organization. For example, for membership in the Métis Nation of Alberta (MNA), an applicant must provide a documented genealogy and family tree dating to the mid-1800s, proving descent from one or more members of historic Métis groups. Cultural definitions Cultural definitions of Métis identity inform legal and political ones. The 1996 Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples stated: Traditional markers of Métis culture include use of Aboriginal-European languages, such as Michif (French-Cree-Dene) and Bungi (Cree-Ojibwa-English); distinctive clothing, such as the arrowed sash (ceinture flêchée); a rich repertoire of fiddle music, jigs and square dances, and practising a traditional economy based on hunting, trapping, and gathering. However, these cultural markers do not exclude Métis that do not partake in them. Canadian history During the height of the North American fur trade in New France from 1650 onward, many French and British fur traders married First Nations and Inuit women, mainly Cree, Ojibwa or Saulteaux located in the Great Lakes area and later into the north west. The majority of these fur traders were French and Scottish; the French majority were Catholic. These marriages are commonly referred to as marriage à la façon du pays or marriage according to the "custom of the country." At first, the Hudson's Bay Company officially forbade these relationships. However, many Indigenous peoples actively encouraged them, because they drew fur traders into Indigenous kinship circles, creating social ties that supported the economic relationships developing between them and Europeans. When Indigenous women married European men, they introduced them to their people and their culture, taught them about the land and its resources, and worked alongside them. Indigenous women paddled and steered canoes, made moccasins out of moose skin, netted webbing for snowshoes, skinned animals and dried their meat for pemmican, split and dried fish, snared rabbits and partridges, and helped to manufacture birchbark canoes. Intermarriage made the fur trade more successful. The children of these marriages were often introduced to Catholicism, but grew up in primarily First Nations societies. They were thought of as the familial bond between the Europeans and First Nations and Inuit of North America. As adults, the men often worked as fur-trade company interpreters, as well as fur trappers in their turn. Many of the first generations of Métis lived within the First Nations societies of their wives and children, but also started to marry Métis women. By the early 19th century,