Celebrating Métis Culture with Annual Kitchen Party – MBC Radio

Mar 25, 2024

The Métis… theirs is a history shaped by resilience and adaptation; a history that for too many decades hibernated, waiting for the warmth of spring.

Batoche is commonly referred to as the ‘heartland’ of the Métis in Saskatchewan, and with its proximity to Bellevue, it is not surprising that the heart of the community beats in time to the Métis fiddle. It is particularly important, that the tradition of Métis fiddling is kept alive. It keeps going, as music is very much part of the heart of Métis culture. While there are different styles within the Métis fiddle community depending on the location, as well as early influences, the feel is the common thread, providing a pulse and heart to the music. It is the music and its feel, that is unique to the Métis culture and very much tied to inspiring dance.

The hamlet of Bellevue and its surrounding rural community is home to many residents who have direct ancestral ties to the Battle of Batoche and the francophone community in Saskatchewan. Métis settlers began making homes here in the 1860s and 1870s, many of them fleeing economic and social dislocation from Red River, Manitoba. Communautés métisses de la rivière Saskatchewan Sud (the Southbranch Settlements) stretched along both sides of the South Saskatchewan River in river lot style from Fish Creek north through Batoche and St. Laurent to St. Louis which was its northern boundary. Batoche and St. Laurent de Grandin were founded by French Métis hivernants (winterers), hunters, and trappers who spent the winter on the prairies and returned to the Red River settlement in the spring with their winter catch. Gabriel Dumont was the leader of the buffalo hunt for his group of 200 hunters living in the Southbranch settlements from 1863 to the end of the Métis buffalo hunts in about 1875. In 1873 the Southbranch settlements organized a form of local government, under Gabriel Dumont, based on the laws of the buffalo hunt. Some estimates count the number of Métis in the Southbranch settlements during the 1880s as between 1300 and 1500. At St-Isidore-de-Bellevue, the francophone population included Métis families who had settled in the district by the early 1880s, followed by descendants of Acadian exiles who had resettled in Quebec before coming to Bellevue in the years 1883 to 1894.

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