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This website states that to Identify as a Metis person in Alberta you must have the three criteria which are "Self-identification, Ancestral connection to the historic Métis community, and Community acceptance"

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Who are the Métis?

The term "Métis" in s. 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 does not encompass all individuals with mixed Indian and European heritage; rather, it refers to distinctive peoples who, in addition to their mixed ancestry, developed their own customs, way of life, and recognizable group identity.

The Supreme Court of Canada has set out the basic elements to identify Métis rights holders. In 2003, the Powley decision clarified Métis rights and proved that the Métis are distinct from other Indigenous people under the Canadian Constitution.
The Supreme Court identified three broad factors:

Self-identification

Ancestral connection to the historic Métis community

Community acceptance

SELF-IDENTIFICATION

The individual must self-identify as a member of a Métis community. It is not enough to self-identify as Métis, but that identification must have an ongoing connection to a historic Métis community.

ANCESTRAL CONNECTION

There is no minimum "blood quantum" requirement, but Métis rights holders must have proof of ancestral connection to a historic Métis community.

Historical proof means evidence of an ancestor who received a land grant or scrip granted under the Manitoba Act or the Dominion Lands Act, or who was recognized as a Métis in other government, church or community records.

Learn more about how we identify connections to historic Métis lands and families in the citizenship application process.

COMMUNITY ACCEPTANCE

At the core of community acceptance is past and ongoing participation in a shared culture, in the customs and traditions that reveal a Métis community's identity. This might include participation in community activities and testimony from other community members about a person's connection to the community and its culture.

The Supreme Court said there must be proof of acceptance by the modern Métis community. In order to claim s. 35 rights through community acceptance, it is not enough to prove a genealogical connection to a historic Métis community and then join a Métis Nation. One must have a "past and ongoing" relationship to the Métis community.

POWLEY TEST: ESTABLISHING MÉTIS RIGHTS

The Supreme Court said the appropriate way to define Métis rights in s. 35 is to modify the test used to define Aboriginal rights (the Van der Peet test). This Métis test is called the Powley Test.

THE NATIONAL DEFINITION OF MÉTIS

We use the National Definition of Métis to determine if prospective citizens qualify for MNA citizenship.

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Métis Identity - Métis Nation of Alberta

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Who are the Métis? The term "Métis" in s. 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 does not encompass all individuals with mixed Indian and European heritage; rather, it refers to distinctive peoples who, in addition to their mixed ancestry, developed their own customs, way of life, and recognizable group identity.

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In Canada, according to the 2021 census done by statistic Canada there are 624,220 people that self identify as Metis. this statistic represents a 6.3% increase since the 2016 census . Only 224,655 of those people actually claim membership in a metis organization or settlement. after cross reading different sources , ive found that the canadian encyclopedia to be a well trusted web page .
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/metis

Steven.B

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Louis Riel, circa 1873.
(courtesy Provincial Archives of Manitoba/N-5733)

Definitions and Terminology
Editorial Note: In the interest of promoting a better understanding of the complex issue of Métis identity and how it is defined, The Canadian Encyclopedia has commissioned two opinion pieces exploring different perspectives on the topic. Métis Are a People, Not a Historical Process explores Métis identity from the perspective of Métis with ancestral ties to the Red River Settlement. The "Other" Métis explores Métis identity from the perspective of Métis who do not have ancestral ties to the Red River Settlement.
The Congress of Aboriginal Peoples (CAP) has been critical of this definition of Métis, asserting that it excludes "many people who have legitimate claims to Métis identity." Despite CAP's stance, the MNC's position is the one that has generally been adopted by federal and provincial governments and the courts. For example, Métis Aboriginal rights defined in the decision and section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 have only been applied to Métis communities west of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. While several lawsuits claiming section 35 Métis rights have been brought before the courts by other communities, none have been successful. For example, R. v. Vatour in 2010 ruled against the notion of a Métis community in the Maritimes. Further, the implementation of these rights defined by the Powley decision and by various provincial governments all fall within the MNC's definition of the "Métis Homeland, " which includes the Prairie provinces, and parts of Ontario, BC and the NWT.

Typically, when written with a small-m, métis refers to any community of European-Indigenous ancestry, including those in Ontario and Québec and non-status settlements near First Nations reserves. It is often used to describe mixed-descent families and communities during the 18th and early 19th century Great Lakes fur trade, although some scholars now avoid using the term.

Contemporary usage of Métis is also different from its historical meaning. At Red River in the 19th century there were two prominent communities of mixed-descent people. In addition to a sizeable French-speaking and nominally Catholic Métis population, there was a large group of English-speaking "Half-breeds" who were mainly Anglican agriculturists. While these interrelated communities can be considered to be distinct constituencies - even though the boundaries between them were quite porous - the derogatory nature of the term "Half-breed" has caused it to fall largely into disuse. Thus, the contemporary meaning of "Métis" typically includes people of both French- and English-speaking heritage.

There are also Canadian legal definitions that further complicate Métis terminology. Section 35(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982 recognizes " Indian, Inuit and Métis peoples" as Aboriginal peoples under Canadian law, yet despite several Supreme Court of Canada decisions, Métis Aboriginal rights - and who may possess these rights - remain, for the most part, undefined. However, in 2016, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in the Daniels case that the federal government has jurisdiction over Métis people, and that both members of the Métis Nation and Non-Status Indians are "Indians" as defined by the Constitution Act. The Court stopped short of clarifying the legal definition of Métis, but removed one barrier governments used for generations to avoid dealing with outstanding Métis issues.

Métis Communities in Canada

There are people of mixed ancestry throughout Canada. The earliest mixed Indigenous-European marriages can be traced to the earliest days of contact, yet whether these marriages resulted in distinct Métis communities has long been the subject of scholarly debate. Some academics have argued that any mixed-descent person should be considered Métis. However, other scholars, along with the MNC, suggest that only those who were part of distinct Métis communities and used the term "Métis" in a self-referential way, should be called Métis. "Labrador Métis" for example, have dropped Métis for this reason and instead prefer a term their ancestors used to define themselves: NunatuKavut. Scholars who defend the Red River definition of "Métis" argue that Métis identity is not simply the result of a dual heritage, but rather a matter of possessing a singular cultural heritage of dual origins; someone of Cree and French Canadian descent would be considered Métis not solely by virtue of their mixed-descent, but whether they have Métis heritage that can be traced back to the Red River community.

Others have argued that such a narrow definition offers a limited understanding of Métis history. Communities in Ontario and Eastern Canada that have sought official recognition as Métis, for example, have expressed frustration at the popular notion that a traceable ancestry to the Red River settlement is a necessary requirement to "authentically" identifying as Métis. They argue that mixed-descent families and communities have existed since the 18th and early 19th century Great Lakes fur trade, before the establishment of the Red River Settlement. However, for many Red River Métis, the term is an important part of their specific history, heritage and identity, as enshrined by Canadian law. This remains an issue of heated debate among many métis people in Canada. ( See The "Other " Métis; Métis Are a People, Not a Historical Process).

Great Lakes Communities

The first small-m métis communities emerged during the Great Lakes fur trade in the 18th century. Great Lakes Indigenous diplomatic and economic protocols encouraged French fur traders to establish family connections through marriage and ceremonial adoption with prominent Indigenous families in the region. Such unions with Indigenous women - referred to as marriages à la façon du pays, "according to the custom of the country" - usually involved mutual commitments with local Indigenous kin and communities. French traders often lived out their lives with these families, whether formally employed at the forts or subsisting as gens libres (French and Métis freemen who supplied the posts or served intermittently as guides, interpreters or voyageurs). Game, fish, wild rice and maple sugar furnished sustenance, supplemented by small-scale slash-and-burn agriculture. Over time small groups of mixed families situated themselves in specific economic niches, with many rising to economic and social prominence throughout the Great Lakes region.

Scholarship has suggested that the application of the term "métis" to the Great Lakes region at this time is problematic since these mixed communities favoured terms like Saulteurs, bois brûlés (literally "burnt wood"), or chicots. While the term "métis" appears occasionally in contemporary writing, it was used predominantly by outsiders to make sense of a complex set of relationships between Indigenous communities and their relatives, not necessarily by the Great Lakes "métis" themselves. Likewise, the term "Métis" did not make its way into common language at Red River until the early 19th century, several years after the decline of the Great Lakes fur trade and the mixed communities it supported. Despite this distinction in terminology, the Métis of Red River and the métis of the Great Lakes were often connected through marriage and kinship practices.

The Western Métis

The success of the fur trade in the region that the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) called Rupert's Land also relied on intermarriage. While the Company initially attempted to suppress these "country marriages," the effectiveness of these unions in establishing trade networks, along with the successful use of intermarriage by the rival North West Company (NWC), convinced the HBC to modify its policy. Initially, the children of these marriages lacked the distinct community and economic base upon which to build a separate identity. While some HBC officers' mixed children were educated in England, Scotland or in the Canadas ( see Upper and Lower Canada, later the Province of Canada), and other families were left in the care of other HBC employees when senior officers returned to Europe, not all mixed-descent children faced difficult prospects. Many of these mixed-descent children remained in the North-West, living near one another and developing a sense of themselves as a unique cultural and social community. This sense of self would eventually evolve into a sense of political commonality.

Nor'Wester William McGillivray admitted in a letter of 14 March 1818 that the Métis were linked to the NWC by occupation and kinship. "Yet," he emphasized, "they one and all look upon themselves as members of an independent tribe of natives, entitled to a property in the soil, to a flag of their own, and to protection from the British government." Further, it was well proved "that the half-breeds under the denominations of bois-brûlés and métifs have formed a separate and distinct tribe of Indians for a considerable time back."

