Recently we had a project about a Métis man called Louis Riel, his contradicting portrayals and how they have evolved over time. Back then he was viewed him as a madman and a criminal but nowadays he’s portrayed as a prophet and a symbol of Métis liberation. How did this happen? Why did this happen? Why did we learn about Louis Riel? This and many more questions were answered in the project titled Let’s Get Riel.
We started off the project by as I stated previously investigating his portrayals. I personally researched three main ones, a minute long video made by Historica, a statue sculpted by Marcien Lemay and designed by Étienne Gaboury and another statue sculpted by Miguel Joyal. During my research on the Historica video I realized that he was portrayed in a positive light which is far different than what I had seen in my surface research around the time the video was made (1991) as he was usually portrayed as more of an imprisoned lunatic. In the video he is shown to be a Métis hero and is said to have sacrificed himself for his people to get the land that was rightfully theirs back (the Métis), this is shown by quotes such as “but let them remember that I struggled for the Metis” and “We have a right to God’s lands”.
Before going into the statues I didn’t really realize how radical the change was between the portrayal of Louis Riel in different time periods but this was soon to change as the statues were as radical as they come. The first Louis Riel statue was unveiled in 1971 but didn’t show the man you hear of in the Historica video, instead in this portrayal you get a tormented man in terrible condition, which you can see by his scrawny looks, no clothes and darkened eyes. A imprisoned man, which you can see by his being tied behind his back and the structure surrounding him which is almost like a prison to the statue. This statue was extremely controversial because of this portrayal so it was taken down and later replaced by another statue sculpted by Miguel Joyal in 1996. This statue portrays him as a much more put together man, seen by him being fully clothed and holding the Manitoba act which not only shows him as an intellectual but also shows what he managed to do for his people (get some of their land back).
Eventually we got to the final stage of the project, the multi paragraph composition which consisted of three separate paragraphs explaining how the portrayals of Louis Riel had evolved over time and why it all happened and after all this research I believe this whole change actually happened because of the ever changing views on the Métis and how people eventually realized how the Canadian government had wronged them through Métis speaking out and other ways. This all caused the views on the Métis (and Louis Riel) to change as they were simply fighting for what was rightfully theirs and the statues and videos of him were changed as more Métis stories begun to come out and the truth was slowly unveiled. I also believe that this was all shown to show us how the government had wrong the Métis and how drastically the portrayal of Louis Riel and his people had evolved. This paragraph composition also helped me dramatically improve my grammar and writing skills overall as we were given feedback and told to act on it multiple times which led me to find out common grammar mistakes I usually make and ways I could re-write things and new words I could use in the future to improve my vocabulary when it comes to essays.
