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���The People and

Territory of the Métis Nation

by Jean Teillet

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Picturing the People of the Métis Nation

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“You seldom see the women here with bonnets. Most of them wear blankets over their cloth dresses when they go out, and the blanket is drawn also over the head and serves for both purposes ... The robe amongst the Indians is drawn over the head similarly to the blanket of the half breed women …” Robert Rundle to my very dear Sister, 14 September 1841, Glenbow Archives, Rundle Papers, M1083, file 3; see also Rundle Journals, 83 - 86.

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Métis Trapper Family

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Métis Children

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Métis Family in Turtle Mountain - 1925

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Ethnogenesis

•  Children of the fur trade and marriages between Indian (usually Ojibway, Cree or Dene) women and the Voyageurs.

•  Successive generations of intermarriage created a unique culture

•  Ethnogenesis - {the birth of a culture} between 1790-1820

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Ethnogenesis

•  “Unfortunately we cannot actually trace the evolution of the Canadian Métis before the end of the eighteenth century. At this point, however, the texts represent them as a group already solidly established and ready to play a part …” Marcel Giraud, The Métis in the Canadian West, trans. George Woodcock (University of Alberta Press, Edmonton: 1986) Vol. 1 at p. 323

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Métis births in Mackinac

1689-1765 (76 years) 1765-1797 (32 years)

Number Percent Number Percent

136 38.75 94 71.76

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Central Alberta “The sources from the 1840s present a picture consistent with the information from the 1820s and 1830s. A significant “Métis or Half-breed” population, both resident at the fur-trade forts and travelling with other Indian and Métis families, was present in the area from Edmonton to Rocky Mountain House and west into the Rocky Mountains, south to the sources of the Red Deer and Bow Rivers, and along the North Saskatchewan, Red Deer, Little Red Deer, and Battle Rivers.”

- Gwynneth Jones, 2007

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Description of the Métis of the Upper Great Lakes •  The Métis “were neither adjunct relative-members of

tribal villages nor the standard bearers of European civilization in the wilderness. Increasingly, they stood apart or, more precisely, in between.” [They] …” did not represent an extension of French, and later British colonial culture, but were rather “adaptation[s] to the Upper Great Lakes environment.”

J. Peterson, “Many roads to Red River: Métis genesis in the Great Lakes region, 1680-1815”, in The New Peoples: Being and Becoming Métis in North America (1985), 37, at p. 41.

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Description of the Métis of the Prairies

“These … Métis … were scattered over the spaces of the North West, especially in the prairie and the parkland. They even reached into the forest zone as far as the threshold of the Barren Grounds ... Apart from the groups of families concentrated around the trading posts or sheets of water rich in fish and game, dispersion of the population was the rule. For all of them nomadism was the customary mode of living.” Marcel Giraud, The Métis in the Canadian West, trans. George Woodcock (University of Alberta Press, Edmonton: 1986) Vol. 2 at p. 317

Métis Nation & the North West •  The Métis Nation is situated in what used to

be called the North West. •  The North West includes western sub-Arctic of

the northern plains; the Northwest Territories as we know it today, north-eastern BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba & north-western Ontario.

•  The North West is a geographical perspective. It’s a view that came out of the Montreal fur trade. The voyageurs headed off to the North West - north and west of Central Canada.

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Defining the North West���at the end of the 18th Century

The Old North West

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SCC Test - “Areas Not Yet Open to Colonization”

“The inclusion of the Métis in s. 35 represents Canada’s commitment to recognize and value the distinctive Métis cultures, which grew up in areas not yet open to colonization, and which the framers of the Constitution Act, 1982 recognized can only survive if the Métis are protected along with other aboriginal communities.”