The early Red River Colony did not allay these fears, but rather antagonized the Métis and the NWC. Decrees from the governor of the colony forbade the export and sale of pemmican to anyone but local HBC forts, and later banned hunting buffalo from horseback ( see Pemmican Proclamation). These were direct economic sanctions against Métis families who provisioned the NWC with pemmican made from buffalo meat (which had been hunted on horseback). After escalating raids on rival fur trade forts by HBC and NWC officers, many prominent Métis grew hostile to the Selkirk settlement's leaders and, under the leadership of Cuthbert Grant, in 1815 decided to evict the settlers from the region. In 1816, after Selkirk himself had decided to evict the Nor'Westers, the governor of the settlement, Robert Semple, confronted a group of Métis soldiers at Seven Oaks. A battle broke out and the Métis soldiers killed Semple and several colonists. The event was memorialized in Pierre Falcon's "La Chanson de la Grenouillère." ( See also: Music of the Métis.)

The Battle of Seven Oaks resulted in an agreement between Cuthbert Grant and the Selkirk settlement's interim leader, Peter Fidler. By 1821, any inter-company conflicts were ended with the merger of the HBC and NWC. After the merger a number of traders were deemed redundant and many took up residence at the Red River Colony, which thus gained an increasing Métis presence. Company employees with Métis families lobbied for the founding of a community where they could retire and have lands, livelihoods, schools, churches and other amenities. The HBC itself hoped to reduce costs by relocating dependent populations to a place where they could become self-supporting under the Company's governance.

From 1821 to 1870, Red River's overwhelmingly mixed-descent population continued to reflect its dual origins: Montréal, the Great Lakes and Prairies, and the NWC; and Britain, the Scottish Orkney Islands (a major HBC recruiting ground) and Rupert's Land. Some argue that these groups expressed mutual solidarity on the basis of their numerous intermarriages, business ties, shared involvements in the buffalo hunt, the HBC transport brigades and provisional government of 1869-70. A contrary view emphasizes the split between Roman Catholic francophones and Protestant anglophones. Whatever their internal ties and tensions, the rapidly growing population in the Northwest was, by the 1830s, increasingly seen as a racial aggregate, as racially based interpretations of human behaviour reigned in the 19th century. As such, Métis were often limited in their advancement through Company ranks.

While the HBC claimed to govern the population of Red River through the Company-appointed Council of Assiniboia, it governed more through influence than command. Throughout the 1840s and 1850s, Métis challenged the HBC trade and administrative monopoly in Red River. In 1849 Métis disrupted the trial of free trader Pierre-Guillaume Sayer, effectively ending the HBC fur monopoly and ushering in an era of free trade. In the mid-1850s, Métis petitioned the Imperial Government in London through Red River-born lawyer Alexander Kennedy Isbister to limit the Council of Assiniboia's power. On the ground, the Council rarely commanded enough of a constabulary to compel Métis to follow its laws, so the Council was often forced to compromise with the community to ensure the enforcement of its laws.

The Red River Provisional Government, 1869-70

Councillors of the Provisional Government of the Métis Nation, 1870.

The consequent efforts of government surveyors to map Red River without regard for local residents' holdings resulted in the establishment of the Métis National Committee, and a provisional government in late 1869. These events established Louis Riel as the leader of the Métis resistance ( see also: Louis Riel Timeline). After consolidating their alliance with the "Half-breed" population and the old British settler population, the three constituencies formed the Provisional Government of Assiniboia's Legislative Assembly in March 1870, and sent a delegation to Ottawa to negotiate Red River's entrance into Confederation. The outcome was theManitoba Act, which established Manitoba as a new province in Confederation as well as several other commitments to protect Métis landholdings (including a 1.4 million acre land reserve), language and local political control over the new province.

However, the agreement recorded by the Provisional Government's chief negotiator varies in important ways from the Manitoba Act, and Métis leaders have argued since the 19th century that the original agreement has never been properly implemented. The promised land reserve was never properly allotted; and when it was, it was granted piecemeal to individual families, taking well over a decade to be allocated. The settlers and troops who arrived in the new province after 1870 were generally hostile to the Métis, many of whom were "beaten and outraged by a small but noisy section" of the newcomers, according to a report by the new governor, Adams Archibald. Métis landholders were harassed, while new laws and amendments to the Manitoba Act undermined Métis power to fend off speculators and new settlers.

Of the approximately 10,000 persons of mixed descent in Manitoba in 1870, two-thirds or more are estimated to have departed in the following few years. While some went north and some went south to the United States, most headed west to the existing Métis settlements around Fort Edmonton (Lac Ste Anne, St Albert and Lac La Biche) and to the South Saskatchewan River, where they joined many Métis families already living at St Laurent, Batoche and Duck Lake.

The North-West Resistance

Louis Riel, circa 1873.

As Saskatchewan Métis communities grew due to the Manitoba exodus, several sought to clarify their land titles with the Canadian government. The government ignored Métis concerns while negotiating major Indigenous treaties and pre-empting land for railways. In deep frustration, the Saskatchewan Métis took up arms under Riel and Gabriel Dumont in the North-West Resistance of 1885.

The Métis defeat at Batoche and the execution of Riel for treason set off a second dispersal, particularly to Alberta, and a renewed weakening of political influence and cohesiveness ( see also: Battle of Batoche). Sir John A. Macdonald in 1885 articulated a view that would begin the process of denying Métis identity for the next century: "If they are Indians, they go with the tribe; if they are half-breeds they are whites." Where Métis individuals did receive land allowances (or financial equivalents), they usually were granted them in paper scrip - transferable certificates which unscrupulous speculators often pressured them to sell cheaply on the spot. The "scrip hunters" followed the Treaty No. 8 Half-Breed Commission in 1900 as it made its awards to Métis in the Dene settlements, and bought up many $240 scrip certificates for cash amounts of $70 to $130.

From 1885 to the mid-1900s, poverty, demoralization and racism commonly connected to being identified as a "half-breed" led many Métis to deny or suppress that part of their heritage if they could. In 1896 Father Albert Lacombe, concerned for Métis interests, founded St-Paul-des-Métis northeast of Edmonton on land furnished by the government. For financial and other reasons, the colony failed as a formal entity by 1908, and settlers from Québec began to dominate the area. The multiple dispersals of Métis families across the west has led to the existence of Métis communities across the Prairies, and into British Columbia and the Northwest Territories, as well as the northern United States and northwestern Ontario.

20th Century Métis Activism

Despite the struggles of the 19th century, some developments after 1900 were more positive. In 1909, the Union nationale métisse St-Joseph de Manitoba, founded by former associates of Riel and others, began to retrieve (from Métis documents and memories) their own history of the events of 1869-70 and 1885, resulting in A.H. de Trémaudan's classic work, Hold High Your Heads: History of the Métis Nation in Western Canada (1936). The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise of new leaders - notably James Patrick (Jim) Brady and Malcolm Norris - who, as Prairie socialist activists, built a new political and organizational base to defend their people's interests. Many Métis and non-Status Indigenous peoples had been considered "squatters" (although they asserted title of their own to these lands) on Crown lands in Alberta. Threatened by a federal plan to place these lands under provincial jurisdiction, Joseph Dion and others organized petitions and delegations to the Alberta government to seek land title for the Indigenous peoples living there.

After Brady and Norris joined the movement in 1932, the first of several provincial organizations was founded - the Métis Association of Alberta, open to all persons of Indigenous ancestry. Its efforts led to the appointment of the Ewing Commission in 1934-36 to "make enquiry into the condition of the Half-breed population of Alberta." The association eventually secured land for Métis settlements alongside the passage of the Métis Population Betterment Act in 1938. That same year, the Saskatchewan Métis Society (later the Association of Métis and Non-Status Indians of Saskatchewan) was founded and began to organize for the recognition and protection of Métis rights.

Métis Organizing and the Constitutional Era

In the late 1960s, Métis political activity intensified with the founding of numerous other organizations, such as the Manitoba Métis Federation, the Ontario Métis and Non-Status Indian Association, and the Louis Riel Métis Association of BC. These organizations confronted such issues as the federal government's White Paper of 1969, and the on-going exclusion of Métis and Non-Status Indians from federal policy considerations.

In the 1970s, alongside their Non-Status Indian counterparts, Métis organizations were successful in developing programming that provided social, economic and educational supports for Indigenous peoples. However, due to the federal policy that limited federal funding to Métis and Non-Status Indians, these groups dealt mostly with individual provinces, which in turn considered them to be a federal concern. Nonetheless, Métis and Non-Status Indian organizations developed meaningful partnerships with provincial governments, which have, over the long term, produced an impressive array of social services still in existence today.

During the 1970s, Métis organizations were primarily concerned with social programming for Métis and Non-Status Indians, but during the lead-up to Canadian constitutional patriation, Métis organizations, like their Indian and Inuit counterparts, were increasingly concerned about constitutional protection of their rights and title. During the patriation process, Métis successfully lobbied for inclusion in what became Section 35 of the Constitution Act of 1982, protecting "the existing aboriginal and treaty rights" of Indigenous peoples, who were defined as "Indian, Inuit and Métis." While Métis (and other Aboriginal) rights and title remained undefined in constitutional practice, Métis did gain a constitutional protection from unjustifiable Canadian infringement on their rights.

Before the constitutional recognition of Métis Aboriginal rights, Métis and Non-Status Indians had worked together out of common interest and necessity. With the Métis recognized as a distinct group in 1982, the alliance began to dissolve. From 1970 to 1983 the Native Council of Canada (NCC, now the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples) represented Métis interests on the national level. However, for the 1983 First Ministers Conference, the Métis National Council was formed to secure Métis representation as a distinct people independent of Non-Status Indians. The First Ministers Conferences of the 1980s, meant to define Section 35 Aboriginal rights, were widely regarded as a failure, and the Métis/Non-Status split became more permanent. Métis organizations began to develop membership codes that reflected Métis-specific membership, excluding many previous Non-Status Indian members. For example, to become a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation, a person must trace their genealogy back to the original Red River Settlement, typically using scrip, parish or census records.

The Courts: Métis Aboriginal Rights

As the recognized Métis "rights and title" of Section 35 were never defined during the First Ministers Conferences, the Métis initiated a series of lawsuits in order for the courts to determine what these rights protected. Since Métis rights were constitutionalized in 1982, three major court decisions have started the long process of defining Métis Aboriginal rights in the Canadian constitutional system, and have highlighted the complexities involved in defining Métis identity.

