We Walk Between:
The Erasure of Métis in Northeast BC and Resurgence
Through Contemporary Art

By
Haley Bassett

MFA, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, 2025

A THESIS SUPPORT PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF FINE ARTS

EMILY CARR UNIVERSITY OF ART + DESIGN

2025

© Haley Bassett, 2025

Bassett 2

Abstract
The Métis experience in British Columbia’s northeast is shaped by history, geography,
industry, and identity. In the Peace Country, where vast reserves of natural gas intersect with
the Métis Homeland, the community is at the crossroads of resource extraction and cultural
survival. This land sits atop the Montney Gas Formation, a massive natural gas deposit.
This document is written by Treaty 8-based, interdisciplinary artist, Haley Bassett. Bassett’s
work explores what makes us who we are, including culture, land, heritage, and history. The
works in this paper focuses on the intersection of identity, place, and labour—both physical
and economic and spans beadwork, textiles, found objects, and sculpture.
This thesis offers a micro-to-macro view of the interplay between Métis identity, cultural
continuity, economic precarity, resource extraction, and legal rights and recognition in
northeast British Columbia and within the broader Métis Nation. Personal and family stories
are woven throughout to give voice to the experiences of Indigenous people living on the
margins of recognition.
Bassett’s research questions concern inherent and constitutionally protected rights –
abstract concepts that become solidified when exercising dominion over natural resources in
a capitalist, resource-based economy. In this sense, such rights are a container for
Indigenous identity. A right is a responsibility–a role. Bassett contends that identity is reified
by a Nation’s duties to the land, water, and sky and by the ability to exercise those rights in
opposition to capitalist and colonial forces. How does the lack of such rights affect
contemporary Métis identity in BC? Does it render it more permeable or vulnerable? And can
this harm be remedied through art making?

Bassett 3
Abstract​
List of Figures​
Foreword​
Introduction​
Life in Limbo​
Horse People​
Horse Girl​
Masks​
Mad Cow​
Valænce​
Identity and Industry​
Relations Shaped by the Land​
Legal Lacuna​
Métis Mobius Strip​
Gauntlet​
Methodology​
Wahkotowin and Storytelling​
Squaring Circles​
Métis-Specific​
Reclaiming Identity Through Art​
Tall Grass​
Prairie Love Song​
Beadwork as Method: Time, Labour and Continuity​
Conclusion​
Final Reflection​
Thesis Exhibition Documentation​
Bibliography​

2
4
6
7
8
11
16
19
23
24
29
32
35
37
38
41
41
42
43
44
46
49
51
53
54
55
69

Bassett 4

List of Figures
Figure 1. Grandpa and I ....................................................................................................... 10
Figure 2. Grandpa and Ribbon …………………………………………………………….......... 11
Figure 3. Grandpa, Uncle Steve and the stoneboat ............................................................. 12
Figure 4. Darcy and I on horseback ..................................................................................... 13
Figure 5. Prince and Babe and the wagon …………………..……………………….………… 14
Figure 6. Horse Girl ………………………………………………….……………………………. 15
Figure 7. Horse Girl, detail …………………………………………………………………….…. 16
Figure 8. Beau Dick, Portrait Mask ………………………..…….…………..……………..…… 19
Figure 9. Self-Portrait (Three Years Later) …………..….…….…………………..…………… 20
Figure 10. Self-Portrait …..……………………………………….………….…………………… 21
Figure 11. Nico Williams, Uncle ……………………………………………………...………….. 22
Figure 12. Valænce (WIP) ……………………………………………………………….….……. 24
Figure 13. Maria-Margaretta, Go Help Grandma With the Dishes ………………………..…. 25
Figure 14. Valænce, detail (WIP) ……...………………………………………………………… 26
Figure 15. Once-known artist, wall pocket ………………………...……………………...….… 27
Figure 16. Once-known artist, shelf or mantle valance …………………………….……….… 28
Figure 17. The Montney Gas Formation …………………………..…..…………………….…. 30
Figure 18. A Michif language map ………………………………..…………………..……….… 33
Figure 19. A map of Treaty 8 ………………………………………………………….……….… 34
Figure 20. A map of the Métis Homeland ………………………………………………….…… 34
Figure 21. Northern style mittens by Kaija Heitland ……………….………………...…….….. 38
Figure 22. Gauntlet (Skin Side) ………………………………………………………….....…… 39
Figure 23. Gauntlet (Flesh Side) …………………………………………………………....…… 40
Figure 24. An ammunition pouch and fire bag by Gregory Scofield …………………..…….. 44
Figure 25. Indian Paintbrush …………………………………………..………...………………. 45
Figure 26. Prairie Fire ………………………………………………..…...………………………. 45
Figure 27. Tall Grass ………………………………….…………………...………….………….. 46

Bassett 5
Figure 28. Tall Grass, detail …………………...…………………………..…………….………. 47
Figure 29. Prairie Love Song ……………………………………………...…………………….. 49
Figure 30. A detail of Prairie Love Song in progress …………………….………………….… 50
Figure 31. Break in the field …………………………………………………………...…………. 51
Figure 32. Installation view 1 …………………………………………………………………….. 55
Figure 33. Installation view 2 …………………………………………………………………….. 55
Figure 33. Horse Girl (skin side/flesh side) ………………..…………………………………… 56
Figure 34. Gauntlet (skin side) …………………………………………………….…………….. 57
Figure 35. Gauntlet (flesh side) ………………………………………………………………….. 58
Figure 36. Self-Portrait installation view ………………………………………………………… 59
Figure 37. Self-Portrait, detail ……………………………………………………………………. 60
Figure 38. Prairie Love Song and Tall Grass installation view ……………………………….. 61
Figure 39. Prairie Love Song detail …………………...………………………………………… 62
Figure 38. Horse Girl detail 1 …………………………….………………………………………. 63
Figure 39. Horse Girl detail 2 …………………………………………………………………….. 64
Figure 40. Gauntlet …………………………………………..…………………………………… 65
Figure 41. Gauntlet detail ……………………………………………………………...…………. 66
Figure 42. Valænce installation view ……………………………………………………………. 67
Figure 43. Valænce detail ………………………………………………………………………… 68

Bassett 6

Foreword
We walk between
We walk between worlds
We walk between natives, settlers, continents and nations
Provinces, territories, rights and laws
Between traditions, cultures, languages and peoples
Cuisines, dance, and music
We walk between communities, families, and homes
Lands, waters and histories
Between nomads, farmers, and industries
Between faith and spirit, visibility and obscurity
We walk between
And between
And between

Bassett 7

Introduction
I am an interdisciplinary artist of Métis and settler descent. I was born and raised and
currently live and work in the Peace Country, a land with many names: northeast British
Columbia, Unchaga, Treaty 8, the traditional territory of the Dene, Dune-zaa, Nēhiyawēwin,
the Homeland of the Métis, the Peace River Regional District, Where Happiness Dwells,
where the Indians wear cowboy hats, God’s Country and the Sacrifice Zone.12345
My work explores the contributing factors of identity and self, or what makes us who we are,
including culture, land, heritage, and history. More recently, I have focused on the
intersection of identity, place, and labour—both physical and economic. The work produced
during this program spans beadwork, textiles, found objects, and sculpture, drawing on an
autoethnographic and place-based methodology rooted in the land, flora, and stories of
Treaty 8, or the Peace Country.
I begin by offering a glimpse into daily life in my community of Fellers Heights, our
connection to Métis culture, and how our way of life was disrupted by market downturns and
an increased reliance on the oil and gas industry. From there, I broaden the scope to
examine provincial Métis politics, government policy, and colonial history, highlighting the
consequences for communities caught between these intersecting forces.
I consider the Peace Country the crucible that formed my selfhood, as my maternal and
paternal ancestors found their way to the region through vastly different paths. My mother’s
ancestors fled Russia during the revolution and later became grain farmers here. My father’s
Métis roots reach Choteau, Montana, and Red River. I am a citizen of Métis Nation BC. My
family names are Gariepy/Gaurdipee, Cardinal, Ducharme, Lalonde, and Demontigny. Our
family settled in Fellers Heights, also called the valley, a remote community southwest of
Dawson Creek, BC, where they maintained a small enclave of Métis culture. After my
parents’ divorce, my brothers and I split our time between our mother’s house and my
father’s home in Fellers Heights.

1

South Peace Historical Book Committee, Lure of the South Peace: Tales of the Early Pioneers to
1945 (Beaverlodge, AB: South Peace Historical Book Committee, 1981), 6.
2
Robin Ridington and Jillian Ridington, Where Happiness Dwells: A History of the Dane-zaa First
Nations (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013).
3
Adrienne Greyeyes, personal communication with the author regarding the origin of the name for our
group exhibition at the Dawson Creek Art Gallery, June, 2022. Adrienne was speaking with an
Indigenous person (name and Nation unknown) in what is now called southern BC. When they asked
where she was from, she replied, northeast BC. “Oh,” they said, “that’s where the Indians wear
cowboy hats.”
4
Lawrence J. Barkwell, Fellers, Emilie Garipey (Gabriel Dumont Institute of Native Studies and
Applied Research, March 2, 2016), https://www.metismuseum.ca/resource.php/148277.
5
David Suzuki and Karl Mattson, Voices from the Sacrifice Zone, Canadian Association of Physicians
for the Environment (CAPE), July 25, 2022, YouTube video, 1:54:46,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ofXlKpKqJ8. CAPE has dubbed the Peace River Region the
“Sacrifice Zone” due to the extreme resource extraction in the area, and the little regard the
government has shown for the health of the environment, or residents.

Bassett 8
Due to my bifurcated upbringing, I am interested in hybrid and postmodern identities. This
thesis contends with the social, economic, and political tensions that underpin my
experiences of my Métis heritage and explores how colonial boundaries, Indigenous
territories, and economic interests influence the formation and expression of collective
identities.
I contend that the unique position of Métis in BC’s northeast within these factors contributes
to our ongoing systemic erasure. To counteract this repression, I weave personal and family
stories to illuminate our experiences as an attempt to write ourselves into the canon of the
Métis Nation, Métis art history, and the broader conversation surrounding Indigenous rights
and identity. My visual work expresses these stories through a series of contemporary
regalia, culturally loaded garments and signifiers, and alternative customary items that reflect
these complex experiences, inherent tensions, and the labour of undoing systemic erasure.

Life in Limbo
As children of divorce, it seemed my brothers and I were perpetually being ferried from one
parent’s house to another. Unbeknownst to me then, these drives with my father, between
Fellers Heights and my parents’ meeting point —the junction of highways 52 and 97 —were
essentially kinship-tie tours.
Dad never missed an opportunity to point out relatives' homes–nearly every house in the
valley. He’d also highlight the land where ancestral homesteads had been and other
important sites that triggered memories and family stories.
Every drive was the same routine. He’d point to a house and say, “So-and-so lives there,”
followed by a brief pause, before continuing,” They’re your cousins.” He’d then launch into
reciting the family tree, outlining our connection. He did so with the same cadence and
intonation each time. Reciting our ties rhythmically, like a prayer with a carousel of names:
Jones, Carlson, Abel, Bedell, Cooke, Houle, McNabb, more Bassetts, the Fellers of course,
and so on.
The sheer volume of information was overwhelming. There were cousins under every rock
and tree. Once, during his recitation, I asked, “Why are you telling me this?” His eyes locked
with mine. With gravity, he said, “Because if you need help, they will help you.”6
–

6

Jesse Bassett, Métis, Kinship-ties, Personal communication, Treaty 8 and the Métis Homeland,
June, 2002.

Bassett 9
What seemed to be a peculiar quirk of my father’s was his way of orally mapping our
community in Fellers Heights. Pushed to the margins of society once again, five generations
and counting of my ancestors survived in this remote area thanks to their traditional
knowledge and kinship ties.7 We shared culture, supported each other as a community,
danced and played music, and hunted and gathered in these lands since 1919.89
My ancestors, namely the Cardinal family, may have been frequenting this area since the
1790s.10 However, such research is beyond the scope of this thesis. I believe my family
settled here because they knew this place. They regarded it as a haven, calling it “God’s
Country.”11
Growing up, I heard whispers of a less-than-dignified exodus from northern Montana, where
our ancestors, the Fellers and the Gariepys, were branded as horse thieves, a common
pejorative directed at Métis people at the time.1213 My father alluded to their departure with a
wink and a smile, claiming our family chose to settle high in the valley in Fellers Heights “so
they could see the posse coming.”14 This displacement aligns with broader patterns of
migration within the Métis Nation, as many families moved north and west, toward the edges
of our Homeland, in search of a better life.15
Martha Harroun Foster describes these regional kinship systems, as outlined in my father’s
oral maps and histories, as “enclaves”, flexible and informal community frameworks that
allowed our ancestors to support each other and maintain cultural continuity despite their
ambiguous position in Montana.16 Due to their nomadism, they were denied both US
citizenship and Indian Status.17 I contend that my ancestors recreated this community
structure when they “immigrated” to northeast BC, where we are confronted with similar
assimilative tactics.

