About the Sault Ste. Marie Métis Heritage Centre

About the Community

The Métis are a distinct Indigenous people with our own history and culture. Born of the fur trade, the Métis are the descendants of the children born to European traders and First Nations women. As these mixed-ancestry children grew up, intermarried, and had their own children, a new people—the Métis—emerged.

In the late 1790s and early 1800s in the Upper Great Lakes and across West Central North America, Métis communities emerged and coalesced, transitioning from mixed ancestry individuals, to a people with a culture, worldview, traditions and political identity.

Several historic Métis communities emerged in what is now Ontario, and the community at Sault Ste. Marie became the best known. The Historic Sault Ste. Marie Métis Community established its settlement on the north shore of the St. Mary's River. They built their homes on long, narrow “river-lots” and lived their way of life based around fishing, hunting, maple sugar making and fur trading. They lived lives of a unique spirituality, a distinctive Métis blend of Anishinaabe traditions and folk Catholicism. They danced to the rhythm of the fiddle on Saturdays and were protective of their place in the world, refusing to give up their unique identity and be represented by their First Nations relatives.

In the 1990s and early 2000s the Sault Ste. Marie Métis Community rallied behind two men from our community, father and son Steve and Roddy Powley, in their 10-year battle in the courts, which led to the first ever Canadian Constitutional recognition of a rights-bearing Métis community. The Sault Ste. Marie Métis Heritage Centre exists to preserve this 200 plus year long legacy and ensure the survival of our culture and history.