Lawyer and Riel descendant says Mtis history goes beyond Louis Riel

A new book by Jean Teillet, a Mtistreaty negotiatorand lawyer, is filling the gaps of Mtisculture and history and the role itplays on the plains and in Canada.

Teillet, whose great grandfather was Joseph Riel, younger brother of Louis, authoredThe North-West Is Our Mother: The Story of Louis Riel's People, the Mtis Nation,published in September.

"It's a bit of a quirk of history in Canada that everybody knows who Louis Riel is. Everybody knows him, and they know nothing about his people. Absolutely nothing," Teillet said Tuesday in Regina.

"They don't know who they are. They don't know where they are. They don't know what they're like and so the purpose in writing the book was to tell the story of the people."

Teilletspoke at Government House in Regina Tuesday evening about Louis Riel and and the 200 year history of the Mtis.

"The MtisNation is still here." she said.

Teillet also spoke on what it means to be aMtis, or Michif. She said it's not as simple as having mixed heritage or an ancestor from the 1600s a time before theMtis.

Essentially, if you are to claim the Michif identity, you need to be a descendant of people involved inMtisstories and part of the people from the Red River, who engaged in the resistance of 1869, 1870 or 1885, she said.

She said there must be a connection to the Red River region, which is more than just the immediate Red River area, but a broader land base including North Dakota, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Teillet said the Red River Resistance was started not because Riel wanted to fight, but because he wanted a place for the people to negotiate with Canada their place on the land, language, educationand governance.

Instead, John A. Macdonald and George-Etienne Cartier broke promises made to theMtis when white, Anglo-Saxons from Ontario made their way west.

"It has taken us 150 years to restore what Louis Riel tried to do and we haven't finished that yet because 1.4 million acres is still not in the hands of the Mtis," she said.