7

South Peace Historical Book Committee. Lure of the South Peace: Tales of the Early Pioneers to
1945. Beaverlodge, AB: South Peace Historical Book Committee, 1981, 42.
8
Lawrence J. Barkwell, Fellers, Emilie Garipey (Gabriel Dumont Institute of Native Studies and
Applied Research, March 2, 2016), https://www.metismuseum.ca/resource.php/148277.
9
South Peace Historical Book Committee. Lure of the South Peace: Tales of the Early Pioneers to
1945. Beaverlodge, AB: South Peace Historical Book Committee, 1981, 43.
10
David V. Burley, J. Scott Hamilton, and Knut R. Fladmark, Prophecy of the Swan: The Upper Peace
River Fur Trade of 1794–1823 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1996), 60.
11
Barkwell, Fellers, Emilie Garipey
12
Lawrence J. Barkwell, Judith Guardipee (Gariepy) née Cardinal (Gabriel Dumont Institute of Native
Studies and Applied Research, March 2, 2016),
https://www.metismuseum.ca/media/document.php/14798.Judith%20Guardipee.pdf. I am grateful to
the late Lawrence Barkwell, the esteemed researcher, and ally to the Métis people, who enshrined the
history of my family, and the founding of Fellers Heights in the Gabriel Dumont Institute.
13
Martha Harroun Foster, We Know Who We Are: Métis Identity in a Montana Community (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 2006).
14
Jesse Bassett, Métis, Relocation Family Story, Personal communication, Treaty 8 and the Métis
Homeland, May, 2002.
15
Bartlett, “A Métis Woman’s Journey of Discovery.”
16
Foster, We Know Who We Are.
17
Foster, We Know Who We Are.

Bassett 10
Fellers Heights was founded by a matriarch, Emily Gariepy Fellers, my
great-great-great-grandmother, her six sons, and their families.18 Many of their descendants
still reside on, or near, their original homesteads, so it’s not surprising I grew up surrounded
by cousins.19 Fellers Heights is a historic Métis community; however, we are not a
rights-holding community at this time.2021 Without the province's legal sanction, I fear our
story will be lost, and our community will be subsumed by the machinery of capitalism,
colonialism, and resource extraction.
However, I believe that art can reclaim space where law and policy deny it. I am writing this
thesis to enshrine our story within an institutional archive and combat our erasure. While I
believe the organizational structure necessary to assert our presence formally may be years,
or even decades, away, this thesis can serve as a lobstick, guiding future ancestors and
leaders in the ongoing struggle for Métis recognition in British Columbia.22

18

Barkwell, Fellers, Emilie Garipey.
Barkwell, Fellers, Emilie Garipey.
20
Métis Nation British Columbia, MNBC Comments on Murray River Coal Project: Potential Project
Effects on Métis Aboriginal Rights and Related Interests (Abbotsford, BC: Métis Nation British
Columbia, 2014), PDF. This document outlines the formal response of the Métis Nation British
Columbia (MNBC) to the proposed Murray River Coal Project, addressing the proponent’s limited
recognition of Métis communities and their rights. It discusses the legal framework surrounding Métis
rights (including R v. Powley), clarifies MNBC’s governance structure, and critiques the exclusion of
MNBC from consultation processes. The report highlights the distinct geographical, cultural, and
governance characteristics of Métis peoples, and emphasizes the importance of Métis Traditional
Knowledge (MTK), mobility, and kinship networks in assessing project impacts. Notably, it also lists
historic Métis communities in northern British Columbia including Fellers Heights, Moccasin Flats,
Hessler Flats, and Taylor underscoring their continued relevance in regional land use and identity.
21
Zachary Romano, quoted in Christopher Gall and Brodie Douglas, “Shifting the Status Quo: The
Duty to Consult and the Métis of British Columbia,” in Bead by Bead: Constitutional Rights and Métis
Community, ed. Yvonne Boyer and Larry Chartrand (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2021), 61.
“Dispossession and dispersion has been particularly intense for the descendants of the historic Métis
Nation represented by the MNBC. The absence of land recognized land rights does not in and of itself
mean the absence of a Métis community.”
22
Lawrence J. Barkwell, Lobstick (Gabriel Dumont Institute of Native Studies and Applied Research,
March 2, 2016), https://www.metismuseum.ca/media/document.php/149071.Lobstick.pdf. “Lobsticks
would mark trails or portages, sources of food, or hunting grounds. They were also used as cultural
markers, to signify meeting places, burial grounds, ceremonial sites, personal totems or to honour
someone.”
19

Bassett 11

Horse People

Figure 1. Grandpa and I.

“She grew up in a Métis settlement, so she knew cattle and horses.”23

This section reflects on daily life in Fellers Heights, the deeply rooted horse culture that
shaped my upbringing and continues to inform my identity as a Métis artist. Through stories
of my grandfather, father, and our community’s shared practices, I trace the continuity of
horsemanship as both a way of life and a cultural throughline. What began as childhood
experience has come to represent a powerful connection to my ancestors and our enduring
relationship with the land, animals, and community.

23

Conor Kerr, Prairie Edge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2024).

Bassett 12

Figure 2. Grandpa and Ribbon.

My grandfather, Glen Bassett, loved horses. When he recounted his life, he’d mark the
chapters, not according to calendar dates, but according to his horses in a sort of equine
chronology. There was his prized mare Ribbon, later his team Blaze and Barney, then his
saddle horse Clancy, and so on, with many more in between.
Like many Indigenous Nations of the prairies, the Métis are horse people. Our ancestors
hunted buffalo on horseback.24 Their prowess in the saddle also made them fierce warriors.25
Horsemanship and cattle-rearing bear particular significance in our family.26 My
great-great-great-great-grandfather, Jean-Baptiste Gariepy, was a celebrated buffalo hunter
who later turned to cattle-raising when the buffalo were eradicated.27 According to Nicholas
Vrooman, the Métis were the first to bring cattle to the plains, well before settlers began
operating cattle ranches in northern Montana.28
24

Jean Teillet, The North-West Is Our Mother: The Story of Louis Riel's People, the Métis Nation
(Toronto: HarperCollins, 2019).
25
Teillet, The North-West Is Our Mother, 52.
26
Barkwell, Judith Guardipee (Gariepy).
27
Barkwell, Judith Guardipee (Gariepy).
28
Al Wiseman and Nicholas Vrooman, Revisiting Montana 1889—Métis Discussion Group,
Montana Historical Society, April 4, 2019, YouTube video, 1:22:53,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwQVhTuqqwo&t=165s

Bassett 13

In keeping with tradition, my grandfather raised cattle and horses on his ancestral
homestead in Fellers Heights. Down the road, my father, Jesse Bassett, did the same on his
uncle, Frank “Jiggs” Fellers’ land. Our neighbours also raised horses and cattle, as well as
buffalo. We had a unique way of feeding and doing other tasks using heavy horse teams and
a stoneboat, a low sleigh that was widely used by Métis people in Montana.29

Figure 3. Grandpa and Uncle Steve with the heavy horse team and the stoneboat.

I learned to ride at nine with my two brothers, Colin and Theran, and three step-siblings,
Casey, Darcy, and Lance Harris. We helped with the annual cattle drives, branding, sorting,
and other chores. Riding was not a leisure activity but a way of life. Horses taught us
responsibility, respect, empathy, teamwork, and self-worth. Gaining every new skill,
grooming, saddling, riding at a walk, trot, lope, and gallop, was a rite of passage, and a
measuring stick. Horses were so central to my childhood that I would feel lost raising
children without them.
My grandfather gave me my first saddle. Our horses were gifted to us by family, friends, and
neighbours. They were old, slow ex-team ropers and pack horses who should have enjoyed
a well-earned retirement. Whisper and Echo, Mini and Shorty, Misty and Dew. They were
patient teachers.

29

Wiseman and Vrooman, Revisiting Montana 1889.

Bassett 14

Figure 4. Me and my horse, Missy (left), and my step-sister Darcy, riding Misty (right) in Fellers Heights.

In the spring, we’d herd the cattle to pastures in the Crown land and bring them home in the
fall. These drives were community events, as were branding and sorting. Our neighbors, the
Hendersons and Kronlachners, would also help. In return, we would assist with their ranch
operations. We had a beautiful, reciprocal way of supporting each other.
I remember my nerves at the beginning of each drive. I always knew what to do, even
though it was never explicitly explained. Coordinating 200 head of cattle is quite a feat. We
all knew the task, however, and worked as a unit. Perhaps it was blood memory at work,
evoking our time as buffalo hunters.
In the summers, we would go on horseback trips through the Crown lands. Dad drove our
covered wagon, which he had built himself. The kids and our neighbours would follow on our
saddle horses. There was music in the evening and pancakes with saskatoon jam in the
morning. We’d then break camp and move on to our next destination.

Bassett 15

Figure 5. Our team, Babe and Prince, pulling our wagon with Dad at the reins.

I was young then, but I do not remember if an explicit connection was made between these
trips and our origins as nomads. This was the world I knew, so I implicitly believed that
everyone grew up this way. I don't know if it was an intentional effort to preserve our culture
or an inherited instinct to move, to ride en masse, as our ancestors did when they rode from
Red River to Pembina.

Bassett 16

Horse Girl

Figure 6. Horse Girl, 2025, vintage and contemporary seed beads, iron cut beads, pony beads, thread, satin
ribbon, my father’s cowboy hat and found hat rack

Bassett 17
What began as lived experience on the land, with horses, family, and community, gradually
revealed itself as cultural inheritance. Horse Girl emerges from this recognition, transforming
memory and material into a statement of Métis cultural continuity and identity.
Horse Girl (above) is about rendering the invisible visible, learning to recognize, or see
anew, something that has always been present: our horse culture. It reflects my journey
toward understanding this way of life as a vital tradition I was fortunate to inherit. The piece
is made from my father’s cowboy hat, symbolizing that lineage. Its brim bears burn marks
from campfires, a quiet record of the years he wore it during cattle drives and horseback
camping trips.

Figure 7. Horse Girl, detail

Bassett 18
I developed a method for beading both sides of a material simultaneously. To my knowledge,
I am the first to use this approach. It is an adaptation of a long-standing tradition made
possible only in the present day. Traditionally, our beadwork was meant to be used and
worn. Double-sided beadwork complicates that utility, shifting these works further toward the
realm of the art object, though not entirely, allowing them to occupy a middle space,
reflecting the Métis experience.
In this design, I aimed to echo historical patterns. The pattern on the top of the hat is
mirrored on the bottom. The top is rendered in monochrome, while the bottom appears in full
colour. This transition to colour symbolizes the moment of realization, when I finally
recognized our lifestyle as a Métis tradition.
This understanding came to me relatively late in life. It was one of many realizations I would
experience as I began to peel back the layers of systemic erasure. Unearthing these truths
can be profoundly disorienting and distressing. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to continue,
as though purging poison from my body.
At the same time, I also feel shame for not understanding, or recognizing my culture for what
it was, sooner. Yet there is comfort in knowing this is a common experience for many Métis.
Renowned Métis physician Judith Bartlett states, “No child can understand the effect of this
daily push and pull, this cognitive dissonance in their life.”30 She further reflects on her
journey: “What I know now is that my Métis culture had never disappeared, it was always
with me.”31
This work also engages with the Métis tradition of multi-use items—reconfigurations inspired
by the Assumption sash, the Red River cart, and the stoneboat.3233 While the Red River Cart
had long fallen out of use, the stoneboat was a fixture of my childhood. It helped us clear
land and complete chores, ferried us to Christmas Mass, and provided joy and recreation
through winter sleigh rides. My father would fabricate attachments or modifications to adapt
the stoneboat for specific tasks.
Sometimes, survival requires reinventing or reconfiguring what is already at hand. These
multi-use cultural items reflect the creativity, resourcefulness, ingenuity, and pragmatism of
Métis people. In that spirit, Horse Girl is a hat, a mask, and a lens that sees through
systemic erasure, affirms cultural survival, and dispels the colonial gaze that devalues Métis
culture.