A transformative movement in Métis rights jurisprudence came in in 2003. Two Métis hunters, Steve and Roddy Powley shot and killed a moose outside of Sault Ste Marie and were charged with hunting without a licence and unlawful possession of game hunted in contravention of Ontario's Game and Fish Act. In defence, they claimed that their rights as Métis allowed them to hunt in a manner consistent with their Aboriginal rights, which predated Canadian assertion of sovereignty over their community. As a result, the Supreme Court established the three-part "Powley test" for determining who may claim Métis Aboriginal rights under section 35 of the constitution. A person must: a) self-identify as Métis; b) have an ancestral connection to a historic Métis community; and c) be accepted by a contemporary community that exists in continuity with a historic rights-bearing community.

In 2013, the Supreme Court determined in MMF v. Canada that the government failed in its obligation to properly distribute and safeguard the 1.4 million acres set aside for the Métis in the Manitoba Act. Since this victory, the Manitoba Métis Federation has been lobbying the federal government to enter into a land claims negotiation to compensate the Métis people for lost lands and resources, with the ultimate goal of securing a legally recognized land base for Métis in Manitoba. On 15 November 2016, Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett and president of the Manitoba Métis Federation David Chartrand signed an agreement to bring an end to this 146-year land dispute. Parties must still negotiate the financial settlement for the land as well as some other issues, but this is a step forward in settling the land claim.

Most recently, Daniels v. Canada offered transformative potential for Métis-Canada relations, ending the "jurisdictional wasteland" that stymied relations for generations. In 2016, following a 17-year court battle launched by the late Métis leader Harry Daniels, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Métis and Non-Status Indians are considered "Indians" under federal jurisdiction as per Section 91(24) of the . This means that jurisdiction for Métis relations falls to the federal government, rather than the provinces, as has been the common practice for decades. The decision could transform how Métis organizations function, where their funding comes from, the kind of services they are able to offer, and their ability to demand consultation and compensation from the federal government.

Contemporary Life

The blending of European and Indigenous traditions has created a unique and rich Métis culture. In traditional music and dance, Métis fiddling and jigging combine European and Indigenous influences ( see Music of the Métis). Métis fiddle music is generally up-tempo and is accompanied by the fast footwork of jiggers. Though there are many fiddle tunes and dances, the most well-known is the Red River Jig, which emerged in the early to mid-1700s. Today, the Métis people still perform traditional music and dances at local and national competitions, community gatherings, powwows and conferences.

Métis art also reflects their unique heritage. Adopting Indigenous beading practices and popular European floral designs, the Métis created an art form all their own. Famous for their floral beadwork, the Métis are often referred to as the "Flower Beadwork People." Perhaps one of the most famous mainstream beadwork artists is Christi Belcourt, who has been awarded with many national and provincial honours for her work, including the Governor General's Innovation Award (2016), the Ontario Arts Council Aboriginal Arts Award (2014) and Influential Women of Northern Ontario, Aboriginal Leadership Award (2014). The Métis are also well-known for their finger-woven, colourful sashes that have historical, practical and sentimental value.

Like Métis music and art, their language, Michif, is rooted in a mixture of Cree and/or Saulteaux ( Ojibwe) verbs and French nouns. Historically, the Métis could speak various Indigenous languages and were often literate in French or English. Today, many Métis communities speak and teach Michif as a means of keeping the language alive.

According to the 2021 Census completed by Statistics Canada, there are 624,220 people who self-identify as Métis in Canada. This represents a 6.3% increase in the Métis population between 2016 and 2021. Of the 624,220 people who self-identify as Métis, 224,655 claim membership in a Métis organization or settlement.

Landmark Agreements on Métis Rights and Self-Government

On 27 June 2019, the Métis Nation of Alberta (MNA), Métis Nation of Ontario (MNO), and Métis Nation-Saskatchewan (MN-S) signed historic self-government agreements with the Government of Canada. The "Métis-Ottawa Accords" represent a landmark in Métis history, the first self-government agreements between the Métis Nation and the federal government. The historic signing took place in Ottawa between Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett, MNA president Audrey Poitras, MNO president Margaret Froh, and MN-S president Glen McCallum.

The agreements are the result of decades of struggle by the Métis people to gain recognition and self-government rights from the federal government. The 2019 accords represent the greatest steps forward for Métis rights since the important hunting, recognition and self-identity rights gained in 2003 ( see Powley Case) and 2016 ( see Daniels Case). The 2019 accords will be followed by future negotiations that will give the Métis Nation control over its own affairs in areas such as childcare, leadership selection, government operations, and citizenship. Most importantly, the accords give the Métis control over the creation of future constitutions for their various nations.

Carolyn Bennett, speaking on behalf of the federal government, considers the accords the beginning of a new and better relationship between Canada and the three Métis nations involved: "What we're signing today is a true acknowledgement of the Métis Nation and the relationship we will have going forward - government to government. We're here to sign not one, not two, but three historic self-government agreements and to recognize that you, the Métis, have control over your own governance."

Métis Nation of Alberta president Audrey Poitras believes that the accords are a "dramatic shift in attitude for Canada" towards her people and a truly historic moment for the Métis: "It's not an exaggeration to say the agreements signed today are something we've been fighting for for close to a century. Finally, Canada has recognized our right to self-government."

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Métis are people of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry, and one of the three recognized Aboriginal peoples in Canada. The use of the term Métis is complex...

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How many people in Canada identify as Metis?

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How many people in Canada identify as Metis?

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According to a consensus done in 2016, there are "537,855 Metis in Canada making up  32% of the Indigenous population".
https://www.sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1602010609492/1602010631711

I Trust this source of information because it is from a professional government website. I also trust this source because the information is consistent with other sources such as: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/89-659-x/89-659-x2018001-eng.htm

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This first annual report to Parliament is organized into three parts. Part 1 provides a broad overview of the socioeconomic gaps between First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples, and the non-Indigenous population in Canada.

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https://youtu.be/747Diz1LmgA12.11.21

Métis

Metis Identity is much debated in Canada. Is it a matter of semantics, are individuals wrong when they self identify as Métis? My own grandmother also claimed to be what she called ‘French Métis’ and she was visibly native, was she First Nations and incorrectly labelled Métis as it is sometimes used to reference mixed race persons? The Métis National Council General Assembly  adopted the following “National Definition”  in 2002: “Métis” means a person who self-identifies as Métis, is distinct from other Aboriginal peoples, is of historic Métis Nation Ancestry and who is accepted by the Métis Nation.” Self described Red River Nationalist Adam Gaudry, Professor at the University of Alberta says “ It’s important that Métis remain in charge of determining who is Métis” Wikipedia describes Métis as Indigenous peoples in the three Prairie Provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan, Alberta) and parts of Ontario, BC and NWT. However there are groups in the maritimes who believe they too are Métis. In its judgement in R. v. Powley  2003, the Supreme Court of Canada confirmed that Métis are a rights-bearing Aboriginal people and set out the components of a Métis definition for the purpose of claiming Aboriginal rights under section 35 of the  Constitution Act, 1982 based on ancestral connection to and acceptance by historic Métis communities. Indigenous persons should be the only ones who can decide if someone is part of their community and wether or not they are Métis, First Nations or Inuit.

Wikipedia

Métis National Council website

R. v. Powley 2003

Métis, who are they? | APTN InFocus

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"In earlier generations, the Métis were probably the most multilingual people in Canada — they spoke their own languages as well as a variety of First Nations and settler languages. Today, the Métis may speak Michif as well as Cree, Saulteaux , Dene and various settler languages. Besides speaking several First Nations and European languages, the Métis also invented Michif, French Michif, Northern Michif and Bungi (a Cree/Scots-Gaelic Creole). All Métis heritage languages are endangered. Losing any of them would be tragic because that would mean losing a rich Oral Tradition, healing traditions, spiritual systems, communitarian values and harvesting strategies." https://indigenouspeoplesatlasofcanada.ca/article/languages/. I found this information to be factual and accurate as it matches with other credible sources.

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The Métis are primarily known for speaking Michif, the official language of the Métis Nation. However, the Métis speak other languages, including French Michif, a dialect of Canadian French with some Algonquian linguistic features, which is spoken in St. Laurent, Man., St. Ambroise, Man., and St. Lo…

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The Metis are a distinct Indigenous people with a unique history, culture, language, and territory that includes the waterways of Ontario, surrounds the Great Lakes, and spans what was known as the historic Northwest.

The Metis Nation is comprised of descendants of people born of relations between Indian women and European men. The initial offspring of these unions were of mixed ancestry. The genesis of a new indigenous people called the Metis resulted from the subsequent intermarriage of these mixed ancestry individuals.

Distinct Metis settlements emerged as an outgrowth of the fur trade, along freighting waterways and watersheds. In Ontario, these settlements were part of larger regional communities, interconnected by the highly mobile lifestyle of the Metis, the fur trade network, seasonal rounds, extensive kinship connections and a shared collective history and identity.

This information is according to the Metis Nation of Ontario website, and can be trusted because of the assumption the Metis would want to represent themselves accurately.
https://www.metisnation.org/culture-heritage/

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Who are the Métis?

The Métis are a distinct Indigenous people with a unique history, culture, language, and territory that includes the waterways of Ontario, surrounds the Great Lakes, and spans what was known as the historic Northwest.

The Métis Nation is comprised of descendants of people born of relations between Indian women and European men. The initial offspring of these unions were of mixed ancestry. The genesis of a new Indigenous people called the Métis resulted from the subsequent intermarriage of these mixed ancestry individuals.

Distinct Métis settlements emerged as an outgrowth of the fur trade, along freighting waterways and watersheds. In Ontario, these settlements were part of larger regional communities, interconnected by the highly mobile lifestyle of the Métis, the fur trade network, seasonal rounds, extensive kinship connections and a shared collective history and identity.

Who was Louis Riel?

To learn more about Métis political leader and father of Conferderation Louis Riel please click here to read an informative PDF document about his life, his work, and his importance to the Métis people.