R. v. Powley, SCC, para. 17

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Populated Areas, 1800

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Populated Areas, 1825

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Populated Areas, 1851

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Policy of Discouraging Settlement in Upper Great Lakes

“Although Europeans were clearly present in the Upper Great Lakes area from the early days of exploration, they actually discouraged settlement of this region. J. Peterson explains:

… the French colonial administration established no farming communities in the Great Lakes region. After 1763 … the British likewise discouraged settlement west of Lake Ontario. Desire to keep the peace and to monopolize the profits of the Great Lakes Indian trade were the overriding considerations favouring this policy. To have simultaneously encouraged an influx of white farmers would have upset both the diplomatic alliance with the native inhabitants inherited from the French and the ratio between humans and animals on the ground, straining the fur-bearing capacities of the region.” [emphasis added]

R. v. Powley, SCC, para. 39 quoting J. Peterson, “Many roads to Red River: Métis genesis in the Great Lakes region, 1680-1815”, in The New Peoples: Being and Becoming Métis in North America (1985), 37, at p. 40

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Locating the Métis of the North West

The evidence used to formulate this map suggests that the Métis who lived in, used and occupied this vast area, the North West, were connected and formed one large historic society founded on mobility, kinship, a shared economy and a common way of life. Mobility, one of the primary characteristics of this Métis society, was the glue that kept the people connected throughout this vast territory.

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Other Aboriginal peoples with large territories - Inuit

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Other Aboriginal peoples with large territories - Cree

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Métis Nation - mobility over a very large territory

•  The historic Métis society was a large highly mobile network that sprawled across the North West.

•  In this, the Métis society is similar to many hunter/gatherer and trader societies - particularly the Inuit, Dene and Cree.

•  It was not geographically centered around a single fixed settlement.

•  The Métis used, as bases of operations, many widely dispersed settlements - Sault Ste Marie, Red River, Fort Edmonton, Green Lake, etc.

•  The historic Métis society was characterized by overlapping and multiple bonds especially those of kinship and trade. Their high degree of mobility sustained that economy. They moved in and out of many settlements and they migrated to various parts of the North West over time.

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Nomadic Peoples? •  A nomad is defined as a wanderer or a member of a people roaming

from place to place for food or fresh pasture. There are different kinds of nomadic peoples including pastoralists, hunter-gatherers, and traders.

•  The common conception of nomads is that they are aimless wanderers who do not value possessions or continuity and who are “rootless, transient, unreliable, and unstable.”

•  Nomads move from one place to another, with no fixed residence, though often temporary centers.

•  Mobility may be cyclical or periodic, determined by the availability of food supplies, rainfall, weather, employment, etc.

Migrants? •  Migrants (as distinguished from nomads) are those

who cross an international boundary for a certain minimum period of time.

•  Internal Migrants – those who move within the country may be economic or social. Internal migration is considered an important factor in the erosion of traditional boundaries between languages, cultures and ethnic groups.

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Difference Between Nomads & Migrants

•  The difference is that the migrant experience of identity revolves around concepts of home and away – a sense of longing for home whether in the past or future.

•  The nomad is thought to have no place in which meaning and identity can rest.

•  Alternatively, the nomad has a very large place where meaning and identity rest.

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Understanding Mobile Peoples like the Métis

•  Métis historically did not fit into neat divisions and classifications. They are a combination of nomads and internal migrants.

•  Their survival tactic was a combination of settlement and mobility. They used and manipulated a large “place”.

•  A form of “tireless but quiet” consumption that is largely invisible because it cannot be identified in products (settlements, buildings, art, etc.) and reveals itself only in its use.

•  Métis are not defined, identified by, or reliant on a single individual place for identity or power.

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Métis were Nomads and Migrants

•  The historic mobility of the Métis is rooted in both of these concepts.

•  Many Métis are nomadic and at times could be seen as internal migrants.

•  Métis culture is not unitary, rooted in a single place, or linear.

•  Métis culture is complex and challenges established norms because their mobility transgresses the established political and legal order that is created through the delineation of property and boundaries.

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The Nomadic Métis Life “… through the whole year they lived a nomadic existence, becoming a veritable floating element which, unlike those whose life was divided between hunting and farming, had virtually broken all lasting ties with the colony. The families that reappeared in the parishes of the Red River only at the end of May or the beginning of June would arrange for the marriages they had contracted during the winter to be blessed and for the children who had been born during their wanderings to be baptized; some of them would even bring back, so that they could have Christian burial, the bodies of their relatives who had died in the prairie four or five months before and whom they had temporarily interred there. At the end of a few days, they would leave again and not return for another year.

… there were some who had never had any occupation other than hunting bison. Departing from St. François Xavier or Red River, they passed long years on the prairies in the winterers’ villages, and only went occasionally to the nearest fort or to the colony of Assiniboia to trade their robes or their provisions of meat.”

