Although legally an Aboriginal people in Canada only since 1982, Metis were and are, unquestionably, genetically Native to North America.  Most Metis today are descendants of Metis parents and grandparents, some going back literally to the 1600's.  Some even earlier if we suppose Viking contact produced mixed blood offspring. Others are more recent additions to the Metis fold as offspring of current Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal couples who find themselves caught in a history of rejection by both sets of parent cultures. 

I have established, I hope, that being Metis is first of all, a matter of real and current human experience which is being lived today by hundreds of thousands of people between two disparate sets of cultures -- Indian and settler/immigrant.  I hope I have at least laid the groundwork for an understanding that Metis are an indigenous people in a very precarious and often bigoted circumstance when it comes to recognition of that fact. 

 I have spent some time here examining this aspect of the Metis phenomenon because it provides the basis for the next stage of this monologue which is:-

Who can legitimately identify themselves as Metis?

One of the most difficult aspects of dealing with Metis issues is the use, non-use, and misuse  of the term Metis in both historic and current contexts.  That difficulty is compounded when the processes involved when -outsiders- (Note 5>  attempt to DEFINE Metis in contradiction to the internal processes involved in IDENTIFYING as Metis.

Like most of the terms we use in everyday language to describe Aboriginal peoples, -Metis- is not a Native North American word in its origins. Like the words -Indian- and -Eskimo,- Metis is a Euro-related word applied to or imposed on a population who, at first, had no idea it was being used to describe them. Without any possible doubt, we can know that there were no people in North America before 1492 who identified themselves with any of those terms. With varying degrees of uncertainty we can identify the period which the various indigenous populations of North America began to use those terms to describe themselves. <Note 5> Some Inuit and many traditional Indians today are still confused or indignant when they are called -Canadians- by government officials.

This imposition of terminology is multiplied many times over when it comes to mixed blood populations in North America. You can check out a list of three dozen or so terms applied to Metis peoples that I have collected over the years. at  [Link 4] and I'm sure there would literally hundreds more if we included the equivalent term for Metis from the 500+ Aboriginal languages in North America.

Before we get to the trickier part of who is Metis in North America today, I would strongly suggest you run through the questionnaire in the -Are You Metis?- [Link 5] section of this site , even if you are absolutely certain you could not possibly qualify to be --or want to be -- a Metis. Going through the questions and answers will give you a better feel for the kind of variables we are dealing with here.

But, getting back to our primary question -  Who, today, can call themselves Metis?

There are several papers on this site which address those issues in great detail in both historic and current contexts which can be found at: [Link 6] [Link 7]

But for our present purposes we can examine what, if anything, the Canadian Constitution has to say about that.