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Métis Nation of Ontario | Culture and Heritage | Métis of Ontario

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The Métis are a distinct Indigenous people with a unique history, culture, language, and territory that includes the waterways of Ontario, surrounds the Great Lakes, and spans what was known as the historic Northwest. The Métis Nation is comprised of descendants of people born of relations between Indian women and European men.

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The Metis are indigenous peoples in the three prairie provinces(Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta) of Canada. There are also some located in Ontario, Northwest Territories and the Northern United States. Albert is currently the only Canadian province with a recognized Metis Nation land base. Among the eight Metis Nation settlements, there are approximately 5,000 people on 1.25 million acres of land. As of the 2016 census, there are roughly 587,545 self-identifying Metis living in all of Canada, 120,585 of which are located in Ontario. I believe this to be true because the source in which it came is widely used in this country and keeps up to date on the ongoing growth of information in the country.

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What area/region in Canada do Metis originate? 

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What area/region in Canada do Metis originate? 

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https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/aboriginal-heritage/metis/Pages/introduction.aspx
The Métis people originated in the 1700s when French and Scottish fur traders married Aboriginal women, such as the Cree, and Anishinabe (Ojibway). Their descendants formed a distinct culture, collective consciousness and nationhood in the Northwest.
I do believe this to be a credible source do it staying consistent with a couple other published articles from websites such as,
https://www.facinghistory.org ,

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca , and the publisher of the article is also trying to inform its readers of what region the Metis people originated from in canada. - Josh Best

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https://www.sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1602010609492/1602010631711#:~:text=and%20Nunatsiavut%20(Labrador).-,M%C3%A9tis,the%20M%C3%A9tis%20Nation%20from%20others%20who%20self-identify%20as%20M%C3%A9tis,-.

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Indigenous populations in Canada

'Indigenous peoples' is a collective name for the original peoples of North America and their descendants. More than 1.67 million people in Canada (4.9% of the population of Canada) self-identified as an Indigenous person on Canada's 2016 Census of Population.Footnote 4 Indigenous peoples are the fastest growing population in Canada, with a population that grew by 42.5% between 2006 and 2016.Footnote 5 Indigenous peoples are also the youngest population in Canada: about 44% were under the age of 25 in 2016, compared to 28% of the non-Indigenous population.

Figure 1 shows the distribution of Indigenous populations across Canada. The figure includes the number of Indigenous individuals living in each province and territory, as well as what proportion of its overall population comprises Indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples make up the largest proportion of the population in Nunavut (86%), the Northwest Territories (51%) and the Yukon Territory (23%), followed by Manitoba (18%) and Saskatchewan (16%).

The inset table indicates what proportion of the overall Indigenous population resides in each province and territory. Although Indigenous peoples comprise only 3% of Ontario's population, it is home to the largest population of Indigenous peoples: 374, 395 individualsFootnote 6 or 22% of the Indigenous population; 16% of the Indigenous populations resides in British Columbia; followed by 15% in Alberta.

Figure 1: Indigenous Peoples across Canada

Text alternative for Figure 1: Indigenous Peoples across Canada

Indigenous

Population size

Percentage

Percentage of the Indigenous population residing in the Province/Territory

Newfoundland and Labrador

3%

Prince Edward Island

0%

Nova Scotia

3%

New Brunswick

2%

Quebec

11%

Ontario

22%

Manitoba

13%

Saskatchewan

10%

Alberta

15%

British Columbia

16%

Yukon

0%

Northwest Territories

1%

Nunavut

2%

The Canadian Constitution recognizes three groups of Indigenous peoples: First Nations, Inuit, and Métis. These are three distinct peoples with unique histories, languages, cultural practices and spiritual beliefs. Figure 2 shows how the composition of Indigenous populations vary across the provinces and territories, and additional information on each of the groups is provided below.

Figure 2: Composition of the Indigenous population in Canada, 2016

Text alternative for Figure 2: Composition of the Indigenous population in Canada, 2016

Registered Indian

Non-Status Indian

Inuit

Métis

Other Indigenous

*Other Indigenous refers to respondents who reported more than one identity group, and those who reported being a Band member with no Aboriginal identity and no Registered Indian status.

Measuring the socioeconomic gaps

Why measurement is important

First, continued measurement helps determine whether progress is being achieved over time.

Second, ongoing measurement can help demonstrate whether existing programs and policies are properly designed and resourced, and if there are program and policy gaps that must be addressed.

Third, by tracking program and policy performance and identifying gaps, measurement can help ensure accountability of those who design and implement those programs and policies.

Finally, measurement calls for reflection to define, in a clear and transparent way, what progress means. By stimulating conversation and inviting challenge, the iterative process of defining how to measure progress focuses attention on the things that truly matter.

What is important to measure

The socioeconomic and health dimensions addressed in this report, including related indicators, were selected based on a review of the various socioeconomic wellness frameworks being used around the world, in addition to numerous indicators and frameworks related to well-being and progress that First Nation, Inuit, and Métis governments and organizations have developed and shared with the public online. Where possible, the specific indicators used to measure the different dimensions were based on established national or international methodologies.

Examining gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations is an important way of putting numbers in context. Without a basis for comparison, raw statistics are difficult to interpret. As we will see shortly, for example, the employment rate for Métis is about 70%. It is only by looking at this number in relation to the employment rate for the non-Indigenous population (about 76%), that one can get a sense that the rate for Métis is not as high as it could be, and that there may be a need to address systemic barriers, or enduring effects of past injustices, to support Métis to achieve their employment goals.

It is sometimes suggested that focusing on gaps between different populations is inappropriate as it potentially involves an implicit value judgement. It suggests that the lower-scoring population should aspire to the level of the higher-scoring population on a particular indicator, even if the indicator is of little importance to the lower-scoring population. This is a fair critique, and is why the current report focuses on key socioeconomic indicators that appear regularly in Indigenous wellness frameworks, as well as being recognized internationally as important to quality of life in most cultural contexts. The inclusion of additional indicators, the importance of which might vary across Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations, will be done in close consultation with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis for subsequent iterations of this annual report. One exception is knowledge of Indigenous languages, which was included in this inaugural report since it is a well-established priority for many Indigenous peoples.

The indicators

The complete set of indicators addressed in this chapter is listed below, with analyses of each indicator presented in turn in the pages that follow.

Some notes on the approach and methodology

Limitations of the data
Data for the first five sets of indicators (from Income through Housing) are taken from the Census of Canada. This robust source of socioeconomic information remains the cornerstone of data because of its unparalleled ability to support distinctions-based, cross-time analyses for all of Canada, including reserves and the territories.

Despite its richness, the Census has some important limitations. For example, Indigenous people are classified in the Census as Indigenous or not based on self-identification, which can be imperfect given variations in how respondents interpret or understand the Indigenous identity questions, as well as their individual choices respecting whether and how to self-identify as an Indigenous person. In addition, the Census does not capture all First Nation communities. In 2016, there were a total of 14 First Nations communities that were not included, as enumeration was either not permitted, or interrupted before it could be completed. Another important limitation is that the Census of Canada includes a relatively narrow range of socioeconomic indicators, and does not capture the various other dimensions of well-being that are important from an Indigenous perspective.

As we move beyond the Census to seek other sources of data on health, justice, and infrastructure, the persistent gaps in data on Indigenous populations become more evident. In many cases, data are not available on all distinctions groups or geographies, or the data are older and not available across time. Where such limitations exist, the best data available are used to illustrate the gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations. A section at the end of this chapter is devoted to the gaps in Indigenous data, steps that have been taken to address them, and what further efforts can be made to ensure that all partners and stakeholders have the data required to support services to Indigenous peoples, and the transfer of services responsibilities to Indigenous control.

The analysis

To the extent possible, this analysis is distinctions-based and includes data for the past 15 years, to illustrate how socioeconomic gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations have evolved.

Data are presented for the three main distinctions groups: First Nations, Inuit, and Métis. First Nations data are further disaggregated, given the significant differences in socioeconomic outcomes that are known to exist among the following groups: Registered Indians living on reserve, Registered Indians living off reserve, and Non-Status Indians.

Regional and gender-based analyses are also provided. Notably, some very small populations of First Nations and Métis in the territories are also the populations experiencing the largest gaps relative to the non-Indigenous population. Because statistics based on very small populations are less reliable, and can create a skewed image of overall trends, one option would be to exclude them from broader analyses and/or discuss them separately. In the interest of transparency, however, it was decided to retain these small populations as part of the general analysis. Readers are encouraged to interpret statistics for small populations with caution, especially when data are further broken down by gender, age or other variables.

Findings

Income - median income

Median income is a well-established measure of material well-being. Although it does not capture an individual's assets, median income is one way of estimating a person's wealth.

Figure 3 below compares median income for the working age population (aged 25-64) across population groups. The gap in median income is largest for Registered Indians living on reserve, whose median income is less than half that of the non-Indigenous population. Registered Indians living off reserve, Non-Status Indians, and Inuit each have a median income that is between about 75% and 80% of the non-Indigenous population median income. Métis have a median income that is nearly on par with that of non-Indigenous Canadians.

For the non-Indigenous population in Canada, the median income for men is higher than the median income for women by approximately $13,500. As Figure 8 below illustrates, this pattern is different for Indigenous populations, particularly among Inuit, where men and women have a similar median income, and among Registered Indians living on reserve, where women's median income is more than $6,000 higher than that of men's. As a consequence, when one focused on data for men specifically, the gap in median income is particularly large: Registered Indian men living on reserve have a median income that is only about one third as large as the median income for non-Indigenous men; and Inuit men have a median income that is about two-thirds as large.

Income - Low income measure

Figure 9 below compares the percentage of the population who were living in a low income situation in 2015.

Members of all Indigenous groups are more likely than the non-Indigenous population to be living in a situation of low income. Registered Indians living on reserve are 3.5 times more likely.

Figure 10 below illustrates that the likelihood of living in a low income situation decreased between 2005 and 2015 for each Indigenous group, particularly Registered Indians living off reserve. Since the likelihood for the non-Indigenous population stayed stable at around 14%, the gaps also narrowed for each Indigenous group - by as much as 6.6 percentage points for Registered Indians living off reserve.

