Metis Ethnogenesis

Historian Peter Bakker writes that the ethnogenesis of the Metis began out of the pairings of people who were male European fur traders (French) and women who were Indigenous (Cree/Ojibwe). In Contours of a People (see "relevant resources" below), historians Brenda McDougall, Carolyn Podruchny and Nicole St. Onge write: "Studied together, the three characteristics [of Metis culture and nationhood that arise from these collected essays]—an expansive geographic familiarity, tremendous physical and social mobility, and maintenance of strong family ties across time and space—appear to have evolved as a result of an entrepreneurial spirit in a variety of economic niches associated with the fur trade writ large. The Metis were involved most famously in the large scale, commercial buffalo hunt specific to Plains Metis culture, but they were also involved in other important activities, including trapping and freighting, working on vast transportation networks that operated along waterways and cart trails, taking part in subsistence and commercial hunting and fishing operations, free trading, and performing contract jobs within the fur trade industry, all practiced in a variety of geographies encompassing plains, parklands, woodlands, and the subarctic. All these economic endeavors, and the cultural practices that subsequently emerged from them, contributed to a sense of shared community and contributed to the nationalist sentiment felt by many Metis today" (pages 7-8). These historians also discuss the formation of genealogical structures and extended family relationships as inherent to Metis identity. In light of the importance of kinship networks, the community fracturing and detriment to social well-being caused by land dispossession, diaspora and fragmentation of Metis people heading west becomes more apparent: "The link holding all of this together—mobility and geography—is found in the Metis conceptualization of family. Like many other societies throughout the world, the Metis created for themselves a system of extended family relationships within fixed communities and across these vast distances because of their tremendous mobility. Looking at subarctic Metis communities, Richard Slobodin argued that a widespread feature of Metis family and social life was an emphasis on family surnames as a means of inspiring and maintaining social and cultural unity. He attributed this particular cultural characteristic to the vastness of the region in which they lived, their relatively small population, and the range of economic activities in which they participated. Within a generation or two, the Metis developed a complex genealogical structure and shared knowledge by emphasizing those surnames as a key aspect of their identity" (pages 12-13). In the same book, historian Etienne Rivard notes the importance of Catholicism in Metis life, as indicated by primary sources: "Métis accounts also provide a sense of the importance of settlements in Métis community life. Describing the moral importance of Father Ritchot, Goulet emphasized the central role of the Catholic Church. Indeed, churches and religious figures regulated most of the central activities of community life in settlements—marriages, baptisms, funerals, and masses. The churches also affected patterns of settlement when they divided territory into parishes of specific religious adherence. Furthermore, Goulet stated that newcomers from Ontario in the 1850s affected the Red River communities, recalling his father’s sense of loss for the 'feeling of unity and friendship that had always been felt among those people of different races and religions'" (page 151).