
A common Métis way of life developed across west central North America, from the Upper Great Lakes westward, that endured over the span of centuries and connected Métis communities across vast distances through kinship, economic, and cultural ties.
One example is the many petitions written by Métis communities across the Homeland, sent as proud assertions of their Métis identity and rights, and as collective responses to their pressing political issues.
Not only is the act of petitioning itself a part of a shared form of Métis political expression across the Métis Homeland, but so too are the specific words that Métis communities chose to include within their petitions.
Many Métis petitions from the 1840s onwards, for instance, reflect a pattern of strengthening collective Métis political consciousness that emphasizes how the Métis firmly understood themselves—a distinct rights-bearing Métis people—as well as their relationship to each other, their rights, their homelands, and other Métis communities.
Well-known Métis petitions from the Upper Great Lakes to what is now Alberta sought recognition of their Métis harvesting, land, and self-governance rights. Many of these petitions used similar reasoning, nearly identical language, and even referenced other Métis communities to which they were connected.
Numerous petitions from Métis communities stretching as far as Penetanguishene to Batoche, for example, utilized the term “Half-breed” or variations of the term to identify themselves, showing a common Métis self-understanding and political positioning even across vast distances.
The 1882 Métis Petition from St. Antoine de Padoue (Batoche), for instance, begins, “We the undersigned French half-breeds…”—clearly demonstrating common understandings of their Métis identity as the earlier 1840 Penetanguishene Métis petition that opens with the same, “The petition of the undersigned half breeds…” The Métis petitions from St. Antoine de Perdue and Penetanguishene are just two of numerous Métis petitions across generations and geography that utilize similar self-naming conventions.
Common, too, in Métis petitions from the Upper Great Lakes westward are the ways in which Métis communities advocated for their distinct rights—as Métis, separate but equal to First Nations.
Métis in the Cypress Hills in 1878, for example, petitioned for “the same rights and privileges that are allowed the Indians [sic.],” closely resembling the Northwestern Ontario Métis Community’s successful earlier 1875 advocacy for, “payments, annuities and presents, in manner similar to that set forth in the several respects for the Indians [sic.]”
The 1878 Cypress Hills petition and earlier 1875 Halfbreed Adhesion to Treaty 3 demonstrate a common mode of Métis rights advocacy and shared political thought across geographically distant Métis communities—with successful ideas and tactics being adopted from one Métis community to the next.
Even today, it remains common for Métis communities from the Upper Great Lakes westward to utilize the previously successful advocacy and rights assertions tactics of other Métis communities to which they are related and connected—building off each other’s successes to support advancements for all Métis across the Homeland.