Connect with the living history and culture of the Métis people of the Southwest Saskatchewan. The Métis have had a presence in the North-West Territories (now called Southwest Saskatchewan) for many years.

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In the buffalo hunting days, our ancestors traveled from the Red River to the plains to hunt buffalo. As the buffalo were disappearing, many Métis travelled to the Cypress Hills to hunt the few remaining buffalo. In the mid-to-late 1800's many Métis began to settle in the southwest - some through Scrip, some through homesteading, and others by squatting on unoccupied land and road allowances.

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The Half-Breed Commission met in Swift Current in 1900, and some of our relatives were given Scrip here. Scrip was a process engineered by the government of the day, to remove Métis from their land, and replace it with land elsewhere or a set amount of money. It is now known that the Scrip process was the biggest land swindle in Canada, and very few Métis retained the land received through Scrip.

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The Prairie Dog Métis are mostly descendants of the people that once roamed free over this land. They were integral to the development of the area, establishing a number of trails like the Battleford trail that runs from northern U.S.A. to Battleford and beyond. These trails were made by the Red River carts, long before the building of roads and highways that are present today.