Métis

SIGNIFICANCE: The Métis are people of mixed European and North American Indian ancestry. They played a vital but unrecognized role as cultural brokers in the settling and governing of North America. In Canada, they have developed a distinctive way of life and think of themselves as a nation with rights.

In the broadest sense, métis (pronounced mehTEE), with a small m, refers to people of a dual North American Indian and White ancestry. Métis, with a capital M, indicates a distinctive ethnic group with a particular sociocultural heritage or political or legal category. In Canada, Métis usually refers to descendants of Scottish or French fur traders who married Cree or Ojibwa women. The French traders operated along the St. Lawrence River in Acadia (part of New France) and the British in the Hudson Bay region, creating two groups of Métis, those with French ancestry along the Ottawa River and Upper Great Lakes and those of Scottish ancestry in the Hudson Bay region from the Rupert River to Churchill.

French Métis

The French contingent of the Métis is older and more populous than its Scottish counterpart. Initially, French officials supported intermarriage, hoping to forge trading and kinship ties, encourage conversion to Christianity, and populate New France. In the 1600s, Métis families and communities developed from Acadia to Labrador. The union was usually between a French man and a native woman. During this period, Métis were used as interpreters, intermediaries, and distributors of gifts from French officials.

By the eighteenth century, partly because of the increased presence of White women, policy and opinion shifted against mixed marriages, especially those not sanctioned by the church. The official policy of discouraging mixed unions was probably one of several factors that led to the formation of distinct Métis communities in New France. Numerous American and Canadian communities around the Great Lakes originated as biracial communities, namely Detroit and Michilimackinac in Michigan; Sault Sainte Marie in Ontario; Chicago and Peoria in Illinois; Milwaukee, Green Bay, and Prairie du Chien in Wisconsin.

These communities developed a culture of their own, which included an attenuated form of French Catholicism. Family and daily life was largely based on the norms of Indian society. Métis worked as guides, interpreters, voyagers, or suppliers to the forts. The region was rich in game, fish, wild rice, and maple sugar, and the climate and environment were conducive to a slash-and-burn style of farming. In essence, the Métis of French ancestry followed the Indian way of life. An Indian woman was indispensable because in that society, a man lost position and respect if he did any tasks considered women’s work, such as cooking or sewing.

Scottish Métis

The Métis of Scottish ancestry developed quite differently. After the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, Hudson's Bay Company posts were established north of the Great Lakes watershed, the region draining into Hudson Bay. Enclaves of Cree Indians formed around the trading posts, and the Indians became provisioners who were crucial for the survival and success of the company. To consolidate trade and ensure a lasting friendship, the Crees offered women as wives to the Europeans. No White women were at the trading posts, but the Hudson's Bay Company had strict rules prohibiting its employees from marrying Indians. The company believed it necessary to prohibit White-Indian unions because it wanted to maximize security, minimize expenses (such as those incurred by dependents of the employees), and decrease friction with the Indians. Despite the prohibition, unions occurred. By 1810, the company began to take responsibility for educating the progeny of its trading post employees; however, it also discouraged the formation of communities dependent on the trading post by removing from the Hudson Bay region all retired and dismissed employees and encouraging the Indians to disperse to their hunting grounds each winter. Except for a few children who became servants for the company, mixed-race offspring were absorbed by the Crees.

Establishing a Métis Identity

With the British conquest of New France in 1760, a sense of separateness began developing among the Métis. Francophones were relegated to lower ranks, and in the United States, after the Canadian-United States boundary was established in 1794, American White settlers and governments displaced numerous Métis communities in the lower Great Lakes region. These refugees migrated northwest to Manitoba and Minnesota.

In the northwest, the Métis evolved a distinct way of life that was neither Indian nor European but uniquely Métis. When conflict erupted in the region, the North West Company argued that the Métis were defending an identity and interest of their own. The company policy had the side effect of helping the Métis develop a sense of unity. Catholic missionaries encouraged the Métis to maintain their French language and Catholic faith. Group identity was further fostered when a large group of Métis settled at Red River, attracted by the mission of Bishop Joseph Provencher and led by Cuthbert Grant, who was of mixed ancestry. However, it was the buffalo hunt that brought the Métis together. The excitement of hunting buffalo and profits from selling pemmican and buffalo meat were preferred over the dullness and low profitability of agriculture. Hunting for buffalo and working on boat brigades to St. Paul encouraged Métis to remain nomadic.

