Reflecting on his evolving identity as a human being, a Canadian and a 
M???tis westerner, Herb Belcourt tells the remarkable story of one 
familys enduring connection to the dramatic history of western Canada. 
Belcourt traces his ancestry directly to an early French-Canadian 
voyageur and his Cree-M???tis wife who lived in Ruperts Land after 1800.
 The eldest of ten children, Belcourt grew up in a small log home near 
Lac Ste. Anne during the Depression. His father purchased furs from 
local First Nations and M???tis trappers and, with arduous work, began a
 family fur trading business that survives to this day. When Belcourt 
left home at 15 to become a labourer in coal mines and sawmills, his 
father told him to save his money so he could work for himself. Over the
 next three decades, Belcourt began a number of small Alberta businesses
 that prospered and eventually enabled him to make significant 
contributions to the M???tis community in Alberta. Belcourt has devoted 
over 30 years of his life to improving access to affordable housing and 
further education for aboriginal Albertans. In 1971, he co-founded 
Canative Housing Corporation, a non-profit agency charged with providing
 homes for urban aboriginal people who confronted housing discrimination
 in Edmonton and Calgary. In 2004, Belcourt and his colleagues 
established the Belcourt Brosseau M???tis Awards Fund, a $13-million 
endowment with a mandate to support the educational dreams of M???tis 
youth and mature students in Alberta and to make a permanent difference 
in the lives of M???tis Albertans. Awarded an honourary doctorate of 
laws by the University of Alberta in 2001, Belcourt is also the 2006 
recipient of a National Aboriginal Achievement Award for Housing. In 
this memoir, Walking In the Woods , he describes Albertas opportunities 
with admiration while speaking bluntly about the loss of aboriginal and 
M???tis land in western Canada, and about the difficult consequences of 
generations of interracial misunderstanding in the West. Addressed to 
young M???tis, and to all Canadians, he speaks with compelling candour 
about his love for this country, and his concerns about its future

Walking in the Woods: A Metis Journey PDF

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