It is a given, in the context of modern sociology, that the culture into which an individual is born strongly affects how that individual experiences him or herself. The relationship between culture and identity is virtually inseparable, and correspondingly, a crisis in identity can be experienced when a given culture is under stress. When a given culture is in some form of major transition, the impact on the identity of members of that culture is often profound. These factors have played and still play a major role in the development of Metis identity. 

In the context of discussion with the Constitutional Review Commission of the NCC in 1991, a description was offered to explain the variety of situations in which Aboriginal people can find themselves. 

1. There are Aboriginal people who live in a "traditional" land-based culture in both a physical and spiritual sense. 

2. There are other Aboriginal people who are, for most purposes, completely assimilated into Euro-Canadian life. 

3. There are still other Aboriginal people who are in transition between those two "states" of being. 

4. Some of these people live their lives in a bi-cultural mode or in a state of dual identity. 

This paradigm is particularly useful when comes to understanding shifts of identity and definition among Métis peoples. It is important to note that in recent years, even Census Canada has recognized this transition phase works in both directions. While some Aboriginal people are assimilating into Euro-Canadian identity, others who seemed to have been assimilated are reclaiming their Aboriginal heritage. 

One of the factors that makes discussion of "Métis-ness" so confusing to observers is the bewildering range of human circumstance that the term seems to cover. Skin and hair colour range from exceptionally dark to virtually fair and blonde. Lifestyles of different Metis range from subsistence hunting and gathering peoples to multi-corporate urban realities. Spiritual orientation ranges from the deeply traditional, through various Christian models, to the urban pagan and the atheistic. 

This diversity is best examined through the Tizya paradigm of a traditional/transitional/assimilation modality. There are Metis individuals and communities who reflect each of these modes. In rural, remote and Northern Canada there are Métis who live a hunting/gathering subsistence kind of lifestyle which virtually matches the historic descriptions of 18th Century Métis lifestyle. These individuals and communities could be described as "traditional" Métis. At the other end of the scale there are completely urbanized populations of Métis who are struggling to reclaim their heritage. In between is a population who are experiencing a fluid, changing, and often bicultural identity process between Indian, Métis and non-Aboriginal cultures. 

In terms of the three basic criteria for Métis identity, the amount of influence culture may have on an individual has little to do with the "amount" of Aboriginal ancestry in an individual. There can be no doubt however, that the mores of any given culture have an enormous effect on whether or not an individual will self-identify as a Métis -- as opposed to identifying as an Indian, or a non-Aboriginal. Culture can have an absolutely determinative impact on the acceptance or rejection of any given individual as being part of a particular Métis community. 

Over a decade of research on Aboriginal issues, it became evident that some areas of Canada have very few "indigenous" Métis, compared to others. Specifically, the coastal areas of Canada, British Columbia, and the Maritimes, had a very low percentage of self-identifying Métis peoples, compared to Ontario or the prairie provinces. It is rare to meet an Iroquois or Haida mixed blood individual who identifies as a Métis. 

One possible explanation springs from the fact that in those societies where the women determine the membership criteria of the community, rules that would exclude their own children are rare, regardless of who the fathers of the children might be. In these cases there would be no motivation to identify as Métis, simply because the children would be raised with the identity of their mothers. In societies where Aboriginal fathers make the rules, or where the patrilineal bias of the Indian Act was applied, there is a tendency to be more protective of their own children, even if the mothers were white. and Membership or participation in the community was more likely to be denied to the children of white fathers. Those same children would often be rejected by white communities as well. As a result, over a number of generations, a population of mixed blood progeny were virtually forced to create their own communities, in order to be relatively free of both white and Indian prejudice. 

Certainly, there were many other factors at play. The further back you look in the history of Aboriginal-White contact, the more likely mixed blood children would be raised in the Indian community. After 1876, the increasingly restrictive clauses of the Indian Act included the children of white women who were married to registered Indians as band members, but excluded the children of Indian women who were married to white men, or to Metis or even to full-blooded Indians who were not registered. 

The Effect of Location 

Another major factor in both the development (or lack of development) of Métis identity, and in how Métis populations were treated, was the effect of the temporal and/or physical location of a given half-breed population. Mixed-blood populations in Acadia and New France were embroiled in a different set of historical circumstances, than were those of Sault Ste. Marie, or Red River. All of those communities fit most of the socio- economic and historical and political identifiers listed above, but only one of them is commonly identified in Canadian history today as a Métis community. The policies of British Crown toward mixed bloods differed from those of the colonial authorities and differed again among the Federal and Provincial governments after Confederation. 

The creation of international, colonial, national, and provincial, and borders, as we shall see in the historical background in this paper, also played a major role in how mixed-blood communities were identified and dealt with in both colonial and modern-day Canada. 

Postscript 

Evidently there are a great many factors that contribute to the existence of a Métis population in Canada. Any simple definition applied to all of that population would only be possible by ignoring or eliminating several of those factors, unless it were specifically designed to include them. Fortunately the application of definitional criteria to an individual is not as difficult as applying those same criteria across the board to all Métis. 

Basically an individual has only to match himself or herself to a few fundamental criteria which were outlined at the beginning of this paper, i.e. Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal ancestry, self-declaration, and community confirmation. In terms of individual identity only the first two would be necessary. Community confirmation only enters the picture when an individual wishes to qualify for a right or benefit which applies to a specific Métis community.