Decline of the Métis

Change for the Métis came fast when Canada began annexing the northwest. The buffalo hunt was ending, and railroads were replacing boats and carts. An attempt by the Canadian government to survey the Red River without respecting the land held by the Métis resulted in the Riel Rebellion of 1869–70 (also known as the Red River Rebellion). The Métis, led by Louis Riel Jr., set up a provisional government to fight for their collective rights. Negotiations that followed promised a land base for the Métis, but the promises were not kept, and European Canadian settlers and troops who arrived in the area from 1870 on were hostile to the Métis. Although some Métis went south to the United States and others went north, most went west to the Catholic mission near Fort Edmonton. While the government was negotiating treaties with the Indians and land rights with the railroads, the Métis sought clear land titles but were ignored. In frustration, the Saskatchewan Métis took up arms under Riel and Gabriel Dumont in the Second Riel Rebellion of 1885 (also known as the Northwest Rebellion). They were defeated at Batoche, Riel was executed, and the Métis dispersed, particularly to Alberta, weakened politically and cohesively.

From 1885 to the mid-1900s, the Métis were impoverished and demoralized. Some lived on reservations with the Indians, but others did not identify as strongly with this part of their heritage. During this time, they formed some associations, including the Union Nationale Métisse St. Joseph de Manitoba, which collected documents and testimony that led to A. H. de Trémaudan’s Hold High Your Heads: History of the Métis Nation in Western Canada. In addition, new leaders, such as Patrick “Jim” Brady and Malcolm Norris, emerged to build a political base to defend Métis interests. Provincial organizations then developed, and the Métis eventually were successful in obtaining some land for their group and passage of the Métis Population Betterment Act of 1938.

Modern Métis Culture

Of the 451,795 self-identified Métis in Canada in 2011, nearly 85 percent resided in the western provinces or Ontario. However, this may be because the official definition of Métis includes only those who trace their origins to communities west of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, a definition that some have argued excludes many people with a legitimate claim to Métis identity. The Métis have a distinct culture, often combining Indian and Euro-Canadian cultures. For example, “jigging,” a form of Métis dance, combines the reels of Scotland and France with the chicken dance of the Crees. It is generally accompanied by fiddle music and is performed at local and national competitions, community gatherings, and powwows.

The Métis are also known for their floral-patterned beadwork, which combines the beading traditions of their Indigenous ancestors and floral designs that were popular in Europe, and their colorful finger-woven sashes. Both of these art forms are still practiced in the twenty-first century.

The Métis language, Michif, combines English, French, and Cree words and is spoken in addition to English. Most in the settlements retain Indian spiritual beliefs and customs. The Métis continue working to make schools in their region more responsive to their culture.

The economy is dominated by ranching, logging, farming, and energy products. The Métis have developed a mixed plan that combines traditional economic activities with industrial and other commercial ventures. Also, efforts to grant land titles to the Métis began in the mid-1980s.

In 2016, a government-commissioned report on Métis rights suggested that the Canadian government should work with Métis communities in a "nation-to-nation, government-to-government relationship" and create a framework for addressing and negotiating Métis rights and that stable funding should be provided to large Métis organizations, among other things. Many of these things were already in place for other Indigenous Canadian groups. The report was commissioned in the aftermath of a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2013 that the federal government failed to follow through on promises made to the Métis people over 145 years ago concerning land and sovereignty.

Following the report's suggestion, the Métis National Council and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau signed the Canada-Métis Nation Accord in April 2017. The Métis peoples of the Métis Nation of Alberta, Métis Nation of Ontario, and Métis Nation-Saskatchewan signed the country’s first self-government agreements called the Métis-Ottawa Accords in 2019. Between 2016 and 2021, Canada’s Métis population increased by 6 percent to nearly 625,000 individuals.

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