I, myself, am a question which is addressed to the world, and I must communicate my answer, for otherwise I am dependent on the world's answer."C.G. Jung
I have used the above quote in many circumstances because it is so obviously applicable to Aboriginal people in general and to the "Other" Metis in particular. In my 20-odd years of research into Metis issues I have collected literally dozens of terms that were applied to mixed blood North American populations. Oddly enough it was some years before it occurred to me to question whether or not the people to the whom the terms were being applied actually used or applied the term to themselves. In most cases, it seems they did NOT apply those terms to themselves-- not at first.
It is important to understand that, usually, mixed blood children were an embarrassment -- not necessarily to the parents -- but to the community, white or Indian, in which the family lived. Even then, children are better tolerated than the adults they eventually become. As adults, particularly where they were numerically significant, mixed bloods were a "problem" to both parent cultures.
Were they "Indian?" Obviously not, since one parent was white. Were they white? Obviously not, since one parent was Indian. What then, are these people to be called? The following list of terms is a partial answer -- in fact a multiple answer-- to that question.
In almost every case, the terms originate with writers, -- very often missionary priests or colonial bureaucrats,-- who are struggling to find an inoffensive or politically correct way to communicate to their superiors that a mixed blood population exists and, in some cases, are becoming extremely significant in colonial affairs. In circumstances where racism. bigotry and a puritan horror of miscegenation were prevalent, this could be a considerable challenge.
In other cases some terms were used to deliberately belittle a segment of the population that was becoming troublesome because of their lack of co-operation with colonial or missionary officials. It is not clear whether the writers concerned literally invented these terms, or picked them up from local references. An admittedly limited survey of the materials available to me present an inescapable probability that the mixed blood population being labeled by the terms, did not, initially, use those terms to describe themselves.
I hope, in a later article, to link the significance of the multiplicity
of these historical terms to a very modern issue -- the question of who
is eligible to identify as a Metis person within the meaning of Section
35 of the Constitution Act, 1982. For the time being, however, I simply
presenting the list for the consideration of those who, like me, are inexplicably
interested in such things.