30

Judith Bartlett, “A Métis Woman’s Journey of Discovery,” in Métis Rising: Living Our Present
Through the Power of Our Past, ed. Yvonne Boyer and Larry Chartrand (Vancouver: Purich Books,
UBC Press, 2021), 235.
31
Bartlett, “A Métis Woman’s Journey of Discovery,” 237.
32
Louise Vien and Lawrence J. Barkwell, “History of the Métis Sash,” Gabriel Dumont Institute,
accessed May 10, 2025,
https://www.metismuseum.ca/media/document.php/14654.History%20of%20the%20Metis%20Sash.p
df. The Métis Sash had several uses, including an emergency bridle, sewing kit, tumpline, pocket,
weight belt, among other things.
33
Lawrence J. Barkwell, The Red River Cart and Métis Identity (Saskatoon: Gabriel Dumont Institute,
n.d.), https://www.metismuseum.ca/media/document.php/07192.Red%20River%20Cartfinal.pdf. The
Red River Cart was amazingly versatile, and could be reconfigured to make a raft, boat, or a shelter.

Bassett 19

Masks
Masks are a recurring theme in my work and my exploration of identity. I was drawn to create
masks by an unconscious desire to affirm my own identity, combining my Métis ancestry and
Russian roots, and to render the cognitive dissonance I was experiencing into something
external and, therefore, tangible. Masks are often powerful cultural signifiers.34 When used in
an Indigenous context, such as ceremonies and cultural performances, masks can affirm
collective identity, shared cultural history, and values.35 In a Western sense, masks are often
used in a theatrical context to adopt new personas, which can illustrate insights through
imagined characters.36 Universally, masks can conceal, reveal, and transform. Horse Girl
blends Western and Indigenous notions of the mask as a fitting medium to explore the
paradox of living within one’s culture without the ability to recognize it as such, and how that
disconnection shapes one’s sense of self.
This focus emerged during my time studying on the unceded traditional territories of the
xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ Nations, also known as Vancouver. Immersed
in the carving traditions of these coastal Nations, I was struck by the strength, and vibrancy
of their cultures. Given the political and economic forces suppressing my Métis identity in
northeast BC, as described below in “Identity and Industry,” I understandibly longed for an
equivalent expression as an antidote to the “cultural disorientation and isolation” that I was
experiencing.37

Figure 8. Beau Dick, Portrait Mask, date unknown, alder, acrylic, horsehair38

34

Chris Gosden and Adam Warburton, “Masks in Context: Representation, Emergence, Motility and
Self,” World Archaeology 52, no. 2 (2020): 157–169, https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2020.1996770.
35
Gosden and Warburton, “Masks in Context.”
36
Gosden and Warburton, “Masks in Context.”
37
Bartlett, “A Métis Woman’s Journey of Discovery,” 235.
38
Fazakas Gallery, “Beau Dick, Portrait Mask, Date Unknown,” Fazakas Gallery, accessed May 14,
2025,
https://fazakasgallery.com/artists/31-beau-dick/works/13271-beau-dick-portrait-mask-date-unknown/.

Bassett 20
I was particularly moved by the powerful masks of Beau Dick (see Figure 8), who was known
for blending the mythology of his Kwakwaka’wakw culture with diverse iconography drawn
from sources as varied as anime and Halloween.39 Dick’s openness to combining the
traditional with the contemporary helped pave the way for my own approach to improvised
iconography.

Figure 9. Self-Portrait (Three Years Later), 2022, oil, vintage and contemporary seed beads and thread on
canvas, 10 x 8 inches

To reflect my mixed heritage, a combination of Métis and mixed settler, I developed the
beaded matryoshka motif (pictured above), a simplified nesting doll face rendered in
beadwork. It was inspired by a matryoshka doll my great-grandmother, Mathilda Schikowsky,
brought from Russia to Canada.

39

Nancy Lanthier, “Sacred Ritual or Performance Art? A First Nation's Chief Takes Documenta,”
Whitehot Magazine, September 2016,
https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/nation-s-chief-takes-documenta/3511.

Bassett 21
I began the series shortly after experiencing a traumatic event that disrupted my sense of
self. To illuminate this experience, imagine yourself as an airplane, flying at 30,000 feet when
suddenly someone throws open the door. The contents of you are ripped out through the
vacuum and strewn along a mountainside. My practice has since centered on reclaiming
what was lost, which is why my work focuses on identity and the self. To reclaim my identity,
I turned to my ancestry, believing those who came before me embodied fixed aspects of my
selfhood, unchangeable by present events or circumstances. In this sense, one's ancestors
form a core part of the self. This concept is elegantly reflected in the matryoshka, or Russian
nesting doll.

Figure 10. Self-Portrait, 2024, seed beads and thread on embroidery mesh, wire, kokum cloth, sinew, ribbon,
buttons, 7.25 x 6.5 x 4 inches

Bassett 22
My desire for internal cohesion, for solidity in my sense of self, is reflected in the
fully-beaded designs in my self-portraiture (see Figures 9 and 10). Beading in this way adds
weight, and creates a hardened shell, like armour, or a mask. The mask conceals and
distorts as much as it reveals about my identity. The bold, symmetrical features and fine
detail are aesthetically seductive, enticing the viewer to observe closely and reflecting a
conflicting desire to be both seen and unseen. Although the design was initially inspired by
the matryoshka doll, it has since evolved into something else, something other. The doll has
become a distant ancestor as my work transitioned into three-dimensions (see Figure 10
above).
The turn to sculptural beadwork is significant. A three-dimensional work has been pulled into
this plane of reality, whereas a painting offer an imagined space we must enter. While the
beaded paintings reveal the interior, or ephemeral aspects of the self, the move into three
dimensions engages with tangible experience. This shift also reflects my turn toward
conceptualizing Métis identity through the lens of labour and shared experience, explored in
works such as Gauntlet and Valænce. The labour-intensiveness of such works, also speaks
to this connection.

Figure 11. Nico Williams, Uncle, 2023. Glass beads, Delica beads and thread, 124.5 × 73.7 cm. Gochman Family
Collection. © Nico Williams Photo: Paul Litherland40
40

National Gallery of Canada, “Sobey Art Award 2024: Nico Williams,” National Gallery of Canada,
October 7, 2024, https://www.gallery.ca/magazine/exhibitions/sobey-art-award-2024-nico-williams.

Bassett 23
This shift led to the development of new processes, including the sculptural application of
flat-stitch beadwork, as seen in Self-Portrait (pictured above). While I take inspiration from
the beaded sculptural works of Nico Williams, my method of sculptural flat-stitch differs from
brick stitch or the peyote stitch that Williams employs, as it requires a fabric backing, leaves
a visible stitch that speaks to the labour of its making, and involves what I refer to as
"sculpting with tension," using thread tension to shape the form of the beads. The distinctive
eye shape, derived from the ultra-feminized eyes of the matryoshka doll, carries through into
the cut-outs in Horse Girl, which emerges from the same lineage as the self-portraiture
series.

Mad Cow
Life in Fellers Heights came with its difficulties, but the beauty and resilience of our
community outshone the hardship. This section explores how economic precarity, the oil and
gas industry, wage labour, and cultural continuity intersect in our lives.
In May 2003, the Mad Cow Disease hysteria began, causing cow-calf prices to plummet by
50%.41 For our community, largely composed of cow-calf producers, the impact was
devastating. To make ends meet, my dad took contract work with oil and gas companies
while continuing to manage the family ranch. He drove crews to sites and built custom
fencing around the facilities that sprang up in the valley seemingly overnight. He’d leave
before dawn and return after dark, completely exhausted.
As finances worsened, we rationed food and water, limited trips to town to conserve fuel, and
gathered firewood to heat the house. We leaned on each other and our neighbours.
Sometimes, when we ran out of water, all six of us children would bathe at a neighbour’s
home.
The hardship strengthened our community bonds, but it also strained cultural continuity.
Drawing on his traditional knowledge, my father began working as a hunting guide in
Terminus Mountain, often gone for weeks at a time. The cattle market crash and demands of
wage labour in the oil and gas industry took both him and our culture from us, and
complicated our connection to the land in many ways.
Eventually, he was forced to sell the family cattle operation, a tradition that spanned seven
generations. This loss marked the beginning of the end of our time living in Fellers Heights,
as my dad ultimately left his ancestral homestead and settled in Sunset Prairie, a nearby
area.
—
One hot afternoon, Dad, my brothers, and I drove out to a natural gas lease deep in the
valley. He brought his rifle. We stepped off the gravel pad and into the bush. “We’re going
hunting,” he said, though he seemed worn and scattered.

41

The Canadian Press, “Timeline: Canada's 2003 Mad Cow Disease Crisis,” Global News, February
13, 2015, https://globalnews.ca/news/1830438/timeline-canadas-2003-mad-cow-disease-crisis/.

Bassett 24
I had only been hunting with him a few times. I didn’t know much, but I knew this wasn’t the
way to do it—walking four abreast in the summer heat. Unsurprisingly, we had no luck. My
brothers and I piled back into the truck, confused by the aimless outing.
Looking back, I realize those weren’t ideal circumstances for hunting. But it was the only
time he had to pass that knowledge on to us. It was the last time we hunted together as a
family, as our way of life had already begun to change forever.
—

Valænce

Figure 12. Valænce (WIP), 2025, vintage and contemporary seed beads, thread, used work gloves

While wage labour in the oil and gas industry disrupted the rhythms of our family and
community life, it also shaped my understanding of work, survival, and identity. These
experiences, rooted in physical labour and marked by economic uncertainty, later became
central to my artistic practice. Valænce emerges from this exploration of endurance,
adaptation, and cultural inheritance.

Bassett 25

Figure 13. (right) Maria-Margaretta Cabana Boucher, Go Help Grandma With the Dishes

The piece draws inspiration from Métis artist Audie Murray’s glove series, which explores
“themes of connection, labour, and the transference of energy through hands.”42 Valænce is
also indebted to the work of Maria-Margaretta Cabana Boucher (Métis), particularly Go Help
Grandma With the Dishes, through which Boucher seeks to “explore my Michif identity
through lived realities within the spectrum of the everyday.”43
In times of hardship, our grandmother-artists often beaded domestic décor items including
tea cozies, wall pockets, and shelf valances, not only as expressions of culture but also as a
means of supplementing family income.44 This tradition reflects how culture and economic
survival have long been intertwined in Métis life. Today, that legacy continues in new forms,
shaped by the pressures and possibilities of contemporary life.

42

Audie Murray, Celestial Gloves, 2021, Fazakas Gallery, accessed May 10, 2025,
https://fazakasgallery.com/artists/48-audie-murray/works/12443-audie-murray-celestial-gloves-2021/.
Image not included at the artist’s request.
43
Maria-Margaretta, Go Help Grandma With the Dishes, 2021, Salt Spring National Art Prize,
accessed May 10, 2025, https://saltspringartprize.ca/artwork/go-help-grandma-with-the-dishes/.
44
Scofield, Our Grandmothers’ Hands.

Bassett 26

Figure 14. Valænce, detail

In that spirit, I created Valænce from a pair of work gloves I used while employed in the oil
and gas industry. The title is a play on words, referring both to the domestic valances (see
Figure 17) created by our grandmother-artists and to “valence” or “polyvalence,” the quality
of having many different meanings, functions or forms.
As I altered the gloves—removing the thumbs and stitching the fingertips together, a face, or
mask, appeared by chance. It was a fortuitous coincidence, once again invoking the Métis
practice of reconfiguration. What began as an aesthetic decision, the removal of the thumbs
also became a play on utility. Valænce became both a mask and a domestic object,
referencing Métis cultural adaptability and the layered meanings of labour, identity, and
survival.
By deconstructing the gloves and cutting through their reinforced seams, I was undoing the
manufacturer’s intent to create something durable and meant to endure hard labour. I felt a
release of energy with each stitch I severed. The material slowly returned to something
closer to the glove’s origin: tanned hide. This became a symbolic act of reclamation.

Bassett 27

Figure 15. Once-known Artist, wall pocket, Métis, Cree, Saulteaux-Métis, c. 1890–191045

The beaded pattern I used is a master study of a grandmother artist’s wall pocket (pictured
above). The pattern is intentionally broken and distorted along the fingers. Some elements
are incomplete or obscured, leaving only the stitches, or the record of labour, visible. This
disruption echoes how the labour of survival can interfere with cultural continuity. While living
in “survival mode” can suppress our identity, it is nonetheless part of our shared history as
Métis people.

