BCMF Director of Research Joe Desjarlais stated, “I want to thank Christina Reid and the Heritage Abbotsford Society for their willingness to sign this MOU. This transformative agreement breaks down colonial and racialized barriers in a partnership that is open to the many ways of being Métis in the Pacific Northwest.”

The rich and enduring history of Métis in the Fraser Valley and across the Pacific Northwest has long been ignored and suppressed. Archives and museums have not been welcoming places and have been impenetrable for local researchers, and Métis have faced systemic anti-Métis racism. This agreement will empower local Métis people and communities in Abbotsford and those connected to historical kinship networks in this region to build capacity and explore funding pathways to access these institutions and collections, and to develop needed skills to repatriate their local history and memory.

Joe Desjarlais concluded, “Métis people with long histories in Abbotsford and the Fraser Valley have the right to recover and to represent their history. Research must be grounded in relationships in community, and must lead to community wholeness. This agreement creates pathways for Métis to find their own unique Métis voice and tell their own stories, for their own benefit, and to educate others about Métis history in Abbotsford, the Fraser Valley and the entire Pacific Northwest. This is an important part of our self determination.”

This partnership will have a ripple effect. Métis peoples and communities across BC are in a position to repatriate their knowledge, reconstitute their communities, and write themselves into the history books and into the imagination of the province.