Darryl Leroux
DARRYL LEROUX is currently an Associate Professor of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa. He examines the self-indigenization of French-descendants since the mid-2000s, a period that coincides with tens of thousands claiming an "Indigenous" identity on the basis of 300+-year-old ancestry.
His book "Distorted Descent: White Claims to Indigenous Identity" was published in September 2019.
His book "Distorted Descent: White Claims to Indigenous Identity" was published in September 2019.
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Papers by Darryl Leroux
Le présent article porte sur le phénomène récent des revendications autochtones chez les descendant·e·s des premiers colons de la Nouvelle-France, à savoir les Franco-Québécois au Québec et les Acadiens en Nouvelle-Écosse. Nous y soutenons que les prétentions actuelles à une identité métisse autochtone revendiquant une reconnaissance juridique en vertu de la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982 sont profondément ancrées dans des logiques de colonialisme de peuplement blanc (white settler colonialism). Notre article révèle l’omniprésence de la mythologie du métissage dans différents documents. Pour infirmer de telles revendications, nous démontrons que la politique de la France en Nouvelle-France se voulait avant tout une tentative de francisation des peuples autochtones. En d’autres mots, les colonisateurs français cherchaient plus à assimiler les peuples autochtones qui auraient maintenu un mode de vie autochtone qu’à constituer une société hybride sur le plan culturel. Faute de preuves suffisantes d’un métissage soutenu au début des colonies au Québec et en Acadie, nous passons en revue les arguments de deux principaux organismes représentant les soi-disant métis de l’est.
EN :
This article examines recent moves to Indigeneity among French-descendant peoples, notably Franco-Quebeckers in Quebec and Acadians in Nova Scotia, and argues that current claims to métissage are deeply rooted in white settler-colonial notions of race and Indigeneity. In examining the evocation of métissage, this article identifies its ubiquity in a variety of documentary forms. In combatting such representations, it first argues that French policy in New France was primarily an attempt at “Frenchification.” In other words, French colonists sought to assimilate Indigenous peoples rather than produce a culturally hybrid society with a deeply Indigenous way of life. With insufficient evidence of a historical métissage at the origins of Quebec and Acadia, the article then analyzes organizational arguments supporting the presence of a distinct “Eastern métis” people.
These vivid constructs pose significant political problems for contemporary Indigenous claims to self- determination insofar as they receive a sympathetic hearing from dominant white settler societies. These “new Métis” identities are essentialized in ways that capitalize on settler puzzlement over forms of Indigeneity based on kinship and belonging and replace these forms with an imagined past of racial mixedness leading to supposed societal unification. This article therefore examines what we call the “evocation" of métissage,” that is, the tactical use of long- ago racial mixing to reimagine a “Métis” identity that prioritizes mixed- race ancestry and disregards the historical development of Métis peoplehood.
reach of Daniels. Second, after confronting the confusion brought forth by Daniels, we examine several different cases of nascent organizations in Québec claiming Aboriginal rights as either self-declared Métis or non-status Indians, and analyze some of their responses to the Daniels decision. We proceed to argue that in their reliance on antipathy towards Indigenous peoples, these organizations exemplify settler nativist tactics that ultimately undermine Indigenous self-determination.
In order to resituate this debate, I locate interculturalism within the rise of tolerance discourses in Western liberal democracies since the 1980s. The first section of the paper presents a brief overview of some of the major claims for the rise of interculturalism in Québec. The second section of the paper provides a concise analysis of the racial politics of the intercultural discourse in Québec.
By doing so, I argue that despite their respective legitimacy, interculturalism and multiculturalism must be read as continued attempts to manage and limit expressions of racialized diversity in the social and political realms."
Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences (formed in February, 2007, and co-chaired by Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor), which tabled its final report in May, 2008. I next analyze the Government of Québec’s new immigrant integration policy, released in October, 2008.
This paper presents and analyzes these three “events” in relation to the emerging academic literature on the politics of multiculturalism in Western liberal democracies. In particular, I argue that through relying on a civilizational discourse that depoliticizes “difference” in culture, the various events appeal to the dominant understandings of difference in Québec society, thereby obfuscating the racialized dimensions of these discourses. In order to situate my analyses, I begin with an overview of debates on cultural pluralism in Québec.
Le présent article porte sur le phénomène récent des revendications autochtones chez les descendant·e·s des premiers colons de la Nouvelle-France, à savoir les Franco-Québécois au Québec et les Acadiens en Nouvelle-Écosse. Nous y soutenons que les prétentions actuelles à une identité métisse autochtone revendiquant une reconnaissance juridique en vertu de la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982 sont profondément ancrées dans des logiques de colonialisme de peuplement blanc (white settler colonialism). Notre article révèle l’omniprésence de la mythologie du métissage dans différents documents. Pour infirmer de telles revendications, nous démontrons que la politique de la France en Nouvelle-France se voulait avant tout une tentative de francisation des peuples autochtones. En d’autres mots, les colonisateurs français cherchaient plus à assimiler les peuples autochtones qui auraient maintenu un mode de vie autochtone qu’à constituer une société hybride sur le plan culturel. Faute de preuves suffisantes d’un métissage soutenu au début des colonies au Québec et en Acadie, nous passons en revue les arguments de deux principaux organismes représentant les soi-disant métis de l’est.
