:50):
we would now think of asLouisville's people.
Aaron Pete (16:53):
There's a strong movement right now to understand
history, I think in a good way.
But to me there's also this verydangerous path that we're on,
that we're sort of just lookingat history as a terrible
atrocity and that we say whitepeople came over and caused all
these problems for Indigenouspeople and that was it and I
(17:14):
often point to the Métis peopleas an example that there could
have been and there wascollaboration among First
Nations people and people comingacross from other lands, and
that that was something bothcommunities benefited from.
It didn't have to go the waythat it went with the English.
It didn't have to be that waythat we did have healthy
relationships, we did have tradeand it was something that was
(17:37):
good.
So when we look back on history, we have to somewhat embrace
the ambiguity and thecomplexities of these
relationships as they were.
Certainly it was never all goodor all bad, but right now I do
feel like so many people arelooking back at history and just
saying everything that wasgoing on was bad and everybody
in the past was bad andIndigenous people have just had
(17:57):
a terrible time of it.
And certainly there are piecesof that that are absolutely true
, but it's far more complicated.
Do you have the sameunderstanding, do you have
concerns when we look back athistory and kind of just have
one narrative around it?
Jean Teillet (18:12):
I certainly think that history is always more
complicated than a simplenarrative, and my, when I was
writing the book, that was soclear to me.
I so often would come across asingle event where there would
be seven different stories, allcoming from different
perspectives, all about the sameevent and some of them totally
(18:36):
irreconcilable.
Some of them could livetogether if you kind of looked
at them, but no, history isincredibly complicated and I
never think there's.
The good guys are not alwaysgood and the bad guys are not
always bad.
I mean, the bad guys can be badsometimes and good sometimes,
(18:58):
and histories like that.
I don't think there's a simplestory.
Anyway, I think the problemwith our history in Canada until
pretty recently is that no onewas even trying to tell the
indigenous side of the story,and so that was what I was
trying to do with the book.
I wasn't trying to say, well,everything you've said is wrong,
I'm just saying yeah, butthere's this other story here,
(19:24):
and so when I was writing it, Iwas always asking myself, okay,
this happened.
So what were they by them?
I mean the Maytube.
What were they thinking?
Why did they do what they didNot?
You know, not the simplisticstories that we got from.
You know the settlers who wrotethe histories, right?
(19:44):
But okay, just turn it aroundand say, well, that doesn't make
a lot of sense if you were theMaytube people standing there,
so what were they thinking, whatwere they doing, why would they
do this thing?
So that's what I was trying todo, not say you're wrong
Although sometimes their storiesare wrong, you know, but not
(20:06):
always.
And so you know, I think it'sjust more a point of adding
another thread or two to thestory.
And so you know, I can tell Iwrote that whole story of
basically the Maytube nation inthere, but I could not add in
(20:28):
there the First Nations thread,right?
And that's a whole huge threadthat no one else has written yet
, right?
That would be reallyfascinating to write, because I
mean just, for example, the 1885resistance.
We know that the First Nations,the Cree, were engaged in that
resistance as well, but theywere not working with the
(20:50):
Maytube, they were on their owntrajectory.
They went to war for their ownreasons and they followed their
own path.
And yet it often gets bundledall together.
Well, I wrote the Maytube sideof the story, or tried to write
the Maytube side of the story.
We've long had the English sideof the story, but where's the
(21:11):
Cree story in there?
You know, that would really benice.
Now some people have started towrite it.
Blair Stonechild and BillWeiser have been trying to add
to that story, but there areother perspectives on it, you
know, and it just makes itricher, you know, makes us
understand that none of this issimple.
(21:32):
So I agree with you that it'snot a simple story and I think
it's good ultimately thatactually indigenous histories
are being published now.
But I think we're missingmassive stories.
I was given the opportunity topublish the story of the Métis
Nation, but where is the historyof the Cree Nation?
(21:54):
Where is the history of theStalo Nation, although we've got
a beautiful Stalo Atlas, whichis great, but where's the
history of the Mi'kmaq?
Where's the history of sixnations?
You know somebody, and I meanit's like not academic books but
a popular history.
I was given the chance to writea popular history right, which
means it's sort of easy to read,not too many dates and
(22:17):
footnotes and things like that,just an easy read.
Where are all those stories?
Those are missing.
We haven't got those yet and weneed them.
Aaron Pete (22:24):
I couldn't agree more and I really enjoyed how
you wrote the book because itwas so easy to absorb and it
took you on this journey and itgave me a deeper appreciation.
I've worked as a native courtworker.
I understood that there wereMetis people, but I didn't
understand the culture, thehistory, the values, the
language, the music.
(22:44):
I got to learn all of that andget insights onto the
distinctness of being Metis andhave a deeper appreciation of
that as a consequence of readingyour book.
So I'm wondering if we can alsotalk about the process of
making that music.
When you started talking aboutthe Voyageurs and how many songs
they would play and how a goodday would I think have 25
(23:06):
different songs?
Jean Teillet (23:07):
50 songs was a good day.
That's what they said.
Aaron Pete (23:11):
Can you tell us about the music and that side?
Jean Teillet (23:15):
Yeah, I totally fell in love with the Voyageurs
when I was writing that part ofit, and that's another story
that, believe it or not, is notout there in Canadian history.
No one's written a popularhistory in the Voyageurs.
They pop up in various stories,a little bit here and a little
bit there, but no one's actuallywritten a wonderful story about
(23:36):
them.
And they're phenomenal, theseguys.
They were fascinating and theyare the fathers of the Metis
nation.
So where they are is most ofthem come.
You know, I can't remember thenumbers, but let's just broadly
say like 85% of them come from avery particular area of Quebec,
(23:59):
around Sprawlard of Yea, andthat's interesting all by itself
that they're just coming fromthis one very small area of
Quebec and they're unique.
You know these guys there, sotheir music was phenomenal.
So I'm married to a musician.
My husband's a composer,conductor, arranger, rock and
(24:21):
roll plays, everything, and whenI came I used to while I was
writing the book.
