Page 44 - Walking_The_Red_Road

I grew up not being allowed to be who I was, and I also understand where my parents were coming from, because of all the racism that happened back then.
My father did not want us to go through those problems, so he was pretty strict about who we were. It wasn’t until I got married, had my son, left my husband, I decided to move away. I moved out to BC...I started to see not the typical stereotypes, Indians that I grew up with. I started seeing First Nation people starting to educate themselves, getting their high school. I was learning, hey we are not all a bunch of drunks, there is more to us; there is a different way of living. I wanted that. From that point on, my learning about who I am has never stopped.
Métis were a displaced people, but now...when pushing for rights, it has caused conflict in the community. Having a difficult time to prove rights. A lot of Métis people went to residential school, but it was easier for them to say that they were French than Métis.
There is a lot of negativity, because they just do not know. People are ignorant. ...because there is really no positive information about us that gets out. Even our own people don’t know their own history. What little history they learn about it, residential schools, but they really don’t know what has happened to us since contact.