Timeline of Canada’s Métis identity crisis—MNC-MMF registry war, Ontario audit, Bill C-53 freeze—and what it means for Métis youth and self-government.

{Métis, MNC, MMF, registry, Bill C-53, Red River, Ontario, self-government, lawsuit, Powley}

This is a story of lost identity, survival by silence, and one family’s fractured inheritance. In a time when “Métis” could get you hanged or disappeared, The Ashes in the Grain asks: what does it cost to forget—and who dares to remember?

With changing definitions occasioned by the Supreme Court, while your ancestry may not be considered as Section 35 Rights-bearing Métis today, it may instead be considered ‘Métis’ under the more recent Daniels supreme court case. MNO only represents Section 35 communities and individuals, not people who may be considered Métis under the Daniels decision.

My name is Andrea Beauvais, and I descend from the Ménard family: voyageurs, interpreters, fur traders, and Métis community builders who lived in Fort Michilimackinac and Montreal and Oka for centuries (17th to 19th century). Their identities were recorded not just in parish registers, but in the contours of a culture that was born between worlds. And while their names remain etched in history, their descendants are being written out.

Dr. Darrell Menard in Russell, Ontario