So I'm up here in my littleattic room and this is where I
wrote the book, a lot of it, andI would come downstairs all the
time and I'd come downstairsand I'd go, did you know that?
But full of all these thingsthat I was learning and one of
(24:42):
them that I found was that thevoyagers, if you had a good
singing voice you got paid morethan the other voyagers did.
And I was just that I was kindof blown away by that and I was
listening to voyager music whileI was writing that section and
just imagining because I've donea lot of canoe trips in my life
(25:05):
and just imagining what it waslike when they were paddling
along those rivers and lakes andthere were so many stories.
Overwhelmingly everyone whoencountered the voyagers talked
about their singing and people.
A very famous Irish poet,thomas Moore, came through the
(25:25):
Great Lakes and he saidsomething I'm paraphrasing, but
something like he had been inthe finest concert halls in
Europe and heard the greatsymphonies and operas and music,
but nothing had touched hissoul as much as one night when
he was, when they were paddling,I think on one of the Great
(25:47):
Lakes one boyager group metanother and they were sort of
like almost like trains of likethere could be 20 canoes in a
group with, you know, ten guysin each one and he said and they
all started singing and it wasmisty on the water and he said
it was just the mostheartbreaking thing, he'd most
(26:12):
beautiful thing he'd ever heardin his life.
And you can have like 200 men'svoices singing out on the water
like that.
They all talked about it.
Everybody who encountered themtalked about how beautiful the
music was.
Well, this musical traditionthen comes down to the May TV,
because this is their fathersand their grandfathers and they
(26:32):
are taught all those voyagersongs.
And some of the songs arewonderful.
Some of them are what they callcomplements, which would be
sort of rueful, mystic kind ofballads, a lot of them dreaming
about living somewherepermanently, because you guys
were always on the move, and buta lot of them were funny songs
(26:55):
and some of them were kind ofjazzy and where the and you know
, you can imagine sometimesthey'd be going through a canyon
or something and their voiceswould echo off the walls of the
canyon and they would justrepeat words that sounded back
and forth across to you.
That's jazz, that's what thatthat is.
So it's all kinds of things.
(27:16):
And they also did little playsand songs around the campfire at
night when they were there.
So they were very lively andthey're very noisy.
That was the other thing.
Is the voyagers and the matey.
That's.
The other thing that came acrossto me over and over again is
that everybody complained abouthow noisy the matey were when
they were in the camps.
(27:38):
They you know the, the firstnations complained about how
noisy they were and settlerscomplained about on those, if
they were, and they it was likebecause they would, they sang
and they talked and everythingwhile they were traveling and
then when they stopped you thinkthey won a little bit of peace
and quiet.
But nope, the fiddle, it justdance and sing all night long
(28:02):
and so, and nobody else liked,but they clearly did so.
It's a very vibrant people,full of you know what a view,
and and they are constantly onthe moon and constantly singing,
and I am.
(28:22):
To me that was justextraordinary.
So I think they get a lot ofthat from their voyager fathers.
It comes down to the rhythmfrom there, this sense of of
song and poetry and dance andmusic that they still go through
today.
I mean, their music is notcontemplative, sweet, they don't
(28:45):
sing sweet sad ballad.
It's noisy, loud, goes at fullspeed and they never, they're
not interested in quiet.
So you know, they're not thematey, are not the quiet noble
savages.
There's just that's, if you canascribe a character to a people
(29:14):
, they're not they're just not.
Aaron Pete (29:16):
It's a beautiful reminder because we're so used
to having our iPods or ouriPhones and having Apple music,
spotify.
We're so used to that that we adon't really share music the
same way we used to and allparticipate.
But you also think of longtravels.
How do you keep yourselfentertained?
How do you keep the energy upwhen everybody is tired?
(29:39):
And I know, when I'm on a run,I listen to music and it gets me
amped up and I'll listen to acertain rap song and it'll just
get me right, hyped back up, andthat's energy to your mind.
It's, it fuels you, and so youhave to think people needed that
back then and there would havebeen a process for that and it
was just such a beautifulreminder that that was a unique
aspect, but such an importantaspect to be able to move
(30:00):
forward.
Would you also mind telling usabout the Mitchiff language?
Jean Teillet (30:05):
yeah, so the the language that's the language of
the native nation.
It's a really unique language,so it one of the unique things
about it is that nobody outsidethe Métis nation knew it even
existed until the 1960s, andthat's not to say it only came
into existence then.
It's just that it was not alanguage that people spoke
(30:27):
outside of the family.
If the minute a stranger cameinto a group, people would start
to either speak Cree back inthe 1700s, 1800s, people would
either if it was a First Nationsperson, they would probably
move to Cree.
If it was a Frank, a European,they would move to French,
(30:51):
because French and Cree werewhat you would call the lingua
franca of fairies, so everybodyspoke French and Cree, or they
would move into English or somekind of, you know, combination
of those three.
But basically they never spoketheir Mitchiff language to
anyone other than anotherMitchiff, and so it was hidden
(31:14):
and it's not until this Danishlinguist came to.
I think he came to Saskatchewanin the 1960s and he was
studying Cree and he heard thesepeople speaking this language
and his ears perked up and hewent wow, what is that?
(31:35):
That's, that's not Cree.
What are they talking?
And so he went over and talkedto them and and started to and
got so intrigued with this thathe went into a deep study of it,
and so his study is reallyfascinating.
He's published a book on it andessentially what he's saying is
(31:57):
that it is like there's onlyone other language in the world
that's like Mitchiff and that'sthe language that the Gypsies or
the Roma people speak.
And so what it is is thatyou're taking nouns from one
language, but the taxonomy andthe grammar is from another
(32:18):
language.
So, for example, if I werespeaking the chif and you spoke
Cree, you would understand a lot, but you'd be going wow, wow,
what is this?
Likewise, if you were French,you would hear a lot of French
nouns, but you wouldn'tunderstand the the rest of it.
So, and that's apparently theRoma language, which is a lot of
(32:42):
German in it and there's otherlanguages in it, but it's got
its own taxonomy and that's whatMitchiff has.
So it's a very unique languageand there are dialects of it.
