Bois-Brûlés: Inventing an Indigenous People in Algonquin Territory

2009

Metis people are a distinct ethnic group that emerged among descendants of First Nations women and European men during the fur trade in North America. Canada's Constitution recognizes Métis as one of Canada's three Aboriginal groups and currently approximately 400,000 self-identify as Metis. Although the United States does not recognize Metis as a distinct ethnic group, tens of thousands of self-identified Metis live in the northwestern states. This course explores the meeting of Indigenous women and European men in the fur trade starting in the 17 th century through to the 19 th century, how their children established distinct communities, the emergence of a distinct Metis language (Michif), various economies of Metis communities, as well as cultural practices, religion, clothing and material culture. It will trace the development of a distinct political collectivity in the western part of North America, focusing on political battles in the Red River settlement, and on the resistances of 1869-70 and 1885. It will then turn to the decline and erasure of Metis communities, the losses incurred in the process of allocating scrip, and the destitution of road allowance communities. The course will end with the resurgence of Metis political organizations in the 1970s and 1980s, the fight for political recognition from the Canadian and U.S. governments, and the renaissance in Metis art, music, and community pride. Some of the most innovative developments in the field of Metis history have been the use of different types of primary sources for historical evidence, the pairing of diverse types of sources, and asking new questions about well-used and familiar sources. This course critically analyses primary source materials used for understanding Metis history, and the reading material is made up of a diverse range of primary sources. General questions to keep in mind when interrogating primary sources are: • Who or what created the source? • What is its provenance? • Why has it survived to the present day? • Is it typical and common, or is it atypical and rare? • What was the context in which it was created? • Can it be assessed in different ways? • Does the source contain more than a single voice or perspective? • How can the source be used to learn about the past? • What perspectives are left out of the story by using this source? We will also be reading some secondary sources in Metis history, both in book and article form, but mainly coming from the textbook From New Peoples to New Nations by Gerhard J. Ens and Joe Sawchuk. I assume that each student brings a different background and different knowledge to the course, and while that can be challenging, it also provides us with great benefits. We will try to work together to enrich our knowledge and understanding of the craft of historical research,

2018

aboriginal policy studies, 2013

The historical narrative around Métis political leader Louis Riel has undergone a extraordinary change since the 1960s—once reviled by Anglo-Canadians, Riel is now paradoxically celebrated as a Canadian hero, and this “Riel-as-Canadian” narrative has become a common trope in contemporary Canadian political culture. Emanating from the Canadianization of Louis Riel is a parallel colonial discourse that distances itself from past attempts to assimilate Indigenous people into Canada, arguing instead for the assimilation of Canadians into a pan-Indigenous political identity. Central to this dialogue is a discourse on “métissage” and “Canadian métisness” that is heralded as the founding myth of Canada. This paper deconstructs this logic, as put forward by Jennifer Reid in Louis Riel and the Creation of Modern Canada and John Ralston Saul in A Fair Country. Both works uncritically assume that Canada’s colonial problem is largely a failure of non-Indigenous people to embrace their underlying Indigenous political identity and acclimate themselves to this continent as a people of mixed political descent. This claim, however, is simply an inversion of colonization, a re-hashing of age-old colonial fantasies of unity, and an attempt to unite all the Indigenous and non-Indigenous polities in Canadian territory under a single sovereign entity—Canada.

The Canadian historical review, 2015

2020

Laronde was a French man (born 1763) who married an Ojibway woman, Madeleine Pewadjiwonokwe, around 1797. Notably, the MNO includes three Larondes as "Verified Métis family Lines" for membership in the "historic Mattawa Métis community," including one line (Laronde-Sauvage) that was used by nearly 600 members to join the Algonquins of Ontario land claim. The second family listed by Jones is the Antoine family, a family that featured prominently in Department of Indian Affairs correspondence. The family is descended from the union of Antoine Nishkwiwisens and Elisabeth Gagnon, both Nipissing/Algonquin, who married at the Oka mission on July 16, 1832. Their four children and at least nine grandchildren were enumerated in Mattawa in the 1881 census, all listed as "Indian." In the 1901 Census, at least two of the households were listed as speaking Algonquin at home. In the same census, three generations of the Antoine family were listed as "Algonquin French Breed" under the designation for "Colour." In 1910, twenty-nine members of the Antoine family, mostly living in Mattawa, were reinstated to the Robinson-Huron Treaty annuity paylists with arrears covering 1851 to 1909 as Nipissing Band members. Despite the fact that the Antoine family clearly sought to be recognized as Nipissing/Algonquin in its known correspondences with authorities, Jones nonetheless takes the fact that census workers listed them as "Algonquin French Breed" in one classification in the 1901 census and lived in Mattawa as evidence that they were a founding "mixed ancestry" family in the region. About 420 members of the Algonquins of Ontario land claim use this family as "root ancestors" for membership (MNO's Bernard-Papineau line). The third family listed by Jones is the Bastien family, another family that featured prominently in Department of Indian Affairs correspondence. The family is descended from the union of Charles Colton (said to be white British-American, born around 1807) and Marie Josephte Sibikwe (born about 1811), Antoine Nishkwiwisens' sister (see above). Sibikwe remarried French-Canadian Louis Bastien in 1844. The Sibikwe-Bastien family mostly resided in the Mattawa region throughout the 1800s and are also listed as "Algonquin French Breed" by the census enumerator in 1901 under the designation for "Colour." Sibikwe's sons Ignace Bastien and Antoine Bastien applied for reinstatement to the Robinson-Huron Treaty rolls in 1910 but their request was denied, since the Department ruled that their Indigenous ancestry was solely derived from the maternal side. Again, given the evidence provided by Jones, it's unclear why she doesn't consider the Bastien family a Nipissing-Algonquin family. About 270 members of the Algonquins of Ontario land claim use the same ancestral line for membership as the MNO (Bastien-Sibikwe line). The fourth family listed by Jones is the Grandlouis family, another family featured prominently in Department of Indian Affairs correspondence. The review of this correspondence confirms once again that members of the Grandlouis were often considered members of the Nipissing Band, living in and around the reserve. Several second-generation family members lived in Mattawa and married into prominent mixed-race, Algonquin/Nipissing families. Jones provides no evidence that this family considered itself anything other than Algonquin/Nipissing. The only potential evidence to a "Métis" identity is that some of the family members were listed as "Chippewa French Breed" or simply "French Breed" in the 1901 census under the designation for "Colour," though Jones herself was unable to find any evidence of French ancestry in this

Journal of American Ethnic History, 2018

Critical Ethnic Studies, 2017

A recurring theme in the narration of Indigenous– settler relations is the evocation of Indigenous– settler societal unification through intermarriage. Among the earliest proponents of this view was Samuel de Champlain, who famously told his Indigenous allies in May 1633, “Our young men will marry your daughters, and we shall become one people.” While the degree to which this vision resulted in the actual societal unification of Indigenous peoples and settlers is overstated, it retains an important place in the settler consciousness, particularly among Champlain’s cultural progenies, the French- speaking and/or French- descendant populations of North America. While postcontact Indigenous peoples later came into being, such as the Métis Nation on the northern prairies or the NunatuKavut in Labrador, they exist not as societies unified with settlers through intermarriage but as Indigenous peoples who emerged through self- conscious historical development as a people. Many French- speaking and/or French- descendant individuals, however, do not understand Champlain’s imaginative vision as merely a dream but rather as a reality where settlers and Indigenous peoples are one and the same. 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.