Daniel Fontaine hopes he’ll be the first of many Indigenous people to serve on New Westminster city council.
Fontaine, who is Métis, was sworn into his new role on council on Monday night, becoming what’s believed to be the city’s first-ever Indigenous city councillor.
“It's not lost on me that this is a pretty historic thing, if in fact, it is accurate and I am the only the first Indigenous person to be elected to council,” he told the Record. “But what I'm hoping for, rather than looking backwards, is hoping that in the next number of elections, that being Indigenous on New Westminster city council is not something to necessarily have to take note of; it's just something that's common and commonplace.”
While he’s not a historian, Fontaine said he’s unaware of any Indigenous person having been elected to New Westminster city council in the past. He said it’s possible there may have been a Métis person elected who didn't self declare or wasn't a citizen of a nation, but he’s the first person to openly identify as being Indigenous or Métis who’s been elected.
“What I like is it's reflective more of our recent census data and who's living here and who's moving here, and the council has definitely got a very diverse flavour to it,” he said. “So for me, I as a Métis person – someone who didn't know when they were young that they were Métis, and only found out kind of later in life – I hope that it inspires other Indigenous people to put their names forward.”
Recently released 2021 Census data for New Westminster showed 2,425 residents (3.1 per cent of the city’s population) reporting Indigenous identity. This includes: First Nations — 1,275; Métis — 1,015; Inuk (Inuit) — 45; multiple Indigenous responses — 60; and other Indigenous responses — 30.
Fontaine was born in St. Boniface, Manitoba.
“At a young age, I only spoke French before I moved to Alberta and became fluently bilingual,” he said in a 2022 election questionnaire to the Record. “I grew up in a household that played the spoons, listened to fiddle music and regularly baked some scrumptious bannock. Yet, it was only later in life that I discovered that I was Indigenous, of Métis heritage.”
Métis generally refers to a person of mixed Indigenous and Euro-American ancestry, many being from around the Red and Saskatchewan rivers in the 19th century.
“I grew up in what would be considered a traditional Métis house, but none of us spoke about it,” Fontaine said. “My grandparents didn't speak about it; my parents didn't speak about it.”
Fontaine said it’s challenging for him to understand why that heritage wasn’t acknowledged, but he said that was a different time. The more Métis people he has talked to, the more he’s discovered how much they have in common.
“I’m still very much learning the customs and traditions,” he said. “It's a very exciting time for me.”
While he was growing up in Manitoba, Fontaine said his uncle (his mother’s brother) did some “old-fashioned sleuthing” and researched family records. It was after Fontaine moved to B.C. that his uncle, as well as Fontaine’s brothers, applied for citizenship to the Manitoba Métis Federation.
“I got a chance to take a look at his historical research, which I ended up using for myself for my own application here to become a citizen,” Fontaine said. “And so it was him that started that journey for us. Had he not done all the work and the research and the genealogy, we may really still be living, still referring to ourselves, as French Canadian.”
Growing up, Fontaine said he’d always been told the family was French Canadian.
According to Fontaine, people, can self-identify as being Métis or they can register with the Métis nations in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario.
“Each of the nations have what's called a central registry, and that central registry has an application process. You have to get your genealogy verified and you have to produce the proper documentation to verify that in fact, you do have Métis heritage within your family,” he said. “So I had to go through that genealogical process.”
Unlike his family members, who are registered in Manitoba, Fontaine said he registered with Métis Nation B.C. because this is where he lives. Fontaine said he’s known he’s Métis for a couple of decades but formally registered and became a citizen after becoming the CEO of Métis Nation British Columbia, the governing body for Métis in B.C.
“I put in my application and it was accepted,” he said. “So it's literally only been the last couple of years that I've formally become a citizen.”
Métis peoples have been recognized as being among the aboriginal peoples of Canada since the Constitution Act of 1982.
Fontaine served as the CEO of Métis Nation BC from May 2020 to March 2022. Part of that job included hosting a TV show, MéTV, where he travelled the province and told stories of some Métis people.
“I got to meet just some amazing Métis people, some of them who had been aware, self aware and the family aware, throughout their entire lives. It was magical to hear them and to see them play the fiddle and to be embracing the culture so widely,” he said. “And then I met a lot of people who found out only later in life, and felt in many ways that there was a part of their life that had kind of been taken from them.”
Fontaine said it was eye-opening to hear from Métis people in B.C. who had a very similar lived experience as he did, even though he grew up several provinces away.
"The forgotten people"
Fontaine said Métis people are sometimes called the forgotten people.
“The reason they're forgotten people or referred to as the forgotten people is, often they were shunned and not welcomed within their First Nation communities and they were also not welcomed within the primarily white, Caucasian European settler communities,” he said. “So they were often forgotten. And that's why so many of them, so many of us, hid kind of who we were and, as a result, became the forgotten people. It was more of a focus to blend in then to stand out and to kind of be proud of that heritage and that culture.”
Fontaine said there’s a really good understanding about Métis people in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and, to a slightly lesser degree, in Alberta.
“For the most part, they understand; they get it. It's very much part of the kind of the fabric of the community,” he said. “It’s very difficult to say that in British Columbia. It's much more of a challenge. Like I've told people, I'm Métis, and they kind of go, ‘Hmm. What does that mean? Who are you? Is that indigenous?’ So there's a lot less of an understanding of Métis in British Columbia.”
But that’s changing, said Fontaine.
“As we're celebrating more things that have Indigenous roots and connections, I see it even in a little bit in the verbiage of what's being printed and stuff you see now – you know, First Nation, Métis, Inuit, you'll see that word Métis coming in a lot more than perhaps it did a decade ago,” he said. “So that's a good sign.”
Fontaine hopes his election to New West city council will help inspire more Indigenous candidates to run in the future.
“For me, I'm going to take my opportunity in the next four years to encourage other Indigenous peoples to put their name forward, be it for school board or council,” he said. “And hopefully, we see more in the future.”