If you're up in NorthwesternSaskatchewan, it is basically
more Cree than French.
If you down where I'm from RedRiver, metis, in St Boniface,
(33:05):
manitoba it's got more French,less grief, but it's still.
But they can still understandeach other, the two different
dialects.
So there's the sort of what wecall Northern Mitchif or
Southern Mitchif and so, but itisn't.
So it's not a patois, it's notjust a slang, it's its own
(33:25):
unique language and we thinkit's been around since the late
1700s or late 1700s, early 1800s, because some of the songs that
are in Mitchif we have actuallywritten down from like 1820.
So we know it's been around forabout, you know, at least 200
years and it is a really it'svery unique to the Métis.
(33:49):
And since you're talking aboutwhat you know, if you're talking
about what makes a people or anation people, language is one
of the key, key things.
They need to have their ownlanguage and otherwise they're
not a, they're not a distinctgroup, they're sort of uh, lead
into other groups.
So so, yeah, mitchif's, andit's very much spoken today.
There's lots of Mitchif, it'snot a.
(34:10):
I don't think it's anendangered language.
There's quite a few people whoare still speaking it alive
today.
It's not like, unfortunately.
Like you know, starting toTerry Lynn, um, davidson,
williams Davidson and she who'sHaida, and I think she said
there's only three fluent Haidaspeakers.
(34:31):
There's people she can speak abit of it, a lot of people, but
there's only three really fluentleft.
Well, I don't think Mitchif'sanywhere near that.
I think there's quite a fewpeople who are really fluent.
Aaron Pete (34:42):
Yeah, for the Helclamelem language.
There's only one fluent speakerleft in who's able to speak
that, so it is considered anendangered language.
Jean Teillet (34:50):
Yeah.
Aaron Pete (34:51):
Yeah, I'd like to ask one last question.
When we're thinking about thechallenges that the Métis have
faced to be recognized, to berespected, to have their Section
35 interests respected I'mwondering what would you say to
municipal, provincial, federalgovernments, what would you say
to First Nations communities onthe impact the Métis has had and
(35:14):
what they should know about theMétis, how they should
understand them?
Jean Teillet (35:19):
Well, I think, first of all that they should
understand them as a separatepeople, that they are a people.
They're not just half FirstNations or half this.
There's a separate and distinctgroup there and that's
important that everybodyunderstands that.
So, and I think we're on theway to recognizing their rights.
(35:44):
You know, I did the first caseat the Supreme Court of Canada
that took Métis rights to theSupreme Court of Canada and the
Supreme Court was very clear andwe've had that there are that
the Métis are distinct peopleand that they have Section 35
rights.
So we've had a couple of otherimportant cases since then.
Not the Supremes that havereinforced that decision.
(36:08):
So I think that in law they'rerecognized.
Now, where the boundaries are isa.
You know that's a question forlots of First Nations and lots
of Métis.
I mean, I know for the Staloright, you know where's the
boundaries are.
You know people fight overthese things.
(36:30):
It's fine, it's standard.
People fight over boundaries.
There's a clear group of Stalo.
You know, in the middle thereand the edges, where does that
boundary between the Katmuc andthe Stalo go?
You know those are.
You know those are debates thatwill probably go on for another
(36:50):
150 years, you know, and theMétis nation has the same thing.
We sort of got this prairiecore, but how far into Ontario,
how far into BC does it feel?
Yeah, we fight over thoseboundaries, but the core group
is solid, and so I think thoseare the things that people need
to recognize.
And then you know so some ofthe things there are
(37:12):
self-government rights, theself-government agreements that
are being signed and enactedinto law pretty much as we speak
, and I'm pretty sure those aregoing to go through.
The Manitoba Métis Federationhas a treaty that's coming.
So I think that this is verydifferent from where it was when
(37:36):
I was growing up.
You know, we're a thousandmiles from where it was when I
was born in the 50s, when theMétis were all stupid, dirty,
diseased, drunken, less thanhuman.
You know people.
So things have come a long way.
(37:58):
We have a ways to go, but Ithink things are better.
Our stories are appearing,people are starting to
understand, and so I'm actuallyretiring my law career pretty
hopeful.
I also see so many wonderfulyoung people coming up who are
(38:21):
picking up the battle andcarrying it on.
I'm, you know, there's abeautiful young Métis lawyer,
geneviève Benoit.
She used to sit on my lap incolor when we were at Métis
meetings back 25 years ago.
(38:41):
She's a lawyer now she'sworking for the Métis Nation.
She's wonderful.
So I just think I'm very, veryproud of our new young
generation coming along.
They're doing well.
I look at the Manitoba MétisFederation.
They just bought a huge majorbuilding at the corner of
(39:03):
Portage and Main, which is themajor intersection in downtown
Winnipeg.
You know there are billboardsup for the Red River Métis in
the Ottawa Airport, you know ofall places.
So I think that they're doingwell and so I'm happy about that
(39:25):
.
I think, like I said, I thinkwe've got a ways to go.
People, the Canadian public,needs to learn more about Métis
and all Indigenous people.
Aaron Pete (39:34):
I can decree more.
Jean Teillet (39:35):
Yeah, but I think you know.
You know things are.
What is it?
Martin Luther King said the arcof justice bends.
You know, the arc of history isbending towards justice and I
think that's true for Indigenouspeople.
Right now it's bending towardsjustice.
We're not there yet, but it'sbending that way and I think you
(39:57):
know I spent my law careertrying to help bend that in that
direction and I think I helpedand so.
But I, like I said, I'm veryhopeful because the young people
are smart and dedicated andworking hard towards all
Indigenous rights, and to methat's great.
(40:19):
I will sit back now and go backto my art career and watch with
enjoyment as you, Erin, andyour generation, Just pick up
the ball and run with it.
Aaron Pete (40:31):
Beautiful Jean.
Thank you so much for doingthis.
The Northwest is your Mother isavailable on Audible audiobooks
.
It is available in physicalcopies.
I highly recommend people checkit out.
Thank you so much for sharingyour time today.
Jean Teillet (40:43):
Thanks for this Erin.
I really enjoyed it.
