Pierre the Falcon

A Red River Métis Fable

High above the prairies there lived a falcon named Pierre, but he was no ordinary bird of prey. His wings were strong and his eyes were sharp but it was not the hunt that moved his heart, it was his song. While other falcons cried only to the sky, Pierre sang to the land below.

He perched anywhere he could find, even on fence posts, and sang of things the world tried to forget: anthems to the brave who stood their ground, laments for lost homesteads swallowed by silence, and reels that made the young ones stomp their feet like proud horses.

The other birds scoffed at first.


“Falcons don’t sing,” muttered the hawk.


“Why waste your time on stories?” clucked the magpie.


But Pierre only shrugged and looked to the sky.


“A voice unused is a feather lost,” he said. “And I was given both.”

As seasons turned and the wind carried his songs farther than wings could fly, the birds and animals began to listen. His melodies weren’t just beautiful, they were rich and purposeful. He sang of pride in old ways, of ancestors whose blood still moved in moccasins and marrow, and of courage not found in conquest, but in remembering.

Soon, Pierre’s name was spoken in nests and dens across the land. Birds who had never known their own stories began chirping his tunes. Young ones looked up, not to chase him, but to follow.

One day, a traveling goose asked, “Pierre, why do you sing so proudly when so many forget?”


And Pierre, with a gleam in his amber eye, replied: “Because the wind will carry truth only if someone dares to lift it. I sing so our kind are not forgotten, not by others and not by ourselves.”

He kept singing until his feathers grayed and his wings grew tired, and even then his voice never faltered. Some songs, when they are born of the land and the heart, do not end. They echo.