WHO I’M FROM
I come from long lines of people who have shaped me into the person I am. My life, in many ways, is lived out of these lines of connection. The people I come from inform the work I make.
My father’s family, where I get my family name, came from Québec—before that, France and a smattering of other European countries. My grandfather’s half-brother was the composer and educator, Gabriel Cusson (the first Canadian student of Nadia Boulanger.) The musical impulse is strong on that side of my family.
My mother’s family is from the Georgian Bay Métis Community, a community of ‘halfbreeds’ that came to Penetanguishene, Ontario in 1829 from Drummond Island when that land was ceded to the United States. My family ran a maple sugar farm in town, and later took up farming in Lafontaine. Most of my extended family: cousins, aunts and uncles, still live on those same lands to this day. That small area of land, the towns of Penetanguishene, Midland and Lafontaine, is the place where I grew up.
My mother’s father was Philibert Charlebois, the son of Delima Chevrette, daughter of Moïse Chevrette, son of Louis Chevrette (originally from Québec) and Marguerite Souliere (born in Fort William, then part of the North West Territories, now North Western Ontario.) Both Marguerite’s husband and father worked for the North West Company. Her father, Jean Baptiste worked for the company in the Red River, St Mary’s River and Lake Nipigon. Marguerite’s mother was from Fort William but is unnamed in the historic record. In each succeeding generation, our family lived in close kinship relationships with other halfbreed families in and around Sault Ste Marie, Drummond Island and Penetanguishene. These halfbreed communities understood and still understand themselves as separate from the surrounding Anishnaabe communities whose lands they were on, and distinct from the French habitant communities who later came and settled in the area.
The Georgian Bay Métis community has a strong and vibrant history of practicing our culture, defending our identity (including in the 1840 Penetanguishene Halfbreed petition) and remaining connected to the extended halfbreed kinship networks in Ontario and further West.
I was lucky to grow up in my community until I left home for university. I now live with my family a short distance away in Collingwood. I have been fiercely proud of who I am and who I come from for my entire life. I recognize the privilege of having known the peoples I come from and growing up with my family and our extended kinship networks, in community.
We live in a strange time. A time when political organizations of all stripes want to define identities, including who is included and who is not for varying reasons and to varying ends. We also live in a time when there is incredible fear of the loss of inherent moral and legal rights of Indigenous peoples. In some cases these fears have led to a circling of the wagons, to reframing historic understandings and acknowledgements of communities, and even to attempts to redefine history, peoples and families. We are in a moment where rhetoric is high and divisive. The hunters of people are prowling the roads.
My response to all of this is to make art. One of my greatest joys is creating work that celebrates and tells the stories that are particular to me and my people. In doing so, I am participating in the long tradition and rich practice of art-making that is so firmly rooted in my community. I hope to honour those who have walked before me, and hold open the door to those who come after. I hope to live in a peaceable way, with integrity, openness, and with accountability to my community.
When I speak, and make artistic work, I speak on behalf of no one but myself, but I do so with great thankfulness and deep pride in all the people I come from.
To read more about the Georgian Bay Métis Community, check out this website.