Employment - employment rate

Employment rate is one way of measuring a population's economic health, and is simply the percentage of the working age population (aged 25-64) who have a job.

Figure 15 demonstrates that all Indigenous populations - particularly Registered Indians living on reserve - have lower employment rates than the non-Indigenous population.

Figure 16 below demonstrates that employment rates have been relatively stable over time. The gaps relative to the non-Indigenous population narrowed slightly for Registered Indians living off reserve, Non-Status Indians, and Métis, but increased slightly for Registered Indians living on reserve and Inuit.

Employment - employment income

Median employment income complements employment rate, as it is a common way of assessing the quality of jobs held by the employed population.

Figure 21 illustrates substantial gaps in median employment income between the non-Indigenous population and First Nations and Inuit.

Figure 22 below shows how median employment income (adjusted to account for inflation) has evolved over time. Although median employment income has increased for each group, the gap relative to the non-Indigenous population has decreased for Registered Indians living off reserve, Non-Status Indians, and Métis only. The median employment income gaps for Inuit and Registered Indians living on reserve have changed little.

Region matters

The national median employment income gaps can conceal important regional differences. As Figure 23 illustrates, for example, Registered Indians living on reserve in Quebec have a median employment income that is about 74% that of the non-Indigenous population, whereas Registered Indians living on reserve in Saskatchewan and New Brunswick have a median income that are only 44% as large as that of the non-Indigenous population in those provinces - differences of $26,172 and $20,485, respectively. The largest gap for First Nations is for the small group of approximately 130 Registered Indians living on reserve in the Northwest Territories, at more than $59,000.

Figure 25 shows that, outside Inuit Nunangat, the employment income gap for Inuit is relatively narrow, with Inuit earning 91% of the employment income earned by the non-Indigenous population. Within Inuit Nunangat, however, the median employment income for Inuit is between about one half (in Nunatsiavut) and one third (in Nunavut) that of the non-Indigenous population.

Education - having at least a high school credential

In addition to being a baseline requirement for many careers, completing a formal education at the high school level or above has the added benefit of ensuring that individuals have the literacy, numeracy, and other skills they need to participate fully in Canada's economy and in civil society, and to effectively access the services and benefits to which they are entitled.

Figure 28 illustrates that levels of high school completion have increased slowly over time for all Indigenous groups, as well as for the non-Indigenous population. The gaps narrowed somewhat for Non-Status Indians and Métis, were unchanged for Registered Indians living off reserve, and widened about six and seven percentage points for Registered Indians living on reserve and Inuit, respectively.

Region matters

High school completion varies widely across the provinces and territories. The Prairie provinces and the Northwest Territories stand out as having the largest gaps between non-Indigenous and First Nations populations (Figure 29).

Regional variation in high school attainment is modest among Métis, and the gaps relative to the non-Indigenous population range from a low of one percentage point in Prince Edward Island to a high of almost 14 percentage points in the Northwest Territories (Figure 30).

Figure 31 illustrates that, outside Inuit Nunangat, the high school completion gap for Inuit is comparatively small: the rate of high school completion for the non-Indigenous population exceeds that of Inuit by 12 percentage points. Within Inuit Nunangat, however, the gaps range from 30 (in Nunatsiavut) to 56 (in Nunavik) percentage points wide.

Changes in a population's education levels tend to start with youth. As the availability of and need for formal education expands, young people strive to obtain the credentials they need to achieve their career goals. Although older adults can and do obtain additional educational credentials, most people complete their formal education when they are relatively younger. According to the 2016 Census, for example, while 64% of Indigenous people aged 15-24 who did not already have a high school diploma were enrolled in school, only 2% of those over 45 were enrolled. Looking at the educational attainment of younger cohorts, therefore, can provide some insight into how the overall education gap can be expected to change in the future. Simply put, if the gaps are smaller among younger cohorts, the overall gaps are in the process of narrowing.

As Figure 32 demonstrates, the gaps among the younger cohort are actually slightly larger than the gaps among the older cohort, suggesting that the high school completion gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations are not on track to narrow in the short term.

Education - completion of a university degree

Although not everyone wants or needs a university degree to fulfil their career goals, those with a university degree still have the highest incomes in Canada, and a degree can generally expand one's employment options as well as providing advanced skills that can be assets in various domains of life.

Figure 34 below illustrates the significant gaps in university attainment that exist for all Indigenous groups, most notably First Nations living on reserve and Inuit, who are less than one-fifth as likely as the non-Indigenous population to have a university degree.

Figure 35 demonstrates that the university gap in the working age population (aged 25-64) has been widening for all Indigenous groups relative to the non-Indigenous population. Although First Nations, Inuit, and Métis all saw increases in university attainment between 2001 and 2016, none increased quickly enough to keep pace with the non-Indigenous population. Moreover, as Figure 36 illustrates, the gaps are wider among younger people (aged 25-34), suggesting that disparities in university completion are not poised to improve in the short term.

Region matters

Figure 37 illustrates the marked variations in university completion gaps for First Nations across regions. The gaps tend to be less pronounced in the Atlantic provinces, where university completion among the non-Indigenous population is lower. Figure 38 shows a similar pattern among Métis.

Figure 39 demonstrates the very large gaps in university completion that exist between Inuit and the non-Indigenous population, even outside of Inuit Nunangat. Within Inuit Nunangat, almost half of the non-Indigenous population in each region has a university degree, compared to only a very small percentage of Inuit.

Housing - crowding

The World Health Organization identified overcrowding as a major factor in the transmission of diseasesFootnote 30,Footnote 31, and it has been linked to other adverse outcomes such as behavioural issues among children.Footnote 32 While the likelihood that one will live in a crowded dwelling is largely a function of one's income or wealth, it is also impacted by the availability of housing and other aspects of local housing markets, and therefore should be measured separately.

Housing - dwellings in need of major repair

Figure 46 illustrates that there is a significant housing repair gap between Indigenous and the non-Indigenous population, with the largest gaps being evident among Registered Indians living on reserve and Inuit.

As Figure 47 illustrates, the percentage of dwellings in need of major repair decreased for the non-Indigenous population, Registered Indians living off reserve, Non-Status Indians, and Métis. Moreover, the gaps between these Indigenous groups and the non-Indigenous population narrowed slightly. By contrast, the percentage of dwellings in need of major repair rose for Registered Indians living on reserve and Inuit, and their gaps relative to the non-Indigenous population widened slightly.

Family - children in foster care

As Figure 52 illustrates, even though relatively few Indigenous and non-Indigenous children are in foster care, the likelihood of being in foster care is much higher for Indigenous children. Registered Indian children, in particular, are 15 times more likely than non-Indigenous children to be in foster care.

Note that Figure 52 includes a statistic for all Registered Indian children, in addition to the breakdown between those living on and off reserve. In subsequent charts related to foster care, the breakdown is not included as it may be misleading, since Registered Indian children living in foster care off reserve may come from families living on reserve.

Data on foster care gaps is only available for two time periods, as this information was only first captured in the 2011 National Household Survey, which was that year's equivalent to the long-form census. As Figure 53 shows, the percentage of children in foster care fell between 2011 and 2016 for all Indigenous groups except for Non-Status Indians, who saw a slight increase in the percentage of children in foster care. Since the proportion of non-Indigenous children in foster care (0.3%) did not change between 2011 and 2016, all Indigenous groups except for Non-Status Indians experienced a small decrease in the foster care gap.

Region matters

Figure 54 illustrates that, although there are some regions in which the foster care gap for Non-Status Indians is small or negligible, the gap for Registered Indians is always pronounced. In Manitoba the gaps for both Registered Indians (6.8 percentage points) and Non-Status Indians (12.4 percentage points) are particularly large.

Figure 55 shows a comparison of the percentage of Métis and non-Indigenous children in foster care. Although the percentages seem very high in Nunavut and the Yukon, they are based on extremely small numbers of Métis children in those regions (25 and 245 children, respectively). It is likely more valuable to focus on Manitoba and British Columbia, which have large Métis populations and comparatively high percentages of Métis children in foster care.

Although small numbers make it difficult to interpret differences in the percentage of Inuit who are in foster care across Inuit regions, it is notable that the percentage of Inuit children in care inside Inuit Nunangat (1.4%) is lower than the percentage outside Inuit Nunangat (5.7%). Again, this pattern might be misleading as some Inuit children in foster care outside Inuit Nunangat might originate from families inside Inuit Nunangat.

Culture - Indigenous language knowledge

Indigenous languages have a very important role in Indigenous cultures, and reflect the rich and distinct worldviews of the different Indigenous nations across the country.

Knowledge of Indigenous languages is not compared to non-Indigenous languages in this report. Instead, the report examines trends in Indigenous language use over time and whether those trends reflect Indigenous peoples' aspirations with respect to the preservation and practice of their ancestral languages.

According to the 2012 Aboriginal Peoples SurveyFootnote 36, half of Indigenous peoples living off reserve reported that it was somewhat or very important to them to speak an Indigenous language (66.9% of Registered Indians, 45.3% of Non-Status Indians, 80.9% of Inuit, and 36.8% of Métis).Footnote 37 Similarly, according to the First Nations Regional Early Childhood, Education, and Employment survey, the vast majority of First Nations adults living on reserve or in a northern First Nation community reported that it was somewhat or very important to them to understand (91.4%) and speak (90.8%) a First Nations language.Footnote 38

As Figure 56 demonstrates, knowledge of an Indigenous language, defined in terms of one's self-reported ability to conduct a conversation in the language, is common only among Inuit (64.8%) and Registered Indians living on reserve (44.8%).

Figure 57 illustrates that knowledge of an Indigenous language has declined slowly over time, when one considers the proportion of Indigenous people who can conduct a conversation in an Indigenous language.

A focus on gender

As Figure 61 demonstrates, the likelihood of knowing an Indigenous language is similar for males and females across Indigenous groups.