Giraud, at 83-84.

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Settlements as Bases of Operation

•  Skill of mobile peoples is to move in and out of fixed settlements

•  Fixed settlements are “dead zones” - no food to hunt or fish, no water, no firewood. Its all private property.

•  Métis often camped outside settlements and used them for socializing; ceremonials (baptisms, weddings, burials, etc); supplies

•  Métis stayed in the fixed settlements for short periods of time and left. They may have had cabins in the settlement that they occupied for only a few weeks a year.

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Settlements & Wintering Sites are Bases of Operations

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Boreal Forest and Parkland/Grasslands

Parkland/Grasslands

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Interchange Points between Boreal Forest &

Parkland/Grasslands

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Common Misconceptions

•  Seen only as “Red River Métis” or as part of the Louis Riel narrative.

•  All Métis all died on the gallows with Louis Riel. •  Try to divide them into English half-breeds vs. French

Métis and say they are separate peoples. •  Rarely connect the fur traders in the boreal forest to

the buffalo hunters. •  The Métis Nation of the North West was not seen as

a people.

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Métis was understood to be a transient identity

•  The theory that mixed race peoples are transient is revealed in a number of theories of identity formation and dissolution, which envision the Métis as a people who bridged the primitive and modern worlds - generally cast in the middle of those models as "half-savage and half-civilized"

•  The assumption is that when the primitive component dissolved - the Métis ceased to exist.

•  Much of the literature stereotypes the Métis as primitive people unable or unwilling to adjust to civilized life and capitalist society.

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NW Métis - An Invisible Society

•  The Métis Nation of the North West was largely invisible to those who were not members of the society.

•  It is not that no one knew about the Métis. •  The Métis were seen as individuals not as a people

or a distinctive culture. •  7 reasons why the Métis Nation of the NW is

largely invisible to Euro-Canadians & First Nations

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1st Reason for Not understanding the NW Métis as a people

No one wants a mixed-race people to exist.

- because no one wanted to recognize the existence of a mixed race people as a result of which there were only two identity options in Canada – white or Indian.

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2nd reason for not understanding the NW Métis as a people

The erasure of historic aboriginal geographic areas of importance and boundaries.

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Circles = Settlement & Wintering sites - hubs

Blue dots = cart trails

Red lines = boat routes

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Borders and Boundaries •  Political and geographic borders are particularly difficult to understand

in relation to mobile & migrant peoples who may live by being able to work the on and across such borders. The Métis were traders.

•  Several large Métis fixed settlements can be found at geographic boundaries, which were created by continental divides or heights of land across the Northwest.

•  Methy Portage in Northwest Saskatchewan is located at the height of land that separates two drainage systems; the Mackenzie from the Hudson Bay. Beginning in 1776, Methy Portage became a vital location that provided access to the Mackenzie and facilitated the fur trade.

•  There is also a vibrant strong and continuous Métis presence in Rainy Lake/Rainy River, which is where the voyageurs had to change from the Great Lakes/Boundary Waters into the Prairie watersheds.

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3rd reason for not understanding the Métis Nation of the NW as a

people

Michif - the hidden language of the Métis. –  Michif was not identified until the 1960s

–  Language is a key marker in identifying a people

–  Michif was primarily used internally. Rarely in public.

–  Cree was the lingua franca of trade on the Prairies

–  Michif was not usually needed in public because the Métis were all bilingual or trilingual.

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4th reason for not understanding the NW Métis as a people

The Métis are not phenotypically distinct.

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5th reason for not understanding the NW Métis as a people

The Métis have many names. Each name is given by a different people.

The existence of so many different names seems to imply that they are different people. For example that the ‘half-breeds’ are a different people from the ‘Métis’.

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The Many Names of the Métis •  French - michif, métis, gens libre, hommes libre,

bois brûlé and chicot. •  English - freemen, half-breed, country-born and

mixed blood. •  Sioux - flower bead work people. •  Cree - âpihtawikosisân. Kosisân, means ‘of the

people’. Âpihta means ‘half’. otipêyimisowak - the independent ones

•  Chippewa - wisahkotewan niniwak meaning ‘men partially burned’

•  Odawa - aayaabtawzid or aya:pittawisit meaning ‘one who is half.’

