Metis On All Sides

Recently I've come across an interesting fact regarding Ancestry and family legends. As my Father's story goes, a grandmother accused his Father of having Jewish ancestry. I was searching for that angle so hard that I was genuinely surprised to find a different answer. My fathers paternal great grandmother did not carry Jewish ancestry but she did hide a branch of Muscogee (Creek). My father's Metis heritage is Anglo-Metis occurring first in Virginia and then travelling through North Carolina to Oaklahoma. Anna Dabney was the most recent ancestor who was considered a full tribal member. Her Children appear on the Rolls including the 1835 Trail of Tears. The boys of her family however all appear to have inherited their grandfathers status of "Cherokee by Blood". Tracking down the tribes to which I have a family history has been somewhat difficult considering the non-status of Metis here in America.

My working list so far consists of the following:

• Metis of the 3rd Generation
  None in USA; Michigan, USA
• Mi'kmaq of the 9th Generation
  Bear River First Nation; Annapolis, NS
• Muskogee of 8th generation
  Muscogee Creek Nation; Tulsa, OK
• Cherokee of 6th Generation
  Appalachian Cherokee Nation, Montross, VA 

     This revelation is not lost on me considering the finding of Metis ancestry on both sides of my maternal grandfather's parentage. The Mi'kmaq is documented however to far removed for a tribal membership and I assume Pottawatomie for my Metis grandmother but recentness hasn't met me with much paper evidence. This is due in part no doubt to her birth shortly after the fire that consumed Detroit in 1805. Another aspect would be the probability of a "country marriage". After all her father not only flees the area when the British take the fort, he also marries again after her mother in a legal fashion sometime around 1834. Peter never returns to Michigan by all accounts. Two generations now in order to create me and my sister, peoples of varying degree of native blood but all Metis have found each other. That has to be meaningful considering I now find myself near marriage to a half-blood Ojibwae.

The feeling that I was different and more alike a different people than those I encountered been a lifelong occurrence. This is something I have been discussing with my Native Studies teacher at University. She is absolutely thrilled to learn what traditions bled through all the years of lost identity for my families. Small things like aboriginal art (Mi'kmaq) and hand-me-downs no one could assertain too. For me however it was personal and spiritual experiences, including reciprocity that is unlike modern sensibility.