EN :
This article examines recent moves to Indigeneity among French-descendant peoples, notably Franco-Quebeckers in Quebec and Acadians in Nova Scotia, and argues that current claims to métissage are deeply rooted in white settler-colonial notions of race and Indigeneity. In examining the evocation of métissage, this article identifies its ubiquity in a variety of documentary forms. In combatting such representations, it first argues that French policy in New France was primarily an attempt at “Frenchification.” In other words, French colonists sought to assimilate Indigenous peoples rather than produce a culturally hybrid society with a deeply Indigenous way of life. With insufficient evidence of a historical métissage at the origins of Quebec and Acadia, the article then analyzes organizational arguments supporting the presence of a distinct “Eastern métis” people.
These vivid constructs pose significant political problems for contemporary Indigenous claims to self- determination insofar as they receive a sympathetic hearing from dominant white settler societies. These “new Métis” identities are essentialized in ways that capitalize on settler puzzlement over forms of Indigeneity based on kinship and belonging and replace these forms with an imagined past of racial mixedness leading to supposed societal unification. This article therefore examines what we call the “evocation" of métissage,” that is, the tactical use of long- ago racial mixing to reimagine a “Métis” identity that prioritizes mixed- race ancestry and disregards the historical development of Métis peoplehood.
reach of Daniels. Second, after confronting the confusion brought forth by Daniels, we examine several different cases of nascent organizations in Québec claiming Aboriginal rights as either self-declared Métis or non-status Indians, and analyze some of their responses to the Daniels decision. We proceed to argue that in their reliance on antipathy towards Indigenous peoples, these organizations exemplify settler nativist tactics that ultimately undermine Indigenous self-determination.
In order to resituate this debate, I locate interculturalism within the rise of tolerance discourses in Western liberal democracies since the 1980s. The first section of the paper presents a brief overview of some of the major claims for the rise of interculturalism in Québec. The second section of the paper provides a concise analysis of the racial politics of the intercultural discourse in Québec.
By doing so, I argue that despite their respective legitimacy, interculturalism and multiculturalism must be read as continued attempts to manage and limit expressions of racialized diversity in the social and political realms."
Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences (formed in February, 2007, and co-chaired by Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor), which tabled its final report in May, 2008. I next analyze the Government of Québec’s new immigrant integration policy, released in October, 2008.
This paper presents and analyzes these three “events” in relation to the emerging academic literature on the politics of multiculturalism in Western liberal democracies. In particular, I argue that through relying on a civilizational discourse that depoliticizes “difference” in culture, the various events appeal to the dominant understandings of difference in Québec society, thereby obfuscating the racialized dimensions of these discourses. In order to situate my analyses, I begin with an overview of debates on cultural pluralism in Québec.
Opposition to the authors' research by Indigenous peoples continued throughout 2020, when the four provincial Mi'kmaw Councils and the Métis National Council wrote a public letter to the SSHRC protesting the funding agency's awarding of a $203,999 Insight Grant to Malette, Bouchard, and anthropologists Denis Gagnon and Siommon Pulla for research that supports the political claims of a self-proclaimed Métis group in New Brunswick. The well-documented and active opposition to the authors' research by Indigenous scholars and governments means that reviewing this book requires careful attention.
At first glance, one may be impressed by the number and range of excerpts from archival documents identified by the authors in Bois-Brûlés. Nonetheless, what is at issue is that the authors' historical method eschews rigour for political expediency. Every time authorities in the nineteenth century use either "métis," "halfbreed" or "bois-brûlés" to describe a mixed-race individual, they automatically become the founders of a distinct Métis community in a region north of Ottawa, regardless of their family life, cultural and linguistic practices, historical experience, and sense of self. The result of their approach is that First Nations people-in this case, Algonquins, whose territory spans the Ottawa River watershed-are erased from the historical record.
What follow are two salient examples of the type of evidence that animates the book's approach: on page 116, there is an image that first appeared in the magazine Opinion publique in 1882, with the caption, "Winter house of Noui Icipaiatik, Algonquin Métis." In their subsequent analysis, the authors draw two key conclusions based on the image and caption. First, they claim that the use of the term "Algonquin Métis" by ...
1. Land acknowledgement and Opening remarks
2. Susan Young, Professional Genealogist, "Where Genealogy Meets Genetics"
3. Hendrik Poinar, Evolutionary Geneticist, "The Science of Genetic Genealogy"
4. Wendy Roth, Sociologist, "Genetic Genealogy & Racial and Racial Identity"
5. Darryl Leroux, Ethnologist, "Genetic genealogy and the Invention of Indigenous Ancestry"
6. Kieran O'Doherty, Social Psychologist, Privacy and Genetic Genealogy
7. Françoise Baylis , Medical Ethicist, "The Ethics of Bio-Data & Genetic Genealogy"
8. Concluding Discussion