Muskoka Mosaic

The chair of the Moon River Metis Nation is proud of her heritage. She makes bannock, hunts, fishes and flies the blue Metis flag beneath the red maple leaf at her home.

But Verna Porter didn’t know the truth about her family history until she was 35.

“My father held a respectable job and kept quiet about it,” says the Huntsville woman. “Back then, if people found out you had Indian blood, you could lose your job.”

 Porter grew up in a small, isolated community called Gogama between Timmins and Sudbury. She and her siblings heard rumours that their grandmother was native, but their questions were discouraged.  

Married in 1970, Porter and her husband Doug lived in Gogama, Hearst and Timmins before retiring to the old homestead on the canal between Fairy and Pen lakes where Doug was raised.

At age 35, Porter decided she was going to find out about her heritage once and for all. The lawyer for whom she was working helped her to fill out forms requesting government records.

She learned that her Scottish great-grandfather, an employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company,  had held the top post at Fort Mattagami, now known as the Mattagami Reserve. This meant he was “the law, doctor, judge, and probably father confessor to the Ojibway and others,” Porter says.

He married a native woman and they had 11 children, one of whom was Porter’s grandmother.

When she went looking for more personal information and anecdotes, Porter wished she had been able to talk to her grandmother, who was 91 at the time, about these things when she was younger.

“You feel a bit of a loss,” she said. “I regret not finding out more about my family history.”

Porter did manage to glean some information from two uncles, a taped interview with a great-aunt, and a family history written by several cousins. Her father still wasn’t talking.

Since retiring to Huntsville in 1995, Porter has been active in embracing her heritage.

She was one of the original members of the Moon River Metis Council, which hosts  two general meetings annually and has organized the National Aboriginal Day celebrations at Muskoka Heritage Place for the past two years.

The group also holds an event each September called the Rendezvous, where members hunt for and package meat for Metis who can no longer get out to hunt themselves.

Porter has always fished, but she only started hunting after learning she was Metis.

“My husband is a hunter, so our interests blend well,” she says.

“I never thought it would be so peaceful, sitting there waiting,” she adds. “And it makes  you think back to when they had these huge families and had to come home with meat.”

Porter is frustrated that Metis people are still fighting for their hunting and fishing rights. The Metis are listed alongside the First Nations and Inuit in the Constitution, she says, but nonetheless her people have had to appear before the Ontario Supreme Court as  recently as last spring over hunting and fishing disputes.

“We don’t hunt for the kill, but for the meat,” she says. “We put tobacco where moose or other animal dropped to thank the Creator, and we do all our own skinning, butchering, wrapping and freezing.”

Porter is a firm believer that you have to know where you come from to know where you’re going. She says she wants to educate her children and granddaughter to be proud of their heritage.

“My granddaughter Victoria loves it when I make bannock,” she says. The little girl also knows how to do the jig and wears a traditional ribbon dress while doing so.

Looking toward the future, Porter says, “I hope my granddaughter and other young Metis will be free to fish, to hunt, to harvest, and be recognized.”

Porter envisions a time when Metis people, wearing their distinctive sashes, are included in cultural festivals alongside Ukrainians and Scots. “That would be great,” she says.