Maachipaypin (the beginning)

“Hearing Art describe his experiences as transitional, I began to reflect on my own experiences growing up solely in an urban environment and how my experiences were very different than those of my father and my grandparents. Unlike my father, I did not grow up on the land, nor did I learn to speak the Michif language, so reluctantly I was faced with a question: who am I then, if I am torn loose from the land and there are cultural gaps between me and my ancestors?” (Bouvier, 2016, p. 85)

“For Art, urbanization did affect his upbringing, and his view of being Métis. He described his experience as transitional where he was the first generation to grow up and live in an urban environment. He viewed his experience differently than his grandparents and father, because they lived in relationship with the land in rural Alberta, whereas he grew up in urban centres. I identified with Art and found meaning in his story because my view of being Métis is heavily influenced by my urban experience” (Bouvier, 2016, p. 100)

“I grew up solely in a large urban environment and am disconnected to the way of life that they experienced of living with the land and within a close knit community. After I conducted the interviews and completed my analysis, I was left with a broad and lingering question: In what ways do Métis individuals, born to an urban-raised generation, construct and affirm their Métis identity in a contemporary context?” (Bouvier, 2016, p. 106)

As Piikani Elder Dr. Reg Crowshoe would say, “In an oral model of learning there is always a mandate that guides the circle, that guides the purpose of the circle”. This inquiry moved through and was held accountable to the questions of: how do Métis individuals born and raised in urban environments re-construct, affirm, and express their Métis self-understandings in the city; how do our self-understandings situate within a collective?; how do they contribute to individual and collective well-bring?; do these self-understandings enable us to live well and flourish in the city? The lynchpin of this work addresses how Métis individuals, born and raised in urban environments, express their Métis self-understandings. For this research, the criteria for participation was: an individual that self-identities as Métis, is connected to a historical Métis community that is held and bounded within unique and distinct political, historical, and kinship processes, and who grew up knowing of and practicing their identity. The historic homeland includes Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, and a small part of the Northwest Territories where we moved through the landscape, building extended kinship systems and communities. Shortly before 1885, and more significantly thereafter, some of our people fled their homes, out of fear of being Métis; it is important to acknowledge that we are dispersed people. For many Métis, the dispersal led us to towns then becoming cities. Today, large populations of Métis live in cities. Although cities may differ from the environments that our ancestors once occupied and protected, we continue to use human created places to express and reify who we are as Métis. Cities provide challenges for us in striving for this, but these places also provide beautiful and plentiful opportunities to collectivize and evolve ourselves individually and collectively while still being tethered to our historical legacy.