On October 21, 1850, Treaty Commissioner William B. Robinson delivered a petition to the Crown on behalf of the Métis community at Sault Ste. Marie seeking recognition and protections for their River Lot homes along the St. Marys River. The 1850 Sault Ste. Marie Métis Petition was penned following the advice Treaty Commissioner Robinson gave the Métis during the recent Robinson-Huron Treaty negotiations, after asserting he “had no power to give them free grants of land” as pa

Marie Anne Cadotte was born in 1789 at La Pointe on Lake Superior in the Upper Great Lakes to fur trader Michel Cadotte le Petite and his Ojibwe wife Charlotte Okapeguijigokoue. Growing up enmeshed in the thriving Upper Great Lakes fur trade, Marie Anne regularly interacted with travelers and traders from locations throughout the historic North-West on both sides of what is now the Canadian-American border, including her future husband, fur-trader Francois Xavier Biron. Marie

Elizabeth Dusome was born in 1847 at Highland Point, “across the bay” from Penetanguishene into the large and deeply connected Métis family that had moved from the Red River to Georgian Bay in the Upper Great Lakes in the years before her birth.   As a “pioneer resident” of the region who grew up at a time when Penetanguishene was a “cedar swamp with a scattering of Indian wigwams and fishing shanties”, only a generation after much of the community had been relocated there fr

Elizabeth Dusome (nee Longlade) was the matriarch of a large community-minded Métis family whose service and connections have spanned generations. Elizabeth Longlade was born in 1859 into a large Métis family—eventually reaching ten siblings—within the richly interconnected Métis community at Penetanguishene. Elizabeth’s father, Louis Longlade, had been born on Drummond Island in 1816 and relocated to Penetanguishene with his parents, Charles—a War of 1812 veteran—and Josephi

George Harvey was born on December 16, 1856 at Michipicoten on Lake Superior to a Métis mother, Jane Flett, and Scottish Hudson Bay...

From kitchen parties, to soirees, and holiday dances, Métis across the Homeland are known for their love of having a good time in the company of friends and family.  Once such “ball” was recorded at the Hudson Bay Company’s Michipicoten Post on October 9, 1849 by Indian Officer Thomas G. Anderson, who was travelling in the region in preparation for the forthcoming treaties with the Anishinaabe. In his diary, Anderson described the lively festivities that erupted between the M