GDI Culture and Heritage Department Staff attend the Mawachihitotaak 2024: Let’s Get Together Métis Studies Symposium, University of Manitoba

Oct 11, 2024

Staff from the Gabriel Dumont Institute (GDI) Métis Culture and Heritage Department spent the week of September 23–27, 2024 in Winnipeg for the Mawachihitotaak 2024: Let’s Get Together Métis Studies Symposium at the University of Manitoba. Our first full day in Winnipeg included a visit to the Canadian Museum of Human Rights. The museum itself is stunning and is located at the Forks—the picturesque junction of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers in the heart of Winnipeg. The museum’s many exhibits are very poignant and demonstrate humanity’s long and arduous, but still incomplete, journey to respect human rights. The museum focuses much of its attention on Canada’s torturous and relatively recent commitment to respect the human rights of all its people. The evocative Métis exhibits in the museum—including panels by Sherry Farrell Racette and the world’s largest beaded Métis Octopus bag by Jennine Krauchi—demonstrate Métis resilience and resistance in the face of settler colonization.

Sherry Farrel Racette Panel

GDI Métis Culture and Heritage staff attended the first two days of the Mawachihitotaak symposium, which brought together Métis thinkers and community activists from across the Métis Homeland. It was a wonderful learning experience for our department and it was a great opportunity to both connect and reconnect with others working in the field of Métis Studies. Conference hosts provided a welcoming and safe environment for all those in attendance. The days were busy with staff attending sessions and visiting with old and new friends and colleagues as well as engaging in other social activities. The symposium had sessions and panels on a whole variety of topics, including Métis spirituality and religion, reconnecting with community, Indigenous identity fraud and its impacts on young Métis academics, hockey and the Métis, Michif-language revitalization, mapping Métis places, Métis community and family histories, intergenerational trauma within Métis families, Métis feminism, and Métis foodways among many other fascinating topics. For more information about the symposium, visit this link: https://www.mawachihitotaak.com.

Jeannine Krauchi Octopus Bag

There were several poignant moments at the symposium. Two stand out for me.

In the keynote address, Charlotte Nolin, a 60s Scoop Survivor, and a two-spirited Elder shared her life story and how she learned to love and accept herself, and in the panel of the River Women Collective’s Experience in Walking with Our Stories—which included the good work of Batoche-area Métis women to highlight murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls—GDI staff member, Amy Briley shared the tragic story of her murdered cousin, Megan Gallager. There was not a dry eye in the audience as Amy recounted the harrowing journey that her family had to bring Megan home. As a member of the Walking with Our Sisters River Women Collective, Amy was asked by the panel members to share Megan’s story with the audience.

Our week in Winnipeg was very enjoyable and was a great bonding experience for the department. Staff members engaged in a variety of social activities and got to know each other a little better.