For many Métis, cultural continuity was broken; they did not learn to bead from family but
through workshops or Zoom rooms (I learned to bead from my friend, Cree artist Adrienne
45

Scofield, Our Grandmothers’ Hands, 154-155. More information about the grandmother artist wall
pocket: “Region: Red River Diaspora/East coast Lake Winnipeg/ Lake Winnipeg
Materials: Brown velvet, bound with black-glazed cotton fabric, lined and backed with black-glazed
cotton fabric, cotton thread-strung and couched glass seed beads, black cotton thread loop hanger,
two-beaded edging in transparent beads.
Measurements: L. 25.4 cm, W. 19 cm
Location Found: Fairport, New York”

Bassett 28
Greyeyes).46 In response to this, many beadworkers create master studies of grandmother
artists’ work to reach back through generations and bridge gaps in cultural knowledge.

Figure 16. Once-known artist, possible connection to the Inkster-Sinclair family, Manitoba, shelf or mantle
valance, Métis, Cree-Métis, Dene-Métis, c. 1875-1880

I chose the wall pocket (Figure 16) for its improvisational quality; the design seemed to have
been created freehand, with organic forms that appeared to bloom as they were stitched.
This intuitive approach suited the unconventional substrate of the gloves. I added the looped
fringe, which is commonly found on historic beadwork from the late 19th century, especially
on domestic items, as exemplified in Figure 17.47 I found myself elaborating on the original
pattern, replacing colours with what I had on hand, enlarging elements, and adding
embellishments spontaneously. This process allowed me to learn directly from a master
beadworker while embracing the continual reinvention that defines Métis culture.

46

Catherine Ruddell, Catherine Ruddell – Before the Peace, Before the Peace, June 21, 2024,
YouTube video, 50:15, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnKNaaZm6QM
47
Scofield, Our Grandmothers’ Hands, 214-215. More information about the shelf valance: “Region:
Red River Diaspora/Great Slave Lake-Mackenzie River Region
Materials: Balck velvet, sinew-strung and cotton thread couched glass seed beads, polished iron
faceted beads, cotton fabric backing, cotton thread.
Measurements: L. 85 cm, W. 27.9 (side drops), W. 21.5 (middle drop)
Location Found: Ottawa, Ontario

Bassett 29

Identity and Industry
While Valænce reflects an intimate engagement with labour and cultural inheritance, these
themes extend far beyond the personal. The complexities of Métis identity in northeast
British Columbia are deeply entangled with resource extraction, legal recognition, and
colonial structures. My own search for work in the oil and gas industry brought these
tensions into sharp relief, revealing the contradictions faced by Métis people striving to
survive within and often despite systems that both employ and erase us.
–
I entered Triple J Pipelines' office one autumn looking for work, although I knew my chances
were slim. Oil and gas was in a “bust” cycle, and the wet conditions didn’t help much. “I’m
Métis,” I told the office manager, feeling distaste for myself. I hoped they would take me on
as a diversity hire. “Half our crew is Métis,” he said. “Call Curtis Belcourt. He might have
something”.48
Curtis was a respected elder and community leader from Kelly Lake, a Métis settlement just
within the BC border. He was also a contractor working in the oil and gas industry. He
proclaimed his Métis pride with two full-sized infinity flags streaming over his company
vehicle. On the back windshield, his logo combined Métis and industry symbols.
I met Curtis at Tim Horton’s with a couple of other prospective hires. We met for coffee a few
times that damp September. Although work never materialized, I enjoyed our visits. His
manner of speaking was passionate and animated, like my grandfather's. He passed away in
2024.
–
For Curtis, his occupation and identity melded seamlessly, at least, it appeared so. For me,
five years working in the oil and gas industry was a mark against my Métis identity. It made
me complicit in the destruction of the land. The “real” Indians are land defenders, I thought.
There I was, sticking a knife in and grabbing a paycheck.49

48

Triple J Pipelines Office Manager (name unknown), personal communication to the author regarding
the Métis workforce, Dawson Creek, BC, September 2015.
49
The Guardian, “Fort McKay: The Canadian Town That Sold Itself to Tar Sands,” The Guardian, May
28, 2015,
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2015/may/28/carbon-bomb-canada-tar-sand
s-fort-mckay-town-sold-itself. Cece Fitzpatrick, a community member from Fort Mckay, and a former
heavy equipment operator at Syncrude, voices a similar sentiment: “I used to feel like I was betraying
myself and betraying my people because I was working at an industry that was destroying the land.”

Bassett 30
The Métis, perhaps more than any other Indigenous group, have strongly associated identity
with occupation and industry. We emerged as fur traders, voyageurs, interpreters, and
diplomats.50 We were also guides, buffalo hunters, and resistance fighters.51 Arguably, our
ethnogenesis, our very being, was facilitated by the policies of the Hudson’s Bay Company
and the North West Company.52 As the centuries wore on and the diaspora ranged wider, so
have our experiences. It is difficult now for one or even a handful of occupations to stand out
as integral to our story in the present moment.

Figure 17. The Montney Gas Formation.53

However, for Métis in BC’s northeast, one industry looms over all else: oil and gas, due to
our position within the Montney Gas Formation.54 The dominance of oil and gas is also
acutely felt by Métis communities on the Alberta side of Montney and, to a greater extent, by
Métis in Fort McKay and their neighbours who have withstood ecocide in Alberta’s oil
sands.55
50

Teillet, The North-West Is Our Mother.
Teillet, The North-West Is Our Mother.
52
Foster, We Know Who We Are.
53
CBC News, "What's the Problem with Montney? Challenges Loom for Canada's Hottest Natural
Gas Play," CBC News, November 2, 2016,
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/montney-natural-gas-challenges-1.3829007.Note: Fellers Heights
and Fort McKay added by the author.
54
CBC News, "What's the Problem with Montney?"
55
France 24, "Fort McKay: Where Canada's Boreal Forest Gave Way to Oil Sands," France 24,
November 14, 2022,
51

Bassett 31
Although British Columbia does not perceive itself as an oil and gas province like Alberta, it
very much is.56 The industry has run rampant in the region for decades, causing untold
environmental harm.57 It is a legal battleground where local First Nations have won landmark
cases against the provincial government for infringing on their treaty rights.58
Métis Nation BC (MNBC), has a close relationship with oil and gas.59 MNBC’s stake in the
Enbridge Northern Gateway Project spurred a backlash among First Nations and MNBC
citizens.6061 MNBC’s relationship with Enbridge and its perceived role in facilitating pipelines
that cross First Nations’ territory propelled the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs
(UBCIC) to pass a resolution denouncing what they call Métis colonialism.62 In January
2024, the BC Government updated its Distinctions-Based Approach (DBA), which contends,
“It is not appropriate to include Métis as rights-holders in any of the Province’s processes,
matters, projects, or initiatives that relate to the land, water, or air in British Columbia.”63
According to Patrick Harriott, MNBC’s Minister of Culture, Language, and Heritage, “The
DBA was supposed to clarify the different approaches when it comes to land based First
Nations’ rights on these lands, and those of us who are Indigenous people grateful to be
living in this beautiful place. Unfortunately, it did not do that and instead muddied the waters
to include non-site-specific social sector issues such as education and culture.”64 As a result,
Métis people, as well as Inuit, non-status, and non-BC First Nations individuals living in
British Columbia, now face significantly reduced access to funding and support. The BC
government defends these outcomes, asserting that they align with the United Nations
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20221114-fort-mckay-where-canada-s-boreal-forest-gave-way
-to-oil-sands.
56
Brent Jang, “Natural Gas Overtaking Forestry as Top Contributor to B.C. Government’s Resource
Revenue,” The Globe and Mail, March 7, 2024,
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-bc-natural-gas-resource-revenue/.
57
Amnesty International, Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Gender, Indigenous Rights, and Energy
Development in Northeast British Columbia, Canada (London: Amnesty International, 2016),
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/amr20/4872/2016/en/.
58
Mandell Pinder LLP, "Yahey v. British Columbia, 2021 BCSC 1287: Case Summary," Mandell Pinder
LLP, 2021,
https://www.mandellpinder.com/yahey-v-british-columbia-2021-bcsc-1287-canlii-case-summary/.
59
Métis Nation British Columbia, "Métis Nation British Columbia: Sponsorship Opportunities,"
accessed December 6, 2024,
https://www.mnbc.ca/node/3986#:~:text=As%20a%20sponsor%2C%20your%20organization,and%20
communities%20across%20the%20province.
60
Terrace Standard, "Enbridge Deal Divides Métis," November 10, 2022,
https://www.terracestandard.com/news/enbridge-deal-divides-metis-6008615.
61
Relationships with major corporations are not unique to MNBC, nor is it a specifically Métis issue,
as many First Nations communities have similar arrangements. I am speaking simply from my own
experiences and affiliations.
62
Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, "UBCIC Unanimously Passes Resolution Denouncing Métis
Colonialism," last modified June 7, 2023,
https://www.ubcic.bc.ca/ubcic_unanimously_passes_resolution_denouncing_metis_colonialism. “The
UBCIC Chiefs Council has unanimously passed Resolution 2023-39, denouncing Métis colonialism in
what is now known as British Columbia (BC), and rejecting the false, unfounded, and deeply offensive
assertions of the Métis that the Métis hold independent land and water-based inherent and
constitutionally protected rights in BC, including related jurisdiction.”
63
British Columbia Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, Distinctions-Based Approach
Primer, accessed December 6, 2024,
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/british-columbians-our-governments/indigenous-people/aboriginalpeoples-documents/distinctions_based_approach_primer.pdf.
64
Patrick Harriott, email to author, March 02, 2025

Bassett 32
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the recommendations of the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission.65
Kelly Lake, a Métis settlement within the BC boundary, is mounting a case to prove their
Section 35 rights.6667 If they are successful, BC’s Distinctions-Based Approach will be
upended in theory. However, it takes time for legal decisions to be implemented in practice.
As Métis people well know, governments are not above dragging their feet to render legal
remedies effectively null.68
Ironically, in a news release, UBCIC President, Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, stated, “First
Nations in BC take no issue with the Métis Nation, the Métis people, or their struggle to
protect and advance their rights within their historic Homeland.”69 Yet, somehow, northeast
BC, which sits within our historic Homeland, is ground zero for these divisive pipelines, and
the people most affected do not factor into this conflict.70 Our presence here has been elided
entirely. We have been rendered invisible in our Homeland.

Relations Shaped by the Land
The Peace Country, named for the Peace River where the Dune-zaa and Nēhiyawēwin
smoked the peace pipe, has a quiet beauty.71 It is a vast, open country where the prairies
meet the mountains, and space and time expand and contract with the seasons.
To the west are the Rocky Mountains, which live in my mind as distant fixtures visible only on
clear days. To the east is the Alberta border, an invisible line marked by a sign, and an
apparent shift in road maintenance policies. Joined by the river and irrespective of provincial
boundaries, the Peace Country encompasses northeast BC and northwest Alberta. Here, the
Rockies enmesh the Peace’s tributaries, forming a network of rolling foothills, valleys, and
pockets of grassland that gradually expand as mountains give way to endless prairies.

65

BC Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, Distinctions-Based Approach Primer.
Métis Nation British Columbia, "Historic Kelly Lake Accepted as Métis Nation British Columbia’s
Newest Chartered Community," Métis Nation British Columbia, October 16, 2021,
https://www.mnbc.ca/news/historic-kelly-lake-accepted-metis-nation-british-columbias-newest-charter
ed-community.
67
Paulette Flamond, MNBC Director for Region 7, phone call with the author, February 28, 2025.
68
Manitoba Metis Federation Inc. v. Canada (Attorney General), 2013 SCC 14, [2013] 1 S.C.R. 623,
Supreme Court of Canada, https://decisions.scc-csc.ca/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/12888/index.do. The
Supreme Court of Canada found that the federal government failed to implement the land grant
provisions of The Manitoba Act, 1870, in a manner consistent with the honour of the Crown. This
failure contributed to the mass immiseration of Métis people.
69
Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, "UBCIC Denouncing Métis Colonialism.
70
Métis Nation of Alberta, "Guidelines & Requirements," accessed December 10, 2024,
https://albertametis.com/registry/guidelines-and-requirement/.
71
Garry Oker, Dane-zaa, How the Peace River got its name, Personal communication, Treaty 8 and
the Métis Homeland, August, 2019.
66

Bassett 33

Sandwiched between the Rocky Mountains and the Alberta border, northeast British
Columbia holds little political or cultural significance for the rest of the province. Even its
quasi-boreal, prairie-like landscape exists in a kind of ecological liminality. The Peace
Region is similarly marginal within the broader mythos of the Métis Nation, as no major
historical events, such as military battles, have taken place here.72 Meanwhile, just 30
minutes east, Métis in Alberta have recently secured the right to self-governance.73
This topography has undoubtedly shaped relationships between First Nations and Métis
alike. This is especially evident when comparing maps of Treaty 8, the Métis Homeland, and
Indigenous language regions, all overlapping in northeast British Columbia.