Welcome back to another episode of the Bigger
than Me podcast.
Here is your host, aaron Pepe.
Thank you so much for tuninginto another Bigger than Me
podcast episode.
Don't forget to like, subscribeand comment to show your
support.
Today we will be exploringMétis culture, their language,
their art, their music and howthey fit into Canadian history
(00:22):
with the author of the Northwestis Our Mother.
My guest today is Jean Taillet.
Welcome, jean, thank you somuch for joining us.
I'm wondering if you would beable to do a very brief
introduction and backgroundabout yourself to get people
familiarized with you.
Jean Teillet (00:40):
So my name is Jean Taillet and I am a recently
retired lawyer, and that's like11 days retired.
I have been for the past 25some odd years an Indigenous
rights lawyer, mitigating at theSupreme Court of Canada and all
other levels of court, as wellas a treaty negotiator I work
(01:06):
for mostly for First Nations andfor Métis nation, and I've also
.
I'm also an author.
I've written the Northwest isOur Mother, which is a history
of the Métis nation, as well asa book called Métis Law in
Canada and multiple otherarticles, and I also do a lot of
public speaking and writing.
(01:27):
So that's me in a nutshell, mylegal life anyway.
Aaron Pete (01:32):
Brilliant.
Well, I'm going to ask you totake us all the way back to the
beginning, where you were awriter, a dancer, a
choreographer, a director, aproducer.
Would you mind taking us backto those 20 years of your life
and some of the highlights thatyou experienced?
Jean Teillet (01:48):
Well, I was a premier and I'm back to being an
artist again.
I've always been an artist andI like making things.
It's really what it comes downto.
As you can see by the threadbehind me, a lot of my work is
in fiber arts, so.
(02:09):
But I started out when I was ateenager writing for a radio
station in Winnipeg and that wasbroadcast over through Ontario,
saskatchewan, manitoba andNorth Dakota, minnesota and, I
think, into Montana, and so Iwrote a one-minute editorial
(02:32):
every day and it was my firstinput into writing and it was
basically it's write anything Iwanted and so I did, and they
never edited me or told me whatto write or said I couldn't say
whatever I wrote.
(02:52):
So I did that.
For you know, I think it wasabout four or five years, maybe
less, I can't remember.
But I also was very interestedin dance.
So I did that, really dancedfor quite a few years.
I danced as a modern dancer.
I danced with Toronto DanceTheatre, primarily on a few
(03:14):
other companies, as a sort of,you know, occasional dancer.
I choreographed for theatreworkshop productions quite a few
other places in, mostly inToronto, and I also had a have
had a long career as visualartist with works hanging in,
(03:40):
you know, some privatecollections in the United States
and a few public and privateplaces in Canada.
And then I went to law school at38, and that was a big change
and, mind you, I wanted to.
I wrote the law school examswhen I was like 20, at the same
(04:04):
time as I was auditioning fordance companies, and I decided
that dances, like being, is anathletic thing.
You really have to do it whenyou're young.
In my mind I said well, you canbe a lawyer when you're 40,
which at that time was about asold as I could imagine being.
And so, sure enough around,it's at 38 that I went to law
(04:27):
school, so just kind of movedover to the other side of my
brain.
And then I've spent that sincethen in law and now I'm back in
my creative mode again.
Aaron Pete (04:47):
There's one piece I'd like to ask about
specifically, and it's the tworow wampum belt sitting in the
University of Toronto.
Would you mind sharing with thelisteners the meaning behind
that belt?
Jean Teillet (04:59):
Yeah, it's a Haudenosaunee, that's sort of
the Six Nations tradition.
And so what happened was I, myfirst day of law school at the
University of Toronto.
I walked in and there was avery large, big brass plaque on
one of walls and I mean large,like you know, 12 feet high by
(05:19):
you know, 10 feet wide and ithad statements about the law
from the Torah and one of thestatements said there should be
one law for you and the strangeramong you I might be misquoting
that slightly, but you get thegist and I remember standing in
front of that on my very firstday of law school, thinking,
(05:41):
well, that's not right.
What you know I'm, I'm I shouldhave said in my introduction.
I'm also a member of theManitoba Métis Federation and I
am, as my one of my elders,maria Campbell, says introduce
yourself by who are your peopleand where you're from.
(06:01):
I'm a member of the Riel family.
My grandmother was Sarah Riel.
My great-granduncle, her unclewas, was Louis Riel, so my
great-grandfather was Louis'slittle brother and I was born in
up right on, literally on thebanks of the Red River in.
So I am your classic Red Rivermatey.
(06:23):
And I stood in front of thatplaque that day and I said well,
that's sure not what I thoughtor was taught.
You know, I had always believedthat there were.
Indigenous people have theirown laws and and I also knew
that there's.
You know, there's military lawand there's there's Catholic law
(06:43):
and there's Jewish law, there'sall kinds of law.
There's not one law for you andthe stranger among you.
And then the other thing thatbugged me about that statement
was well, if there's one law foryou, the stranger among you,
then surely you settlers are thestrangers and she should be our
.
That should be the one law,right?
So I really didn't like it andit really bugged me.
(07:05):
So I after that, you know, inthe first week or so, met the
other indigenous law studentsthere.
There were nine of us, or nineof us, or eleven of us, I think.
That year we were the, the, thepeak, that's, the most
indigenous students U of T hasever had was that year.
And then I think they were likenine or something the year
(07:26):
after and there were three orsomething the year before us.
So we were at that.
You know, in those years I wasthere, then we were the biggest
amount of indigenous students atthe University of Toronto ever.
And so we did things.
So the, the Wampum Belt, Istarted talking about it with at
(07:47):
the.
We called ourselves the NativeLaw Students Association.
I started talking to them aboutthis thing.
That bugged me, and we just westarted talking about it, all of
us, and we said, well, but whydon't we try and get another
symbol of indigenous law in thelaw school and put it up?
And so we, but we didn't wantto appropriate another
(08:09):
indigenous people's symbolwithout, you know, talking to
them in permission.
So we invited the Holder of thetwo romampum belt To the?
