A scathing report questions the validity of many Georgian Bay Métis community root ancestors and wonders if they are really Métis at all.
Led by University of Ottawa academics Darryl Leroux and Darren O’Toole, the report examined six Ontario communities that were recognized by the province in 2017 and specifically notes that the Métis Nation of Ontario (MNO) “has failed to demonstrate the existence of a distinct, rights-bearing Métis community in the Penetanguishene region.”
The report notes the case of Georgian Bay is somewhat unique in relation to the other communities, as the claim here is that a pre-existing community in essence “transplanted” from the (now) United States to Penetanguishene and the greater Georgian Bay area.
"Many of the Georgian Bay VMFLs (verified Métis family lines) came into present-day Ontario around 1830 as part of the transfer of the British garrison from Drummond Island to Penetanguishene,” the report says, noting the MNO identifies 26 such family lines.
“The mean birth year for the Georgian Bay 'Métis' root ancestors is 1824 and there is a considerable range in year of birth."
The report goes on to say that the effective date of control that the MNO chose for Georgian Bay is 1860, "yet this date does not actually align with the historical details" that they provide for this geographic area.
"The Georgian Bay VMFLs consistently note that it is important to locate the 'Métis root ancestors' within the Georgian Bay area prior to when Ontario experienced a large influx of habitants (French Canadian farmers) from the east in 1840," the report states.
The report notes that this would suggest the effective control date should be at least 1840 and notes that Penetanguishene was developed as a naval base in 1817, with a naval and military presence until the late 1850s. Indeed, the MNO discloses how many of the Georgian Bay VMLF individuals were included on military pay-lists in Penetanguishene in various roles and positions.
"Given the military presence in 1817, the influx of habitants, and the fact that the area under question came under Treaty in 1850, we suggest that a more likely effective date of control is between 1817 and 1840, 20 to 43 years earlier than the MNO’s selected date of 1860."
The academics point out that the effective date of control is significant as mentioned previously because one of the legal requirements flowing from the Powley decision is that a distinct Métis community must have emerged post-European contact "but before the area came under the effective control and influence of European laws and customs.”
According to the report, the MNO uses one of two “problematic” documents as the only evidence for the inclusion of no less than 12 of its VMFLs for Georgian Bay: A.C. Osborne’s The Migration of Voyageurs from Drummond Island to Penetanguishene in 1828, published by the Ontario Historical Society in 1901 and the 1840 “Penetanguishene Halfbreed Petition.”
“In the first case, we have found conclusive evidence that at least one individual identified as 'halfbreed' in Osborne’s List of Drummond Island Voyageurs was French Canadian," the report commissioned by the Manitoba Métis Federation (MMF) further notes.
A Robinson Huron Waawiindamaagewin study released last year also wades into the documents used by the MNO to highlight several root ancestors attached to Georgian Bay family lines including Giroux-St.Onge, Longlade, Labatte, Trudeau-Papanaatyhianencoe, Vasseur-Longlade, and Payette-Lavallee.
"They signed their names to the 1840 Petition of Penetanguishene 'half breeds' sent to the Governor General. It is important to note that the MNO interprets the petition as evidence that the signatories were, in fact, Métis, and in most cases, this document is the sole evidence of a recorded Métis identity within the entire VMFL," the report co-authored by Leroux and McGill University's Celeste Pedri-Spade states.
"However, upon close examination of the census materials MNO provides and additional historical documentation, we have confirmed that many of the signatories had no Indigenous ancestry whatsoever."
While an MNO spokeswoman says the reports are plagued by cherry-picked information, the researchers say they found similar problems with other documents, including the 1840 Penetanguishene Halfbreed Petition.
“We discovered that at least three of the men who signed the petition and whom the MNO has transformed into either a forebearer or root ancestor on only that basis were European settlers.”
As an example, they studied the Jones Blette dit Sorelle VMFL, which they say relies on Thomas Jones (b. 1803) as its only Métis root ancestor.
