Hardisty Family

Joe Lougheed

[0:00 – 1:36]

Growing up we always knew of our Métis heritage. There was a prominent photo of my great great grandmother always in our house and we always knew about it. I’m very proud of my ancestry and role they have played. My great grandmother’s uncle, Richard Hardisty and the role he played, and my great great grandfather in basically the settling of Canada. I would have to say it’s been over the last 5 or 10 years that I’ve been much more vocal about the past and that I am of Métis heritage. We can clearly and demonstrably trace our heritage back to a very prominent Métis family where multiple wings of the family were very much involved in the fur trade. My great grandmother, even in this house, she brought the Métis culture into the house and she was known to occasionally do the Métis jig. And these were stories that were passed down. The fur traders came largely from Scotland and England; that is fairly well documented. But the Indigenous families that they married into that’s what’s fascinating, and where were they really from? That whole history of the north, our family’s connection to the north, is in itself deep. The first person of Indigenous ancestry to serve in the Canadian parliament was Richard Hardisty. And that would have been a very historically significant event.

Lawrence Gervais

[1:37 – 1:54]

Hardisty is very very important to us because that is a significant name not only here but also in the Red River too. The Métis Nation, we look to that.