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  • The North-West Is Our Mother

  • The Story of Louis Riel's People, the Metis Nation
  • Written by: Jean Teillet
  • Narrated by: Jean Teillet
  • Length: 14 hrs and 41 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (431 ratings)

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The North-West Is Our Mother

Written by: Jean Teillet
Narrated by: Jean Teillet
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Publisher's Summary

There is a missing chapter in the narrative of Canada’s Indigenous peoples - the story of the Métis Nation, a new Indigenous people descended from both First Nations and Europeans

Their story begins in the last decade of the 18th century in the Canadian North-West. Within 20 years the Métis proclaimed themselves a nation and won their first battle. Within 40 years they were famous throughout North America for their military skills, their nomadic life and their buffalo hunts. 

The Métis Nation didn’t just drift slowly into the Canadian consciousness in the early 1800s; it burst onto the scene fully formed. The Métis were flamboyant, defiant, loud, and definitely not noble savages. They were nomads with a very different way of being in the world - always on the move, very much in the moment, passionate and fierce. They were romantics and visionaries with big dreams. They battled continuously - for recognition, for their lands and for their rights and freedoms. In 1870 and 1885, led by the iconic Louis Riel, they fought back when Canada took their lands. These acts of resistance became defining moments in Canadian history, with implications that reverberate to this day: Western alienation, Indigenous rights and the French/English divide. 

After being defeated at the Battle of Batoche in 1885, the Métis lived in hiding for 20 years. But early in the 20th century, they determined to hide no more and began a long, successful fight back into the Canadian consciousness. The Métis people are now recognized in Canada as a distinct Indigenous nation. Written by the great-grandniece of Louis Riel, this popular and engaging history of “forgotten people” tells the story up to the present era of national reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. 

Title: Métis camp with Red River carts at [Milk River Lake, Alberta]

Source: Library and Archives Canada/George M. Dawson fonds/e011156514  

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.  

©2019 Jean Teillet (P)2021 Audible, Inc.
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

What listeners say about The North-West Is Our Mother

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Fantastic historical account that all Canadians should be acquainted with.

First off, the narrator does a good job, so no concerns there.
As someone who grew up in the prairies, we were always indoctrinated that the Métis were not a legitimate group and Louis Riel was both bloodthirsty and crazy.
This book gives a wonderfully written history of how the Metis came to be all the way to their situation in present day. Of course an oral history can never be 100% accurate, but this book gives a very fair, detailed, and arguably objective account of Metis history. It explains the Metis Nation as a whole, and in its sub-categories.
I wish I could have had access to this work back when I was in high school being whitewashed.

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9 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Just wow, wow, and more wow.

Finished this today, and I'm a changed person. What an amazing book on the history of Canada, and The Metis people. I feel the author does a great job detailing the parallel life a Metis person must endure. Upon reflection, it's ways of thinking politically, spiritually, socially that makes a nation so perhaps one could view the Metis as a bridge between First Nation people and the people who settled here? Perhaps I could even call my Metis family The Children of Canada?

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4 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Mandatory reading

In order for Canada to truly know it’s own identity, this book should be mandatory reading at universities across the nation. We have needed this book for a long time. Canadians no longer have the convenient excuse of not knowing who the Métis are or how the people helped form the country into what it is today. As a storyteller, Jean Teillet has made this truth telling easy to read.

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4 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

True Canadian history!

Love this book. This book is so full of information... I immediately listened again when finished. Easy to listen to... very well read.👍👍

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Clear, concise, endearing, honest, & shameful.

My grandmother had to hide our proud heritage so we could succeed. This is why.

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2 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

history as seen through one side of a multi sided

This was an interesting review on a period of history through the eyes of the metis nation...one of the participants.

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1 person found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

The Most Important Book I Have Ever Read

I have never learned more about Canadian history in a shorter time span than the time it took to read this book! I elected to read a hard copy while listening to Jean Teillet’s audio recording on Audible, often pausing and flipping back pages in the book to recount or revel in the shocking and unbelievable fight the Métis Nation has been engaged in with Canada for over 200 years. Despite being a nation prior to Canada’s Confederation, the Métis are still fighting for recognition as a nation within a nation and for the promises Canada failed to deliver to the people of the Métis Nation as promised in the Manitoba Act.

