“Everywhere white supremacy surrounded me. Even in solitary silence I felt the word ‘savage’ deep in my soul.” [1]
In their book entitled From New Peoples to New Nations: Aspects of Métis History and Identity from the Eighteenth to the Twenty-First Century, Gerhard Ens and Joe Sawchuk provide a comprehensive trajectory in the field of Métis studies covering debates related to nationalism, ethnicity, and identity. Covering a period of three hundred years, the book highlights sociopolitical, cultural, and economic realities which marked the emergence of the Métis as distinct peoples in North America.
The word Métis, historically, describes the descendants of the marriage à la façon du pays that, uniting French-Canadian men and Cree or Ojibway women, contributed to the economic prosperity of the fur trade as it advanced westward. This factor is obviously related to the significant role played by aboriginal women in their interaction with early fur traders. The traders who “married” aboriginal women à la mode du pays exploited the latter socially, culturally, politically, economically, and sexually. The aboriginal women were the means by which the fur traders were able to sustain themselves in unknown and hazardous climates and regions. Native women played multifarious roles for the upkeep of these white men. They acted as unpaid guides, translators, and intermediaries in trade negotiations. They also helped procure food and drink for these traders and offered them physical and mental comfort. Across dangerous terrain and during long journeys, these women also worked as “carriers” of these men by taking them on their backs. These women gave birth to children from those relationships and became mothers, counselors, and educators for their partners. Again, more than often, though useful for trade and survival in the New World, they were deserted as mute chattel slaves when they reached old age.[2]
Therefore, Métis history begins with a story of exploitation of aboriginal women. It provides a narrative which bespeaks exploitation and injustice at its very inception. It also tells a story of survival of generations that followed from the union of these aboriginal women and the fur traders. In fact, by the early part of the nineteenth century, these people, les gens libres of the northern plains, had begun to think of themselves as la nouvelle nation. Since then the Métis have considered themselves to be “the first Canadians.” [3] However, it was only in 1982 that the federal government chose to recognize the Métis as one of Canada’s aboriginal peoples in the Constitution Act. The history of the Métis in Canada has, however, been a history of exploitation of ethnic and racial conflicts, and of the relations arising therein. It has been a history fraught with gender inequalities and sexism within the context of racism. [4]
Incorporating archival materials, interviews, oral histories, ethnographic research, and a deep-rooted understanding of Métis political organizations, From New Peoples to New Nations traces a route-map for Métis historiography from the Battle of the Seven Oaks to contemporary political and legal debates. The book is divided into five parts. Part I, entitled Hybridity and Patterns of Ethnogenesis, focuses on the creation of the Métis through economic transactions of the fur trade and the inherent struggles as the Métis tried to construct their identity in racial and national terms. The process of ethnogenesis involves the creation of “enduring identities in general contexts of radical change and discontinuity” (4). In the context of the ethnocultural mosaic of Canada, Métis identity has therefore been constrained and shaped by the policies of fur traders, scientists, governments, and historians. The Riel Resistance of 1869-70 in Canada created a constitutional space to establish, however nebulous, Métis identity along political lines. This was in contradistinction to the United States, where political articulation of Métis peoplehood did not find expression until the 1970s.
Part II, The Genesis and Development of the Idea of the Métis Nation to the 1930s, focuses on a more detailed understanding of the Fur Trade Wars, the Battle of Seven Oaks, and the idea of the Métis Nation (1811-1849) along with the emergence of the religion of Métis Nationalism vis-à-vis Louis Riel. Providing a succinct analysis of the conflicting nationalisms in Riel’s oeuvre, the section studies the transformation into Riel as a symbol and martyr of the Métis Nation. The final part of the section examines the formation of the Métis Nation as promoted by L’Union Nationale Métisse Saint-Joseph du Manitoba, and provides an in-depth study of A. H. Trémaudan’s 1935 book entitled Histoire de la Nation Métisse dans l’Ouest Canadien. Both aspects were crucial to the formation of Métis identity and served as powerful rhetorical strategies and effective politics of identity.