U of t from six nations and hecame and he talked to us about
it, what it means, and and.
(08:32):
Then we asked him if we made areplica of it, would that be
Wrong?
And he said no, no, no, not atall, as long as you say it's a
replica, and and and then wesaid, well, and if we put a
plaque under it that saysdescription of it, um, can we
send it to you so we get thewording right, and then you can
(08:54):
send it back?
And he said, absolutely.
So I went off and beated it.
So what it is is it's um, awhite row and a purple row, thin
purple row and another whiterow, and another thin purple row
and another white row, and soit's called two row because it's
the two purple rows, and reallythe symbolism behind it is that
(09:16):
indigenous people have theirlaws and customs and um and live
in the one purple row and thesettlers have their laws and
customs and they live in another, in the other purple row, and
the white rows in between areabout respect and trust and
honesty and communication andall of those things, and the
(09:38):
belief was that the two rowscould live in parallel with each
other as long as there wasrespect and honesty and and
dignity afforded to each side.
And that's the idea of it.
So two laws that work inparallel with each other.
So we I beated it Marty Bayer,who was from managed to to an
(10:03):
island Ojibwe guy, brought backbeautiful birch bark rods and
hawk feathers and Deer skinstrips, and so we took my wampum
belt and we sort of uh, made asort of a leaf, did into a frame
and hung the hawk feathers fromit, and then we Drafted up a
(10:25):
plaque and we sent it to the um,the I'm sorry, I've totally
forgotten his name um, and hesaid no, that sounds great.
I think he made a, maybe made acouple of changes to to it, and
then we gifted it to theuniversity of toronto and, uh,
to the dean then who was bobsharp, who was later on the
(10:48):
court of appeal for ontario, andum, uh, then they hung it in a
really prominent place, just asyou were coming out of the
library and down the steps intowhat was called um lavel hall,
which was, you know, they justrebuilt u of t, but um, anyway
it was, it was given a veryprominent um position there.
(11:11):
Um, and one of the interestingthings is that they put the new,
the new law school now Up andthat brass plaque is gone, uh,
but the two were one pump beltsstill there, yeah, so that was
the story and I think it wasgreat that u of t accepted it
and and placed it and did allthat.
(11:31):
So it was all was um, it was agood.
I believe very much thatsymbols are really important Um
to have so because people,people look at them and they
absorb them.
Aaron Pete (11:45):
That's a beautiful story.
In the beginning of thenorthwest is your mother.
You talk about how there's arisk of the matee being treated
like the forgotten people, thatthey walked so lightly on the
land in so many ways thatthere's a risk that they don't
get the acknowledgement, theunderstanding, the recognition
that they deserve.
Would you mind describing fromyour perspective, who the matee
(12:08):
people are?
For people who may just bestarting to learn about matee
people now?
Jean Teillet (12:14):
Yeah, the the word itself, matee, is very
confusing.
So I think to anybody who'slistening, if you're confused
about who the matee are, you'rein good company and you're right
to be confused because it isconfusing.
So, and that's because, um,what happened really is in the
1960 era, people start to becomevery aware of language.
(12:37):
A lot of this comes out of um,a man named francis farman, who
was an african writer, whostarted writing about naming um
and how we use words likemulatto and half breed and um,
you know, negro and all of thosekinds of things, and the fact,
uh, how discriminatory thelanguage is in the naming.
(13:00):
And so people became very awarethat are english people let's
put it that way who had alwayscalled matee primarily half
breeds, became aware that halfbreed was a very derogatory term
.
So, and it is derogatorybecause it really means that you
are half of something, you'renot.
You're not a whole anything,you're just half of this or half
(13:23):
of that, these the word breedis also very Troubling.
I mean, we breed animals, wedon't breed people, right?
So if you're calling a person ahalf breed, you're calling them
half an animal and it doesn'ttake a lot to guess which half
is the animal right.
And the other part of it isthat a half breed connotes
(13:46):
almost like a mule, like youhave nothing that you can.
You're neutered, you havenothing that you can pass on.
And it also completely createsyou as an individual and not as
a member of a collective.
So it's just that one wordalone just completely severs
that person from any collectiveat all, especially an indigenous
(14:10):
collective.
So the Métis, of course, inFrench and the bulk of the Métis
nation have always calledthemselves Métis or Métis or
Métifs.
That has been the language thatthey use, but of course the
English never did that.
The English people always callthem half-breeds.
(14:31):
So who are the Métis?
As far as I'm concerned, theMétis are the people who are the
members of the Métis nation,and the Métis nation is
primarily the people who cameinto existence in the late 1700s
, in the prairies primarily.
Now that territory kind ofspills over a bit into Ontario,
(14:55):
a bit into the United States, alittle bit into BC, maybe a
little bit into the NorthwestTerritories, but the bulk of it,
the real bulk of it, iscentered on the prairie
provinces, and so they're thepeople that we would today think
of as Louis Riel's people,although Louis Riel was not the
first leader by any means.
He's three or four generationsin to the creation of the Métis
(15:21):
nation.
But that's who I'm talkingabout.
I do not use the word as asimple reference to anybody who
has mixed ancestry.
I don't use it to refer toFirst Nations people who lost
their status or whosegrandmother married a white guy,
(15:42):
or any of the people in EasternCanada who have lately picked
up the word Métis and arestarting to call themselves
Métis.
So I don't think that that'sappropriate.
But what I think about the useof the word is absolutely
irrelevant.
The horse has left the barn onthat one.
It's just out there andeverybody's using the word, and
(16:06):
that's why everyone's confusedabout it is because anybody who
has so much as a never-so-greatIndian grandma from 1702, now
maybe they didn't even knowabout for 300 or 400 years is
suddenly calling themselvesMétis.
Well, I think that's just afantasy, but that's what's
(16:27):
happening.
So my solution to this would beto suggest to the Métis nation
that we should call ourselvesthe Métis nation and let
everybody else fight over Métis.
But I'm not a public politician, I'm not in power, so I doubt
that that's going to happen.
But it is a problem.
The word so that's what I'mtalking about is the people that
(16:50):
we would now think of asLouisville's people.
