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It’s been almost a quarter century since the Supreme Court of Canada told us that Indigenous oral traditions must be considered “on an equal footing” with other types of historical evidence. Alas, as the attack on famed Canadian filmmaker Michelle Latimer shows, the CBC still hasn’t gotten that memo. Thus does it fall to me to pour my emotional labour into educating the cultural reactionaries who staff our national broadcaster.
As a genealogical investigation performed by two university professors has now confirmed, Latimer traces her Indigenous ancestry, through both maternal and paternal grandparents, to an area of western Quebec that has long been home to Algonquin and Métis communities. The 1927 flooding of that region (known as Baskatong) generated diaspora groups whose histories we can piece together through evidentiary fragments. This kind of example shows why even imperfect family accounts, such as those that Latimer learned at home as a child, are important.