Man traces Metis roots

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Geoff Burtonshaw used to build offices, schools and homes, but now he helps people reconstruct their Metis past.

For 15 years, Burtonshaw, a retired journeyman carpenter, has been collecting old government, church and other records to create family trees for 947 people.

"It's often the 45-to-50-year-olds who have some old grandma tell them as she is dying, 'You have Indian blood'. . . They don't have a clue about their background. Where do they go?" asks Burtonshaw.

Enquirers who drop into the Calgary office of the Metis Nation of Alberta, Zone III, will likely be referred to Burtonshaw, who volunteers at the Glenbow Museum.

"I don't know what I would do without him," says Sandra Brazeau, the membership clerk for the Metis Nation of Alberta, Zone III. Every month, she refers at least 40 people to Burtonshaw.

Besides people wanting to qualify for Metis cards, some want to search out their Metis past to teach their children. Others want to pick up the threads of their family history so they can continue the search in Quebec, or in such places as Scandinavia or the Orkney Islands.

"There are some wannabes too," said Burtonshaw.

Burtonshaw, who is of Irish and English ancestry, is not Metis, but knows the culture.

As a boy growing up on the family homestead near Valpoy, 40 miles northeast of Dauphin, Man., Burtonshaw's friends were the neighboring Metis children. As a young history enthusiast, he eagerly listened to stories of Louis Riel and his followers. When he served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II, his best friend was Metis. His late wife, Grace, was also Metis.

Once he left the shelter of his community, he discovered that other people did not share his love for Metis people.

"I didn't know about injustice until I joined the air force during the war," he says. "I learned the word 'discrimination,' which I didn't know before."

The 84-year-old Burtonshaw fights that discrimination on three fronts. His home has become a library of western Canadian, Artic and Northern United States history. His collection of Metis documents, fills 360 files and more than 24 museum file boxes. Finally, his bi-monthly newsletter, Neya Powagon, is circulated across Canada and the United States to 300 fellow researchers.

"I think it's important for (people) to find out, because their culture and language have been (neglected) through discrimination," he says. "Also, every time an old person dies, they take a big history book with them."