The Abitibi Inland Métis Community has long recognized and asserted itself as a distinct Métis collectivity with deep family and kinship connections throughout the broader Métis Nation Homeland. This collective consciousness, situated within an understanding of a broader Métis Nationhood, is exemplified within the Abitibi Inland Métis Community’s 1893 and 1905 petitions for Métis scrip. The Abitibi Inland Métis Community’s 1905 petition read, in part: “We understand that

In 1893, Métis living at Fort Albany on James Bay petitioned Parliament “to consider favourably the claims of the Half-breeds of that Country for compensation in lieu of lands” as “compensation for the extinction of the half-breed title to the soil”. The following year, after the government’s refusals to issue Métis scrip in the region, Métis petitioner and Archdeacon, Thomas Vincent, penned a follow up letter on behalf of Métis living around the Hudson’s Bay Post at Fort Alb

Many members of the Abitibi Inland Métis Community formally petitioned for Métis scrip, similar to what had been issued to other Métis communities farther west. Thomas Vincent’s family, for example, was among those from Fort Albany who submitted a Métis scrip claim. Vincent initially applied for Métis scrip for himself and his children in November 1885. Lacking success in their initial attempts, Vincent “and others” of “Moose Factory, James Bay, Northwest Territories” contin

Throughout history, Métis communities’ distinctive political identities have often emerged as a response to external threats to their collective Métis rights and way of life. Now-famous Métis political actions include the Battle of Seven Oaks and North-West Resistance. Each event served to solidify a distinctive Métis identity and collective consciousness in present-day Manitoba and Saskatchewan, respectively. In present-day Ontario, the 1905 negotiations for Treaty 9 in