The New Peoples: Being and Becoming Metis in North America

by Jacqueline Peterson (Editor), Jennifer S. H. Brown (Editor)

Overview

This is the first major work to explore in a North American context the dimensions and meanings of a process fundamental to the European invasion and colonisation of the western hemisphere: the intermingling of European and Native American peoples. This book is not about racial mixture, however, but rather about ethnogenesis — about how new peoples, new ethnicities, and new nationalities come into being.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780873514088
Publisher:	Minnesota Historical Society Press
Publication date:	06/15/2001
Series:	Manitoba Series in Native Hist Series III , #1
Pages:	290
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Jennifer S.H. Brown is a Professor in the Department of History at the Universityof Winnipeg, Canada Research Chair in Aboriginal Peoples in an Urban and Regional Context, and Director of the Centre for Rupert's Land Studies at the Universityof Winnipeg. She is the author of "Strangers in Blood: Fur Trade Company Families in Indian Country" (Universityof Oklahoma Press, 1996).

Table of Contents

	Illustrations	ix
	Foreword	xi
	Acknowledgements	xv
	Introduction	3
Part I	Metis Origins: Discovery and Interpretation
	From "One Nation" in the Northeast to "New Nation" in the Northwest: A look at the emergence of the metis	19
	Many roads to Red River: Metis genesis in the Great Lakes region, 1680-1815	37
	Some questions and perspectives on the problem of metis roots	73
Part II	Communities in Diversity
	The metis and mixed-bloods of Rupert's Land before 1870	95
	Waiting for a day that never comes: The dispossessed metis of Montana	119
	Treaty No. 9 and fur trade company families: Northeastern Ontario's halfbreeds, Indians, petitioners and metis	137
	Grande Cache: The historic development of an indigenous Alberta metis population	163
Part III	Diasporas and Questions of Identity
	"Unacquainted with the laws of the civilized world": American attitudes toward the metis communities in the Old Northwest	185
	Diverging identities: The Presbyterian metis of St. Gabriel Street, Montreal	195
	"What if Mama is an Indian?": The cultural ambivalence of the Alexander Ross family	207
Part IV	Cultural Life
	In search of metis art	221
	What is Michif?: Language in the metis tradition	231
	Afterword	243
	Contributors	253
	Index	256