Health - life expectancy

Life expectancy is one of the key, internationally-recognized indicators of population health. Reliable life expectancy estimates for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis populations are currently readily available for only two time periods: 2006 and 2011, and only at the national level. These estimates were developed using population-based linked datasets called the Canadian Census Health and Environment Cohorts (CanCHECs), and were published by Statistics Canada in a 2019 article entitled Life expectancy of First Nations, Métis and Inuit household populations in Canada.Footnote 41

The life expectancy gaps relative to the non-Indigenous population in 2011 were 8.9 years and 9.6 years for First Nations males and females, respectively; 11.4 and 11.2 years for Inuit males and females, respectively; and 4.5 and 5 years for Métis males and females, respectively.

Figure 65 illustrates that life expectancy for males and females in Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations increased slightly between 2006 and 2011. Among males, Inuit life expectancy increased the most, and their gap relative to the non-Indigenous population narrowed slightly. The gap for First Nations and Métis, however, widened slightly. Among females, the life expectancy of the non-Indigenous population increased the most, meaning the life expectancy gaps for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis females increased slightly.

Text alternative for Figure 65: Life expectancy at age one, 2006 - 2011, by gender (female), Canada

Female

First Nations

Métis

Inuit

Non-Indigenous

Health - infant mortality

Another key international indicator of population health is infant mortality, which is monitored by organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the World Health Organization.

The indicator is defined in terms of the number of infants who die before age one, expressed as a rate per thousand live births. Reliable life expectancy estimates that are comparable for First Nations, Inuit, Métis, and non-Indigenous populations are currently readily available for only a single point in time, based on a cohort of singleton births (May 16, 2004 through May 15, 2006) created by linking the Canadian Live Birth, Infant Death, and Stillbirth Database of the 2006 Census. Results were published by Statistics Canada in a 2017 article entitled Birth outcomes among First Nations, Inuit and Métis populations.Footnote 43

Figure 66 illustrates that infant mortality is higher for each of the three Indigenous groups than for the non-Indigenous population. The error bars highlight that there is some imprecision in the estimates for the Indigenous groups. Nevertheless, First Nations, Inuit, and Métis infant mortality rates are measured to be 2.1, 2.8, and 2.4 times the rate of the non-Indigenous population, respectively.

Justice - victimization

Being safe in one's community is a key factor in well-being, and can be measured in various ways. This report looks specifically at experiences of violent victimization, which are measured in the 2018 Survey of Safety in Public and Private Spaces in terms of whether one has experienced physical or sexual assault since the age of 15.

Figure 67 illustrates that Indigenous peoples are significantly more likely than the non-Indigenous population to have experienced violent victimization, with the gap being 17.1 percentage points wide among women and 20.2 percentage points wide among men. Not enough Inuit were surveyed to allow analyses specific to Inuit, and no data are currently available that distinguish Registered Indians from Non-Status Indians, or those living on versus off reserve. Published statistics on First Nations and Métis suggest that their rates of violent victimization are similarly elevated. Error bars are included in the chart to highlight that the Indigenous sample in the source survey was small, and the apparent differences between First Nations and Métis were not precisely measured and could be due to chance.

Figure 67: Percentage who experienced violent victimization since the age of 15 years, 2018, aged 15+, CanadaFootnote 44

Text alternative for Figure 67: Percentage who experienced violent victimization since the age of 15 years, 2018, aged 15+, Canada

Male

Percentage

95% confidence interval (from/to)

Percentage

95% confidence interval (from/to)

Percentage

95% confidence interval (from/to)

Percentage

95% confidence interval (from/to)

Infant mortality rate per 1,000 live births

54.9%

49.1%

60.5%

34.7%

33.6%

35.8%

49.8%

40.6%

59.0%

58.9%

51.4%

66.1%

Female

Percentage

95% confidence interval (from/to)

Percentage

95% confidence interval (from/to)

Percentage

95% confidence interval (from/to)

Percentage

95% confidence interval (from/to)

Infant mortality rate per 1,000 live births

55.3%

50.2%

60.2%

38.2%

37.1%

39.2%

58.0%

50.5%

65.1%

55.0%

48.2%

61.5%

Justice - incarceration

Disproportionate levels of incarceration can be a strong signal that a holistic examination is in order of both crime and institutional responses to it.

Figures 68 and 69 below show data from the Adult Correctional Services Survey.Footnote 45 Figure 68 provides a rough estimate of the differences in incarceration rates between Indigenous and the non-Indigenous population in 2016/17. Specifically, it presents the number of custody admissionsFootnote 46 associated with Indigenous and the non-Indigenous population in 2016/17 as a percentage of their respective 2016 census populations.Footnote 47 Since a single person can have more than one custody admission in a year, this percentage does not represent a true rate. Nevertheless, it does suggest that custody admissions are far more common among Indigenous peoples than the non-Indigenous population.

Figure 69 demonstrates the degree to which Indigenous people were overrepresented among custody admissions to correctional services in the years 2013/14 through 2017/18. According to the 2016 Census, Indigenous people made up 4.9% of the population of Canada that year. In 2016/17, however, the Adult Correctional Services Survey determined that Indigenous peoples were involved in 29.9% of custody admissions.

A focus on urban settings

Analyses of these data revealed that gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations living in urban settings are generally similar to those that exist between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations overall. Employment rates provide a useful illustration. Figure 70 shows the employment rate gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations overall, and Figure 71 shows the gaps for urban sub-populations. Urban and overall rates are within a percentage point of each other for Registered Indians living off reserve, Non-Status Indians, and the non-Indigenous population. The difference is somewhat more marked among Inuit, whose employment rate is about two and a half percentage points higher in an urban environment. The tendency to see higher outcomes for Inuit in urban areas (and smaller gaps relative to the non-Indigenous population), echoes earlier regional analyses, which showed the large differences in socioeconomic outcomes between Inuit living in Inuit Nunangat, and those residing in the South.

Conclusion - addressing data gaps

Indigenous Services Canada continues to take steps to improve the quality and availability of data on Indigenous populations to ensure that socioeconomic gaps between Indigenous and the non-Indigenous populations can be measured reliably and comprehensively.

First, the department continues to provide funding and expertise to support the Census of Canada, which continues to be the cornerstone of data on Indigenous populations in Canada. It not only provides high quality data that are comparable across populations and over time, and which are generally available even down to the community level, but it functions as a technical foundation for data integration, sampling, and data processing.

Second, the department continues to invest in specialized surveys on Indigenous populations. These include:

the Surveys on Indigenous Peoples, which received permanent funding ($49.4 million over five years and $9.9 million per year ongoing) through Budget 2019 and which covers First Nations living on and off reserve, as well as Inuit and Métis;

the First Nations Regional Health Survey, which received permanent funding in Budget 2019 ($24.7 million over four years and $4.9 million ongoing); and

the new Inuit Health Survey, which received permanent funding in Budget 2018 ($82 million over 10 years and $6 million per year ongoing).

Importantly, the bulk of these funds were allocated to Indigenous organizations. Given the increasing recognition that strong, Indigenous-led data capacity is key to Indigenous peoples' self-determination and Indigenous Services Canada's ultimate goal of service transfer, the department prioritized survey initiatives that supported Indigenous peoples themselves to identify and address the data gaps impacting their populations.

Third, the department has invested in a number of surveys of the general Canadian population. These investments ($770,000 in the 2019 General Social Survey on Victimization; $660,000 in the upcoming National Legal Problems Survey; and $1,300,000 for the upcoming Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies survey of literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving skills) will allow Statistics Canada to collect data from enough Indigenous peoples that Indigenous-specific data will be possible and gaps relative to the non-Indigenous population can be identified.

Fourth, Indigenous Services Canada is turning its attention increasingly towards administrative data, or more specifically, the integration of select administrative data sources with other data sources (such as Census and survey data), to produce powerful new data sets at relatively low cost and without increasing respondent burden. Indigenous Services Canada has developed a partnership with Statistics Canada, through which administrative data from departmental programs are shared with Statistics CanadaFootnote 49, who explores their potential to be integrated with other data sets and used for new statistical purposes. The first major new dataset to be developed is called the Longitudinal Indian Register Database, which Statistics Canada produced by linking the Indian Register that Indigenous Services Canada manages with tax data from the Canada Revenue Agency. Indigenous Services Canada has also shared its administrative data on infrastructure with Statistics Canada, who is using it to validate and supplement on reserve data from Canada's Core Public Infrastructure Survey; as well as the department's data holdings related to First Nation Chiefs and councilors, which Statistics Canada will use to report on gender representation among First Nation Chiefs and councillors.Footnote 50

Notably, Indigenous Services Canada's data sharing and integration relationship with Statistics Canada is just one element of the broader efforts being undertaken to improve and integrate the department's administrative data holdings. Although Indigenous Services Canada must rely on Statistics Canada to integrate data about individual people, the department is taking steps to harmonize and integrate community-level data holdings, as a means of reducing respondent burden, improving data quality, facilitating fast and accurate reporting, and creating a multidimensional data set that will help program and policy makers understand the interrelationships between program and policy areas, so that services to Indigenous communities can be improved.

Fifth, as part of the New Fiscal Relationship the department is working with the Assembly of First Nations and the First Nations Information Governance Centre to co-develop and engage with First Nations on a National Outcomes-Based Framework to better measure and report on the closure of socio-economic gaps between First Nations and non-Indigenous Canadians. This work also responds to numerous reports and studies, over the past 40 years which have consistently underlined the negative impacts of a narrow focus on compliance and its associated recipient reporting burden, calling for a shift to a focus on outcomes. Most recently in the spring of 2018, the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) released Report 5 "Socio-economic Gaps on First Nations Reserves - Indigenous Services Canada". The report found that the department did not have a comprehensive picture of well-being of on reserve First Nations people compared with other Canadians as measured by the Community Well-being Index, and indicated that while the Index includes important measures of well-being (i.e., education, employment, housing, income), it does not include critical variables such as health, environment, language and culture. The department agreed with the OAG recommendation, highlighting in its response that it would build on the Community Well-being Index by co-developing, with First Nations and other partners, a broad dashboard of well-being outcomes that will reflect mutually agreed-upon metrics in measuring and reporting on closing socio-economic gaps. This means that the right data are necessary to track progress on priorities as identified by First Nations, and to demonstrate outcomes for Canadians on the closure of the socio-economic gaps between First Nations and non-Indigenous Canadians.