Figure 18. A Michif language map.74

72

Gabrielle Legault, "Métis Networks in British Columbia: Examples from the Central Interior," BC
Studies, no. 143 (2004): 55–78,
https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/bcstudies/article/view/193712/191111.
73
Métis Nation of Alberta and Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, Métis Nation
within Alberta Self-Government Recognition and Implementation Agreement, February 24, 2023,
https://albertametis.com/app/uploads/2023/02/Self-government-and-Implementation-Agreement-signe
d.pdf.
74
Native Land Digital, “Michif Piyii (Métis),” Native-Land.ca, accessed May 14, 2025,
https://native-land.ca/maps/territories/metis.

Bassett 34

Figure 19. A map of Treaty 875

Figure 20. A map of the Métis Homeland76

75

Doig River First Nation, “Treaty 8,” Doig River First Nation, accessed May 14, 2025,
https://doigriverfn.com/about/history/treaty/.
76
Native Land Digital, “Michif Piyii (Métis).

Bassett 35
It is essential to consider how this region came to be divided. The southern, zigzagging
portion of the BC/Alberta border was surveyed between 1913 and 1924.77 There was no
need to continue the survey until oil and gas deposits were discovered north of the
established boundary.78 In 1949, survey work resumed in a straight line along the 120th
meridian and was completed in 1953.79 This is the origin of BC’s peculiar shape (see map
above). Its southern half more closely reflects natural boundaries and watersheds, while the
northern portion is an arbitrary line that signifies nothing but colonial greed.
Unsurprisingly, traditional Métis land use has nothing to do with an imaginary line drawn in
1953. Métis presence has been recorded in the region as early as the 1790s.80 Yet, this line
has cut off my community from our neighbours and kin to the east and tethered us to a
colonial government based over 1000 kilometers away.

Legal Lacuna
In my view, Métis across British Columbia have become convenient scapegoats for the
provincial government, corporations, and political organizations, occupying the paradoxical
role of a kind of Schrödinger’s Halfbreed: simultaneously Indigenous and non-Indigenous to
BC, depending on political or corporate convenience.81 Whether it's the UBCIC, federal or
provincial governments, or companies like Enbridge, our status shifts to suit strategic needs.
Broadly speaking, our Indigeneity is affirmed when it supports pipeline development west of
the Rockies, yet denied within our own Homeland, the northeast, where our rights could
obstruct these projects at their source.82 Either way, Peace Region natural gas continues its
journey to the West Coast. This pressure will only grow amid the ongoing trade conflict with
the United States and Canada’s renewed efforts to export oil and LNG to overseas markets.
This cycle will continue as long as our legal status in BC remains ambiguous. Christopher
Gall and Brodie Douglas draw attention to our conflicting legal status, or “legal lacuna,”
asserting that, while Métis Nation BC is recognized by the federal Crown, British Columbia

77

Land Title and Survey Authority of British Columbia, "The AB-BC Boundary & the Surveyor General,"
LTSA, December 14, 2023, https://ltsa.ca/our-stories/the-ab-bc-boundary-the-surveyor-general/.
78
LTSA, "AB-BC Boundary & the Surveyor General."
79
LTSA, "AB-BC Boundary & the Surveyor General."
80
Burley, Hamilton, and Fladmark, Prophecy of the Swan, 60.
81
Sara A. Metwalli, “What Is Schrödinger’s Cat?” Built In, last modified March 7, 2024,
https://builtin.com/software-engineering-perspectives/schrodingers-cat.The term Schrödinger’s
Halfbreed is a play on Schrödinger’s Cat, a thought experiment in which a cat is placed inside a
sealed box along with a radioactive atom, a Geiger counter, a vial of poison, and a hammer. If the
Geiger counter detects radiation (due to the atom decaying), it triggers the hammer to break the vial,
releasing the poison and killing the cat. If no radiation is detected, the cat remains alive. According to
quantum mechanics, until the box is opened and an observation is made, the atom exists in a
superposition of decayed and undecayed states. Consequently, the cat is simultaneously alive and
dead. Opening the box collapses this superposition into one definite state: the cat is either alive or
dead. I am drawing a parallel here to illustrate a point about Métis people experiencing a similar state
of superposition (existing in multiple states simultaneously) in British Columbia.
82
BC Métis Federation, “Sunrise Expansion Program (Enbridge),” accessed May 13, 2025,
https://bcmetis.com/programs-services/sunrise-expansion-program-enbridge/. The BC Métis
Federation’s cooperation with Enbridge’s Sunrise Expansion Program, that extends from Chetwynd to
Chilliwack, is but one example of this double-standard.

Bassett 36
claims it has no duty to consult Métis people.83 According to Gall and Brodie, “The Province’s
policies are not legally grounded.”84
The provincial government itself confronts a contradiction in its own policies toward Métis
people through the DBA: “the Métis Homeland, as defined by the Métis National Council
does not extend into British Columbia west of the Rocky Mountains.” Notably, however, the
Province implicitly acknowledges that the Homeland does overlap with British Columbia east
of the Rockies. It further defends its exclusion of Métis people by asserting, “There has been
no court decision applicable to British Columbia that has confirmed the existence of any
identifiable historic Métis community or Métis homeland in British Columbia.”85
This statement is technically accurate, for now. Across the Métis Homeland, landmark legal
victories have been achieved through court cases centered on harvesting rights, such as
Powley and Goodon.8687 These have proven to be effective legal strategies. In British
Columbia, however, conservation authorities appear to have deliberately obstructed this
pathway. Anecdotally, it is widely understood within my community that conservation officers
avoid prosecuting individuals who claim Métis identity; charges and fines are often dropped
as soon as someone identifies as Métis. This practice effectively prevents our Section 35
rights from being tested in court. In the meantime, Métis people in the region continue to
face the threat of arrest, property seizure, and fines simply for trying to feed their families.
I’ve heard the Peace Country disparagingly called “the frontier.” While I resent that
characterization, it is sadly accurate. Supreme Court rulings, such as the Powley and
Daniels decisions, which have enshrined Métis rights, are flouted on the frontier.88 On the
frontier, corporations can leverage the ambiguous position of Métis to push their projects
through. The frontier is lawless. The frontier is where the robber barons make their fortune.
On the frontier, you do what you must to survive.

83

Christopher Gall and Brodie Douglas, “Shifting the Status Quo: The Duty to Consult and the Métis of
British Columbia,” in Bead by Bead: Constitutional Rights and Métis Community, ed. Yvonne Boyer
and Larry Chartrand (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2021), 52–70.
84
Gall and Douglas, “Shifting the Status Quo,” 55.
85
BC Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, Distinctions-Based Approach Primer.
86
R. v. Powley, 2003 SCC 43, [2003] 2 S.C.R. 207. “The respondents, who are members of a Métis
community near Sault Ste. Marie, were acquitted of unlawfully hunting a moose without a hunting
licence . . . The trial judge found that the members of the Métis community in and around Sault Ste.
Marie have . . . an aboriginal right to hunt for food that is infringed without justification by the Ontario
hunting legislation.”
87
CBC News, “Manitoba Métis Win Hunting Rights Case,” CBC News, September 7, 2009,
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/manitoba-m%C3%A9tis-win-hunting-rights-case-1.784627.
“A man has won a five-year legal battle against the Manitoba government with a landmark court ruling
on Métis hunting rights.”
88
CBC News, “Landmark Supreme Court Decision Says Métis, Non-Status Indians Are ‘Indians’
under Constitution,” CBC News, April 14, 2016,
https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/landmark-supreme-court-decision-metis-non-status-indians-1.35
37419. “The Daniels decision classifies non-status Indians and Métis as "Indians" under section
91(24) of the Constitution. This clarifies that both groups are a constitutional responsibility of the
federal government and not the provinces.”

Bassett 37
–
During my last pipeline job, I was assigned to “spot” an excavator working under a power
line. My task was to stand and stare at the line, airhorn in hand, to ensure the excavator’s
bucket didn’t snag it. The temperature was hovering around -35℃, with a wind chill of -50 ℃.
They don’t work heavy equipment below -35℃ because it’s hard on the machinery. Wind
chill doesn’t affect machines, though.
I stood for hours in the howling wind, squinting through the icy crust that had formed around
my safety glasses. The cold ripped through me and radiated from the frigid ground through
my steel-toed boots. I glanced at the boys slinging skids. It was brutal work, but at least they
were warm enough to break a sweat.
In my periphery, a piece of cardboard was caught between the wind and a frozen lump of
earth. I don't know where the idea came from. It seemed to come from outside myself, like a
gentle tap on the shoulder. I slid the cardboard under my feet. The insulation it provided from
the ground made me instantly more comfortable. I’ve never felt so close to my ancestors as I
did at that moment.

Métis Mobius Strip
My grandfather was a bright student who showed great promise in his studies. However, his
family couldn’t afford the tuition for middle school, so he was offered a scholarship to attend
a boarding school in Dawson Creek.
When he arrived, he learned it was the “town fathers,” as he called them, who had funded
his education. Upon discovering that he would be indebted to these leaders of the faith, he
immediately left the school and walked the 40 miles home. He would make his own way in
life, with a grade seven education.89
–
Métis Elder Norman Fleury once said that Métis heritage “is why you are where you are.”90
He was referring to our history as a nomadic and diasporic people. But for many of us, our
heritage also explains why we are, where we are on the socioeconomic ladder. A legacy of
disenfranchisement and immiseration, including barriers to education, such as the
remoteness of Métis communities, has left many in northeast BC vulnerable, and prime
candidates for the labour force in oil and gas.91
The industry is a double-edged sword. While it brings significant social and environmental
harm, it also offers one of the few avenues for upward mobility, and is often the only option

89

Eva Bassett, Personal communication with the author regarding Glen Bassett’s education, Treaty 8
and the Métis Homeland, April, 2025.
90
Norman Fleury, Métis, Discussion about Métis identity, Ktunaxa Territory. Rocky Mountain Métis
Association Michif Language Class, April, 2021.
91
Statistics Canada, “Barriers to Postsecondary Education among First Nations People, Métis and
Inuit,” Statistics Canada, February 6, 2025,
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2025002/article/00002-eng.htm.

Bassett 38
for many Métis people.9293 As Ron Quintal, chief of the Fort McKay Métis, puts it, "The reality
is that they shut off the oil sands tomorrow, my community would starve."94 My own work in
oil and gas helped fund my post-secondary education and set me on the path to becoming a
culture carrier.
This paradox is what I describe as the “Métis Möbius Strip.” Like the infinity symbol on our
flag, it represents a closed loop: we are drawn into resource extraction because of historical
marginalization, and our involvement is then used to question the legitimacy of our
Indigeneity. The legal and economic systems conspire to both erase and exploit us.

Gauntlet

Figure 21. Northern style mittens by Kaija Heitland95

92

Amnesty International, Out of Sight, Out of Mind.
Marion Thibaut, “Fort McKay: Where Canada's Boreal Forest Gave Way to Oil Sands,” Phys.org,
November 14, 2022, https://phys.org/news/2022-11-fort-mckay-canada-boreal-forest.html.
94
Thibaut, “Fort McKay.”
95
Indigenous Nouveau, “Moccasins, Mittens and Gloves,” Indigenous Nouveau, accessed May 14,
2025, https://www.indigenousnouveau.com/portfolio-1/project-one-zyc4h.
93

Bassett 39
In 2023, I was mentored by Kaija Heitland, a celebrated Métis artist and culture carrier, in the
art of making traditional gauntlets, decorated gloves made from animal hide and fur.96 As
with many traditional Métis garments, the patterns can often be traced back to specific
regions and families.97 These garments speak not only to craftsmanship but to identity; they
declare who you are and where you come from.

Figure 22. Gauntlet (Skin Side), 2024, Vintage and contemporary, seed, pony and crow beads, vintage iron cut
beads, thread, imitation sinew, and found welding glove.

