Who are the Métis

Who are the Métis?

(Métis National Council Definition)

The Métis are one of three distinct Aboriginal peoples of Canada, recognized under section 35 in the 1982 Constitution. Fiercely independent, the Métis were instrumental in the development of western Canada.

The Métis people were born from the marriages of Cree, Ojibwa and Saulteaux women, and the French and Scottish fur traders, beginning in the mid-1600s. Scandinavian, Irish and English stock was added to the mix as western Canada was explored.

The word Métis comes from the Latin "miscere", to mix, and was used originally to describe the children of native women and French men. Other terms for these children were Country-born, Black Scots, and Half-breeds.

The Métis quickly became intermediaries between European and Indian cultures, working as guides, interpreters, and provisionary to the new forts and new trading companies. Their villages sprang up from the Great Lakes to the Mackenzie Delta. The Métis Homeland encompasses parts of present-day Ontario, British Columbia, the Northwest Territories, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.

Métis culture was a fusion of French, English and Indian influences that took root and flourished until the late 1800s. The Métis developed a unique language called Michif. Their fiddlers combined jugs and reels into their music. Métis attire included woven sashes, embroidered gun sheaths, deer hide caps, quilled and beaded pipe bags. The Métis developed technologies such as the Red River Cart. Expert hunters, they made formidable soldiers.

They also developed a unique political and legal culture, with strong democratic traditions. The Métis had elected buffalo councils to organize buffalo hunts. By 1816, the Métis had challenged the Hudson Bay Company’s monopoly in the fur trade, and began to develop a national consciousness.

The Métis formed the majority of the population at the Red River Colony. Louis Riel’s provisional government negotiated the entry of Manitoba into Canadian confederation in 1870. But federal promises of land in the Manitoba Act were not fulfilled. After ten years of delay, the government introduced the now-notorious scrip system. These certificates for land or money replaced direct land grants. Speculators who followed the Scrip Commissions snapped up scrip. Aware that the Métis were defrauded of their land, the government ignored the abuse and facilitated the business of the speculators.

The Royal Proclamation of 1763 made the crown responsible for the well being of aboriginal peoples and forbid the dismembering of their lands. But the federal government refused to acknowledge its responsibilities for the Métis, and their political rights as a sovereign people were not recognized.

Impoverished and frustrated, the Métis appealed to Louis Riel once again and in 1885 he led a resistance in North-western Saskatchewan, near the Métis settlements of Duck Lake and Batoche. Despite support from farmers, Blackfoot and Cree, the Canadian army crushed the resistance. Riel and his provisional government were arrested and tried, and Riel was executed in Regina on November 16, 1885.

By the 1930s, associations to lobby for a land base were formed in Saskatchewan and Alberta. In 1936, Alberta government granted 1,280,000 acres of land for Métis Settlements, a precedent that has allowed the contemporary Métis of Alberta to obtain limited control of housing, health, child welfare and legal institutions.

The 1960s saw the emergence of renewed political organizations. During the constitutional talks of 1989, the Métis were recognized as one of the three aboriginal peoples of Canada.

In 1992, Louis Riel was recognized as one of the founders of Confederation by the same government that had called him a demented rebel and hanged him.

Métis National Council

The Métis Yesterday and Today

We as Métis are indeed a distinct people, as we are neither Native nor are we White. We are a nation of people who are a mixture of European and Aboriginal blood. The word Métis literally means, “mixed blood”. We are the offspring of French voyageurs, courier de bois, French, English and Scottish explorers, fur traders, Hudson’s Bay Company employees, and Native women. Most Métis in this area have Cree and Dene roots, but also Anishnabe (Ojibwe and Saulteaux), Iriquois and Blackfoot. Many of our ancestors who came from the Red River settlement with the fur trade took Sioux wives (Assiniboine, Dakota, and Lakota).

Historically we have been recognized as a separate nation since the early days of the Red River settlement, which is now known as Winnipeg. In the early 1800’s several mixed-blood buffalo hunters under the leadership of Cuthbert Grant, a Métis, fought a battle with the Hudson’s Bay Company for hunting rights. This was called the Battle of the Seven Oaks, an area near the White Horse Plains in what is now southern Manitoba. At that time, the various French, English and Scottish Halfbreeds involved defined themselves as Métis. Many of the Métis people in the Wood Buffalo region have roots in that part of western Canada. Since that time the Métis have been recognized as a separate yet integral part of western Canadian society.

The uprisings of 1869-70 in Red River, and the Northwest Rebellion of 1885 at Batoche were struggles for recognition of our rights. After that time our people were imprisoned, executed, dispersed all over western Canada and the US, and for many years marginalized to the edge of mainstream society. The provincial and federal governments did not accept any responsibility for the Métis people in terms of education, medical benefits or basic human rights. Many of our people lost their rights as citizens after the uprising of 1885. Many Métis people received a form of compensation from the federal government called Scrip. This was given in the form of money or land. The vast majority of Métis people of that time were uneducated, spoke little English, and as a result, were soon swindled out of this money and land by unscrupulous speculators. There was no significant land base granted for the Métis in most of western Canada like the reserves for our First Nations cousins. In Alberta, leaders such as Joe Dion, Malcolm Norris and Jim Brady were responsible for acquiring settlements for Métis, which was an agreement with the provincial government, unlike the Federal government treaties signed with Status Indians. In the rest of western Canada, we had no land of our own. Many of our people lived in the bush or on road allowances, subsisting on next to nothing, working at whatever they could find, and often accepting relief from the church and government. The Métis have never signed a treaty with the federal or provincial governments, therefore reserves, medical care, and education were never offered or received.

A popular misconception of the Métis is that we are and have the same rights as First Nations people. This is heard even today all over western Canada and beyond. It has always been a point of contention for Métis people not to be stereotyped as Native people. To say that we are the same as First Nations people is simply not true. Many First Nations people have Métis roots, and many Métis people have roots in First Nations communities. We also have relatives who are Non-Aboriginal. But we are neither. We are Métis.

Today Métis people are taxpayers. We are landowners, farmers, tradespeople, artists, musicians, and professionals such as educators and lawyers. We do not get tax breaks on gas and tobacco. In Alberta and other parts of Canada, we do in principle, have the same rights as First Nations people to hunt, fish, trap and gather. We have fought hard for those rights. However, we do not get a free education and medical benefits from Indian Affairs or our band. We do not have bands. We are not Status Indians and we are not White.

We are Métis.