Historic Crown Recognition of the Abitibi Inland Métis Community

Crown governments have recognized and engaged with the distinct Abitibi Inland Métis Community, even as they repeatedly failed to honour their rights in the early 1900s.

In 1902, for example, Indian Commissioner J.A. McKenna warned Ottawa that its arbitrary treatment of Métis in the James Bay region risked undermining upcoming Treaty 9 negotiations, highlighting the apparent inconsistency that:

“Halfbreeds living on the Keewatin side of the English River are recognized as having territorial rights and get scrip… while the Halfbreeds on the Ontario side… has to be told that he has no territorial rights.”

McKenna cautioned that the government “must take care to avoid the perpetuation of this” injustice and urged decision makers to postpone treaty negotiations until both First Nations and Métis rights could be appropriately addressed.

Despite McKenna’s warning, Canada proceeded with Treaty 9. In response, Métis families at Moose Factory presented the Treaty commissioners with a petition for recognition on the basis that they had “been born and brought up in the country” and deserved the same scrip provided to their Métis relatives on the prairies.

While the Ontario Government appears to have recognized these claims on paper, stating in 1906 that it decided to “allow these half-breeds… 160 acres of land reserving minerals”, there is no evidence the offer was ever communicated to the Métis at Moose Factory. As a result of this exclusion, many Métis soon left Moose Factory, heading south into the Abitibi Inland region.

Despite the Métis being excluded from signing Treaty 9 and not having their inherent rights properly addressed at the time of treaty, northern Ontario’s Métis were formally acknowledged within the treaty’s text, in which signatory First Nations pledged to maintain peace not only with “Indians” and “whites,” but also with “half-breeds”—a recognition of the Métis as part of the region’s social and political fabric.

The long history of Crown recognition has continued to the present day, including with the Government of Ontario’s 2017 formal recognition that the Abitibi Inland Métis Community is a historic rights-bearing Métis community.

See Our Sources

• “Report from J. A. McKenna Regarding Half-Breed Claims,” LAC RG 10, Vol. 3033, File 235,225 Pt. 1, C-11314.

• 1905 Moose Factory Métis Petition

• Letter from A.J. Matheson to Frank Pedley, 2 April 1906

• Treaty Number 9 - Text

• Treaty Number 9 - Scan

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