Inspired by this tradition, I created Gauntlet using a found welding glove, as a way to tie my
experience in the oil and gas industry to contemporary Métis life. Working in trades and
resource extraction was almost inevitable for me, as it was for many in my family and
community within the Montney Gas Formation. We share these experiences, and often
kinship ties, with Métis from communities like Fort McKay, where the oil sands have shaped
lives and landscapes alike.98

96

Lawrence J. Barkwell, “Gauntlet Gloves and Mittens,” Virtual Museum of Métis History and Culture,
2013, https://www.metismuseum.ca/resource.php/14317.
97
Gregory Scofield, kôhkominawak ocihcîwâwa – Our Grandmothers’ Hands: Repatriating Métis
Material Art (Saskatoon: Gabriel Dumont Institute Press, 2023).
98
France 24, "Fort McKay."

Bassett 40

Figure 23. Gauntlet (Flesh Side), 2024, Vintage and contemporary, seed, pony and crow beads, vintage iron cut
beads, thread, imitation sinew, and found welding glove.

Gauntlet draws on traditional Métis beading motifs: red and pink roses, mouse tracks, and
iron-cut accents.99 I intentionally overcrowded the beads and pulled the stitches tight. The
beadwork nearly subsumes the glove, twisting and warping the leather. It is changed,
misshapen, but undeniably Métis. It tells a complex story, one of cultural inheritance, legal
ambiguity, and our complicated entanglement with the very systems that marginalize us.

99

Lawrence J. Barkwell, Characteristics of Métis Beadwork (Saskatoon: Gabriel Dumont Institute,
n.d.),
https://www.metismuseum.ca/media/document.php/13489.Characteristics%20of%20Metis%20Beadw
ork.pdf.

Bassett 41

Methodology
Métis identity in northeastern British Columbia is a complex tapestry woven from history,
culture, and economic necessity. The region’s distinctive geography and colonial past have
shaped our experience, fostering a deep connection to the land while also imposing
significant challenges. From preserving cultural traditions to navigating the harsh realities of
resource extraction, Métis communities in the Peace Region exemplify resilience and
adaptability. This section explores the interplay between Métis heritage and contemporary
life, highlighting how art, labour, and cultural practices sustain identity amid systemic
disenfranchisement and environmental pressures.
As a Métis person, invisible systems, colonial boundaries, and legal frameworks entwined
with economic interests have profoundly shaped my identity, sense of self, and lived
experience, pulling at me like strings connected to an unseen puppet master. For example,
the experience of living within a Métis community in a province that denies our existence
created profound cognitive dissonance and emotional distress. I am grateful to have had the
opportunity to trace these strands throughout this program. The only way I could hold these
conflicting notions at once while maintaining some semblance of grounding was through the
concept of wahkotowin, which helped me carry these contradictions simultaneously.

Wahkotowin and Storytelling
To connect the unique factors suppressing Métis identity and self-determination in BC’s
northeast, I use the Cree-Métis concept of wahkotowin, or the interconnectedness of all
creation, as well as the tradition of storytelling embedded in Métis art.
Métis Elder Maria Campbell describes wahkotowin:
“Today it is translated to mean kinship, relationship, and family as in human
family. But at one time, from our place, it meant the whole of creation. And our
teachings taught us that all of creation is related and inter-connected to all
things within it.”100
Campbell notes that wahkotowin has long been expressed through Métis material culture:
“[Métis women] wove the stories of wahkotowin and the histories of our people
in and out of their beading, embroidery, and berry picking.”101
Métis Elder Rose Richardson elaborates on storytelling through beadwork:

100

Maria Campbell, “We Need to Return to the Principles of Wahkotowin – Maria Campbell (2007),”
M. Gouldhawke (blog), last modified November 5, 2019,
https://mgouldhawke.wordpress.com/2019/11/05/we-need-to-return-to-the-principles-of-wahkotowin-m
aria-campbell-2007/.
101
Maria Campbell, “Foreword,” in Women of the Métis Nation, comp. Lawrence J. Barkwell, Leah
Marie Dorion, and Anne Carrière-Acco (Saskatoon: Gabriel Dumont Institute Press, n.d.), 1–2,
https://www.metismuseum.ca/media/document.php/149695.Women%20of%20the%20Metis%20Natio
n%20-%20Maria%20Campbell%20Foreword.pdf.

Bassett 42
“As our ancestors picked and used plants, they told stories, and in the winters,
they retold those stories in pictographs and patterns they sewed and beaded on
jackets and clothing. All our bedding and household belongings told stories of
our spirituality, our respect, and our understanding of the signatures of a divine
power.”102
With these principles in mind, I incorporate traditional beading elements into my work,
creating storytelling devices as our ancestors did.

Squaring Circles
As Métis people, we are often required to navigate contradiction and ambiguity in nearly
every aspect of our lives. Frequently, we must hold two opposing truths at once. This way of
being is arguably central to the Métis experience.
In my work, this duality is expressed through the use of opposing pairs: interior and exterior,
bead and stitch, monochrome and colour, top and bottom, spiritual and practical, use-value
and aesthetic-value, seen and unseen.103 Each element, even those typically considered
incidental, like a beading stitch, is treated with equal importance, even if it is not easily
visible in the final presentation. Revealing the stitch also paradoxically reveals the source of
tension: the underlying systems that erode Métis identity and sovereignty, as well as the
labour undertaken by our ancestors to preserve who we are.
Hidden details are intentionally suggested rather than fully revealed. The viewer becomes
aware that not everything is visible at once. This positions them within a Métis vantage point,
shaped by partial visibility and layered meaning, and invites them to undertake the labour of
imagining or straining to perceive what lies beneath the surface.
This approach reflects the “iceberg” nature of Métis identity: what is visible is only a fraction
of what exists. Much has been obscured or suppressed through assimilation and
colonization. What lies beneath the surface holds the key to easing the cognitive dissonance
many Métis experience and offers a path toward reconciliation with the self and our shared
history.

102

Rose Richardson, quoted in Christi Belcourt et al., Medicines to Help Us: Traditional Métis Plant
Use: Study Prints & Resource Guide (Saskatoon: Gabriel Dumont Institute, 2007).
103
Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Volume I, trans. Ben Fowkes (London: Penguin
Books, 1976), 125. Marx makes a distinction between exchange-value and use-value stating: “The
utility of a thing makes it a use-value. But this utility is not a thing of air. Being limited by the physical
properties of the commodity, it has no existence apart from that commodity.” I am drawing a
comparison between Indigenous historical utilitarian artworks, such as beaded or quillworked
garments, and the Western notion of fine art, which historically lacks use-value.

Bassett 43

Métis-Specific
In June 2025, I will attend a visual arts residency called Kapishkum: Métis Gathering at the
Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. The residency aims “to bolster Métis-specific art,
creative forms, methodologies, and unique ways of being, knowing, and doing.”104
Too often, we are perceived through the colonial lens of “halfbreed.” Métis culture is
frequently mischaracterized as inauthentic, a patchwork of borrowed elements from our
European and First Nations ancestors, rather than a distinct and cohesive cultural identity.105
This persistent misunderstanding underscores the importance of initiatives like Kapishkum
and the timeliness of this thesis.
Métis-specific art is characterized by several qualities: a strong emphasis on aesthetics,
skilled craftsmanship, and fine detail, traits rooted in our reverence for our grandmother
artists and their beadwork, quillwork, embroidery, and tufting.106 Our art is steeped in
traditional knowledge of the land, kinship, and culture.107 It often serves as a vehicle for
storytelling, continuing our oral traditions through visual means.108
There is also an inherent resourcefulness and ingenuity born of our “in-betweenness,” our
mixed heritage, and our historical necessity to remix and adapt cultural elements for survival.
Much of our work is highly time and labour-intensive, a testament to the grit and
determination that runs in our blood. And often, there is a spark of humour, a big belly laugh,
that makes everything lighter and easier to bear.

104

Banff Centre, “Visual Arts – Kapishkum: Métis Gathering,” Banff Centre, accessed May 14, 2025,
https://www.banffcentre.ca/programs/visual-arts/visual-arts-kapishkum-metis-gathering.
105
Maria Campbell, Halfbreed (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1973).
106
Scofield, Our Grandmothers’ Hands.
107
Scofield, Our Grandmothers’ Hands.
108
Richardson, quoted in Belcourt et al., Medicines to Help Us.

Bassett 44

Reclaiming Identity Through Art

Figure 24. An ammunition pouch and fire bag by Gregory Scofield109
109

Gregory Scofield, “Photos,” Facebook, accessed May 14, 2025,
https://www.facebook.com/gregorya.scofield/photos.

Bassett 45
In 2022, I was mentored by esteemed poet, artist, and Métis culture carrier Gregory Scofield
on how to make octopus bags, also known as fire bags. They are traditional Métis items
used to carry fire-making materials, such as flint and tinder, one’s pipe and tobacco, or
ammunition. They are traditionally made by Métis women for their husbands or other male
family members (Barkwell, 2010).

Figure 25. Indian Paintbrush, 2022 (left). Figure 26. Prairie Fire, 2022 (right) photo credit: Jake Kimble

Learning from Gregory changed my life. The ability to create and hold a piece of one’s
culture is an incredible gift. I fell in love with fire bags and have made seven since then.
There was something about their weight, their tangibility, and the way they moved with the
body that grabbed me. I endeavoured to bead my fire bags as heavily as possible. I loved
the weight of the beads on the fabric. It made them more here, more present in physical
reality somehow. I believe this was an unconscious reaction to our ambiguous status in BC,
which I had internalized, thus suppressing my identity.

Bassett 46

Tall Grass

Figure 27. Tall Grass, 2023, Vintage and contemporary seed beads and bugle beads, vintage Swarovski crystals,
thread, cotton fabric, sinew, cotton twill, wool yarn, melton wool, denim, photo credit: Jake Kimble

In 2023, I created Tall Grass, a fire bag inspired by a field in Fellers Heights, where my
ancestors’ homestead once stood. The piece holds many meanings for me, including an
attempt to counter our erasure by affirming our connection to the land in northeastern British
Columbia. I fully beaded the front panel as a way to insist on our presence here. My father’s
house once overlooked that field, and watching the waves of grass ripple in the wind brought
me a sense of calm and grounding. I made this bag to recreate that feeling of centeredness I
experienced as I watched the grass swaying in the wind.

Bassett 47
Tall Grass is a reminder of my family’s connection to Fellers Heights. However, it also carries
the weight of its time. This work responds not only to personal memory but also to the
devastating wildfire season of 2023 and the broader crisis of climate change, an issue in
which this region is deeply implicated due to the prominence of oil and gas extraction. I was
also working on Tall Grass as I witnessed the genocide in Gaza that began in October 2023.

Figure 28. Tall Grass, detail

In Métis tradition, it is believed that one’s feelings and experiences are transferred into
objects through beadwork. This bag is therefore imbued with those stories, of fire, grief, and
resistance. As an Indigenous person whose presence is inconvenient to power and capital,
and who is thus subject to ongoing pressures of assimilation, I feel a resonant, albeit minor,
connection to the experience of the Palestinian people.
In response, I wrote a poem dedicating Tall Grass to the people of Gaza, including a Cree
translation by Barbara Belcourt. It is included here as a reflection on the interconnectedness
of land, identity, and global struggle.

Bassett 48
Tall Grass, by Haley Bassett, translated by Barbara Belcourt
Tall Grass was conceived
before I put needle to stroud.
To make solace
and breathe through the smoke.
Tall Grass was named
for the field below Dad’s house—
Jiggs’ Place, lush in June.
Lee Maracle says
find freedom in the context you inherit.
Why devote something beautiful
to children under rubble?
It wasn’t up to me.
Some say beading is ceremony.
Some say beading is prayer.
Tall Grass made ceremony in October.
Tall grass, from the Jordan to the Peace.
Tall Grass is a prayer for the colonized
to behold our homelands
and breathe easy.

timaskâw ki-osîhcikâsew
pâmeyes sâponikan saminam ayiwinisekan
ta nistasiskakewin
ekwa ta yehe kaskâpatewin.
timaskâw wihâw
ka wâsakânkatek askîy capasis nohtâway wikihk
Jiggs’ ta ka wikiht, maskosiya ka miyokihkwâk opâskâwehowi pîsimohk
Lee Maracle itwew
miska tipiyimisowin ta ka mekiwin
tanîhki ka pakitinisewiyin kikway ekatawasisik
awasisak atami wepinikewinihk
namoya nîya nitôtamowin
atiht itwewak mîkisihkahcikewin isîhcikêwin
atiht itwewak mîkisihkahcikewin kakesimowin.
timiskâw isihcikew pimihowipîsimohk
timiskâw Jordan ohci iskoh sâkitawâhk
timiskâw kakesimowin ohci wapiskiwiyasak
îh wapahtakihk kitaskîyinaw
ekwa ta miyoyehe

Bassett 49

Prairie Love Song

Figure 39. Prairie Love Song, 2024, vintage and contemporary seed beads, bugle beads, thread, cotton fabric,
sinew, cotton twill, wool yarn, melton wool, denim, approx. 19.5 x 10 x .5 inches, photo credit: Jake Kimble

Prairie Love Song is a prime example of storytelling through beadwork. It tells a love story, a
courtship mediated by the land. My partner, Matthew Dalen, is a celebrated opera singer,
and this work captures the story of our first summer together through the flora of the Peace
Country: wild roses, saskatoons, bluebells, wolf willow, and strawberries. While much of my
work explores hardship and difficulty, it is just as important to hold both light and dark, the
beautiful and the challenging, together, allowing each to give meaning to the other.

