Louis Riel The Rebel And The Hero

A BIOGRAPHY OF THE CENTRAL FIGURE IN THE TWO METIS UPRISINGS OF EARLY CONFEDERATION, AND THE CONSEQUENCES OF HIS LIFE ON CANADA. (CANADIAN LIVES)

A history of the Canadian prairie provinces from the days of Native-European contact to the 1980s.

The nineteenth-century Métis politician and mystic Louis Riel has emerged as one of the most popular - and elusive - figures in Canadian culture. Since his hanging for treason in 1885, the self-declared David of the New World has been depicted variously as a traitor to Confederation; a French-Canadian and Catholic martyr; a bloodthirsty rebel; a pan-American liberator; a pawn of shadowy white forces; a Prairie political maverick; a First Nations hero; an alienated intellectual; a victim of Western industrial progress; and even a Father of Confederation. Albert Braz synthesizes the available material by and about Riel, including film, sculpture, and cartoons, as well as literature in French and English, and analyzes how an historical figure could be portrayed in such contradictory ways. In light of the fact that most aesthetic representations of Riel bear little resemblance not only to one another but also to their purported model, Braz suggests that they reveal less about Riel than they do about their authors and the society to which they belong. The most comprehensive treatment of the representations of Louis Riel in Canadian literature, The False Traitor will be a seminal work in the study of this popular Canadian figure.

Chester Brown reinvents the comic book medium to create the critically acclaimed historical biography Louis Riel. Brown won the Harvey Awards for best writing and best graphic novel for his compelling, meticulous, and dispassionate retelling of the charismatic, and perhaps insane, nineteenth-century Metis leader's life. Brown coolly documents with dramatic subtlety the violent rebellion on the Canadian prairie led by Riel, an embattled figure in Canadian history, regarded by some as a martyr who died in the name of freedom, while others consider him a treacherous murderer.

Le premier mai 1876 Louis Riel écrivait à Mgr Courget: "Le Saint-Espirt m'a dit: Tu es le Messie de Gloire humaine que la Maison de Jacob s'attendait à trouver dans le Verbe incarné". A la suite de quel cheminement psychologique et sous la pression de quels facteurs sociaux Louis Riel en arriva-t-il à cette convition? Quelle fut l'évolution de cette idéologie messianique et millénariste tout ou long de sa vie? Enfin quel rôle joua cette idéologie dans ses actions politiques entre 1869 et 1885? Utilisant abondamment des sources manuscrites souvent inédites, la présent analyse de sociologie historique entend situer la personne de Riel dans l'historie collective du peuple métis. La description circonstanciée des bouleversements socioéconomiques du peuple métis et l'analyse détaillée des traumatismes psychologiques de Louis Riel se conjuguent pour éclairer d'un jour nouveau cette page controversée de l'histoire canadienne.