Dani Pierson, M.A.

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my community connections

I was born and raised on Cree, Beaver, and Métis Lands in a town colonially known as Sexsmith, Alberta, near the city of Grande Prairie. I am meaningfully connected to my Métis and Ukrainian communities. 

Both my Métis and settler parents and grandmothers were raised on denedeh (Dene Land), in a town colonially known as Fort Nelson, BC. My dad’s family, my Métis family, understand their Métis-ness and Indigeneity as coming from and emerging through their connection to Old Fort Nelson. This is the place that my Grandma Clara was born, where my Great-Grandmother Fee was a midwife, where the Land and waters cared for my family. Simultaneously, our genealogy explains that prior to Fort Nelson, my Great-Grandmother Fee Gairdner was born in what is now called Fort Simpson, NWT; her mother (Julie Lafferty) and father (Archibald Gairdner) were born in Fort Providence; and like all Métis families, a few generations before these places they came from the Red River in Manitoba. 

Similarly, my Great-Grandfather Angus Harrold came from Spirit River, a tiny town only forty minutes from where I grew up in Sexsmith. It is unclear whether the Harrold family is Métis or mixed Cree-settler. Angus Harrold’s father, Alexander Harrold, has ties to Manitoba and records name his mother, Nancy, as a “Halfbreed.” Angus’s mother, Rosalie Testawich, and her family have been in the South Peace Region (Spirit River, Dunvegan, Sturgeon Lake) for many generations with names that are typically Cree. While my dad’s family understands their Métis community connections as being in Fort Nelson, since my parents’ move to Grande Prairie in the early 1990s, my dad has formed a strong connection to the Lands in the South Peace Region. These are the territories that he hunts on, and that he knows inside and out. While we do not claim these Lands as our “homelands,” our family has significant emotional, spiritual, and familial ties to these Lands.