A Review of Peter Fortna’s The Fort McKay Métis Nation: A Community History

Maegan Ellis

Peter Fortna’s The Fort McKay Métis Nation: A Community History presents a compelling and community-centered account of one of northern Alberta’s long-standing yet often overlooked Métis communities. The book offers a significant contribution to both Indigenous history and the growing field of community-engaged scholarship. Beyond a regional study, Fortna’s work reflects how communities assert identity, maintain continuity, and navigate evolving relationships with the land, the state, and industry.

A defining strength of Fortna’s monograph is its rootedness in the community’s own voice and experience, grounded in respectful collaboration. Rather than writing about the Fort McKay Métis Nation (FMMN), he worked with them. Having the full support of the community, Fortna’s work was reviewed and partially funded by the FMMN itself. As Fortna highlights in his introduction, earlier iterations of this work drew on oral histories and interviews, family genealogies, land-use documents and reports, newspaper articles, and correspondence between community members and various organizational bodies to marshal historical evidence that Fort McKay’s Métis population holds section 35 rights under the Constitution. This research was initially undertaken to support Fort McKay’s legal claim to consultation rights and formed part of a larger submission that resulted in the Alberta government recognizing the FMMN’s “credible assertion” as rights-holders under section 35 in 2020. Fortna’s monograph expands on that work, turning evidence assembled for legal purposes into a deeper historical account of Métis identity, continuity, and community authority.

Fortna blends chronology with interconnected themes of identity, land tenure, governance, resource extraction, community collaboration, and political recognition, beginning with the early settlement of Fort McKay and continuing into the 21^st century. In the opening chapters, he situates the Fort McKay community within a unique historical and cultural landscape, emphasizing the deeply intertwined lives of its Métis, Cree, and Dene members since the fur trade era. Rather than treating these identities as fixed or oppositional, Fortna explores how they have evolved in relation to one another, particularly in the aftermath of the imposition of treaty and scrip regimes between 1899-1920. The first two chapters focus closely on the genealogy of Fort McKay’s Métis families and their relations to the First Nations population, illustrating how pre-treaty kinship networks, collective land use, and shared history shaped the community’s social fabric and bush economy. Through this lens, Fortna demonstrated how the category of “Métis” emerged not just through state policy but also through lived experience that continued to shift into the 21^st century.

Chapter 3 turns to the FMMN’s enduring relationship with the land, focusing on the bush economy and the disruption of the trapline system in the community. It highlights how traditional land-based practices – trapping, hunting, and fishing – have long sustained the community, not only economically but culturally and socially. These practices continued well into the 20^th century and remain vital to Fort McKay’s identity and self-determination. Fortna also illustrates how state-imposed regulations, development pressures, and industrial encroachment destabilized these lifeways, forcing the community to adapt while maintaining deep-rooted connections to the land.

Rather than portraying the community as mere victims of development, Fortna emphasizes their agency in shaping outcomes. Chapters 4 and 5 trace how the community managed land and navigated colonial land tenure systems over the course of a century, beginning in the 1960s with a response to industrial encroachment. While Métis and First Nations residents of Fort McKay lived in close cooperation, the state worked to divide them through policies that treated Métis and Treaty Indians as fundamentally separate groups.  Pointing to land leases struggles and a desire for home ownership, the Fort McKay Métis, who were denied ownership of their land until 2018, faced significant challenges in securing stability and control over their own homes. This issue of land tenure was compounded by the rise of oil sands extraction in the region, as highlighted in Chapter 5. Fortna details how Fort McKay residents, be they Métis, Cree, or Dene, united to challenge oil extraction operations that threatened their ways of life, advocating for the protection of the land and their community’s health. One of the most significant events that galvanized this resistance was the 1981 spill of toxic substances from the oil company Suncor into the Athabasca River, which contaminated the community’s drinking water and sparked legal action.

In the final pages, Fortna’s epilogue demonstrates the FMMN’s ongoing assertion of their community’s rights and sovereignty, connecting their history to present issues faced by the community. It engages with national discourse surrounding the Métis Nation and Canada’s legal framework to highlight tensions between the FMMN and Métis Nation of Alberta (MNA). As an organization that represents all Métis people in Alberta, the MNA has challenged the FMMN for acting on their own behalf in legal and political contexts. This connection is vital because it underscores the evolving struggle for recognition and self-determination, particularly as Métis communities continue to assert their rights in a complex legal and political environment. Fortna shows how, despite historical and ongoing efforts by the state to marginalize the Métis, the FMMN remains actively engaged in shaping its future through self-governance and political advocacy. This relationship also reflects broader tensions within the Métis Nation’s diverse membership about governance, land rights, and the recognition of community sovereignty. To demonstrate the FMMN’s stance, Fortna includes in his Appendix “The Fort McKay Métis Nation Position Paper on Consultation and Self-Government,” an essay authored by the FMMN to discuss who has the right to govern a Métis community.

Though rich in sources and grounded in partnership, this study invites some critical reflection. As a non-Indigenous historian, Fortna’s positionality raises important methodological questions. He thoroughly acknowledges his experiences and ongoing relationship with Fort McKay, having worked as a former employee of the Fort McKay Industrial Relations Corporation (IRC) and later as a community consultant. However, further discussions of his evolving ethical and methodological commitments throughout the project would deepen readers’ understanding of how settler-Indigenous research partnerships can be equitable and mutually beneficial. Such reflections would clarify the challenges and rewards of working closely with Indigenous communities in the context of historical scholarship

Historians working in the field of Indigenous and Métis studies may also find the interconnectedness and historical fluidity of Fort McKay’s First Nation and Métis identities intriguing. In his introduction, Fortna engages briefly with academic discourse regarding legal definitions of “Métis” and notions of the “Métis Homeland” following the Powley decision and where Fort McKay fits within these conversations. He proceeds throughout the book to draw on oral histories, community documents, correspondence, and land-related reports to highlight how Fort McKay residents understand and assert their identity in ways that may not align with legal or academic frameworks. Rather than attempting to impose a rigid definition, Fortna foregrounds how community members themselves articulate belonging – often through kinship, land connection, and shared history. This approach may challenge scholars who adhere to other interpretations of Métis identity, but it offers readers an opportunity to engage with how identity is lived, claimed, and negotiated. 

Ultimately, The Fort McKay Métis Nation: A Community History makes a vital contribution to Métis historiography and to the growing body of scholarship that centers Indigenous voices in historical research. Fortna’s work is respectful, informed, and grounded in his deep connections with the community. In a time when questions of Indigenous rights, land, and sovereignty remain urgent, this book offers both historical grounding and forward-looking insight into the future of Métis political and social movements. Accessible to both scholars and community members, the book’s concise narrative (at 225 pages) ensures its broad appeal, particularly among those interested in Indigenous histories and community-driven scholarship.

Maegan Ellis (She/Her) is a Métis graduate student in the Department of History at the University of Guelph.