<h1 class="title">Métis history may help indigenous people in Japan</h1>


                        <h3 class="author">             

                                                                                                        By
                                                Konnie LeMay, Today correspondent<br>
                        </h3>
                
        <div class="storyinfo">
                
<p><span>Story Published:
                        Oct 14, 2009
        </span>
</p>



        <p><span class="moddate">Story Updated:
                        Oct 9, 2009
                </span>
        </p>
</div>
 
           




        <div class="storybody">
                 
        
                                        
                                                                        
                                        <p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">REGINA, Saskatchewan – Dr. Shunwa Honda of the <a href="http://www.u-air.ac.jp/eng/index.html" target="_blank">Open University of Japan</a> is on a mission to help win government legal recognition of indigenous status for the Ainu people.<br>

<br>
To that end, he is heading a 10-member team on a four-year research
project funded by the Japanese Ministry of Education to study
relationships with indigenous and aboriginal people around the world,
but primarily in Canada.<br>
<br>
He recently stayed at the <a href="http://www.firstnationsuniversity.ca/" target="_blank">First Nations University of Canada</a>, working through the <a href="http://www.tpu.ru/eng/ciap.htm" target="_blank">Centre for International Academic Exchange</a>
to meet leaders of the Métis Nation and to research the political,
social and cultural development of the Métis people in Saskatchewan.<br>
<br>
“I wanted to learn through the Métis experience of how they became
acknowledged by the government in 1982 as an aboriginal people.”<br>
<br>
Some situations of Métis and the Ainu (pronounced I-new) are similar.<br>
<br>
The Ainu (the word means “human” in the Ainu language) are a people
indigenous primarily to Hokkaido, the northern most of Japan’s four
main islands, and the Kuril islands. They are culturally, physically
and linguistically different from the Japanese people of the southern
islands. As the Japanese people moved north taking control among the
islands, the Ainu fought back, but were unsuccessful.<br>
<br>
Eventually, many Ainu people intermarried with the Japanese and even
today, many don’t acknowledge their Ainu heritage, blending into the
dominant culture to avoid discrimination.</span></span></p><p><br><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">For the rest of the article:</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"></span></span><a href="http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/global/canada/63874022.html">http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/global/canada/63874022.html</a><br>
</p></div>