[PEN-L:138] Louis Riel and the Metis

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

July 7, 1998

Canada Reassesses Hanged Rebel

By ANTHONY DePALMA

REGINA, Saskatchewan -- Along with Chief Long Dog's three-bladed tomahawk
and the fading stuffed remains of Nero, the loyal parade horse, the hanging
rope used to dispatch a rebel, Louis Riel, 113 years ago was one of the
most popular exhibits in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police museum.

All that visitors can see of that exhibit today, though, are glue marks and
tack holes where the rope used to be mounted. The museum's directors
removed it last year after some Indian police recruits complained that the
macabre artifact offended them.

The museum's willingness to bend to the complaint is just one small sign
that even 11 decades have not been enough to quell the unrest and
bitterness surrounding Riel's execution.

To some in Canada, Riel remains a traitor who was hanged for leading a
deadly rebellion of Metis -- settlers of mixed European (primarily French)
and Indian descent who were in the way of westward expansion after Canada
became a dominion in 1867.

But for many in this country where heroes seem to be as scarce and sought
after as warming breezes, he has become a bona fide figure of admiration, a
misunderstood martyr who stood up for his rights.

To the Metis, who have never been officially recognized by Canada as a
separate people, he is a rallying point for a dim dream of nationhood.
According to the latest government figures, there are about 152,000 Metis,
and they make up about 19 percent of Canada's total Indian population.

To French Catholics in Quebec, especially separatists, the French-speaking
Riel -- a devout Catholic -- symbolizes the will of minorities to overcome
oppression and stand up for their rights.

And to people all over the western part of this vast country, Riel has come
to stand for western alienation and the struggle to be recognized by the
east, where power still resides.

Under pressure from all three groups, the federal government has had to
re-evaluate Riel's place in Canadian history. When it issued an apology in
January to Canada's Indians for the abuse they had suffered through several
hundred years of paternalistic treatment, the government promised to
reassess Riel's conviction and execution.

Critics accuse the government of revisionism. They have focused their anger
on a parliamentary bill that would officially reverse Riel's conviction for
high treason and designate him a founding father of Canada.

"Here they come again," The Calgary Herald said in a recent editorial, "the
revisionists with their soap and scouring pads, eager to scrub away at the
dirty little stains of history until it's all cleaned up and made
presentable for the mores of the moment."

But the bill's sponsors say they are simply setting the record straight.
"We don't want to change one second of history," said Reg Alcock, a Liberal
sponsor of the bill from Winnipeg, Manitoba, which was the site of another
rebellion led by Riel, in 1869.

Alcock said his own feelings about Riel had changed.

"I grew up believing Riel was some kind of murderous traitor," he said. "It
wasn't until I was in my early 20s, when the province of Manitoba put a
statue to him on the back lawn of the Legislature in 1972, that I started
thinking about it differently."

Just when Riel's historical standing began to change is not clear. But it
seems to have coincided with the period after World War II when Canada
began to turn away from Britain and toward the United States, with its
emphasis on individual rights.

Now it is not uncommon to find schools and community buildings named for
the man who was executed for high treason against the queen.

By all accounts, Riel was an extraordinary character -- an unusually
vibrant mix of worldliness and grass-roots leadership. He was a literate
man who spoke French and English and was elected several times to the
Canadian Parliament -- but then prohibited by English-speaking Protestants
from taking his seat in Ottawa.

He was an outspoken Catholic at a time when English Canada was
overwhelmingly Protestant, and he rallied thousands of Metis to defy the
surveyors sent to tame the land that would become the province of Manitoba.

But he was also capable of demagoguery. When a kangaroo court convicted an
English Protestant, Thomas Scott, of leading a counterinsurgency against
the Metis, Riel did not intervene, although a word from him apparently
would have been sufficient to prevent the execution.

After the execution, the forces against Riel mounted and he fled to the
United States in 1870. He remained in exile on and off for much of the next
15 years. The Canadian government offered to pay him to remain in exile but
Metis friends persuaded him to return to the Canadian prairie. In 1885, he
arrived in the area of the west that would become Saskatchewan to help
defend the Metis against continuing English migration.

Fighting broke out -- what Canadian history books call the Northwest
Rebellion of 1885 and what the Metis call the Northwest Resistance. The
Canadian government became intent on getting rid of Riel, who by then saw
himself as the Metis' Messiah. He was captured, charged with treason, put
on trial and convicted.

In an article in Canadian Lawyer published in February, Ronald Olesky made
a convincing case that the government rigged the trial against Riel. "The
Crown's tactics were directed toward conviction at any cost," Olesky wrote.

Since there were no trees growing on the prairie then, scaffolding was
built next to the Regina headquarters of the Northwest Mounted Police,
precursor of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. On Nov. 16, 1885, with a
rope attached to the scaffolding around his neck, Riel was forced out the
second-floor window of the guard room and was hanged.

The hanging took place not far from the museum where the rope had been
displayed. Today, the hanging site is a pleasant patch of well-watered
grass, flanked by lines of poplars and pines. A memorial will be erected
there someday, if the Metis agree.

So far, they have opposed the bill before Parliament. They say that
anything short of outright and complete exoneration would be an injustice.

"If we just accept history as the status quo without ever questioning it,
then it's not history, it's myth, and you might as well build a temple to
it," said Jean Teillet, a great-grandniece of Riel and a lawyer in Toronto.
"You know what they say about history being written by the victors."

The controversy over Riel is not likely to end soon. A proposal earlier
this year to change the name of a homely stretch of highway around the city
from the Ring Road to Riel Way has stalled because of fears it would cost
too much to make new road signs.

But it is not likely that the hanging rope will ever be returned to the
display in the Mounties' museum, said William Mackay, the museum's curator.
It was the only noose the museum displayed, and the curator doubts it is real.

Actually, the museum has three pieces of rope, each identified by somebody
as the right one and each a different length and diameter.

The Mounties' forensic lab is now analyzing the pieces, but Mackay doubts
that will prove anything. One piece came to the museum years ago from a
donor who got it from the friend of a friend. One came in anonymously in
the mail. The third was brought in by a man who said he bought it at the
railway station, and Mackay said there are accounts of Riel hanging ropes
being openly hawked in Regina up to World War I.

The text of the Riel exhibit has not changed, nor will it, Mackay said.
High treason, rebellion, all the inflammatory words remain. But the rope is
gone, even though it probably never slipped around anyone's neck.

"It's the symbolism that counts," Mackay said.

In the case of Louis Riel, it always is.

Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company



Louis Proyect

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