Aaron Pete (16:53):
There's a strong movement right now to understand
history, I think in a good way.
But to me there's also this verydangerous path that we're on,
that we're sort of just lookingat history as a terrible
atrocity and that we say whitepeople came over and caused all
these problems for Indigenouspeople and that was it and I
(17:14):
often point to the Métis peopleas an example that there could
have been and there wascollaboration among First
Nations people and people comingacross from other lands, and
that that was something bothcommunities benefited from.
It didn't have to go the waythat it went with the English.
It didn't have to be that waythat we did have healthy
relationships, we did have tradeand it was something that was
(17:37):
good.
So when we look back on history, we have to somewhat embrace
the ambiguity and thecomplexities of these
relationships as they were.
Certainly it was never all goodor all bad, but right now I do
feel like so many people arelooking back at history and just
saying everything that wasgoing on was bad and everybody
in the past was bad andIndigenous people have just had
(17:57):
a terrible time of it.
And certainly there are piecesof that that are absolutely true
, but it's far more complicated.
Do you have the sameunderstanding, do you have
concerns when we look back athistory and kind of just have
one narrative around it?
Jean Teillet (18:12):
I certainly think that history is always more
complicated than a simplenarrative, and my, when I was
writing the book, that was soclear to me.
I so often would come across asingle event where there would
be seven different stories, allcoming from different
perspectives, all about the sameevent and some of them totally
(18:36):
irreconcilable.
Some of them could livetogether if you kind of looked
at them, but no, history isincredibly complicated and I
never think there's.
The good guys are not alwaysgood and the bad guys are not
always bad.
I mean, the bad guys can be badsometimes and good sometimes,
(18:58):
and histories like that.
I don't think there's a simplestory.
Anyway, I think the problemwith our history in Canada until
pretty recently is that no onewas even trying to tell the
indigenous side of the story,and so that was what I was
trying to do with the book.
I wasn't trying to say, well,everything you've said is wrong,
I'm just saying yeah, butthere's this other story here,
(19:24):
and so when I was writing it, Iwas always asking myself, okay,
this happened.
So what were they by them?
I mean the Maytube.
What were they thinking?
Why did they do what they didNot?
You know, not the simplisticstories that we got from.
You know the settlers who wrotethe histories, right?
(19:44):
But okay, just turn it aroundand say, well, that doesn't make
a lot of sense if you were theMaytube people standing there,
so what were they thinking, whatwere they doing, why would they
do this thing?
So that's what I was trying todo, not say you're wrong
Although sometimes their storiesare wrong, you know, but not
(20:06):
always.
And so you know, I think it'sjust more a point of adding
another thread or two to thestory.
And so you know, I can tell Iwrote that whole story of
basically the Maytube nation inthere, but I could not add in
(20:28):
there the First Nations thread,right?
And that's a whole huge threadthat no one else has written yet
, right?
That would be reallyfascinating to write, because I
mean just, for example, the 1885resistance.
We know that the First Nations,the Cree, were engaged in that
resistance as well, but theywere not working with the
(20:50):
Maytube, they were on their owntrajectory.
They went to war for their ownreasons and they followed their
own path.
And yet it often gets bundledall together.
Well, I wrote the Maytube sideof the story, or tried to write
the Maytube side of the story.
We've long had the English sideof the story, but where's the
(21:11):
Cree story in there?
You know, that would really benice.
Now some people have started towrite it.
Blair Stonechild and BillWeiser have been trying to add
to that story, but there areother perspectives on it, you
know, and it just makes itricher, you know, makes us
understand that none of this issimple.
(21:32):
So I agree with you that it'snot a simple story and I think
it's good ultimately thatactually indigenous histories
are being published now.
But I think we're missingmassive stories.
I was given the opportunity topublish the story of the Métis
Nation, but where is the historyof the Cree Nation?
(21:54):
Where is the history of theStalo Nation, although we've got
a beautiful Stalo Atlas, whichis great, but where's the
history of the Mi'kmaq?
Where's the history of sixnations?
You know somebody, and I meanit's like not academic books but
a popular history.
I was given the chance to writea popular history right, which
means it's sort of easy to read,not too many dates and
(22:17):
footnotes and things like that,just an easy read.
Where are all those stories?
Those are missing.
We haven't got those yet and weneed them.
Aaron Pete (22:24):
I couldn't agree more and I really enjoyed how
you wrote the book because itwas so easy to absorb and it
took you on this journey and itgave me a deeper appreciation.
I've worked as a native courtworker.
I understood that there wereMetis people, but I didn't
understand the culture, thehistory, the values, the
language, the music.
(22:44):
I got to learn all of that andget insights onto the
distinctness of being Metis andhave a deeper appreciation of
that as a consequence of readingyour book.
So I'm wondering if we can alsotalk about the process of
making that music.
When you started talking aboutthe Voyageurs and how many songs
they would play and how a goodday would I think have 25
(23:06):
different songs?
Jean Teillet (23:07):
50 songs was a good day.
That's what they said.
Aaron Pete (23:11):
Can you tell us about the music and that side?
Jean Teillet (23:15):
Yeah, I totally fell in love with the Voyageurs
when I was writing that part ofit, and that's another story
that, believe it or not, is notout there in Canadian history.
No one's written a popularhistory in the Voyageurs.
They pop up in various stories,a little bit here and a little
bit there, but no one's actuallywritten a wonderful story about
(23:36):
them.
And they're phenomenal, theseguys.
They were fascinating and theyare the fathers of the Metis
nation.
So where they are is most ofthem come.
You know, I can't remember thenumbers, but let's just broadly
say like 85% of them come from avery particular area of Quebec,
(23:59):
around Sprawlard of Yea, andthat's interesting all by itself
that they're just coming fromthis one very small area of
Quebec and they're unique.
You know these guys there, sotheir music was phenomenal.
So I'm married to a musician.
My husband's a composer,conductor, arranger, rock and
(24:21):
roll plays, everything, and whenI came I used to while I was
writing the book.
