Metis Identity - A Source of Rights?
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Metis Identity - A Source of Rights? |
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Metis Identity and Metis definition - mutually exclusive concepts?
As you might expect by now, I have a kind of renegade attitude toward dealing with what most people think of as conventional and straightforward issues. After all, what could be simpler than choosing a set of terms, establishing their parameters, including the people who match them and excluding those who don't. There are many government agencies and even some Métis organizations who are trying to do exactly that.
The trouble is, in reality, and from a human process point of view, it doesn't work -- unless your goal is to delimit the significance of Métis peoples. I suspect that the processes involved in developing and establishing Métis identity and those involved in the definition of Métis are mutually exclusive, or at least contradictory in many critical aspects, and they are very likely mutually destructive. I suggest that one of the major difficulties in resolving these issues is that most analysts have ignored a crucial distinction necessary to a functional understanding of the relationship between Métis identity and Métis definition.
I think it was Buckminster Fuller who said "I seem to be a verb." I want to explore that possibility in relation to Métis. What happens to our thinking processes about Métis if we begin to think of Métis, not as a noun, but as a verb? When we address the phenomena of the appearance of Métis peoples and populations we are addressing a very complex human process which simply defies objectification as a distinct and definable "thing". Perhaps if we concentrate on the "process" of becoming Métis, the process of metissage - the intermixing of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples everywhere in Canada - we can identify some useful elements to assist in our struggle to understand the modern fact and function of Métis rights in Canada.
I would ask you to keep this thought in the back of your mind until the next part of my presentation which deals with the emergence of a variety of Métis populations. Meanwhile, it cannot be denied that if there is one over-riding issue in the dialogue between Métis people and other Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people, it is the issue of Métis identity and how, or if, or by whom, the term Métis is to be used and/or defined.
In terms of our work here this weekend, however, I think it would be valuable to carefully distinguish between the process of "being and becoming" Métis -- the process of identity building -- and the exercise of "naming" Métis which is a semantic process of definition, of establishing terminology. From my point of view, if we make the mistake of replacing the human process of identification with the academic or legal process of definition, we run a serious risk of demeaning and diminishing the real significance of Métis reality in Canada.
As much as I would like to, I cannot entirely sidestep the semantic issues involved in Métis terminology. Terminology has had and does have a frequent and often unfortunate impact on the reality experienced by Métis peoples. Some of the legal and academic semantic aspects of the issue have been exhaustively explored over the years and no doubt will be addressed by others at this conference. But it is relatively rare to find an examination or analysis of a nation wide and historically comprehensive framework of the human interaction in which terminology related to Métis functions.
There is no question that terminology can create an emotional minefield with hair-trigger sensitivity when terms like identity, membership, citizenship, nationality, and beneficiary are carelessly mixed together. This issue is further complicated when the factors of identity and factors related to definition are confused with each other. I hope, by examining these factors separately, it may be possible to trace a critical path to a workable solution to the issues raised by Métis identity, Métis definition, and the exercise of Metis rights.
Even though we seem, in this conference, to be dealing with a single term --the term "Métis"-- there is a multiplicity of terminology that is historically associated with what I would, today call Métis populations. In fact, my collection of those terms has resulted in a list of 36 names that have been applied to mixed blood peoples.
To my own embarrassment, 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 almost certain they did not originate most of those terms. It is absolutely certain they did not originate the term "Métis."
It is important to understand that mixed blood children were, usually, an embarrassment -- not necessarily to the parents -- but to the original community, white or Indian, in which the family lived. Even then, mixed blood children are better tolerated than the adults they eventually become. As adults, particularly where they were numerically significant, mixed bloods were often 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. If both parents were mixed blood, what then? What are these people to be called?
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, were 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.
The following list of terms is a partial answer -- in fact a multiple answer-- to that question.
Acadian (Early colonial writers)
Anglais (Halfbreeds raised by English in French environment)
Apitow Coosan (Half a person or half-son)
Bembenyiik (Used in Quebec)
Boschlopers (New York Dutch - wood runners)
Brule and Bois Brule (Often translated as Burnt Wood - i.e. skin colour)
Canadien, Canayen (Montreal based often 1/4 blood)
Chicot
Country-born (as distinct from settlement-born
Coureur de Bois (1649-50 in St. Lawrence Fur Trade)
Creole (the Metis of Green Bay)
Englishman (HBC term for mixed bloods raised by whites)
Freemen or Gens de libre (Plains hunters or Fur Traders at Mackinac)
Jocot
Habitant (to distinguish permanent settlers/farmers)
Half-caste, Halfbreed, Breed (in American publications in 1775 1791)
Home Guard Cree, Home Indian (HBC for mixed bloods raised as Indians)
Huskies (Inuit-White mixed)
Livyers (Describes permanent mixed blood Labrador population)
Labradorian (To distinguish between immigrants or Newfoundlanders)
Malouidit (People who speak badly)
Métis (First used in New Brunswick & Quebec)
Métis Ecossais (Applied to Scotch/Indian mix in French environment)
Mixed Bloods (Used primarily by academics to use of Halfbreed term)
Mustee (Black & Indian mix)
Muktum (Applied to mixed bloods in modern-day New Brunswick)
Native (Preferred term by some Red River residents in 1850's)
Non-Status Indian (Used by Aboriginal representative organizations)
Ootip ayim sowak (The People Nobody Owns)
Pedlars (Term applied to Norwester Breeds)
Pork Eaters (Referring to fur trade staple of salted pork)
Promyshlennki (Russian)
Rupertslander (Permanent halfbreed population of HBC territory)
Scots (Halbreeds raised in predominantly Scotch population
Voyageurs (2,431 licensed in 1777 around Great Lakes)
Wissakodewinmi (Ojibway for burnt-sticks - translated as "Bois Brule" by the French colonists.
