Metis: Race, Recognition, and the Struggle for Indigenous Peoplehood

Description

Ask any Canadian what “Metis” means, and they will
likely say “mixed race” or “part Indian, part
white.” Canadians consider Metis people mixed in ways that other
indigenous people — First Nations and Inuit — are not, and the census
and the courts have premised their recognition of the Metis on this
race-based understanding.

Chris Andersen argues that Canada got it wrong.
He weaves together
personal anecdotes, critical race theory, and discussions of history
and law to demonstrates that our understanding of “Metis”
— that our very preoccupation with mixedness – is not natural
but stems from more than 150 years of sustained labour on the part of
the state, scholars, and indigenous organizations.
From its roots deep
in the colonial past, the idea of “Metis as mixed” pervaded
the Canadian consciousness through powerful sites of knowledge
production such as the census and courts until it settled in the realm
of common sense.
In the process, “Metis” has become an
ever-widening racial category rather than the identity of an indigenous
people with a shared sense of history and culture centred on the fur
trade.

Andersen asks all Canadians to consider the consequences of adopting
a definition of “Metis” that makes it nearly impossible for
the Metis nation to make political claims as a people.
Chris Andersen is associate professor, associate dean
(research), and director of the Rupertsland Centre for Metis Research
in the Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta.He is also the
current editor of aboriginal policy studies, an online, peer-reviewed
journal dedicated to publishing on Metis, non-status Indian, and urban
Aboriginal issues in Canada and abroad.”