Red River Colony

Louis Riel was born back on this day in 1844.

Born in the Red River settlement, Riel would go on to lead the Métis resistance during both the Red River and Northwest rebellions.

The Red River resistance was sparked by the turnover of Rupert's land from the Hudson's Bay Company to the Canadian government.

In 1896, Riel and his followers at the Red River settlement formed a provisional government and arrested a group of pro-Canadians who the Métis felt were encroaching on their land.

The provisional government tried and executed one of the men, Irish-born Canadian Thomas Scott.

Following the rebellion, the Canadian government agreed to the creation of a small province by the name of Manitoba to be formed on land occupying the Red River settlement.

Riel and his men, however, were forced to flee Canada for the United States in 1870.

Almost 15 years later, the tensions between the Canadian government and the Métis and Plains Indians had reached its peak.

But anyway, that's how they were able to drive the trade even further 'cause they could bring their own food with them finally instead of only being able to exist on what indigenous societies could supply locally in terms of hunting or whatnot.

So in 1814, the governor of the Red River Colony...

Where is this, the Red River Colony?

That's essentially the city of Winnipeg right now, so just north.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Way out there.

That governor, named Miles Macdonell, issues the Pemmican Proclamation, banning for one year the export of pemmican from the settlement, from the Red River Colony, intended to secure food for the struggling colony.

In publishing these myths of the Sioux, I deem it proper to state that I am of one-fourth Sioux blood.

My maternal grandfather, Captain Duncan Graham, a Scotchman by birth, who had seen service in the British Army, was one of a party of Scotch Highlanders who in eighteen eleven arrived in the British Northwest by way of York Factory, Hudson Bay, to found what was known as the Selkirk Colony near Lake Winnipeg, now within the province of Manitoba, Canada.

Soon after his arrival at Lake Winnipeg, he proceeded up the Red River of the North and the western fork thereof to its source, and thence down the Minnesota River to Mendota, the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers, where he located.

My grandmother, Hazahotawin, was a full-blood of the Mendowakinton band of the Sioux tribe of Indians.

My second term just began.

Um, I've been a lifelong, um, creature of the Red River settlement.

I was born here.

I spent a lot of time on Lake Winnipeg.

Can-

Um, I wasn't like, there's certain people who grew up in the MMF literally being the children of ministers of, like, in the cabinet, and, um, yeah, there's a lot of that in the MMF where, uh, yeah, children grow up attending the meetings and, and all of that.

But, um, how I sort of entered into the MMF was, uh, my grandfather finally told my mom, uh, where his mom was from, uh, which was, um, St. Andrews, a, a town called Mapleton, just, uh, very, like the next little neighborhood north of Lower Fort Garry on the Red River settlement.

Um, [clears throat] so he told her that's where, um, his mom had grown up, uh, she'd also, she'd been born in Kenora, so she'd grown up going back and forth between St. Andrews on the Red River all the way up to Winnipeg River, like through the Lake Winnipeg up to the Winnipeg River down there all the way into the English River, uh, the literal superhighway of the Les Voyageur.