Statement on MMF Indigenous Identity Fraud Summit
Posted on: May 14, 2024
Statement from the Otipemisiwak Métis Government on the Manitoba Métis Federation (MMF) Indigenous Identity Fraud Summit
The Otipemisiwak Métis Government – formerly the Métis Nation of Alberta – is disappointed in the repeated attempts by the Manitoba Métis Federation (MMF) to divide the Métis Nation. At their invitation-only event to discuss Indigenous Identity Fraud, no other voices from the Métis Nation were invited to participate, despite the voices of the Métis outside of Manitoba making up the vast majority of Métis people in Canada.
The Otipemisiwak Métis Government will never be spoken for or governed by an external entity, including the MMF. We are the people who govern ourselves. And we know how to speak for ourselves. Our Métis government is a leader in the democratic representation of Métis people. Our Constitution ratification vote in 2022 was the largest Indigenous self-government vote in Canadian history – even larger than the ratification vote that made Nunavut a territory.
Our Government proudly represents more than 68,000 Métis citizens whose ancestral connections to rights-bearing Métis communities across the Northwest has been objectively verified by our first-in-class Citizenship Registry. While many of our citizens ancestrally connect to the Red River, many others do not, and they do not need to. There are rights-bearing, historic Métis communities in Alberta that are as old as, if not older than the Red River communities. It is revisionist history to suggest otherwise. Our citizenship criteria, per our Constitution, states that citizens must connect to the Historic Métis Nation Homeland, which means “the area of land in west central North America used and occupied as the traditional territory of the Métis or Half-breeds, as they were then known.”