Sharing culture across generations

Identity is a key piece of Métis culture, and passing it down from generation to generation is critical to maintaining cultural vitality. Born and raised in Manitoba, Chelsea Gabel, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Well-Being, Community Engagement and Innovation at McMaster University and a citizen of the Manitoba Métis Federation, is using digital storytelling to help foster this kind of cultural transfer.

The approach helps bring multiple generations together to share their knowledge and experiences. It also provides more insights into Métis conceptions of their own identity, which is too often misunderstood, due in part to a lack of current, Métis-specific health and well-being research.

“I wanted to look at what it means to be Métis today and identify some key markers of kinship that make us uniquely Métis,” says Gabel.

Understanding Métis health and well-being today

Although there has been increased focus on Indigenous research in recent years, there is still very little accurate, research available on the health and wellness of Métis. If Métis are included in this type of research, they are typically rolled into the broader “Indigenous” heading.

“We need to move away from pan-Indigenous approaches,” she says. “A lot of people use ‘Indigenous’ synonymously with ‘First Nations’, but we’re not all the same. We are our own people, with our own unique needs.”

Seeing her own daughter (now 11) grow up proud of her Métis heritage underscored for Gabel the importance of passing cultural knowledge from generation to generation. Her work focuses on how relationships between generations help build strong, healthy Métis communities. With a SSHRC Insight Grant in 2018, Gabel pulled together an all-Métis team to document and share their stories about being Métis across the Métis homeland.

Strong connections to food, family and the land

We Know Who We Are is a digital storytelling project that explores intergenerational understandings of Métis identity and well-being through a collection of three- to five-minute videos. The project involved five youth, five adults and five seniors—all Métis. In partnership with StoryCentre Canada, Gabel and her team interviewed the participants to uncover what stories they wanted to tell, taught them how to use video-editing software, and met with them weekly to check in on their progress.

Although the final stories were all different, several key themes emerged, including food, family, survival, resistance, and attachment to meaningful places and spaces. Participants told of being misunderstood by classmates and teachers, connecting with the land, sharing stories around the kitchen table, and more.

“Nearly every story was related in some way to the Métis homeland,” says Gabel. That really highlighted our connection to the land, despite the fact that we are often thought of as a ‘landless’ people.”

Advancing distinctions-based research

The project has been presented at Back to Batoche Days, a celebration of Métis heritage and history held annually in Saskatchewan that welcomes participants from all over the world. It has also been shared with members of Métis and other governments. 

Gabel hopes the stories can be used by policy- and decision-makers to inform the development of culturally safe health and research practices and resources. They could also support the creation of more effective intergenerational programming across the Métis Nation, offering a way for different generations to come together and learn from each other.

Since the initial project, Gabel and her team have used a similar approach for digital storytelling with Métis cancer survivors in northern Saskatchewan. She believes the approach could be used in other contexts as well.

“These digital stories are really powerful,” says Gabel. “They offer a meaningful way for people to participate in research, and can even become a recorded legacy that is passed on to children and grandchildren after the person is gone.”

In further support of distinctions-based research, Gabel also co-led with Métis scholars Caroline Tait (University of Calgary) and Robert Henry (University of Saskatchewan) the development of Métis-specific health research and data governance principles for anyone collecting, using, sharing or holding data about Métis. Until now, researchers working with Métis typically applied the First Nations principles of ownership, control, access and possession (OCAP). With the new principles, Gabel says more Métis-specific research tools, frameworks and guidelines can be developed, which will enable Métis to more fully participate in research that is distinct from First Nations and Inuit.