The Moonspeaker:
Where Some Ideas Are Stranger Than Others...

Ambitious History in a Métis Mode

The number of histories by Métis historians about their own histories, european-style trained or not, was zero. As a matter of practicality, this is not surprising. Most Métis in the early twentieth century had their hands full and then some with bare survival. Despite having emerged as a people in a key socio-economic niche characterized by extensive travel, trade, and diplomacy, Métis found themselves caught between the pincers of racialization and intermittent organized settler violence against them. The result for communities in the Métis northeast, including Red River and its siblings in the interlake region of Manitoba, was often severe economic loss, in far too many cases down to impoverishment and landlessness. This drove many from those communities west along established trade routes to the communities founded by relatives, some earlier than Red River, some after, to start over. Once back on their feet, educational opportunities were still fraught, so that many people did not complete more than a few years of elementary school education. But of course, Métis history composition and recording did not depend upon the pen and paper-based system imposed by settlers. Still, as part of what is now a solidly developed practice of ongoing self-education and participation in post-secondary schooling as mature students, Métis scholars began composing written histories to help counter the misinformation their young people were seeing and hearing at school. A key leader in this work was Anne Anderson, born in 1906 east of the Métis settlement of st. albert. At her passing in 1997, surrounded by family in edmonton, she had helped found Métis history writing by Métis, and spurred an ongoing revival of Cree language learning across the prairies.

Picture of Dr. Anne Anderson, respected Métis Elder, historian, linguist, and educator, who passed away in 1997. Image quoted from the edmonton city as museum project, accessed 4 july 2026. The original is in the city of edmonton archives, item EA-742-1.

Like many women, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, Anderson's life was full of hard work, including years far from her homeland in oregon. On top of having and raising children, Anderson farmed, worked as a farming instructor, and as a nurse's aide. After health issues forced her to retire, she found herself bored, but not without constructive ideas for what to do next. At the forefront of these was her promise to her mother to help preserve and pass on the cree language. Alongside what rapidly developed into a series of in-demand course materials and courses, Anderson began developing a plan for what became what journalist Heather Andrews described as a chronicle of Métis families in alberta. So it was and is, though it is also much more than that. The formal research process began in 1982, eventually bringing together both documentary and oral sources. The result, The First Metis – A New Nation, published in 1985, soon made its way into school, public, and university libraries in alberta and the western provinces. It is a large format hardcover book, 488 pages long not counting the index. The book and Anderson's Cree language work truly began together. 1982 is also the year she founded the Dr. Anne Anderson Native Heritage and Cultural Centre, in part to provide space for Cree language classes and an outlet to store and sell the associated langauge and teaching materials. Forced to carry out both projects on a shoestring budget including a significant amount of her own money, Anderson won government and industry funding to hire student researchers to assist in transcribing archival materials and finding diagrams and photographs.

The First Metis is by mainstream standards an unusual book, and not just because of its subject. Unlike mainstream histories presented as monolithic wholes, Anderson and her team put together a collection of images, document summaries, genealogies, and transcribed family histories. The results, besides an absolute goldmine for Métis genealogists in the pre-web era, is an often wryly funny, though subtle send up of settler "firsting" narratives. Even as first settlers are noted, it is always with the reality of First Nations already present made clear, and how often in fact Métis were there before anyone deemed a "settler" in mainstream terms. Anderson sets out material that seemed to rather surprise mainstream historians when they found some of the same records over again, such as the Kahnawaà:ke men who went west with the fur trade, many of them staying to join Cree and Métis communities, or the deeper origins of the now formally recognized historic Métis community of Lac Ste. Anne. What ties these many stories and threads together into a broader history extending over the whole historic Métis is wahkôtowin, a Cree term referring to the multifaceted relationships among relatives, from those connected "by blood" to those connected by friendship and trade.

Despite having produced such an important book among so many others – by the end of her life Anderson had over ninety books in print – money remained tight. In 1987, withdrawal of the provincial portion of the funding for the Heritage and Cultural Centre forced Anderson to call for help from the community. The Métis and broader Indigenous community did not let her town, with local organizations putting on a fundraising dance to help cover the shortfall. Approaching her retirement from teaching, Anderson had the satisfaction of seeing the Centre and her teaching materials acquired by the Métis Nation of Alberta, now known called Otipemisiwak M&ecute;tis Government. In order to keep Anderson's Cree teaching materials available and in print, the then Métis Nation of Alberta created Cree Productions, and partnered with the province of alberta's education department to refresh them for inclusion as official school resources. Today, a web search will quickly reveal there is a brand new Dr. Anne Anderson Community Centre, a recreation centre built and named after her in 2021. All this said, these are not the only ways the community honoured Anderson, and there were many honours in her lifetime, including the establishment of Dr. Anne Anderson Park, which includes a bronze buffalo sculpture by Lloyd Pinay, the famed Cree artist from Peepeekisis First Nation. For years the sculpture was not included in the provincial public art maintenance program due to a legislative hiccup, which did not prevent the community from caring for it and ensuring its safety.

Scan of the original dust cover of Dr. Anderson's 1985 book, The First Metis... A New Nation, snippet drawn from the alibris used book catalogue, accessed 10 january 2020.

The ongoing legacy of Anderson's Cree language revitalization efforts is widely recognized, but The First Metis is not quite so widely recognized yet. At first it was simply under-appreciated by settler historians, although over the past several years more have taken notice and used it in their own books. Closer to its original publication date, The First Metis may have been a bit too controversial in some of its coverage, which includes the ongoing efforts of Michel and Papaschase First Nations to restore their status under the indian act and hopefully their reserve lands. Yet in many ways, what Anderson did was well ahead of her time precisely because of how she brought together written and oral sources joined together by wahkôtowin. She struggled through the usual narrative patterns imposed on Métis history in general and Indigenous history in what is currently called canada in general. More often than not, Anderson succeeded, documenting how Métis persisted through adversity, building their families, homes, and communities, and insisting on the reality of First Nations' self-governance and presence before any settlers showed up. Sometimes what today reads as frustratingly close to racist language sneaks through anyway, but it is telltale this goes with accounts of settler-designed programs and policies. With access to some sensitive editing assistance, Anderson would likely have revised those sections to make clearer whose views were summarized and presented in those cases.

The greater evidence of the influence of The First Metis is in the growing number of new Métis histories by Métis historians today, the majority of them by Métis women. Their range is remarkable, from Ron Rivard and Catherine LittleJohn's The History of the Metis of Willow Bunch to Brenda MacDougall's One of the Family to Cheryl Troupe's Putting Down Roots, they share major features that go all the way back to The First Metis. They combine oral and written sources, including reproductions of historical documents from scrip certificates to properly captioned photographs. The importance of wahkôtowin is evident throughout, and so too, are the main Métis languages, Plains Cree, and the famous and baffling to linguists Michif which combines Plains Cree verbs and french nouns. Troupe's book specifically builds on the growing Métis recovery and tracing of material culture practices and materials, including many examples of renowned flower beadwork. This source of historical information is hinted at in Anderson's book too via the inclusion of both illustrations and brief accounts of turn of the twentieth century Métis housing and household wares.

Over her extraordinary life and career, Dr. Anne Anderson planted many, many important seeds. As recently as 2024, she was profiled by the Rupertsland Centre in its Métis Changemakers series, developed for K-12 educators teaching Métis history. Her example and publications continue to inspire Métis all over Turtle Island.