President's Corner: August 7, 2026
Posted on: Aug 07, 2026
This summer, our government took the Kitchen Party Tour to thirteen communities across Alberta. We built it around a Michif idea, Âstam Pi Kîyoki, which means “Come and Visit.” And that is exactly what we did.
We went to visit. We went to listen. We went to have fun. We went to be with our Citizens in their communities. And what I carried home from every single one of those stops is something I want to share with you. Being Métis is a beautiful thing to be.
I watched grandparents show their grandchildren how to jig. I watched little kids wear their sashes proudly for the first time. I watched Elders sit in the front row and smile as the sounds of the fiddle came from the stage. I met families who drove hours to be there, and families who walked over from down the street.
There were nights the music went longer than it was supposed to. There were nights I met Citizens who had never been to a Métis gathering before, and Citizens whose families had been hosting kitchen parties in their homes for generations. And every one of them was proud to be there. That pride is what this tour was really about.
For a very long time, our people were made to feel that being Métis was something to keep quiet. Something to hide. Something to fit around the edges of your other identities. That is what colonization asked of us, and for generations, many of our families paid that price.
What I saw this summer is what happens when we refuse that. When we stand up together, in the light, with our music and our stories and our sashes, and we say clearly: this is who we are. We are Métis and we aren’t going anywhere.
Our culture is not behind us. It is alive in this generation, and it is being carried onto the next one by every child who learned a new step this summer, by every teenager who picked up a fiddle, by every Elder who sat down and told a story that had never left their family.
I want to thank every District, every volunteer, every musician, every artist, every Elder, and every Citizen who came out to a stop on this tour. You made it what it was. And I want to thank the team at the Otipemisiwak Métis Government who spent months working diligently to make this tour a success. All the hours of planning, and the many kilometers driven across Alberta came together to make sure every night felt like a homecoming.
Being your President means a lot of things. Meetings with ministers. Long negotiations. Late nights on files that do not always move as fast as we want them to. All of that matters. But so does this. So does being in community with our people, hearing our music, watching our children grow up proud. That is why we do the work.
Maarsi to every community that welcomed us in this summer. This is who we are as Métis people. And we are just getting started.
President Andrea Sandmaier
Otipemisiwak Métis Government