Every book or article related to Métis, as a term for Aboriginal people, will say that the word Métis means "mixed." The books will also say that it was applied to people born of mixed Indian and White, usually French, blood. That is only partly true, and is dependent on time and place --but even at that it does not go far enough to give any real understanding of even the basic hereditary background of modern Métis peoples.
Most Métis people today are not so much the direct result of Indian and White intermixing any more than English Canadians today are the direct result of intermixing of Saxons and Romans. Most Métis today are the direct result of Métis intermarrying with Métis, or Métis with Whites, or Métis with Indians, or with Inuit, or with Blacks, or with Orientals. Most Métis today are born of one of more parents who are Métis.
We must also remind ourselves that neither the term "Indian" or the term "Métis" originated from within the "Native" populations that those terms are applied to today, "Indian" is no more definitive, or even descriptive of an indigenous population in North America than is the term "Métis." There were no "Indians" in North America before 1492. Certainly there were Hopi, and Déne and Haudenoshonee, but there was no population who referred to themselves as Indians. It was an externally imposed terminology using externally imposed definitions. In a parallel context, the same can be said of the term "Métis."
It is clear that the term "Métis," itself, was used outside the Red River area long before it became commonly used in the west. I am not aware of any research which has determined if the populations of the areas where the term has been used historically , actually initiated the use of the term to describe themselves.
An early printed reference to the term is on a map of the St. Johnís River in New Brunswick in 1778 as Ile de Mettise (sic). It is not known if the population of that Island actually applied the term to themselves. A river near Mont-Joli has been named La Riviére Mitis (sic) since the early 1800s. Where that river meets the St. Lawrence is a community named Mitis.(sic)
Most writers apply the term "Métis" to Red River people, but few, if any, have examined precisely when and how the people indigenous to Red River used or applied the term to themselves. If anyone here has that information I would be delighted to hear it. Determination is made more difficult by the fact English documents most often use the term "Halfbreed" while French translations of those same documents use the word "Métis." The word "Metis" does not appear in the English versions of the Manitoba and Dominion Lands Acts, but the word "Halfbreed" does.
As leader of the expedition from Upper Canada to Red River in 1857, George Gladman, himself a mixed-blood born in Red River (and my great-great- grandfather) referred often in his reports to "Indians" and to "natives of the country" but did not use the terms "Métis" or "Halfbreed." Henry Youle Hind, in his separate reports on the same expedition makes derogatory references to "Indians" and to "Halfbreeds" - inlcuding my great-great grandfather.
No one seems to have noticed that those in Red River who drafted the Declaration of the People of Rupert's Land and the Provisional Government's List of Rights did not used the word "Métis" to describe themselves in the document. In fact the only terminology used is that of "uncivilized and unsettled Indians," "male native citizens," and "foreigners being a British subject."
There is no question that Riel, who, it must be remembered, was educated in Montreal, uses the term "metisse" in his poetry in 1870 and an 1885 article written by him and published in The Globe shortly after his death contains the often-published quote, "..should we not be proud to say, "We are Métis?"
The point is, the external application of terminology does not guarantee that the term accurately communicates the expression of an internal identity. Conversely, a community may well have parallel or even identical identity building process and use a very different term to express that identity. When a particular term is used by a given community (such as the Métis constituency of the NCC in 1982), an external --or even constitutional-- use of that term cannot legitimately be restricted later to only a sub-group of that population. If, for example, this restrictive principle were applied to the term "Canadian," then it would apply only to the descendants of those Huron Halfbreeds outside Quebec City who were the first people, in 1632, to be called "Canadien."
Clearly an examination of terminology can only take us so far. I suggest that, once we have a basic understanding of the application and limitations of terminology as it applies to Métis, it is far more important to shift our perspective to examine the human phenomenon that gave rise to the term, whoever was using it and for whatever purposes. It is now necessary to examine a number of factors as they effect the context in which Métis identity is formulated. These include effects generated by cultural, socio-economic, historical and political circumstances.
Even within the context of metissage, there are cultural circumstances which seem to foster Métis identity and other cultural circumstances in which Métis identity does not seem to develop at all. Historical factors must be taken into account, particularly where the popular history of a particular era or area masks, ignores, obscures, or mis-represents the existence of a Métis population. Métis populations were perceived (and perceived themselves) differently in different periods and locations in Canadian history.
Finally, there are the effects of other
factors that are often ignored or avoided. The creation of borders, for
example, has a marked impact on the way in which Métis populations
were treated. In the modern area legal and academic theory has had a major
impact on both public and official perception of how and where Métis
people fit in the emerging negotiations between Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal
Canadians.
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