Focuses on the Métis in Canada but also includes some articles and annotated references on the Métis in the United States.

Focuses on the Métis in Canada but also includes some articles and annotated references on the Métis in the United States.

Twelve essays look at Canadian Métis today in terms of history, identity, law, and politics.

In Metis Pioneers, Doris Jeanne MacKinnon compares the survival strategies of two Metis women born during the fur trade—one from the French-speaking free trade tradition and one from the English-speaking Hudson’s Bay Company tradition—who settled in southern Alberta as the Canadian West transitioned to a sedentary agricultural and industrial economy. MacKinnon provides rare insight into their lives, demonstrating the contributions Metis women made to the building of the Prairie West. This is a compelling tale of two women’s acts of quiet resistance in the final days of the British Empire.

The Red River Colony was the Hudson’s Bay Company’s first planned settlement. As a settler-colonial project par excellence, it was designed to undercut Indigenous peoples’ “troublesome” autonomy and curtain the company’s dependency on their labour. In this critical re-evaluation of the history of the Red River Colony, Susan Dianne Brophy upends standard accounts by foregrounding Indigenous producers as a driving force of change. A Legacy of Exploitation challenges the enduring yet misleading fantasy of Canada as a glorious nation of adventurers, showing how autonomy can become distorted as complicity in processes of dispossession.

Métis Rising presents a remarkable cross-section of perspectives to demonstrate that there is no single Métis experience – only a common sense of belonging and a commitment to justice. The contributors to this unique collection, most of whom are Métis themselves, offer accounts ranging from personal reflections on identity to tales of advocacy against poverty and poor housing, and for the recognition of Métis rights. This extraordinary work exemplifies how contemporary Métis identity has been forged into a force to be reckoned with.

From New Peoples to New Nations is a broad historical account of the emergence of the Metis as distinct peoples in North America over the last three hundred years. Examining the cultural, economic, and political strategies through which communities define their boundaries, Gerhard J. Ens and Joe Sawchuk trace the invention and reinvention of Metis identity from the late eighteenth century to the present day. Their work updates, rethinks, and integrates the many disparate aspects of Metis historiography, providing the first comprehensive narrative of Metis identity in more than fifty years. Based on extensive archival materials, interviews, oral histories, ethnographic research, and first-hand working knowledge of Metis political organizations, From New Peoples to New Nations addresses the long and complex history of Metis identity from the Battle of Seven Oaks to today's legal and political debates.