There are three pieces of documentation that the Métis nation put together. First, they voted on what is called the Otipemisiwak Métis Government Constitution, and part of the language of the constitution talks about where the MNA would help the Metis Settlements General Council entrench their lands under the Canadian Constitution. There's language in there that talks about their having exclusive rights to the Métis communities and the members of the MNA.
When it talks about Métis communities and an exclusive representative or a government that talks for all Métis in Alberta, for us, what it is saying is that it includes the Metis Settlements General Council, but we've always been two separate organizations. The Métis Settlements General Council has been around for many decades—nearly a century, actually—and we have governed ourselves ever since, under Alberta legislation. The MNA did kind of stem from the Metis Settlements, and they became an organization in more urban areas—the people who didn't want to be in the communities. I think there is language in their constitution and their self-government agreement that purports to say they represent all Métis in Alberta, and then there's a clause that says they do not affect the Metis Settlements, so, to us, they're kind of pushing and pulling at the same time.