PUBLISHER’S NOTE, 2022

Rotten to the Core was first published in 1995, yet it remains remarkably relevant today in understanding the political tensions and conflicts related to the Manitoba Métis Federation. Due to demand, the book has been re-released as originally published, but with the bibliographical endnotes updated to incorporate modern technology—such as online urls—that was not available in 1990s.

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By Sheila Jones Morrison

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Rotten to the Core examines the troubled early years of the Manitoba Métis Federation (MMF) from 1967 to 1995. It was the most powerful of the provincial Métis organizations funded by the federal and provincial governments. The people the MMF was supposed to represent feared the organization, yet neither the federal or provincial governments seemed willing to step in to sort out the mess. No one was being held to account.

 

By 1994, the MMF was so embroiled in internal bickering and political dirty tricks that a Manitoba judge, frustrated by the warring sides using the courts to attack each other, finally appointed an external interim board to keep the organization from imploding.

 

Rotten to the Core is the first in-depth examination of how the fact that Indigenous political organizations like the MMF were created by governments—and not by the people they are supposed to represent—is a fundamental weakness that strikes at their very core.

 

Sheilla Jones Morrison is an award-winning Canadian journalist, former newspaper editor and CBC news editor.