Bassett 50

Figure 30. A detail of Prairie Love Song in progress

My partner and I are artists with different backgrounds: a settler boy, a Métis girl, a musician,
and a visual artist. Prairie Love Song celebrates our story and the shared principles of our
art forms: balance, movement, rhythm, and light and dark.
I wanted to experiment by combining traditional and contemporary elements with an
asymmetrical yet balanced design. Such designs originate from our Anishinaabe ancestors
and represent the balance between the masculine and feminine.110 In keeping with tradition,
buds, blooms, and berries represent the changing seasons and the passage of time.

110

Barkwell, Characteristics of Métis Beadwork.

Bassett 51

Beadwork as Method: Time, Labour and Continuity

Figure 31. Left to right: Grandpa Glen, Uncle Steve, my Dad, Jesse, and Uncle Frank taking a break in the field.

Bassett 52
Our ancestors filed for land deep in a hidden valley, Fellers Heights. To keep the land, they
had to clear a portion to make it “productive” in the government’s eyes.111 My family could not
afford machinery, so the clearing was done by hand and horse. From a very young age, my
father and his brothers spent many hours labouring on the land, picking rocks and roots.
—
One day, Grandpa and his oldest son, Frank, were picking rocks on the land. Uncle Frank
was about five years old then and didn’t think much of picking rocks.
After hours of hard work, the stoneboat was piled high with the fruits of their labour. Fed up
with the ordeal, young Frank asked my Grandpa, “How many rocks do you need?”112
—
We’ve been in the valley for generations.113 Every acre cleared was an investment in our
future. After generations of displacement, my family worked to have something—to build
something for future generations.114
My great-grandparents, Harvey Bassett and Hazel Fellers, picked rocks on the homestead
so my grandfather could attend elementary school. My grandparents, Glen and Eva Bassett,
picked rocks so my father, Jesse Bassett, could finish high school. My father picked rocks so
I could attend university. Thanks to the vision and determination of my ancestors, I can live
as an artist.
I also picked rocks as a labourer in the oil and gas industry. My version of rock-picking now
is beadwork. Like our homesteads in Fellers Heights, my work is a generational project, my
gift to future ancestors.
Beadwork is not so different from rock-picking. Both are repetitive acts, meditative in their
ways, but hard on the body. They require patience, some skill, determination, a clear vision
of a future outcome, and faith that the result will be beautiful.
I bead to make my culture visible in colonial space. Just as my ancestors shaped the land to
build a future, I shape material to preserve a past and assert a present. Beadwork makes a
gift of time and renders it material. It fortifies, beautifies, and binds. It turns memory and
identity into tactile form. It is a means of survival and a way to reclaim visibility. Every stitch is
a moment materialized, a defiant assertion of presence.
Uncle might ask, “How many beads do we need?”

111

Barkwell, Fellers, Emilie Garipey.
Howard Bassett, Métis, Rock-picking story, Glen Bassett’s Eulogy, Treaty 8 and the Métis
Homeland, May, 2023.
113
Barkwell, Fellers, Emilie Garipey.
114
Barkwell, Fellers, Emilie Garipey.
112

Bassett 53

Conclusion
According to Métis scholar David Garneau, the reserve is often privileged as the “authentic
site of Indigeneity,” which causes non-reserve Natives to be viewed as “diluted versions of
the real.”115 He further states, “This diminishment is felt in our bodies, minds, and spirits, and
we often perform accordingly.”116 As a Métis woman who grew up in a Métis settlement within
British Columbia, whose presence is actively denied by the province, I can personally attest
to the accuracy of this observation.
I see the toxic, suffocating effect it has on my community. We have lived with an unseen boot
pressing on our necks, and I have only recently learned its name: settler colonialism,
capitalism, and resource extraction, magnified within an internal colony.117 Such an
environment is corrosive to both Indigenous community and identity.
We internalize these forces and the ways they shape our experiences. We believe that the
changes they have wrought move us further from the idealized, “real” Native. In reality, these
experiences are shared by Métis across Turtle Island and should be recognized as part of
our collective struggle and a testament to the resilience of our people.
I did not publicly identify as Métis until my late twenties. I kept silent partly because of the
internalized racism imposed by settler family and society. This personal and societal
repression is compounded by the broader political implications of identifying as Métis within
my specific context in B.C. Doing so defies over a century of colonial rule, volumes of
government policy, and the economic interests of the state and major corporations. Within
the confines of resource-based capitalism, this also pits First Nations and Métis interests
against each other in a zero-sum game. These structures render simply being, simply stating
one’s experience, a deeply radical and political act.
While it can take decades to name the forces that suppress us, we feel them acutely,
gnawing at our sense of self and eroding our community bonds. We instinctively understand
the threat and self-censor to protect ourselves from harm. Caught in a vicious cycle of
erasure, we come to see our lack of recognition and rights as proof of our non-existence.

115

David Garneau, “Migration as Territory: Performing Domain with a Non-Colonial Aesthetic Attitude,”
Voz-à-voz/Voice-à-voice, September 2015, accessed May 31, 2025,
http://www.vozavoz.ca/feature/david-garneau.
116
Garneau, “Migration as Territory.”
117
Glen Coulthard, “'Settler' and 'Internal' Colonialism in 'Canada': Reconciling Competing Framings of
Indigenous-State Relations,” Settler Colonial Studies 15, no. 1 (2025): 1–20,
https://doi.org/10.1177/19427786241299042. “Classic scholarship about internal colonialism in
Canada demonstrated how northern and other ‘frontier’ regions (where Indigenous peoples often
constitute a demographic majority) serve as economic peripheries for more developed metropolitan
regions in southern Canada, where non-Indigenous settlers form a demographic majority. The
economies of Canada's internal peripheries tend to be dominated by the extraction of primary
resources . . . activities which tend to disproportionately benefit and be controlled by, non-Indigenous
people and institutions based in metropolitan centers in southern Canada.”

Bassett 54
For Garneau, “Art is essential to Indigenous resurgence.”118 It can out-manoeuvre legal
structures, stonewalling politicians, bureaucrats, and corporations to raise consciousness
and break these destructive cycles. Art and culture, like our nomadic ancestors, pay no mind
to invisible lines. I believe our cultural contributions to the province of British Columbia
expose the incoherence of its policies. Our art, culture, and traditions are an irrefutable,
living record of our presence.
Whatever government policy may say, we have left an indelible mark, helping to shape the
identity of this place: Unchaga, Treaty 8, the traditional territory of the Dene, Dune-zaa,
Nēhiyawēwin, Homeland of the Métis, Where Happiness Dwells, where the Indians wear
cowboy hats, and God’s Country.119120121122

Final Reflection
On the opening night of our thesis exhibition, I was approached by a young girl I did not
know. “Are you Haley Bassett?” she asked. When I confirmed that I was, she said, “My mom
says we’re related.” I then met her mother, Tracy Meier-Ragazzi, a cousin from Fellers
Heights. Her grandfather and my great-grandmother were siblings.
Tracy and her daughter, Natalia, are regular attendees at Emily Carr's opening receptions.
They did not expect to find my work that night. After reminiscing about our family and the
valley, Tracy asked her daughter how she recognized me. Natalia simply said, “She looks
like a Bassett.” Natalia has spent her young life far from our ancestral homesteads in Fellers
Heights, and yet, our connection was such that she could pick me out in a crowd of
strangers.
Before writing this thesis, I was not forthcoming about my father’s community. I assumed we
were too insignificant, too obscure, too marginal to be recognized. In a word: invisible. I was
shocked to learn that we are known to researchers such as Lawrence Barkwell and
institutions like the Louis Riel Institute and Métis Nation BC. I attribute this to internalized
erasure—the result of our marginalization in British Columbia.
Meeting Natalia and Tracy brought to the surface the layers of decolonization I have yet to
undertake. I wonder what assimilative beliefs still live, unexamined, in my mind and spirit. Yet
our small reunion illuminated the power of kinship ties that ring true and clear through
colonial static. It reminds me that the quagmire we find ourselves in is external to who we
are. I try to envision a world in which our existence, rights, and identity are affirmed and
encapsulated in a simple statement: “We’re cousins.”

118

Garneau, “Migration as Territory.”
Lure of the South Peace, 6.
120
Ridington and Ridington, Where Happiness Dwells.
121
Greyeyes, personal communication, June 2022.
122
Barkwell, Fellers, Emilie Garipey.
119

Bassett 55

Thesis Exhibition Documentation

Figure 32. Installation view 1. Photo credit: Samson Cheung

Figure 32. Installation view 2. Photo credit: Samson Cheung

Bassett 56

Figure 33. Horse Girl (skin side/flesh side), 2025, inkjet print. Photo credit: Samson Cheung

Bassett 57

Figure 34. Gauntlet (skin side), 2025, inkjet print. Photo credit: Samson Cheung

Bassett 58

Figure 35. Gauntlet (flesh side), 2025, inkjet print. Photo credit: Samson Cheung

Bassett 59

Figure 36. Self-Portrait installation view. Photo credit: Samson Cheung

Bassett 60

Figure 37. Self-Portrait, detail. Photo credit: Samson Cheung

Bassett 61

Figure 38. Prairie Love Song and Tall Grass installation view. Photo credit: Samson Cheung

Bassett 62

Figure 39. Prairie Love Song detail. Photo credit: Samson Cheung

Bassett 63

Figure 38. Horse Girl detail 1. Photo credit: Samson Cheung

Bassett 64

Figure 39. Horse Girl detail 2. Photo credit: Samson Cheung

Bassett 65

Figure 40. Gauntlet, 2025, install view. Photo credit: Samson Cheung

Bassett 66

Figure 41. Gauntlet detail. Photo credit: Samson Cheung

Bassett 67

Figure 42. Valænce, 2025. Photo credit: Samson Cheung

Bassett 68

Figure 43. Valænce detail. Photo credit: Samson Cheung

Bassett 69

Bibliography
Amnesty International. Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Gender, Indigenous Rights, and Energy
Development in Northeast British Columbia, Canada. London: Amnesty International, 2016.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/amr20/4872/2016/en/.
Auger, Monique D. “Understanding Our Past, Reclaiming Our Culture: Métis Resistance,
Resilience, and Connection to Land in the Face of Colonialism.” Journal of Indigenous Social
Development 10, no. 1 (2021): 1–28.
https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/jisd/article/download/70465/54820/215635.
Banff Centre. “Visual Arts – Kapishkum: Métis Gathering.” Banff Centre, accessed May 14,
2025.
https://www.banffcentre.ca/programs/visual-arts/visual-arts-kapishkum-metis-gathering.
Bartlett, Judith. “A Métis Woman’s Journey of Discovery.” In Métis Rising: Living Our Present
Through the Power of Our Past, edited by Yvonne Boyer and Larry Chartrand, 235-237.
Vancouver: Purich Books, UBC Press, 2021.
Bassett, Howard, Métis, Rock-picking Story, Glen Bassett’s Eulogy. Treaty 8 and the Métis
Homeland, May 2023.
Bassett, Jesse. Métis, Personal communication with the author on kinship ties, Treaty 8 and
the Métis Homeland, June 2002.
Bassett, Jesse. Métis, Personal communication with the author on the relocation of the
Fellers Family, Treaty 8 and the Métis Homeland, May 2002.
Barkwell, Lawrence J. Characteristics of Métis Beadwork. Saskatoon: Gabriel Dumont
Institute, n.d.
https://www.metismuseum.ca/media/document.php/13489.Characteristics%20of%20Metis%
20Beadwork.pdf.
Barkwell, Lawrence J. Fellers, Emilie Garipey. Gabriel Dumont Institute of Native Studies
and Applied Research, March 2, 2016. Accessed May 10, 2025.
https://www.metismuseum.ca/resource.php/148277.
Barkwell, Lawrence J. "Gauntlet Gloves and Mittens." Virtual Museum of Métis History and
Culture. 2013. https://www.metismuseum.ca/resource.php/14317.
Barkwell, Lawrence J. Judith Guardipee (Gariepy) née Cardinal. Gabriel Dumont Institute of
Native Studies and Applied Research, March 2, 2016. Accessed May 10, 2025.
https://www.metismuseum.ca/media/document.php/14798.Judith%20Guardipee.pdf.

