Journey leads back to Métis spiritual roots

As she begins her new role as president of the Métis National Council, a highlight for Cassidy Caron will be getting to meet Pope Francis in Rome this month.

She will be there as part of the Métis delegation, joining First Nations and Inuit delegations who will ask the Pope to come to Canada to apologize for the suffering caused by the Roman Catholic church through residential and day schools.

While there, she might also talk to him about what the church can do to help Métis people recover their identity, values and culture.

“Our communities before colonization, they were in balance,” she said in an interview.

“Everybody had a role, everybody had a responsibility and colonization took that away from us. We need healing, and we need community building and rebuilding initiatives,” she said.

Perhaps she will also tell the Pope how Métis people lost their spirituality through their interactions with the church — traditional practices like ceremonies, dances, drumming, sweat lodges and other things.

One person trying to help Métis people recover that lost spiritual tradition is Chantal Fiola, author of the new book Returning to Ceremony: Spirituality in Manitoba Métis Communities (University of Manitoba Press).

In the book Fiola, herself Métis and a professor at the University of Winnipeg, writes that Métis spirituality isn’t Christian or First Nations, but a mix of the two.

“It’s on a continuum,” she said of the kind of spirituality increasingly being practiced by many Métis today.

For the book, Fiola interviewed 32 people from six Manitoba Métis communities — Duck Bay, Camperville, St. Laurent, St. François-Xavier, Ste. Anne, and Lorette — about their spiritual experiences.

Through the interviews she learned how recovering traditional spirituality is providing them with a clearer understanding of their identity and culture, as well as a stronger connection to the Creator.

Unfortunately, many Métis have lost touch with that spiritual tradition, Fiola said.

When the first Roman Catholic missionaries came to what is now Manitoba, they suppressed expressions of Indigenous and Métis spirituality.

In their letters, they refer to Indigenous and Métis people as uncivilized, infidels, barbarians and savages in need of conversion to Christianity.

When some Métis converted to Christianity, they were discouraged or prevented from practising their traditional spirituality — they were told it was incompatible with their new faith.

The result was a loss of those traditional practices. Many Métis forgot “our ancestors’ historic participation in ceremonies,” Fiola said.

It didn’t help that “Church and government made concerted efforts to assimilate and Christianize Métis and First Nations peoples via colonial legislation and policies,” she said, referring to things like the Indian Act and teaching against traditional spirituality in day and residential schools.

Métis who became Christians heard sermons against traditional practices and ceremonies — lessons that made them believe their old ways of connecting with the Creator were sinful or wrong.

Over time they “internalized these harmful lessons,” Fiola said, adding things like sweat lodges and other ceremonies “were seen as the work of the devil.”

Today, however, many Métis are recovering their pride as a people. This includes reclaiming their traditional spiritual practices and ceremonies such as the sweat lodge, smudging, traditional medicine, tobacco, sweetgrass, cedar, sage, drumming and dances.

“It’s an ancestral spiritual way of life,” Fiola said.

But for many Métis today, recovering their traditional spirituality doesn’t mean abandoning Christianity, she added.

“When they get involved in traditional spirituality, they don’t stop going to church,” she said. “There is also room for beauty and growth there, too.”

And yet, after decades of being told it was wrong, some are still fearful or apprehensive about participating in traditional Métis ceremonies.

“The Roman Catholic church can do a lot today to help correct this,” she said, speaking appreciatively about a Manitoba priest who came to the opening of a sweat lodge to bless it with holy water.

Churches of all kinds can play a role, “promoting respect for all faiths, including Métis and Indigenous,” she added.

This includes disavowing the notion that Métis and Indigenous spirituality “is a lesser form of faith,” or that the Creator can only be accessed through one kind of faith.

“We all have direct access to the Creator,” she said.

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Fiola’s own journey led her back to her Métis spiritual roots.

Raised in the Roman Catholic faith, she developed an interest in traditional spirituality as she grew older. Participating in ceremonies today “has been impactful in my life, on my well-being,” she said.

Now her goal is to tell other Métis, especially younger people, about this aspect of Métis life that has “been hidden from them for years.”

These expressions of Métis spirituality and religion “are not new truths,” she said.

Rather, they are “truths that too many Métis have been forced to forget. The complex and beautiful relationships that Métis people have with Indigenous spirituality and Christianity have existed since the early days of the birth of our people and of the Métis Nation and persist to this day.”

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