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Red River Carts

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Categorizing Métis Names

1. Refer to colour (bois brûlé; chicot; wisahkotewan niniwak)

2. Refer to freedom (freemen, hommes libres; otipêyimisowak)

3. Seek to associate Métis with either Euro-Canadians or with First Nations. (half-breed; âpihtawikosisân)

4. Mixed-race (half-breed; aayaabtawzid or aya:pittawisit )

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Naming •  Some of the names are not exclusively

applied to Métis - freemen, hommes libres, gens libre

•  Names like ‘half-breed’ given by outsiders imply individuals only.

•  Hence the addition by the Métis themselves (1815) of the term “nation” to make a statement that they are a people - the Métis Nation.

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6th reason for not understanding the NW Métis as a people

A strong incentive and disinclination to publicly identify as Métis following the events of 1870 and 1885.

Bounty, jail sentences, rapes, hangings are powerful deterrents.

7th reason for not understanding the NW

Métis as a people

•  Mobility

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Mobility - Historian’s Perspective

“Although the Métis anchored their lives on the small family farms that reached back from the riverfront, they roamed over a vast area. For this reason, the Métis socioeconomic community was not limited to the boundaries of the built-up area and cleared fields of the settlement, but rather, it included its sprawling hinterland … the Sault Ste Marie Métis continued to tap a very large area in the course of their annual cycle … in this respect, it was similar to western Métis settlements.” Dr. Arthur Ray, 2006, p. 45

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Métis Mobility - Métis Perspective

« Ou je reste? Je ne peux pas te le dire. Je suis Voyageur – je suis chicot, Monsieur. Je reste partout. Mon grand-pêre était Voyageur: il est mort on voyage. Mon pêre était Voyageur: il est mort en voyage. Je mourrai aussi en voyage, et un autre chicot prendra ma place. Such is our course of life.”

- Kohl, Kitchi-Gami, Wanderings Round Lake Superior (London: Chapman and Half, 1860; reprint edition, Minneapolis: Ross

and Haines, 1956) at 98.

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Mobility - the Métis perspective

“We usually left [Red River] for the prairie early in spring, as soon as the grass was long enough for grazing – nippable, as we used to say. We would come back around the month of July, stay at the house one, two or three weeks and leave again, not to return this time until late in the autumn. Sometimes we even spent the winter on the prairies. That’s what we used to call wintering-over, in a tent, a cabin or a makeshift house on the plain. Normally we went to Wood Mountain, but when the buffalo drew back into the area of the Cypress Hills, we followed them. Finally, later on when they took refuge in the rough country on Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska and Colorado, it was along the Missouri River we went to find the few remaining herds. Now that was a great life! Cré mardi gras!”

Guillaume Charette, Vanishing Spaces: Memoirs of Louis Goulet trans. by Ray Ellenwood (Winnipeg: Editions Bois-Br ulé, 1976) at 15-17

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Métis Mobility - Métis Perspective

“ It took about three months’ travelling every day to reach Winnipeg where we would dispose of the buffalo robes and furs. Oh but that was the life! Free life, camping where there was lots of green grass, fine clear water to drink, nothing to worry or bother us. No law to meddle with us. We’d killed ducks, prairie chickens and all kinds of wild game on which we mostly depended for our living. There were times when we camped near lakes … We would also kill antelope, badgers, skunks, wild cats, in fact all kind of wild animals which were good to eat. This would be some change to pemmican and dried buffalo meat of which we always had lots …

We always travelled with different families, whenever we would camp it would be like a nice village. All kinds of leather tepees, those days we did not use tents but we carried poles and pegs. At night when we found a suitable camping place, a corral was made with the carts into which the horses were driven …”

- Marie Rose Smith, The Adventures of the Wild West of 1870, Undated manuscript in the Glenbow Archives, Mary Rose Smith Papers, M1154, file 3, pages 1 6.

