MNO at forefront in Guatemala

    OTTAWA, Feb. 22 /CNW Telbec/ - Métis Nation of Ontario President, Tony
Belcourt will be leaving for Guatemala this weekend to visit Mayan communities
to discuss fundraising for schools in isolated villages. He will attend a
meeting with Indigenous people from throughout the Americas to discuss use and
access to technology for health, education, governance and commerce. And he
will work on plans for purchasing textiles from Mayan women to feed their
children. These are activities that are bringing the MNO and its people to the
forefront in Guatemala in the coming weeks and months. Next week he will be
joined by Métis National Council President, Clément Chartier and National
Congress of American Indians President, Joe Garcia.
    President Belcourt and his partner, Danielle, have been making private
visits annually to Guatemala for years. They've struck up a friendship with
many people there and have been helping to fund a better education and family
life for a young girl and her mother. They have also learned a great deal
about the struggles of the Q'eqchi Maya in the Alta Verapaz Region where
people are living in conditions identical to the feudal system of the middle
ages. Many citizens of the Métis Nation have heard about these struggles over
the years and have responded, in the past, to calls for assistance in the
aftermath of Hurricane Mitch and the mud-slides following Hurricane Stan. MNO
Registrar Karole Dumont Beckett has championed a new fundraising campaign to
assist in the building of schools in isolated villages and to assist children
to be able to attend schools.
    For further information on the visits to Guatemala, and more details on
the issues at hand, please visit the International News section of the MNO
website at www.metisnation.org

    The Métis are a distinct Aboriginal people with a unique culture,
language and heritage, and with an ancestral Homeland that centres around
Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, parts of the
Northwest Territories, as well as the northwestern United States. The Métis
played an instrumental role in the shaping of Canada, and work tirelessly to
share their culture, music, traditions and knowledge of the environment with
their fellow Canadians. Today, the Métis live, work, raise their families and
pay taxes in communities all across Canada.

For further information: Avery Hargreaves, Communications Assistant,
Work: [phone], Ext. 108 Cell: [phone], [e-mail]