This Indigenous Community Created A New Blueprint To Fight Climate Change

The Métis have always played a pivotal role in land protection and conservation. They're not about to slow down now.

This past April, the Métis Nation held the first Youth Summit on Climate Change, highlighting and celebrating just how strong Métis activism still is. I was invited there to speak on a panel about how storytelling is, and has always been, an important tool for mitigating climate change and healing nature.

At the summit, I was surrounded by brilliant Métis and First Nations youth activists from across Turtle Island, also known as North America. I felt immersed in the powerful energy of young minds gathering to collaborate, learn, and tell stories that reinforce our commitment to the environment.

If you live south of the Canada-U.S. border, it’s entirely possible that you have not heard of the Métis peoples. Any time I’ve spoken this term after moving from Canada to New York City, I’ve been met with confused expressions, whether I’m talking to Natives or non-Natives.

There was a time when Métis were referred to as halfbreeds. In the U.S., your right to Native identity is measured in blood quantum, a hotly debated concept that the measurement of how much “Indian blood” you have dictates the authenticity of your lineage. Traditional Native communities, however, practiced from kinship systems, which establish community through mutual obligation rather than blood relations. This means that tribes would “adopt” members, so to speak, based on community involvement.

In Canada, a distinct cultural group emerged from Natives and European settlers having children together and building community. However, that doesn’t mean anyone with mixed European and Native heritage qualifies. The term “Métis” refers to a distinctive mixed peoples who developed their own customs, language, ways of life, cultural practices and recognizable group identity. There are no blood quantum requirements, but Métis rights holders must have ancestral connections to a historic Métis community.