Analyzing Métis's Short Story 'Joseph Justice'

Métis are descendant of half Natives and Europeans, most of them are half Cree and French, which they defines themselves as their own group. Their looks are different from the Aboriginals, they look like one of Europeans, but inside that body, they have their own culture and language. In the past, many Métis felt left out because Aboriginals and Europeans did not consider them as their own kind. Once they created their own culture, they felt proud of their heritage and language. The short story “Joseph Justice” is about a Métis man try to justify his stolen belonging of beaver pelts, guns by going court battle after court battle to get his stuff. In the “Joseph Justice” , author uses many writing techniques such as diction, figure of speech,

The last line of first paragraph explained how the writer use sentence structure to form tone that would reflect Métis voice. Tone is reflected by diction, and without it would be like body without bone. He used words that consider as slangs and shortcut words that most Native American use and pronounce. Such as “hisself” (pg. 93) for “himself”, “an” (101) for “and”, “dah” (pg. 101) for “the”, “hees” (pg. 107) for “his” and so on. These word made Métis voice of determination, strength, pride, stubborn, respect more convincing to readers and accept as their identity. One of quote example is when we read about “You know dah big fight at Batoche? Dah one we fight with Anglais?” (pg. 92), this show also shows how pride they are having big fight at the Batoche. Writer also used the word “Anglais” (pg. 92), which makes majority Canadian readers immediately understand that it is a French word for “English”. As for the Métis, this is most important, their language which they calls it “Mitchif” was originated from French and Cree. This was made when the Métis mixed French and Cree language together. Another addition example would be “he ssen him to Angleterre to get hees edjication” (pg. 106), when it talk about “Jimmy” or James