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This first annual report to Parliament is organized into three parts. Part 1 provides a broad overview of the socioeconomic gaps between First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples, and the non-Indigenous population in Canada.

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Out of the 58,100 people living on the reserve in Ontario only approximately 7 percent identify as Metis.

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Demographics

Ontario has the largest Indigenous population in Canada (374,395). The second largest Indigenous population is in British Columbia (270,580).

The Indigenous population in Ontario increased by 54 per cent from 2006 to 2016. There are two explanations for the large growth in the Indigenous population: natural growth and an increase in people voluntarily self-identifying as First Nations, Inuit, or Métis.

Indigenous people represent 2.8 per cent of the total population of Ontario.

Thunder Bay is the Census Metropolitan Area with the highest proportion of Indigenous people in Canada (12.7 per cent of the population).

The average age of the Indigenous population is 33.6 years compared to 40.7 years for the non-Indigenous population in Ontario.

Ontario has the largest First Nations population in Canada (236,685 or 24 per cent of the total First Nations population in Canada).

There are 120,585 self-identifying Métis people in Ontario, which is a 40 per cent increase from 2011 and an increase of 64 per cent since 2006.

With a population of 3,860, the Inuit represent 1 per cent of the total Indigenous population in Ontario.

133 First Nation communities are located in Ontario, the second-highest number in Canada after British Columbia (source: Chiefs of Ontario).

78 per cent of First Nation communities in Ontario are located in Northern Ontario.

1 in 4 First Nation communities in Ontario is a remote community, accessible only by air year-round or by ice road in the winter. Ontario has the highest number of remote First Nation communities in Canada.

23 per cent of First Nations people in Ontario live on reserve.

Of the 58,100 people living on reserve in Ontario, 93 per cent identify as First Nations. Approximately 7 per cent identify as Métis, Inuit, other Indigenous or non-Indigenous.

**The original Census statistics uses "Aboriginal" rather than "Indigenous" to refer to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people.

*** All statistics are based on self-identification as Indigenous.

**** While the Census of Population is the most comprehensive data source available, some Indigenous organizations question the cultural appropriateness of the methodology used by Statistics Canada for the Census, resulting in possible over- and under-counting of certain Indigenous populations.

Source: Statistics Canada, 2016 Census of Population

Socio-economic indicators:

Income:

The median annual income for Indigenous people in Ontario (aged 25-64) is $33,218 ($30,819 after-tax) compared to $42,564 for the non-Indigenous population ($37,779 after-tax).

The prevalence of low incomes for the Indigenous population in Ontario (aged 25-64) is 21 per cent, which is higher than the rate for the non-Indigenous population at 13 per cent.

Source: Statistics Canada, 2016 Census of Population

Education:

The high school completion rate of Indigenous people (aged 20-24) is 76 per cent, below the rate of the non-Indigenous population at 93 per cent. For First Nations living on reserve, the rate is 45 per cent.

53 per cent of the Indigenous population vs. 65 per cent of the non-Indigenous population in Ontario (aged 25-64) has attained some form of post-secondary education (apprenticeship, trades certificate, diploma, college or university).

13 per cent of Indigenous people in Ontario hold a university degree (aged 25-64), up from 9 per cent in 2006.

Source: Statistics Canada, 2016 Census of Population

Life expectancy:

Life expectancy for Indigenous people remained about 10 years lower than for the non-Indigenous population (71 years compared to 81 years).

Source: Statistics Canada, Vital Statistics custom tabulation

Justice system involvement:

The 2017 Independent Review of Ontario Corrections found that "Indigenous peoples account for approximately 2 per cent of Ontario's population and yet in 2016 represented 13 per cent of those in provincial custody. One in three Indigenous people admitted to Ontario's correctional institutions last year, and over half of the Indigenous people admitted to segregation, were flagged with a suicide risk alert. Both of these rates are higher than in the non-Indigenous population."

Rates of Indigenous incarceration appear to be especially high in northern Ontario. Renu Mandhane, Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, speaking with CBC News in February 2017, claimed that 90 per cent of inmates in the provincial correctional centre in Kenora were Indigenous.

Source: Statistics Canada, Adult correctional services

The Indigenous population figures do not include the residents of eight Ontario First Nations reserves that were incompletely enumerated in or omitted from the 2016 Census.

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Ontario has the largest Indigenous population in Canada (374,395). The second largest Indigenous population is in British Columbia (270,580). The Indigenous population in Ontario increased by 54 per cent from 2006 to 2016. There are two explanations for the large growth in the Indigenous population: natural growth and an increase in people voluntarily self-identifying as First Nations, Inuit, or Métis.

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The Métis Nation originated in the 1700s when French and Scottish fur traders married Indigenous women, such as the Cree, and Anishinabe (Ojibway). Their descendants formed a distinct culture, collective consciousness and nationhood in the Northwest. Distinct Métis communities developed along the fur trade routes. This Métis Nation Homeland includes the three Prairie Provinces (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta), as well as parts of Ontario, British Columbia, the Northwest Territories and the Northern United States.
This website is a credible source because it is made by Canada Government officially. Especially, meets Current (modified in Oct 2021), Reliable, and Accurate. As it is an official government website, so there is no need to explain its credibility anymore.

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In French, the word métis is an adjective referring to someone of mixed ancestry. Since the 18th century, the word has been used to describe individuals with mixed Indigenous and European ancestry. But it's generally recognized that being Métis is more than having mixed Indigenous and European heritage. I believe this is a credible source because the site has a long standing history of being reliable as well as it only informing and not trying to persuade.

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This article is a part of our series, 'Exploring Identity.' We're taking a closer look at issues surrounding identity in Inuit, First Nations and Métis communities.
Canada's 1982 Constitution recognizes three distinct Indigenous groups: First Nations, Inuit and Métis.

Who are the Métis and why is this question so complicated? Here's some historical background.

What does 'Métis' mean?

In French, the word métis is an adjective referring to someone of mixed ancestry. Since the 18th century, the word has been used to describe individuals with mixed Indigenous and European ancestry.

But it's generally recognized that being Métis is more than having mixed Indigenous and European heritage. Métis have a distinct collective identity, customs and way of life, unique from Indigenous or European roots.

The 1996 Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples stated "Many Canadians have mixed Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal ancestry, but that does not make them Métis or even Aboriginal. Some of them identify themselves as First Nations persons or Inuit, some as Métis and some as non-Aboriginal. What distinguishes Métis people from everyone else is that they associate themselves with a culture that is distinctly Métis."

Through the late 1970s and early 1980s, Jim Sinclair pushed to have Métis and non-status Indians' rights recognized in the Constitution, helping establish the Native Council of Canada (NCC). When the Constitution was repatriated in 1982, First Nations, Inuit and Métis were recognized as Indigenous Peoples with rights under Canadian law.

In 1983, the Métis Nation split from the NCC to form the Métis National Council, which represents Métis communities from Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia.

The Métis Nation are descendants of fur traders who settled in present-day Manitoba. There's a shared culture, traditions and language among those who trace their family roots back to the Red River colony.

There are others outside of the Métis Nation who do not have connections to the Red River colony who also identify as Métis, particularly in Quebec and the Maritimes. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples referred to them as "the other Métis" and said they constituted "a minority within a minority within a minority."

Over the last decade, the number of people identifying as Métis in these areas has skyrocketed.

How many Métis are there?

In the 2016 Census, 587,545 people identified as Métis across Canada. That number represents a 51.2 per cent growth since 2006. Over the same period, the First Nations population grew by 39.3 per cent and Inuit by 29.1 per cent.

The highest jumps in Métis population were seen in Nova Scotia, Quebec and New Brunswick, with numbers more than doubling over 10 years. Nova Scotia shows the biggest increase at just over 200 per cent.

This has sparked conversation and controversy around Métis identity.

What are Métis rights?

Section 35 of the 1982 Constitution Act guaranteed Indigenous rights but they were not defined.

In October 1993, Steve and Roddy Powley killed a moose north of Sault Ste. Marie and were charged with unlawfully hunting a moose without a licence contrary to Ontario's Game and Fish Act. They argued that as Métis they had rights under s.35 to hunt for food.

R. v. Powley went to the Supreme Court of Canada and in the court's September 2003 decision, the Powleys were acquitted and the "Powley Test" was established for determining the rights to which Métis are entitled.

The Powley Test

The test considers 10 criteria, encompassing self-identification, ancestral connection and community acceptance, to determine whether someone is entitled to exercise Métis rights. The test was modeled after the Van der Peet Test which determines how First Nations claims to rights are defined.

The 10 criteria are:

Characterization of the right.

Identification of the historic rights-bearing community.

Identification of the contemporary rights-bearing community.

Verification of the claimant's membership in the relevant contemporary community. (One must self-identify as Métis, have an ancestral connection to a historic Métis community and be accepted by the modern Métis community.)

Identification of the relevant time frame. (To determine whether something was integral to the Métis community, the practice must have fallen post-contact but before European laws and customs ruled the land.)

Determination of whether the practice is integral to the claimant's distinctive culture.

Establishment of continuity between the historic practice and the contemporary right asserted.

Determination of whether or not the right was extinguished.

If there is a right, determination of whether there is an infringement.

Determination of whether the infringement is justified.

The Daniels decision

In 2016, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Daniels v. Canada (Indian Affairs and Northern Development) that Métis and non-status Indians are considered Indians under s. 91(24) of the 1982 Constitution.

The decision established that the federal government must accept responsibility for negotiating programs and services for Métis communities.

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Exploring Identity: Who are the Métis and what are their rights? | CBC News

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Who are the Métis, why is this question so complicated and what are the legal issues affecting them? Here's some historical background.

