Native North American Biography Book

A clear, almost modernist in traditional simplicity, text, Gabriel Dumont's recitation of the events of the Métis revolt provides the greater public with one of the few contemporary Métis voices beyond the rare poems of Pierriche and the last speeches of Louis Riel.

Told in the confused, awkward tongue of a first-language Michif speaker, this account's blankness, devoid of the gesticulations, laughs, and tears that may have characterized the original telling, is nothing but offensive to the trained Western reader. The simple act of transcribing the story turned Dumont unintentionally into the first writer of the Iceberg Theory.

Every Métis victory is fleeting, every casualty briefly reminisced on and quickly forgotten. The austerity of Dumont's braggadocio must leave any outside reader with a disorientation only befitting of such an odd war. To Dumont, it was a war of dignity set in the realist landscape of the Canadian prairie. It's left to the sentiments of the reader to determine the validity and even the levity of bloodshed.

I read this account on a rainy day, one that I imagine resembled the day of Riel's execution. Expecting more the flagrancy of Lord Byron, Gabriel Dumont gave me the words to "American Gothic". I read this with the intent of flaring my Métis nationalist spirit, and I was left with just that.

There is nothing but pure, cacao-bitter Americanness in this story, so naturally many reacted with a disgust, expecting the latte of war poetry in the style of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain or the Springtime of Nations.

However, if you read this telling of the 1885 rebellion, already aware that this is all a prologue to the surrender at Batoche and the trial and execution of the messianic Louis Riel, you will find an unusually modern and fleetingly beautiful story of impatience, faith, damnation, pride, and everything that can be put in the context of Hemingway's famous saying, "A man can be destroyed but not defeated."