So I'm up here in my littleattic room and this is where I
wrote the book, a lot of it, andI would come downstairs all the
time and I'd come downstairsand I'd go, did you know that?
But full of all these thingsthat I was learning and one of
(24:42):
them that I found was that thevoyagers, if you had a good
singing voice you got paid morethan the other voyagers did.
And I was just that I was kindof blown away by that and I was
listening to voyager music whileI was writing that section and
just imagining because I've donea lot of canoe trips in my life
(25:05):
and just imagining what it waslike when they were paddling
along those rivers and lakes andthere were so many stories.
Overwhelmingly everyone whoencountered the voyagers talked
about their singing and people.
A very famous Irish poet,thomas Moore, came through the
(25:25):
Great Lakes and he saidsomething I'm paraphrasing, but
something like he had been inthe finest concert halls in
Europe and heard the greatsymphonies and operas and music,
but nothing had touched hissoul as much as one night when
he was, when they were paddling,I think on one of the Great
(25:47):
Lakes one boyager group metanother and they were sort of
like almost like trains of likethere could be 20 canoes in a
group with, you know, ten guysin each one and he said and they
all started singing and it wasmisty on the water and he said
it was just the mostheartbreaking thing, he'd most
(26:12):
beautiful thing he'd ever heardin his life.
And you can have like 200 men'svoices singing out on the water
like that.
They all talked about it.
Everybody who encountered themtalked about how beautiful the
music was.
Well, this musical traditionthen comes down to the May TV,
because this is their fathersand their grandfathers and they
(26:32):
are taught all those voyagersongs.
And some of the songs arewonderful.
Some of them are what they callcomplements, which would be
sort of rueful, mystic kind ofballads, a lot of them dreaming
about living somewherepermanently, because you guys
were always on the move, and buta lot of them were funny songs
(26:55):
and some of them were kind ofjazzy and where the and you know
, you can imagine sometimesthey'd be going through a canyon
or something and their voiceswould echo off the walls of the
canyon and they would justrepeat words that sounded back
and forth across to you.
That's jazz, that's what thatthat is.
So it's all kinds of things.
(27:16):
And they also did little playsand songs around the campfire at
night when they were there.
So they were very lively andthey're very noisy.
That was the other thing.
Is the voyagers and the matey.
That's.
The other thing that came acrossto me over and over again is
that everybody complained abouthow noisy the matey were when
they were in the camps.
(27:38):
They you know the, the firstnations complained about how
noisy they were and settlerscomplained about on those, if
they were, and they it was likebecause they would, they sang
and they talked and everythingwhile they were traveling and
then when they stopped you thinkthey won a little bit of peace
and quiet.
But nope, the fiddle, it justdance and sing all night long
(28:02):
and so, and nobody else liked,but they clearly did so.
It's a very vibrant people,full of you know what a view,
and and they are constantly onthe moon and constantly singing,
and I am.
(28:22):
To me that was justextraordinary.
So I think they get a lot ofthat from their voyager fathers.
It comes down to the rhythmfrom there, this sense of of
song and poetry and dance andmusic that they still go through
today.
I mean, their music is notcontemplative, sweet, they don't
(28:45):
sing sweet sad ballad.
It's noisy, loud, goes at fullspeed and they never, they're
not interested in quiet.
So you know, they're not thematey, are not the quiet noble
savages.
There's just that's, if you canascribe a character to a people
(29:14):
, they're not they're just not.
Aaron Pete (29:16):
It's a beautiful reminder because we're so used
to having our iPods or ouriPhones and having Apple music,
spotify.
We're so used to that that we adon't really share music the
same way we used to and allparticipate.
But you also think of longtravels.
How do you keep yourselfentertained?
How do you keep the energy upwhen everybody is tired?
(29:39):
And I know, when I'm on a run,I listen to music and it gets me
amped up and I'll listen to acertain rap song and it'll just
get me right, hyped back up, andthat's energy to your mind.
It's, it fuels you, and so youhave to think people needed that
back then and there would havebeen a process for that and it
was just such a beautifulreminder that that was a unique
aspect, but such an importantaspect to be able to move
(30:00):
forward.
Would you also mind telling usabout the Mitchiff language?
Jean Teillet (30:05):
yeah, so the the language that's the language of
the native nation.
It's a really unique language,so it one of the unique things
about it is that nobody outsidethe Métis nation knew it even
existed until the 1960s, andthat's not to say it only came
into existence then.
It's just that it was not alanguage that people spoke
(30:27):
outside of the family.
If the minute a stranger cameinto a group, people would start
to either speak Cree back inthe 1700s, 1800s, people would
either if it was a First Nationsperson, they would probably
move to Cree.
If it was a Frank, a European,they would move to French,
(30:51):
because French and Cree werewhat you would call the lingua
franca of fairies, so everybodyspoke French and Cree, or they
would move into English or somekind of, you know, combination
of those three.
But basically they never spoketheir Mitchiff language to
anyone other than anotherMitchiff, and so it was hidden
(31:14):
and it's not until this Danishlinguist came to.
I think he came to Saskatchewanin the 1960s and he was
studying Cree and he heard thesepeople speaking this language
and his ears perked up and hewent wow, what is that?
(31:35):
That's, that's not Cree.
What are they talking?
And so he went over and talkedto them and and started to and
got so intrigued with this thathe went into a deep study of it,
and so his study is reallyfascinating.
He's published a book on it andessentially what he's saying is
(31:57):
that it is like there's onlyone other language in the world
that's like Mitchiff and that'sthe language that the Gypsies or
the Roma people speak.
And so what it is is thatyou're taking nouns from one
language, but the taxonomy andthe grammar is from another
(32:18):
language.
So, for example, if I werespeaking the chif and you spoke
Cree, you would understand a lot, but you'd be going wow, wow,
what is this?
Likewise, if you were French,you would hear a lot of French
nouns, but you wouldn'tunderstand the the rest of it.
So, and that's apparently theRoma language, which is a lot of
(32:42):
German in it and there's otherlanguages in it, but it's got
its own taxonomy and that's whatMitchiff has.
So it's a very unique languageand there are dialects of it.
