Free People - Li Gens Libres

Revised and expanded to include fresh research, a discussion of recent interpretive trends, and a review of new literature since the publication of the first edition in 1990, The Free People - Li Gens Libres: A History of the M, is a comprehensive history of the M tis community and national historic site of Batoche, Saskatchewan. Diane Payment has a long personal association with Batoche; her study is the culmination of thirty years of documentary and field research as a participant-observer within the community. Her inquiry draws on a range of dictated and written historical sources, both M tis and non-M tis, as well as more recent oral history narratives and personal observations. The Free People is one of the few studies on M tis communities in western and northern Canada. Payment's approach demonstrates that any understanding of M tis culture cannot be based on European or Euro-Canadian historical models, but on its own values and traditions. She argues that Batoche has persisted as a community despite conflict, crisis, and prejudice from immigrant ethnic groups and institutions such as the Canadian government and the Roman Catholic Church, succeeding in maintaining its uniquely M tis identity.