ay be accused, not of delays or mistaken Judgment, but of bad faith.22 Canada had no choice but to deal firmly with the rebel leader after restoring Order, but the rest was excusable. Any other errors the government may have committed were honest mistakes, not part of a calculated campaign to destroy the Metis or deprive them of their rights.23 Flanagan interpreted the land claim and survey issues and took the approach that to some extent the Metis were responsible for their land alienation. He believes that bureaucratic bungling, and failure on the part of the Metis and their advisors to understand the land survey system, to be far more to blame for the events of 1885, than any malice on the part of the government.Three authors, three separate views, and although history is supposed to be the facts of our past, it really all depends upon whose point of view the historian is interpreting. All historical writings can be misconstrued, and depending upon whose side you are more sympathetic towards the facts can be interpreted very differently. The three authors all agree on the general facts of the past, but there are a few discerning events that no one author tells in the same shade. To one author Riel was the rebel leader of primitive people and to another he was a sort of early provincial-rights activist executed for leading the Mtis into two confrontations against a struggling new government, and yet to another, he was a misguided visionary with illusions of grandeur in his head. Each author agrees that mistakes were committed by both sides, however, to what extend is displayed in each of their own bias. No doubt for years, decades, maybe even centuries to come, historians will still be debating whether Riel was a hero and a patriot, or as the government claimed, a traitor!...