If you're up in NorthwesternSaskatchewan, it is basically
more Cree than French.
If you down where I'm from RedRiver, metis, in St Boniface,
(33:05):
manitoba it's got more French,less grief, but it's still.
But they can still understandeach other, the two different
dialects.
So there's the sort of what wecall Northern Mitchif or
Southern Mitchif and so, but itisn't.
So it's not a patois, it's notjust a slang, it's its own
(33:25):
unique language and we thinkit's been around since the late
1700s or late 1700s, early 1800s, because some of the songs that
are in Mitchif we have actuallywritten down from like 1820.
So we know it's been around forabout, you know, at least 200
years and it is a really it'svery unique to the Métis.
(33:49):
And since you're talking aboutwhat you know, if you're talking
about what makes a people or anation people, language is one
of the key, key things.
They need to have their ownlanguage and otherwise they're
not a, they're not a distinctgroup, they're sort of uh, lead
into other groups.
So so, yeah, mitchif's, andit's very much spoken today.
There's lots of Mitchif, it'snot a.
(34:10):
I don't think it's anendangered language.
There's quite a few people whoare still speaking it alive
today.
It's not like, unfortunately.
Like you know, starting toTerry Lynn, um, davidson,
williams Davidson and she who'sHaida, and I think she said
there's only three fluent Haidaspeakers.
(34:31):
There's people she can speak abit of it, a lot of people, but
there's only three really fluentleft.
Well, I don't think Mitchif'sanywhere near that.
I think there's quite a fewpeople who are really fluent.
Aaron Pete (34:42):
Yeah, for the Helclamelem language.
There's only one fluent speakerleft in who's able to speak
that, so it is considered anendangered language.
Jean Teillet (34:50):
Yeah.
Aaron Pete (34:51):
Yeah, I'd like to ask one last question.
When we're thinking about thechallenges that the Métis have
faced to be recognized, to berespected, to have their Section
35 interests respected I'mwondering what would you say to
municipal, provincial, federalgovernments, what would you say
to First Nations communities onthe impact the Métis has had and
(35:14):
what they should know about theMétis, how they should
understand them?
Jean Teillet (35:19):
Well, I think, first of all that they should
understand them as a separatepeople, that they are a people.
They're not just half FirstNations or half this.
There's a separate and distinctgroup there and that's
important that everybodyunderstands that.
So, and I think we're on theway to recognizing their rights.
(35:44):
You know, I did the first caseat the Supreme Court of Canada
that took Métis rights to theSupreme Court of Canada and the
Supreme Court was very clear andwe've had that there are that
the Métis are distinct peopleand that they have Section 35
rights.
So we've had a couple of otherimportant cases since then.
Not the Supremes that havereinforced that decision.
(36:08):
So I think that in law they'rerecognized.
Now, where the boundaries are isa.
You know that's a question forlots of First Nations and lots
of Métis.
I mean, I know for the Staloright, you know where's the
boundaries are.
You know people fight overthese things.
(36:30):
It's fine, it's standard.
People fight over boundaries.
There's a clear group of Stalo.
You know, in the middle thereand the edges, where does that
boundary between the Katmuc andthe Stalo go?
You know those are.
You know those are debates thatwill probably go on for another
(36:50):
150 years, you know, and theMétis nation has the same thing.
We sort of got this prairiecore, but how far into Ontario,
how far into BC does it feel?
Yeah, we fight over thoseboundaries, but the core group
is solid, and so I think thoseare the things that people need
to recognize.
And then you know so some ofthe things there are
(37:12):
self-government rights, theself-government agreements that
are being signed and enactedinto law pretty much as we speak
, and I'm pretty sure those aregoing to go through.
The Manitoba Métis Federationhas a treaty that's coming.
So I think that this is verydifferent from where it was when
(37:36):
I was growing up.
You know, we're a thousandmiles from where it was when I
was born in the 50s, when theMétis were all stupid, dirty,
diseased, drunken, less thanhuman.
You know people.
So things have come a long way.
(37:58):
We have a ways to go, but Ithink things are better.
Our stories are appearing,people are starting to
understand, and so I'm actuallyretiring my law career pretty
hopeful.
I also see so many wonderfulyoung people coming up who are
(38:21):
picking up the battle andcarrying it on.
I'm, you know, there's abeautiful young Métis lawyer,
geneviève Benoit.
She used to sit on my lap incolor when we were at Métis
meetings back 25 years ago.
(38:41):
She's a lawyer now she'sworking for the Métis Nation.
She's wonderful.
So I just think I'm very, veryproud of our new young
generation coming along.
They're doing well.
I look at the Manitoba MétisFederation.
They just bought a huge majorbuilding at the corner of
(39:03):
Portage and Main, which is themajor intersection in downtown
Winnipeg.
You know there are billboardsup for the Red River Métis in
the Ottawa Airport, you know ofall places.
So I think that they're doingwell and so I'm happy about that
(39:25):
.
I think, like I said, I thinkwe've got a ways to go.
People, the Canadian public,needs to learn more about Métis
and all Indigenous people.
Aaron Pete (39:34):
I can decree more.
Jean Teillet (39:35):
Yeah, but I think you know.
You know things are.
What is it?
Martin Luther King said the arcof justice bends.
You know, the arc of history isbending towards justice and I
think that's true for Indigenouspeople.
Right now it's bending towardsjustice.
We're not there yet, but it'sbending that way and I think you
(39:57):
know I spent my law careertrying to help bend that in that
direction and I think I helpedand so.
But I, like I said, I'm veryhopeful because the young people
are smart and dedicated andworking hard towards all
Indigenous rights, and to methat's great.
(40:19):
I will sit back now and go backto my art career and watch with
enjoyment as you, Erin, andyour generation, Just pick up
the ball and run with it.
Aaron Pete (40:31):
Beautiful Jean.
Thank you so much for doingthis.
The Northwest is your Mother isavailable on Audible audiobooks
.
It is available in physicalcopies.
I highly recommend people checkit out.
Thank you so much for sharingyour time today.
Jean Teillet (40:43):
Thanks for this Erin.
I really enjoyed it.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.