I'm going to do the best I can in that regard. First of all, I'm not an expert in that. I can't, really, so things may be said in jest, but I do know this: We have one of the strictest genealogy enrolments in Canada. We have a very strict one. In fact, we went through a new process here recently, a process in which we've identified some who are not of Métis descent and things that were flawed. We're growing, and I'd say this is a new time and era for us.
When I played junior hockey years ago, I used to go to these native tournaments around Canada. I recall guys showing up with a card, and we knew they weren't because they were from my hometown. We knew they were not, but they had a card because the local native team wanted them to play. Again, we're a very competitive people. That was happening back in the day. In some ways it's still happening, and we need to clean that up. We need to know who are nehiyawk, who are the real people.
In B.C. we're doing that. We take that seriously and with pride. We've been in B.C. for a lot of years. My family came to British Columbia because we were still nomadic. We were still running from the Prairies. We were still running from the government in the late 1950s. That's why we came to the little town called Chetwynd and created what's called Moccasin Flats. We were still squatting land. Whenever we saw the government officials, I remember hiding in a tree or behind trees in the bush. Why? Nobody knew, but later I knew why.
When I say there are impacts, we have concerns about who are going to be Métis people. I played hockey the other day with a good friend of mine. He said, “Dean, I'm a capital M, not a small m,” meaning capital Métis to métis. We knew what he meant. He comes from the homeland. He comes from where we come from. We know. You know who you are, and the families know who they are.
The biggest challenge we have in B.C. is that some of them are just starting to come home. A 75-year-old-man named Phil Berlinski thought he was Polish all his life, and he passed. His mother passed many years ago. He had just found out she came from the Red River. We're still finding ourselves, but in the meantime some are trying to distinguish themselves as being Métis, but we know they're not.
We have a way to go in our genealogy. That's why we hired the experts, to make sure the right people are getting through the door.