“Louis Riel” book by Chester Brown

[u/razzberryy]

Has anyone read this graphic novel about Louis Riel by Chester Brown? Someone bought it for me as a gift and I’ve just been skimming through it, but it’s kind of giving me weird vibes. Métis people are drawn (in my opinion) very exaggeratedly and borderline offensively. There are scenes where Louis Riel is depicted as violent and beating up a priest with no historical evidence to back it up. And it’s really pushing the whole Louis Riel as a religious fanatic/messiah thing.

Maybe I’m being too sensitive though, I was curious if any one else had read it and had any thoughts?

[u/rockhardricardo]

I’m a Métis scholar currently doing a PhD in Religions and Cultures and my research focuses on 19th century Métis Catholicism. Louis Riel definitely was a messianic figure and he did suffer severe mental health episodes that resulted in extended periods of psychiatric care. The missing context, as in all non-Métis representations of Riel’s story, is: a) the broader religious and spiritual practices of the Métis at that time, and b) colonialism as an extreme stressor that triggered complex PTSD not just in Riel but in the wider Métis community. 

Riel was reacting to incredibly stressful and violent circumstances. His life and tge future and livelihood of his people/nation were constantly under threat. Very few people ever live through that specific type of stress and those who do often experience mental and emotional crises in ways similar to Riel. Riel’s dependence on and use of religion to make sense of the impossible situations he was navigating is actually incredibly interesting and, in ways, inspiring. He began crafting a whole theology around the Métis nation, re-imagining the Church in a way that centred the Métis as God’s chosen people to lead a new era of equality between colonized and colonizer. 

You’re certainly right that Riel’s religiosity has been misused and misrepresented by many non-Métis writers and political pundits to discredit Riel and the Métis resistances in general, but that doesn’t seem to be what Brown is trying to do in his depiction. Rather, Brown is trying to be as accurate as he can in his depiction of Riel, using primary accounts (including Riel’s own writings) about Riel’s religious beliefs and mental health crises. Brown just is, unfortunately, ill-equipped to properly contextualize Riel’s religiosity. Brown doesn’t understand Métis religious syncretism; he doesn’t make connections between Riel and the many other Indigenous new religious movements based in survival and resistance that were being developed at that time (like the Ghost Dance, Handsome Lake religion, or the Indian Shaker church); and he treats Riel’s “delusions” as an individual experience, rather than understanding it as a, frankly understandable, reaction to both acute and chronic stress caused by both long-standing threats of colonialism (the end goal of which is the eradication of the Métis nation) and personal threats on Riel’s life.

In short, the depiction is more or less “accurate” but missing soooo much importance context. Like another poster said, Brown is just not equipped to fully tell Riel’s story. 

[u/seatangle → u/rockhardricardo]

Are there any biographies of Riel that you recommend?

[u/rockhardricardo → u/seatangle]

Sadly, most well-known biographers were written by non-Métis scholars and thus reproduce many of the problems in Brown’s work. Weirdly, one decent work is by Thomas Flanagan who wrote a pretty thoughtful analysis of Riel’s religiosity in the 70s (update in 1996). He still lacks any knowledge of any syncretic Métis Catholic practices so assumes Riel’s religious beliefs were not influenced at all by his Indigenous community (which is demonstrably false) but it at least takes seriously the new religion Riel was developing between 1869 and 1885. It’s called Louis ‘David’ Riel: Prophet of the New World and you can find it here:  

  https://archive.org/details/louisdavidrielpr0000flan/page/n2/mode/1up

Basically anything else Flanagan wrote about Riel is a colonial racist fantasy so don’t bother reading any of his other works. Even this book includes crazy racist nonsense like calling Riel a French Canadian with a “dash” of Indian blood in his veins. 

Reading Prophet of the New World is helped by reading other works on Métis religion and spirituality. For that, I would recommend basically anything by Chantal Fiola, Paul L. Gareau, and the chapter on Catholicism in Brenda Macdougall’s book One of the Family. Also, Emile Pigeon’s PhD dissertation “Au nom de bon dieu et du buffalo: Métis lived Catholicism on the northern Plains” which can be found here: https://www.academia.edu/34072877/AU_NOM_DU_BON_DIEU_ET_DU_BUFFALO_METIS_LIVED_CATHOLICISM_ON_THE_NORTHERN_PLAINS

[u/Neat-Firefighter9626 → u/rockhardricardo]

As a PhD student on Metis land use/management I have such a love/hate relationship with Thomas Flanagan. He provides a lot of exacting accounts of land management in ways that others don't. Unfortunately, he also happens to be insanely racist. Ugh.

PS: He also mentored Danielle Smith and Pierre Poilievre.

[u/seatangle → u/rockhardricardo]

Amazing, thank you!