My Métis Sash

by Josée Clarke and John Dias

Lorraine is a young Métis girl who lives in a small rural northern Ontario town. She is somewhat used to her classmates teasing her for the different way she pronounces words. Lorraine is more shaken when her teacher tells her she will always be seen as inferior until she starts speaking “properly” in public. Too many people tell Lorraine that Michif is a made-up language, only spoken by poor, uneducated people who never learned proper grammar and sentence structure.

Lorraine believes they are wrong. She speaks to “Mèr” (Mom) and “Pépér” (Dad) every day in Michif, the language of the Métis people. “Koum”’ (Grandma), the wisest person she ever knew, told all her stories in Michif. Lorraine is proud of her heritage and wears the Métis sash Koum passed down to her to school.