Part III, Government Policy and the Invention of Métis Status in the Nineteenth Century, dwells on the debates around the Manitoba Act, the Indian Act, and the Métis Scrip. The categories created by the Act(s) and the Scrip led to a new process of self-definition for Métis ethnicity in relation to treaty Indians. Further, a chapter on the United States-Canada border and the emergence of the Plains Métis offers an interesting study of Métis claims to aboriginal land rights and political formation, more so in Canada than across the border. The fourth part, Economic Marginalization and the Métis Political Response, 1896 to the 1960s, provides a detailed analysis of the socio-economic crisis among the Métis in the aftermath of the collapse of the Plains Métis economy. Further government interventions and reports led to the perpetuation of stereotypes in relation to the Métis both within the community and beyond. The final and fifth part of the book, Politics, the Courts, and the Constitution: Reformulating Métis Identities since the 1960s, emphasizes the processes of establishing Métis sovereignty, reinterpretation of past identities, and a marked movement towards organizational politics.
In fact, the decade of the 1960s was a major period in the context of indigenous history both in Canada and in the United States. The era of the Black Panthers witnessed major protest movements against colonization among native people in Canada and the United States as well as among the Métis. Due to political activism and intense struggles for self-determination by indigenous peoples, the 1960s was a period which also saw the upsurge of Métis nationalism. Métis activists through Métis nationalism tried to overcome the “ghetto-mentality” and “deep subordination of [their] selves.” [5] In his seminal text on decolonization, Prison of Grass, Métis activist Howard Adams writes:
"When I left my ghetto as a young man, I made a complete break with my parents and home. To me, everything about them and the community seemed so definitely halfbreed, and therefore ugly and shameful. As a result, I attempted to dissociate myself from everything and everyone that appeared halfbreed. I wanted to be a successful white man in mainstream society. If I maintained a close identification and relationship with my parents, home and community, they would anchor me to halfbreed society and prevent my success in the white world. I was fully aware of how whites mocked and condemned halfbreeds and their way of life. I wanted to escape from all the ugliness and mockery. Since my parents were precious to me, it was an agonizing experience, yet there was no choice if I wanted to succeed."
Forced assimilation and humiliations suffered in the process have been part of the social realities of many aboriginal peoples, including the Métis as a nation.
With an interdisciplinary perspective from the fields of history, anthropology, constitutional law, political science, and sociology, Ens and Sawchuk thus identify the many facets of what it means to be Métis in Canada today. Highlighting key issues related to identity, rights, and matters of governance, politics, and economics, they explore Métis identity beyond the conceptually limited geographical borders of the fur trade in Canada. This book should be of significant interest to scholars in political science and native studies and in the legal community, as well as to public administrators, government policy advisors, and people seeking to better understand the transformations within Métis past and present.
[1] Howard Adams, Prison of Grass: Canada from the Native Point of View (Toronto: New Press, 1975), p. 11.
[2] Hartmut Lutz, “Howard Adams (1921-2001): Profound Thinker, Fearless Activist, Cherished Friend.” In Connections: Non-Native Responses to Native Canadian Literature, edited by Hartmut Lutz and Coomi S. Vevaina (New Delhi: Creative Books, 2003), pp. 12-16.
[3] Olive Patricia Dickason, “Métis.” In Aboriginal Peoples of Canada: A Short Introduction, edited by Paul Robert Magosci (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), p. 212.
[4] Hartmut Lutz, “Howard Adams (1921-2001): Profound Thinker, Fearless Activist, Cherished Friend.” In Connections: Non-Native Responses to Native Canadian Literature, edited by Hartmut Lutz and Coomi S. Vevaina (New Delhi: Creative Books, 2003), pp. 12-16.
[5] Hartmut Lutz, Contemporary Challenges: Conversations with Canadian Native Authors (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan: Fifth House Publishers, 1991), p. 136.
[6] Howard Adams, Prison of Grass: Canada from the Native Point of View (Toronto: New Press, 1975), pp. 10-11.
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[Review length: 1487 words • Review posted on September 12, 2017]