Most people are aware of the Sault Ste. Marie Métis Community’s deep and rich history. But did you know that it also has deep historical and contemporary connections throughout the Métis Nation Homeland?
For example, Elzéar Goulet was second in command of the Métis militia under Louis Riel’s Provisional Government. He became a martyr of the Red River Resistance. He also had connections to the Sault Ste. Marie Métis Community in the Upper Great Lakes.
Goulet’s Métis grandmother, Louise Roussain, was from the Upper Great Lakes. Her daughter, Josephte—Elzear’s mother—was raised and educated by the Nolin family in the Red River. The Nolins, like the Roussains, were also from the Upper Great Lakes and maintained connections to the Sault Ste. Marie and the Red River Métis communities for generations.
So strong were these ties that when Elzear’s mother, Josephte, took Métis scrip in the Red River in 1876, she grounded her Métis identity and scrip claim in her mother’s Upper Great Lakes Métis ancestry—not her husband’s ties to the Red River.
Learn about this story and more in this short embedded video.
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