On October 21, 1850, Treaty Commissioner William B. Robinson formally submitted a petition to the Governor General, Lord Elgin, on behalf of the Métis of Sault Ste. Marie. Alongside the Sault Ste. Marie Métis Petition, Commissioner Robinson provided a handwritten cover letter advocating for its just implementation, stating: “I will thank you to lay the accompanying paper before His Excellency the Governor General. They are those to which I alluded in conversation with His Exc

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

Angelique Langlade was one of the historic Georgian Bay Métis Community’s Métis matriarchs who, despite relocation from Penetanguishene to Drummond Island after the War of 1812, kept her Métis community’s spirit and memories alive. Later in her life, “at an advanced age” that not even she could remember, Langlade shared her memories with journalist A.C. Osborne. Identifying herself as a “half-breed,” and despite her limited command of the English language—a reality for many f