Bigotry, however, created a condition, particularly between the 1830s and the 1950s where Aboriginal ancestry became a dark secret hidden at the back of the Canadian family closet.  It is also a major factor in the re-discovery today of Metis heritage by so many thousands who are beginning to realize what is in that family closet and what it means to where they -belong- in Canada.

It is clear that the Metis experience is extremely variable in different historical periods and in different times and places in North America. Some Metis populations and communities were formed as a result of rejection by both Indian and settler communities. Others were formed as result of a deliberate and self-conscious attempt to be free from the inherent limitations or confines of either or both of the parent cultures. And in some situations (Native matriarchal cultures for example) Metis cultures rarely developed at all. But the Metis experience does have some very deeply rooted commonalities.

The first commonality, obviously, is that (nearly) all Metis have Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal ancestry -- white adoptees and spouses excepted. Which is not to say that all people who have Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal ancestry are Metis, but weÌll get to that later.

The second commonality is that Metis exist between two sets of cultures -- many different Indian cultures and many different non-Aboriginal cultures. In the context of the human experience of being Metis, there is no question but that we are, as some writers have put it, the people in between. That experience can manifest itself very differently for different Metis in varying times in history and in various places in North America. <Note 3>

I have often referred to Metis as a living bridge between the two sets of cultures and I particularly like the concept of Metis as being living treaties between the many indigenous and various immigrant/settler populations on this continent.

The third, and less obvious to some,. commonality springs from the fact that being Metis is, fundamentally, an INDIGENOUS experience -- as opposed to being an IMMIGRANT experience. <Note 4>   Oddly enough, in the literally millions of pages of data I have been exposed to over the last 36 years, and in the thousands of meetings of Aboriginal peoples I have attended, this simple and crucial fact, except for a few self-conscious off-colour jokes, is almost completely ignored. 

Whatever terms may have been historically applied to mixed blood populations, one thing was certain -- they were and are  a -Native- population in the most profound sense of the word. The fact that some were absorbed into their motherÌs -Indian-milieu, while others assimilated into -White- settler society, and still others formed distinct mixed-blood communities were variations dictated by specific circumstance.  The variations in adaptation to those circumstances cannot change the simple fact that they were, and their descendants are, all the product of and native to North America -- no matter by what name they were labelled. 

Metis individuals and communities often associate themselves with the indigenous resources of their respective areas.. The fur trade is the most obvious and familiar historic example. Because of their familiarity with the country, transportation (voyageur) was another focus of historic Metis activity. Hunting trapping and guiding are economic activities which are still a primary source of employment and subsistence for many Metis today.  Of necessity Metis -- having often been denied the resources of both the Indian and colonial worlds -- had to become entrepreneurs in the no-manÌs land between the two sets of cultures.

The middleman role of Metis in all of these kinds of activities has often been highlighted by historians. Less emphasized but no less significant was the middleman function of Metis in the context of treaty-making, negotiating and diplomacy between White and Indian populations and which are still Metis functions today in the context of modern Aboriginal organizations.

Certainly in most of Canada, and even in much of the United States, the result of all of this activity was the creation of communities on the -frontier- that were definitely not Indian in either appearance or culture, and most definitely were not white colonial communities. I have a growing list of over 1200 of these communities, many of which eventually grew into today's Canadian and American towns and cities from the Arctic Circle to the Gulf of Mexico. In this sense the Metis were often -- and often unintentionally -- the founders of a frontier culture that was to mature into the modern societies we live in today. Unfortunately, credit for this development is most often assigned by non-Native historians to the first whiteman who stumbled into to these communities, sometimes decades and generations after they were founded by Metis families.