“Jones is ‘documented Métis’ based on having signed the petition, even though none of his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren or even great-great-grandchildren were ever recorded as anything other than white or European in the historical documentation provided by the MNO, which includes dozens of primary documents spread out over 160 pages.
“Jones’ signature on a petition has overridden the overwhelming evidence presented by the MNO that nobody in the Jones family was ever understood as Indigenous by the broader society, including Thomas Jones himself.”
Leroux — who since 2015 has been studying the changing dynamics of white, French-descendant identities in the 21st century, particularly as it pertains to increasing claims to "Indigenous" identities — and O’Toole say they found the same with identification of Joseph Létard dit St-Onge, the 'Métis root ancestor' for the St. Onge VMFL.
“It was relatively easy to find that he was born in Boucherville, east of Montreal, to two French-Canadian parents (Joseph Létard dit St. Onge and Véronique Bissonnette),” the report states.
“The MNO claims that Joseph Jr.s’ date of birth is unknown, but there are numerous reliable sources that provide information on his birth date and his parentage and ancestry going back several generations exclusively to France. The same is true of Jean-Baptiste Trudeau, who is the ‘Métis root ancestor’ for the Trudeau-Papanaatyhianencoe VMFL.
“Clearly, the 1840 Penetanguishene Halfbreed Petition is an unreliable source of historical information when it comes to an individual’s identity, especially when it is the only archival source used to identify an individual as a ‘Métis root ancestor’ as the MNO does repeatedly.”
Eight other VMFLs are similarly included after a forebearer or root ancestor signing either the 1840 Penetanguishene Petition or being identified as 'halfbreed' in Osborne’s 1901 book, the report says.
“Several of these VMFLs include no other ‘documented Métis’ at all, according to the MNO. Notably, all 12 of them include no individual ancestor who was ever documented as “Métis” prior to the MNO’s date of effective control.
While the researchers says they found nine Georgian Bay VMFLs that had no “documented Métis” prior to effective control and five that had no “documented Métis” at all, according to the researchers, they acknowledged they were two family lines identified by the MNO that have "any known connections" to the Métis Homeland: Dusome-Clermont VMFL and the Brissette-L’Hirondelle VFML.
"Pointing to another serious flaw in the MNO’s research, there are Georgian Bay VMFLs that provide no concrete evidence that the Métis root ancestor and/or descendants were ever identified as Métis," the Huron-Robinson report states.
“It is our contention that the Georgian Bay VMFLs demonstrate the existence of a network of interrelated French-Canadian families settled in Penetanguishene and its vicinity, including most notably at Lafontaine, after the arrival of Québécois settlers in the 1840s.”
But Ryan Shackleton, the founder and CEO of Know History, says the report by Leroux and O’Toole doesn’t hold water.
“They’re wrong,” says Shackleton, who heads an independent consulting firm with offices in Ottawa and Calgary and whose client list includes the MNO.
“We’ve reviewed all of the (academic) reports in detail. We have extensive notes on them and they’re just poor academic reports. They’ve misquoted items, they have lied about certain things. I don’t say this lightly, but we have extensive documentation.”
Shackleton says the reports' authors are not historian and pick one little piece and then examine that piece "to support an argument that they already came to the table with."
Shackleton says there are 25,000 documents supporting the MNO’s historic community claims along with 15,000 hours of genealogical historical research.
“We’re genealogy historians,” he says, noting his company maintains the MNO registry and assesses the veracity of potential members.
He says that if the researchers had gone to the MMO, they would have learned that the MNO has the documentation proving the existence of the VFMLs they were questioning.
“We’re pretty familiar with all of the (MNO’s) historic communities,” says Shackleton, who noted the MNO doesn’t recognize the Mitchell-Bertrand family line and also booted nearly 6,000 members last year due to issues with their membership.
“They’re serious about their registry,” he says. “Every fact has been supported by a document.”
Shackleton says that even though his organization works for the MNO, “if we start putting out biased reports, it affects our credibility.
