Métis Nation of Ontario accuses Manitoba leaders of hypocrisy, politicking on identity issue
CBC
Ontario Métis leaders deny identity theft allegations made at the Indigenous Identity Fraud Summit in Winnipeg last week, accusing opponents of politicizing Métis identity, flip-flopping on past positions and circulating falsehoods.
During the two-day meeting, delegates from co-host organizations Manitoba Métis Federation (MMF) and Chiefs of Ontario called the Métis Nation of Ontario (MNO) race shifters who lack connection to the historic Métis Nation of the Prairies.
Mitch Case, regional councillor for the MNO's Huron-Superior Regional Métis Community, says that allegation is nonsensical and easily disproved.
"It's based on the Manitoba Métis Federation's political goals of being the only Métis government in Canada, which is not in any way historically accurate," Case said.
Case called the summit a "hate rally" in a Facebook post, and told CBC Indigenous he feels that way because it was based on "nonsense."
The MMF broke from the Métis National Council in 2021 following years of factionalism and turmoil fuelled largely but not solely by controversy over six disputed MNO communities.
MNO and the Ontario government jointly recognized the communities as historic in 2017, stretching the asserted homeland of the Métis Nation as far east as the Ontario-Quebec border.
MMF President David Chartrand described the influx as an "eastern invasion" that threatens to swamp the Métis Nation from within — something he told attendees last week was Louis Riel's greatest fear.
In response, Case pointed to the Supreme Court of Canada's historic 2003 Powley ruling, which affirmed Métis hunting rights in and around his home community of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., about 1,000 kilometres east of Winnipeg.
Chartrand and the MMF had no issue with Métis rights in Ontario when Steve and Roddy Powley, who sparked the case when they shot a bull moose in 1993, were asserting those rights in court, Case said.
Tony Belcourt is Métis from Manito Sahkahigan, or Lac Ste. Anne, Alta., and the founding president of both the MNO in the 1990s and the Native Council of Canada (now the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples) in 1971.
There's no discounting facts like the recognition of the historic Métis community in Sault Ste. Marie, Belcourt said.
"It caused me a lot of emotional stress and pain to listen to what was going on," Belcourt said.
"It was very hurtful to see our people being subject to such hate and racial discrimination."
