Maegan Ellis
Peter Fortna’s The Fort McKay Métis Nation: A Neighborhood Historical past presents a compelling and community-centered account of one in every of northern Alberta’s long-standing but usually missed Métis communities. The ebook gives a major contribution to each Indigenous historical past and the rising area of community-engaged scholarship. Past a regional research, Fortna’s work displays how communities assert id, keep continuity, and navigate evolving relationships with the land, the state, and business.
A defining power of Fortna’s monograph is its rootedness locally’s personal voice and expertise, grounded in respectful collaboration. Fairly than writing about the Fort McKay Métis Nation (FMMN), he labored with them. Having the total assist of the group, Fortna’s work was reviewed and partially funded by the FMMN itself. As Fortna highlights in his introduction, earlier iterations of this work drew on oral histories and interviews, household genealogies, land-use paperwork and experiences, newspaper articles, and correspondence between group members and varied organizational our bodies to marshal historic proof that Fort McKay’s Métis inhabitants holds part 35 rights below the Structure. This analysis was initially undertaken to assist Fort McKay’s authorized declare to session rights and shaped half of a bigger submission that resulted within the Alberta authorities recognizing the FMMN’s “credible assertion” as rights-holders below part 35 in 2020. Fortna’s monograph expands on that work, turning proof assembled for authorized functions right into a deeper historic account of Métis id, continuity, and group authority.
Fortna blends chronology with interconnected themes of id, land tenure, governance, useful resource extraction, group collaboration, and political recognition, starting with the early settlement of Fort McKay and persevering with into the 21st century. Within the opening chapters, he situates the Fort McKay group inside a singular historic and cultural panorama, emphasizing the deeply intertwined lives of its Métis, Cree, and Dene members because the fur commerce period. Fairly than treating these identities as fastened or oppositional, Fortna explores how they’ve advanced in relation to at least one one other, notably within the aftermath of the imposition of treaty and scrip regimes between 1899-1920. The primary two chapters focus carefully on the family tree of Fort McKay’s Métis households and their relations to the First Nations inhabitants, illustrating how pre-treaty kinship networks, collective land use, and shared historical past formed the group’s social material and bush financial system. By this lens, Fortna demonstrated how the class of “Métis” emerged not simply by state coverage but in addition by lived expertise that continued to shift into the 21st century.
Chapter 3 turns to the FMMN’s enduring relationship with the land, specializing in the bush financial system and the disruption of the trapline system locally. It highlights how conventional land-based practices – trapping, searching, and fishing – have lengthy sustained the group, not solely economically however culturally and socially. These practices continued properly into the 20th century and stay very important to Fort McKay’s id and self-determination. Fortna additionally illustrates how state-imposed rules, improvement pressures, and industrial encroachment destabilized these lifeways, forcing the group to adapt whereas sustaining deep-rooted connections to the land.
Fairly than portraying the group as mere victims of improvement, Fortna emphasizes their company in shaping outcomes. Chapters 4 and 5 hint how the group managed land and navigated colonial land tenure methods over the course of a century, starting within the Sixties with a response to industrial encroachment. Whereas Métis and First Nations residents of Fort McKay lived in shut cooperation, the state labored to divide them by insurance policies that handled Métis and Treaty Indians as basically separate teams. Pointing to land leases struggles and a need for dwelling possession, the Fort McKay Métis, who have been denied possession of their land till 2018, confronted important challenges in securing stability and management over their very own properties. This difficulty of land tenure was compounded by the rise of oil sands extraction within the area, as highlighted in Chapter 5. Fortna particulars how Fort McKay residents, be they Métis, Cree, or Dene, united to problem oil extraction operations that threatened their methods of life, advocating for the safety of the land and their group’s well being. Some of the important occasions that galvanized this resistance was the 1981 spill of poisonous substances from the oil firm Suncor into the Athabasca River, which contaminated the group’s ingesting water and sparked authorized motion.
Within the ultimate pages, Fortna’s epilogue demonstrates the FMMN’s ongoing assertion of their group’s rights and sovereignty, connecting their historical past to current points confronted by the group. It engages with nationwide discourse surrounding the Métis Nation and Canada’s authorized framework to focus on tensions between the FMMN and Métis Nation of Alberta (MNA). As a corporation that represents all Métis individuals in Alberta, the MNA has challenged the FMMN for performing on their very own behalf in authorized and political contexts. This connection is significant as a result of it underscores the evolving battle for recognition and self-determination, notably as Métis communities proceed to claim their rights in a fancy authorized and political atmosphere. Fortna exhibits how, regardless of historic and ongoing efforts by the state to marginalize the Métis, the FMMN stays actively engaged in shaping its future by self-governance and political advocacy. This relationship additionally displays broader tensions inside the Métis Nation’s various membership about governance, land rights, and the popularity of group sovereignty. To exhibit the FMMN’s stance, Fortna contains in his Appendix “The Fort McKay Métis Nation Place Paper on Session and Self-Authorities,” an essay authored by the FMMN to debate who has the correct to manipulate a Métis group.
Although wealthy in sources and grounded in partnership, this research invitations some important reflection. As a non-Indigenous historian, Fortna’s positionality raises vital methodological questions. He totally acknowledges his experiences and ongoing relationship with Fort McKay, having labored as a former worker of the Fort McKay Industrial Relations Company (IRC) and later as a group advisor. Nevertheless, additional discussions of his evolving moral and methodological commitments all through the venture would deepen readers’ understanding of how settler-Indigenous analysis partnerships could be equitable and mutually useful. Such reflections would make clear the challenges and rewards of working carefully with Indigenous communities within the context of historic scholarship
Historians working within the area of Indigenous and Métis research may discover the interconnectedness and historic fluidity of Fort McKay’s First Nation and Métis identities intriguing. In his introduction, Fortna engages briefly with educational discourse relating to authorized definitions of “Métis” and notions of the “Métis Homeland” following the Powley choice and the place Fort McKay suits inside these conversations. He proceeds all through the ebook to attract on oral histories, group paperwork, correspondence, and land-related experiences to focus on how Fort McKay residents perceive and assert their id in methods that will not align with authorized or educational frameworks. Fairly than trying to impose a inflexible definition, Fortna foregrounds how group members themselves articulate belonging – usually by kinship, land connection, and shared historical past. This strategy might problem students who adhere to different interpretations of Métis id, nevertheless it gives readers a possibility to interact with how id is lived, claimed, and negotiated.
Finally, The Fort McKay Métis Nation: A Neighborhood Historical past makes an important contribution to Métis historiography and to the rising physique of scholarship that facilities Indigenous voices in historic analysis. Fortna’s work is respectful, knowledgeable, and grounded in his deep connections with the group. In a time when questions of Indigenous rights, land, and sovereignty stay pressing, this ebook gives each historic grounding and forward-looking perception into the way forward for Métis political and social actions. Accessible to each students and group members, the ebook’s concise narrative (at 225 pages) ensures its broad attraction, notably amongst these serious about Indigenous histories and community-driven scholarship.
Maegan Ellis (She/Her) is a Métis graduate scholar within the Division of Historical past on the College of Guelph.
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