Bassett 70
Barkwell, Lawrence J. Lobstick. Gabriel Dumont Institute of Native Studies and Applied
Research, March 2, 2016. Accessed May 10, 2025.
https://www.metismuseum.ca/media/document.php/149071.Lobstick.pdf.
Barkwell, Lawrence J. "Métis Octopus Bags." Virtual Museum of Métis History and Culture
2010. Accessed April 10, 2024. https://www.metismuseum.ca/media/db/11910.
BC Métis Federation. “Sunrise Expansion Program (Enbridge).” Accessed May 13, 2025.
https://bcmetis.com/programs-services/sunrise-expansion-program-enbridge/.
Belcourt, Christi, Rita Flamand, Olive Whitford, Laura Burnouf, Rose Richardson, and
Gabriel Dumont. Medicines to Help Us: Traditional Métis Plant Use: Study Prints & Resource
Guide. Saskatoon: Gabriel Dumont Institute, 2007.
Boyer, Yvonne, and Larry Chartrand, eds. Bead by Bead: Constitutional Rights and Métis
Community. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2021.
British Columbia Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation. Distinctions-Based
Approach Primer. Accessed December 6, 2024.
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/british-columbians-our-governments/indigenous-people/a
boriginal-peoples-documents/distinctions_based_approach_primer.pdf.
Burley, David V., J. Scott Hamilton, and Knut R. Fladmark. Prophecy of the Swan: The Upper
Peace River Fur Trade of 1794–1823. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1996.
Campbell, Maria. “Foreword.” In Women of the Métis Nation, compiled by Lawrence J.
Barkwell, Leah Marie Dorion, and Anne Carrière-Acco, 1–2. Saskatoon: Gabriel Dumont
Institute Press, 2016.
https://www.metismuseum.ca/media/document.php/149695.Women%20of%20the%20Metis
%20Nation%20-%20Maria%20Campbell%20Foreword.pdf.
Campbell, Maria. Halfbreed. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1973.
Campbell, Maria. “We Need to Return to the Principles of Wahkotowin – Maria Campbell
(2007).” M. Gouldhawke. Last modified November 5, 2019.
https://mgouldhawke.wordpress.com/2019/11/05/we-need-to-return-to-the-principles-of-wahk
otowin-maria-campbell-2007/.
CBC News. “Landmark Supreme Court Decision Says Métis, Non-Status Indians Are
‘Indians’ under Constitution.” CBC News, April 14, 2016.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/landmark-supreme-court-decision-metis-non-status-indi
ans-1.3537419.
CBC News. “Manitoba Métis Win Hunting Rights Case.” CBC News, September 7, 2009.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/manitoba-m%C3%A9tis-win-hunting-rights-case1.784627.
CBC News. "What's the Problem with Montney? Challenges Loom for Canada's Hottest
Natural Gas Play." CBC News, November 2, 2016.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/montney-natural-gas-challenges-1.3829007.

Bassett 71
Charles Marion Russell Biography. CharlesMarionRussell.org. Accessed May 31, 2025.
https://charlesmarionrussell.org/biography.html.
Coulthard, Glen. “'Settler' and 'Internal' Colonialism in 'Canada': Reconciling Competing
Framings of Indigenous-State Relations.” Settler Colonial Studies 15, no. 1 (2025): 1–20.
https://doi.org/10.1177/19427786241299042.
Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada. "Métis." Accessed December 6,
2024. https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1100100028813/1581293624572.
Doig River First Nation. “Treaty 8.” Doig River First Nation. Accessed May 14, 2025.
https://doigriverfn.com/about/history/treaty/.
Fazakas Gallery. “Beau Dick, Portrait Mask, Date Unknown.” Fazakas Gallery. Accessed
May 14, 2025.
https://fazakasgallery.com/artists/31-beau-dick/works/13271-beau-dick-portrait-mask-date-un
known/.
Fleury, Norman. Métis, Discussion about Métis identity, Ktunaxa Territory. Rocky Mountain
Métis Association Michif Language Class. April, 2021.
France 24. "Fort McKay: Where Canada's Boreal Forest Gave Way to Oil Sands." France
24, November 14, 2022.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20221114-fort-mckay-where-canada-s-boreal-forestgave-way-to-oil-sands.
Foster, Martha Harroun. We Know Who We Are: Métis Identity in a Montana Community.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016.
Gall, Christopher, and Brodie Douglas. “Shifting the Status Quo: The Duty to Consult and the
Métis of British Columbia.” In Bead by Bead: Constitutional Rights and Métis Community,
edited by Yvonne Boyer and Larry Chartrand, 52–70. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2021.
Garneau, David. “Migration as Territory: Performing Domain with a Non-Colonial Aesthetic
Attitude.” Voz-à-voz/Voice-à-voice. September 2015. Accessed May 31, 2025.
http://www.vozavoz.ca/feature/david-garneau.
Gosden, Chris, and Adam Warburton. "Masks in Context: Representation, Emergence,
Motility and Self." World Archaeology 52, no. 2 (2020): 157–169.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2020.1996770.
Indigenous Nouveau. “Moccasins, Mittens and Gloves.” Indigenous Nouveau. Accessed May
14, 2025. https://www.indigenousnouveau.com/portfolio-1/project-one-zyc4h.
Institute for Community Engaged Research. Métis Nation British Columbia: Northeastern
Communities and Their Historical Context. Accessed December 6, 2024.
https://icer.ok.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/88/2018/06/metisnationbritishcolumbia21948.
pdf.

Bassett 72
Jang, Brent. “Natural Gas Overtaking Forestry as Top Contributor to B.C. Government’s
Resource Revenue.” The Globe and Mail, March 7, 2024.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-bc-natural-gas-resource-revenue/.
Kerr, Conor. Prairie Edge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2024.
Land Title and Survey Authority of British Columbia. "The AB-BC Boundary & the Surveyor
General." LTSA, December 14, 2023.
https://ltsa.ca/our-stories/the-ab-bc-boundary-the-surveyor-general/.
Lanthier, Nancy. “Sacred Ritual or Performance Art? A First Nation's Chief Takes
Documenta.” Whitehot Magazine, September 2016.
https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/nation-s-chief-takes-documenta/3511.
Legault, Gabrielle. "Métis Networks in British Columbia: Examples from the Central Interior."
BC Studies, no. 143 (2004): 55–78.
https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/bcstudies/article/view/193712/191111.
Mandell Pinder LLP. "Yahey v. British Columbia, 2021 BCSC 1287: Case Summary." Mandell
Pinder LLP, 2021.
https://www.mandellpinder.com/yahey-v-british-columbia-2021-bcsc-1287-canlii-case-summ
ary/.
Manitoba Metis Federation Inc. v. Canada (Attorney General), 2013 SCC 14, [2013] 1 S.C.R.
623. Supreme Court of Canada.
https://decisions.scc-csc.ca/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/12888/index.do.
Maria-Margaretta. Go Help Grandma With the Dishes. 2021. Yellow rubber gloves, seed
beads. Salt Spring National Art Prize. Accessed May 10, 2025.
https://saltspringartprize.ca/artwork/go-help-grandma-with-the-dishes/.
Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Volume I. Translated by Ben Fowkes.
London: Penguin Books, 1976.
Métis Nation British Columbia. "Métis Nation British Columbia: Sponsorship Opportunities."
Accessed December 6, 2024.
https://www.mnbc.ca/node/3986#:~:text=As%20a%20sponsor%2C%20your%20organization
,and%20communities%20across%20the%20province.
Métis Nation British Columbia. MNBC Comments on Murray River Coal Project: Potential
Project Effects on Métis Aboriginal Rights and Related Interests. Abbotsford, BC: Métis
Nation British Columbia, 2014. Unpublished manuscript, PDF.
Métis Nation of Alberta. "Guidelines & Requirements." Accessed December 10, 2024.
https://albertametis.com/registry/guidelines-and-requirement/.
Métis Nation of Alberta and Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada. Métis
Nation within Alberta Self-Government Recognition and Implementation Agreement.
February 24, 2023.

Bassett 73
https://albertametis.com/app/uploads/2023/02/Self-government-and-Implementation-Agreem
ent-signed.pdf.
Metwalli, Sara A. “What Is Schrödinger’s Cat?” Built In. Last modified March 7, 2024.
https://builtin.com/software-engineering-perspectives/schrodingers-cat.
Murray, Audie. Celestial Gloves. 2021. Fazakas Gallery. Accessed May 10, 2025.
https://fazakasgallery.com/artists/48-audie-murray/works/12443-audie-murray-celestial-glove
s-2021/.
National Gallery of Canada. “Sobey Art Award 2024: Nico Williams.” National Gallery of
Canada, October 7, 2024.
https://www.gallery.ca/magazine/exhibitions/sobey-art-award-2024-nico-williams.
Native Land Digital. “Michif Piyii (Métis).” Native-Land.ca. Accessed May 14, 2025.
https://native-land.ca/maps/territories/metis.
Oker, Garry, Dane-zaa, Treaty 8 and the Métis Homeland. Oral history of how the Peace
River received its name. August, 2019
R. v. Powley, 2003 SCC 43, [2003] 2 S.C.R. 207. Supreme Court of Canada.
Ridington, Robin, and Jillian Ridington. Where Happiness Dwells: A History of the Dane-zaa
First Nations. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013.
Ruddell, Catherine. Catherine Ruddell – Before the Peace. Before the Peace, June 21,
2024. YouTube video, 50:15. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnKNaaZm6QM.
Scofield, Gregory. “Photos.” Facebook. Accessed May 14, 2025.
https://www.facebook.com/gregorya.scofield/photos.
Scofield, Gregory, and Sherry Farrell Racette. Kôhkominawak Ocihcîwâwa Our
Grandmothers’ Hands: Repatriating Métis Material Art. Saskatoon: Gabriel Dumont Institute,
2023.
South Peace Historical Book Committee. Lure of the South Peace: Tales of the Early
Pioneers to 1945. Beaverlodge, AB: South Peace Historical Book Committee, 1981.
Statistics Canada. “Barriers to Postsecondary Education among First Nations People, Métis
and Inuit.” Statistics Canada, February 6, 2025.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2025002/article/00002-eng.htm.
Suzuki, David, and Karl Mattson. Voices from the Sacrifice Zone. Canadian Association of
Physicians for the Environment, July 25, 2022. YouTube video, 1:54:46.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ofXlKpKqJ8.
Thibaut, Marion. “Fort McKay: Where Canada's Boreal Forest Gave Way to Oil Sands.”
Phys.org, November 14, 2022.
https://phys.org/news/2022-11-fort-mckay-canada-boreal-forest.html.

Bassett 74
The Guardian. “Fort McKay: The Canadian Town That Sold Itself to Tar Sands.” The
Guardian, May 28, 2015.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2015/may/28/carbon-bomb-canada
-tar-sands-fort-mckay-town-sold-itself.
Terrace Standard. "Enbridge Deal Divides Métis." November 10, 2022.
https://www.terracestandard.com/news/enbridge-deal-divides-metis-6008615.
Teillet, Jean. The Northwest Is Our Mother: The Story of Louis Riel's People, the Métis
Nation. Toronto: HarperCollins, 2019.
The Canadian Press. “Timeline: Canada's 2003 Mad Cow Disease Crisis.” Global News.
February 13, 2015.
https://globalnews.ca/news/1830438/timeline-canadas-2003-mad-cow-disease-crisis/.
Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs. "UBCIC Unanimously Passes Resolution
Denouncing Métis Colonialism." Last modified June 7, 2023.
https://www.ubcic.bc.ca/ubcic_unanimously_passes_resolution_denouncing_metis_coloniali
sm.
Vien, Louise, and Lawrence J. Barkwell. “History of the Métis Sash.” Gabriel Dumont
Institute. Accessed May 10, 2025.
https://www.metismuseum.ca/media/document.php/14654.History%20of%20the%20Metis%
20Sash.pdf.
Wiseman, Al, and Nicholas Vrooman. Revisiting Montana 1889—Métis Discussion Group.
Montana Historical Society, April 4, 2019. YouTube video, 1:22:53.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwQVhTuqqwo&t=165s.