Métis Like Me

If you were to judge Métis Like Me just by its cover alone (actually the dust jacket), then you would likely be inclined to give the book high praise as its brightly coloured cover, which features raised beadwork designs, is immediately engaging, both in visual and tactile terms. Opening the book, young readers/listeners will then encounter further visual engagement in the form of a repeated design on the endpapers, a design dominated by the colour red but also containing orange, white, blue and green. Some of the adults who are facilitating the book’s reading will immediately recognize the pattern as being one of those employed in the weaving of a woolen Métis sash or belt, sometimes referred to as un ceinture flechée.

However, the actual contents of the book are a bit disappointing in that they come across as being somewhat superficial, perhaps because the book’s subject matter, Métis identity or heritage, is simply too complex to be meaningfully communicated to the book’s very young audience which the publisher identified as being children between the ages of three and seven.
Throughout the book, Hilderman has a number of children identify things or activities that the children see as connecting them to their Métis roots, but the connections are not explained to the book’s readership. How are picking saskatoon berries or making bannock a Métis “thing”. I have done both, and I am not Métis. Nowhere in the main text do readers learn that Métis are people of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry. Somehow, Hilderman needed to connect the present performance of activities, such as berry picking, to their historic roles in Métis society. In today’s supermarket world, berries of various kinds are on the shelves almost year round, but, in nineteenth century Manitoba, for example, berries would have been eaten fresh off the bushes or dried for off-season use. Today, berries, such as saskatoons, find their way into treats, like pies or jams, but in earlier times, saskatoon berries were the “treat” additive to a staple like pemmican.

Hilderman narrates the book in the first person, singular and plural, with the speaker(s) never being identified by name. Consequently, young readers may assume the “I” or “me” to be one of the three children seen on the book’s cover, a conclusion reinforced by the fact that the little boy in the orange shirt and wearing a blue sling on his arm does appear in many of Hugo’s illustrations.

Because the book doesn’t use a through storyline, readers encounter several abrupt transitions. For example, after readers have spent several pages with orange shirt boy, the last one portraying him and two young female cousins picking saskatoon berries in the bush, a turn of the page takes readers to a farmers market where a different girl (not one of the cousins) and her grandma are purchasing saskatoons to use in making jam or saskatoon crisp. The next page introduces yet another anonymous young girl and her “noohkom”. This grandmother doesn’t cook with her granddaughter, but, instead, does teach her how to bead using traditional Métis beading patterns.

Many sections beg for expansion. For example, a girl says: My auntie made them [moccasins] for me in our special Métis style. What is that style? How does it differ from other styles? Why does it differ? Another child asks: Do you like Métis music? It’s a blend of styles.... What styles? Hugo’s artwork accompanying the music quote has three children and two adults jigging [What is “jigging” you ask.] with two of the dancers wearing Métis sashes but each in a different fashion.

The sash is a significant visible symbol for those who wish to identify as members of the Métis nation, but no mention is made of it in the main text, nor even in the back matter which includes Hilderman’s closing “Author’s Note”. There, Hilderman, who is Métis, addresses why she wrote the book, acknowledging that she grew up in Alberta without really being connected to the area’s Métis community.

The end matter also includes “A Recipe for Tasha’s Favorite Bannock/Gaalet” and a closing page about the traditional language of the Métis, Michif. This page also includes 26 Michif words, their pronunciation and English equivalent. Though readers are not informed, each of these Michif words has appeared in the book but in its English form.

Hilderman closes her “Author’s Note” by saying, “It is never too late to take pride in and share our heritage with others in that community.” Métis Like Me is a first step in that sharing.