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Métis Mobility - an Outsider’s Perspective ... we may here bestow a few words upon the frequenters of the plains, commonly called the half-breeds of Red River ... not a tenth part of their number really belong to Red River, although they have from choice made it the land of their adoption. Hither, in fact, have flocked the half-breeds from all quarters east of the rocky mountain ridge, making the colony their great rendezvous and nursing place; while their restless habits lead them from place to place, from camp to camp, from the colony to the plains, and from the plains to the colony, like wandering Arabs, or the more restless Mamelukes, wherever hunting or fishing hold out to them a precarious subsistence … the chief dependence of all is upon buffalo hunting or fishing. The boundless prairies, therefore, have attractions for them, which the settled habits and domestic comforts of the industrious farmer can never hope to rival in their estimation ...

–  Alexander Ross, The Red River Settlement: Its Rise, Progress and Present State, With Some Account of the Native Races and its General History to the Present Day (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1972) at 83-84.

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Métis Mobility - an Outsider’s Perspective “Sayer the Free Man got afraid of the high water and has abandoned his usual Haunt. He arrived here [Rainy Lake] last Night. He says [he] intends going to the Plains. I have advised him to go to red River and become a Settler. He is however a Lazy drunken Scamp and prefers leading a Vagabond Life from one turn to an other than to settle when in a Place when he would be obliged to work”

–  HBCA B 105/a/11, fo. 12.

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Métis Mobility

•  The next slides show Métis mobility •  Information is largely from scrip and fur

trade records •  Shows individual and family mobility •  Impressionistic - straight lines do not

reflect the actual travel routes - only the end points.

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Annie Deschamps

Annie Deschamps

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Marie Amyotte

Marie Amyotte

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Suzie Harwood

Suzie Harwood

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Abraham Boyer

Abraham Boyer

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Alexandre Fagnant

Alexandre Fagnant

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Charles Smith

Charles Smith

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Gabriel Poitras

Gabriel Poitras

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Phillip Bird

Phillip Bird

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Sayer Family

Sayer Family

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Calder Family

Calder Family

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Vermeylen Family - 5 Generations

Langan Family - 5 generations (1839-1964)

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Manitoba & Saskatchewan pattern - 5 scrip applications

5 scrip applications showing Manitoba & Saskatchewan hivernant sites

Cypress Hills Qu’Appelle Valley

Wood Mountain Turtle Mountain

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Montana map

Montana use

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Alberta Focus

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Men & Women

19 men 19 women

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50 Scrip Maps

50 Scrip Maps

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Migrations

•  Métis internal migrations •  Internal - because they are all within

their traditional territory. Not migrating to new unknown lands.

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Migration after 1815

Economic Migration out of Sault Ste Marie after 1815

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Migration following buffalo after 1850

Economic Migration after buffalo - post 1850

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Migration after 1870

Fleeing the ‘reign of terror’ - Migration after 1870

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Migration after 1880

Economic Migration after 1880

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Migration after 1885

Migration after Rebellion - 1885

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Migration from Turtle Mountain ND after 1900s

Eviction from Turtle Mountain, USA - Migration early 1900s

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Compilation Migration Map

Migration compilation map

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Compilation Map - Migration & Scrip Maps

Migration & scrip mobility maps

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The Métis Nation of the

North West

Métis Nation Today •  350,000 Métis •  41% urban (65% non aboriginal population) •  Métis median age is 27 (39.4 non-aboriginal population) •  Mobility rates within large urban centers 566/1000 (35-40%

higher than non aboriginal population) •  Métis in Ontario, Saskatchewan and Manitoba are less mobile

than Métis in Alberta, BC and NWT •  Standardized Migration rates over 5 years in Alberta – 231/1000

(208/1000 for non aboriginal population) •  Alberta 5 year migration – Métis are 11% more mobile than the

non-aboriginal population; 16% higher than registered Indians. •  Alberta 1 year migration – Métis are 24% higher than the non-

aboriginal population;

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Modern Métis Mobility

•  2001 Census “23% of the population that identified themselves as Métis changed residences in the year prior to the census, compared with only 14% of the non-Aboriginal population.”

•  2006 - Métis migration rates tend, with the exception of the Province of Saskatchewan, to be higher than those of the overall aboriginal population in all of the regions, especially in British Columbia, Alberta and the Northwest Territories.

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•  2001-2006 – 6,540 Métis moved into Alberta.

•  36% from BC; •  26% from Saskatchewan; •  14% from Manitoba; •  4% from NWT; and •  11% from Ontario.

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