“We don’t cherry-pick,” he says. “The MNO’s work is sound.”
But MMF cabinet minister Will Goodon says it’s completely disingenuous to say Leroux et al published cherry-picked information.
“In fact, the MNO paid consultants who did the history for the new communities were given parameters that would only result in one finding — that these communities existed,” says Goodon whose organization and the Chiefs of Ontario co-hosted a two-day summit last month to address what they say is “rampant identity theft” by entities such as the MNO.
“And that there was a circular logic — they find someone who thinks they are Métis today, go back in time and recreate an ancestor into being Métis, therefore the person today becomes Métis."
In the past, Shackleton’s firm also did work for the MMF, something that ended after the organization left the Métis National Council over its decision to acknowledge MNO claims.
Shackleton states that the academic report doesn’t always identify the correct ancestor such as in its identification of Jean-Baptiste Trudeau, but rather uses a man with a similar name who lived in Chambly, Quebec.
“The larger thing here is they’re missing context,” he said, noting that the only national census where people identified themselves as ‘half-breed’ was conducted in 1901 and that the report doesn't pass scrutiny.
“I do not understand how they can say that. They're (MNO citizens) interconnected because of the fur trade.”
Shackleton says the Georgian Bay Métis community actually moved three times as an entity before arriving in the Penetanguishene area.
“They relocated after the War of 1812 because the border changed (ie Drummond Island became an American property)," he says, noting the group members all lived beside one another when first arriving and unlike the French Canadian habitants didn't rely on farming, but rather practised a traditional lifestyle like trapping.
"There is a community that has sustained presence. They go through the same socio-economic ways. When the fishing collapses, they move into lumbering. We see them and their children marrying each other."
In the earlier report, the authors noted the original text of one document previously used by the MNO was La colonisation française en Huronie by Micheline Marchand for La Société historique du Nouvel-Ontario.
"Marchand’s document squarely situates the migration of Drummond Island voyageurs as a part of the process of colonization of the Huron-Wendat homeland," the report notes.
"With the initial English-language translation and production of the report for MNO in 2006, the term “voyageur” was frequently used to imply Métis, and at times the words are used interchangeably. Even so, in the 2006 document, Marchand writes that voyageur refers to a way of life that may mean Métis, but also includes “FrenchCanadian, First Nations, and [individuals] of European origin.”
When asked whether those arriving from Drummond Island were also essentially “colonists” since there was already an established First Nations' and European presence, Shackleton says they were not settlers.
“Yes, the Métis were looking for land. I don’t know if I would call them colonists. There weren’t (Métis) communities in Windsor, Kawartha Lakes. Not everyone who’s mixed ancestry is Métis."
For her part, MNO president Margaret Froh says the reports are nothing more than an extension of political agendas by those who seek to deny the Powley case and Métis existence in Ontario.
She says the organization stands behind its registry, which has undergone an independent, third-party review that led to last year's expulsions.
"We've been very public and transparent with that," says Froh, who notes the MNO currently has about 28,000 members with "thousands" in the Midland-Penetanguishene area. "We have a registry that's incredibly solid. We have trained historians that run our registry."
While Goodon suggests people are now flocking to the MNO due to potential financial opportunities, freebies and for health reasons, given that Métis citizens in Ontario received COVID-19 vaccinations before the general population, Froh says she "can't say why someone becomes a citizen of any government" but knows citizens take pride in their ancestry.
Goodon, meanwhile, notes that on top of everything else, the agency hired to do this “research” is now the company managing the membership registry of MNO.
“So if cherry picking is the MNO criticism or speck in the eye of respected and published academics, it seems that MNO is blind to the two-by-four or beam in their own eyes.”
Goodon, who compares some locals claiming Métis status to zebra mussels that not so long ago attached themselves by the thousands to boats on Georgian Bay, says his group needs to now force the issue "because governments and institutions are legitimizing groups making false claims in our territories."
He added: "We can no longer stand by and allow these cultural thieves and identity colonizers get away with the damage they are doing to our peoples.”
