We Walk Between: The Erasure of Métis in Northeast BC and Resurgence Through Contemporary Art

The Métis experience in British Columbia's northeast is shaped by history, geography, industry, and identity. In the Peace Country, where vast reserves of natural gas intersect with the Métis Homeland, the community is at the crossroads of resource extraction and cultural survival. This land sits atop the Montney Gas Formation, a massive natural gas deposit. This document is written by Treaty 8-based, interdisciplinary artist, Haley Bassett. Bassett's work explores what makes us who we are, including culture, land, heritage, and history. The works in this paper focuses on the intersection of identity, place, and labour—both physical and economic and spans beadwork, textiles, found objects, and sculpture. This thesis offers a micro-to-macro view of the interplay between Métis identity, cultural continuity, economic precarity, resource extraction, and legal rights and recognition in northeast British Columbia and within the broader Métis Nation. Personal and family stories are woven throughout to give voice to the experiences of Indigenous people living on the margins of recognition. Bassett's research questions concern inherent and constitutionally protected rights – abstract concepts that become solidified when exercising dominion over natural resources in a capitalist, resource-based economy. In this sense, such rights are a container for Indigenous identity. A right is a responsibility–a role. Bassett contends that identity is reified by a Nation's duties to the land, water, and sky and by the ability to exercise those rights in opposition to capitalist and colonial forces. How does the lack of such rights affect contemporary Métis identity in BC? Does it render it more permeable or vulnerable? And can this harm be remedied through art making?