I also have a personal connection to this book. My family’s roots in the Red River Settlement are partially documented here. I got to read the names of my ancestors and experience their stories coming to life from of the pages of history! Before reading The North-West Is Our Mother, I merely knew the names of my ancestors and where they lived. Now I understand and appreciate what they had to endure and fight for in order for my present day family to exist. For this, I am very grateful.

Knowing your own history is important. If you are Canadian, you need to read this book. If you are Métis, you DEFINITELY need to read this book. Jean Teillet’s passion and knowledge is very evident in this recount of Métis history for Audible.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Teillet draws a stick figure and calls it mom

Jean Teillet is the great-grand nephew of Louis Riel - she tells everyone this. She is a lawyer who fought and won the Powley case - she doesn’t mention this in the book. Why the omission/ lack of disclosure?

Throughout she excises Métis peoples outside Métis Nation. The intro to the 2019 book has "race-shifters" as “new adversary” for Métis with the second last chapter regurgitating Darryl Leroux's lazy and inaccurate research. Yuck.

The main technique for arguing the legitimacy of Métis Nation -at the expense of Other Métis- is a complex gerrymandering of social and physical borders. The author doesn't seem to care that Métis as a Nation existed in the written record prior to 1816. These pesky details I guess didn't make it into discovery.

This book could have easily acknowledged the existence of Métis outside Métis Nation but doesn't. She cherry picks Riel quotes; Voyager stories; Bois brulé stories to serve an otherwise vivid narrative. She is rhetorically trying to recognize origins of Western Métis and simultaneously exclude all Other Métis. It's a clumsy balancing act that sadly, most readers won't notice.

Where is her mother? Where is the Metis Nation exactly? “The North-west was always land North and West of Montreal” Oh really? So why does she go through great lengths to erase Métis in most of Ontario? Why acknowled Harry Daniels and ignore his inclusion of Métis outside Métis Nation in the constitutional definition? Why acknowledge Tony Belcourt and then ignore his advocacy of Métis communities in Ontario like Sault Sainte Marie?

The inclusion of non-Status folk as part of the founding of Union Nationale Métisse is dismissed as a "marriage of convenience". Well then, Teillet is just a divorce lawyer of Métis disunity happy to litigate both sides.

In Chapter 9, Teillet turned the hypocrisy knob to 12 when she wrote "borders are antithetical to Métis people". I almost took a swig of water so that I could spew it out for dramatic effect. She made adversaries out of people outside her ill-defined homeland. a homeland that only has "draft" borders to show after 100+ years.

Basically, if someone asks what “mother” looks like and all you can draw is a stick figure (I’ll concede one eyeball and three toes are super-detailed) don’t be surprised when people disagree.

Three stars because there was plenty good outside the grievances listed above.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Complete history of the Mètis

A people unique from all other First Nation communities of Turtle Island. Thank you.

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👍👍

It is pretty cool hearing my family name in old stories.I am quite enjoying it

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  • Aedificator
  • 2021-10-28

Métis history primer

A good primer on the history of Métis resistance to Canada's violence towards them. The reign of terror against the Red River people J.A. MacDonald sat idly by and watched happen is thoroughly laid out.

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  • KLK
  • 2021-08-10

Well told - educational storytelling

I loved this book. It is so dense I will listen to it again. I am a Canadian and when I was in school in the 1960s and 1970s, we learned American and British history. This was a delightful, entertaining way to learn about the history of my birth country. Well written, well narrated, thoroughly enjoyable.

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  • Chelsee
  • 2021-06-02

beautiful account of history

great vocal performance in addition to being witty, honest, and intelligent. Greatly appreciate Jean's deep knowledge of the law. a long and very healing listen

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  • Patrick Lane
  • 2022-10-28

Must read!!!!

This is an amazing and captivating history of the Métis nation that everyone in North America should read!!!

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