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According to the 2016 Census, there are 537,855 Metis in Canada, representing about 32% of the Indigenous population. At present, the Census does not distinguish members of the Metis Nation from others who self-identify as Metis. i believe this cite is credible because it is a government website and it was written by the minister if indigenous services

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This first annual report to Parliament is organized into three parts. Part 1 provides a broad overview of the socioeconomic gaps between First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples, and the non-Indigenous population in Canada.

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Métis are people of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry, and one of the three recognized Aboriginal peoples in Canada. ... Métis are people of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry, and one of the three recognized Aboriginal peoples in Canada.

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Louis Riel, circa 1873.
(courtesy Provincial Archives of Manitoba/N-5733)

Definitions and Terminology
Editorial Note: In the interest of promoting a better understanding of the complex issue of Métis identity and how it is defined, The Canadian Encyclopedia has commissioned two opinion pieces exploring different perspectives on the topic. Métis Are a People, Not a Historical Process explores Métis identity from the perspective of Métis with ancestral ties to the Red River Settlement. The "Other" Métis explores Métis identity from the perspective of Métis who do not have ancestral ties to the Red River Settlement.
The Congress of Aboriginal Peoples (CAP) has been critical of this definition of Métis, asserting that it excludes "many people who have legitimate claims to Métis identity." Despite CAP's stance, the MNC's position is the one that has generally been adopted by federal and provincial governments and the courts. For example, Métis Aboriginal rights defined in the decision and section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 have only been applied to Métis communities west of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. While several lawsuits claiming section 35 Métis rights have been brought before the courts by other communities, none have been successful. For example, R. v. Vatour in 2010 ruled against the notion of a Métis community in the Maritimes. Further, the implementation of these rights defined by the Powley decision and by various provincial governments all fall within the MNC's definition of the "Métis Homeland, " which includes the Prairie provinces, and parts of Ontario, BC and the NWT.

Typically, when written with a small-m, métis refers to any community of European-Indigenous ancestry, including those in Ontario and Québec and non-status settlements near First Nations reserves. It is often used to describe mixed-descent families and communities during the 18th and early 19th century Great Lakes fur trade, although some scholars now avoid using the term.

Contemporary usage of Métis is also different from its historical meaning. At Red River in the 19th century there were two prominent communities of mixed-descent people. In addition to a sizeable French-speaking and nominally Catholic Métis population, there was a large group of English-speaking "Half-breeds" who were mainly Anglican agriculturists. While these interrelated communities can be considered to be distinct constituencies - even though the boundaries between them were quite porous - the derogatory nature of the term "Half-breed" has caused it to fall largely into disuse. Thus, the contemporary meaning of "Métis" typically includes people of both French- and English-speaking heritage.

There are also Canadian legal definitions that further complicate Métis terminology. Section 35(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982 recognizes " Indian, Inuit and Métis peoples" as Aboriginal peoples under Canadian law, yet despite several Supreme Court of Canada decisions, Métis Aboriginal rights - and who may possess these rights - remain, for the most part, undefined. However, in 2016, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in the Daniels case that the federal government has jurisdiction over Métis people, and that both members of the Métis Nation and Non-Status Indians are "Indians" as defined by the Constitution Act. The Court stopped short of clarifying the legal definition of Métis, but removed one barrier governments used for generations to avoid dealing with outstanding Métis issues.

Métis Communities in Canada

There are people of mixed ancestry throughout Canada. The earliest mixed Indigenous-European marriages can be traced to the earliest days of contact, yet whether these marriages resulted in distinct Métis communities has long been the subject of scholarly debate. Some academics have argued that any mixed-descent person should be considered Métis. However, other scholars, along with the MNC, suggest that only those who were part of distinct Métis communities and used the term "Métis" in a self-referential way, should be called Métis. "Labrador Métis" for example, have dropped Métis for this reason and instead prefer a term their ancestors used to define themselves: NunatuKavut. Scholars who defend the Red River definition of "Métis" argue that Métis identity is not simply the result of a dual heritage, but rather a matter of possessing a singular cultural heritage of dual origins; someone of Cree and French Canadian descent would be considered Métis not solely by virtue of their mixed-descent, but whether they have Métis heritage that can be traced back to the Red River community.

Others have argued that such a narrow definition offers a limited understanding of Métis history. Communities in Ontario and Eastern Canada that have sought official recognition as Métis, for example, have expressed frustration at the popular notion that a traceable ancestry to the Red River settlement is a necessary requirement to "authentically" identifying as Métis. They argue that mixed-descent families and communities have existed since the 18th and early 19th century Great Lakes fur trade, before the establishment of the Red River Settlement. However, for many Red River Métis, the term is an important part of their specific history, heritage and identity, as enshrined by Canadian law. This remains an issue of heated debate among many métis people in Canada. ( See The "Other " Métis; Métis Are a People, Not a Historical Process).

Great Lakes Communities

The first small-m métis communities emerged during the Great Lakes fur trade in the 18th century. Great Lakes Indigenous diplomatic and economic protocols encouraged French fur traders to establish family connections through marriage and ceremonial adoption with prominent Indigenous families in the region. Such unions with Indigenous women - referred to as marriages à la façon du pays, "according to the custom of the country" - usually involved mutual commitments with local Indigenous kin and communities. French traders often lived out their lives with these families, whether formally employed at the forts or subsisting as gens libres (French and Métis freemen who supplied the posts or served intermittently as guides, interpreters or voyageurs). Game, fish, wild rice and maple sugar furnished sustenance, supplemented by small-scale slash-and-burn agriculture. Over time small groups of mixed families situated themselves in specific economic niches, with many rising to economic and social prominence throughout the Great Lakes region.

Scholarship has suggested that the application of the term "métis" to the Great Lakes region at this time is problematic since these mixed communities favoured terms like Saulteurs, bois brûlés (literally "burnt wood"), or chicots. While the term "métis" appears occasionally in contemporary writing, it was used predominantly by outsiders to make sense of a complex set of relationships between Indigenous communities and their relatives, not necessarily by the Great Lakes "métis" themselves. Likewise, the term "Métis" did not make its way into common language at Red River until the early 19th century, several years after the decline of the Great Lakes fur trade and the mixed communities it supported. Despite this distinction in terminology, the Métis of Red River and the métis of the Great Lakes were often connected through marriage and kinship practices.

The Western Métis

The success of the fur trade in the region that the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) called Rupert's Land also relied on intermarriage. While the Company initially attempted to suppress these "country marriages," the effectiveness of these unions in establishing trade networks, along with the successful use of intermarriage by the rival North West Company (NWC), convinced the HBC to modify its policy. Initially, the children of these marriages lacked the distinct community and economic base upon which to build a separate identity. While some HBC officers' mixed children were educated in England, Scotland or in the Canadas ( see Upper and Lower Canada, later the Province of Canada), and other families were left in the care of other HBC employees when senior officers returned to Europe, not all mixed-descent children faced difficult prospects. Many of these mixed-descent children remained in the North-West, living near one another and developing a sense of themselves as a unique cultural and social community. This sense of self would eventually evolve into a sense of political commonality.

Nor'Wester William McGillivray admitted in a letter of 14 March 1818 that the Métis were linked to the NWC by occupation and kinship. "Yet," he emphasized, "they one and all look upon themselves as members of an independent tribe of natives, entitled to a property in the soil, to a flag of their own, and to protection from the British government." Further, it was well proved "that the half-breeds under the denominations of bois-brûlés and métifs have formed a separate and distinct tribe of Indians for a considerable time back."

The early Red River Colony did not allay these fears, but rather antagonized the Métis and the NWC. Decrees from the governor of the colony forbade the export and sale of pemmican to anyone but local HBC forts, and later banned hunting buffalo from horseback ( see Pemmican Proclamation). These were direct economic sanctions against Métis families who provisioned the NWC with pemmican made from buffalo meat (which had been hunted on horseback). After escalating raids on rival fur trade forts by HBC and NWC officers, many prominent Métis grew hostile to the Selkirk settlement's leaders and, under the leadership of Cuthbert Grant, in 1815 decided to evict the settlers from the region. In 1816, after Selkirk himself had decided to evict the Nor'Westers, the governor of the settlement, Robert Semple, confronted a group of Métis soldiers at Seven Oaks. A battle broke out and the Métis soldiers killed Semple and several colonists. The event was memorialized in Pierre Falcon's "La Chanson de la Grenouillère." ( See also: Music of the Métis.)

The Battle of Seven Oaks resulted in an agreement between Cuthbert Grant and the Selkirk settlement's interim leader, Peter Fidler. By 1821, any inter-company conflicts were ended with the merger of the HBC and NWC. After the merger a number of traders were deemed redundant and many took up residence at the Red River Colony, which thus gained an increasing Métis presence. Company employees with Métis families lobbied for the founding of a community where they could retire and have lands, livelihoods, schools, churches and other amenities. The HBC itself hoped to reduce costs by relocating dependent populations to a place where they could become self-supporting under the Company's governance.

From 1821 to 1870, Red River's overwhelmingly mixed-descent population continued to reflect its dual origins: Montréal, the Great Lakes and Prairies, and the NWC; and Britain, the Scottish Orkney Islands (a major HBC recruiting ground) and Rupert's Land. Some argue that these groups expressed mutual solidarity on the basis of their numerous intermarriages, business ties, shared involvements in the buffalo hunt, the HBC transport brigades and provisional government of 1869-70. A contrary view emphasizes the split between Roman Catholic francophones and Protestant anglophones. Whatever their internal ties and tensions, the rapidly growing population in the Northwest was, by the 1830s, increasingly seen as a racial aggregate, as racially based interpretations of human behaviour reigned in the 19th century. As such, Métis were often limited in their advancement through Company ranks.

While the HBC claimed to govern the population of Red River through the Company-appointed Council of Assiniboia, it governed more through influence than command. Throughout the 1840s and 1850s, Métis challenged the HBC trade and administrative monopoly in Red River. In 1849 Métis disrupted the trial of free trader Pierre-Guillaume Sayer, effectively ending the HBC fur monopoly and ushering in an era of free trade. In the mid-1850s, Métis petitioned the Imperial Government in London through Red River-born lawyer Alexander Kennedy Isbister to limit the Council of Assiniboia's power. On the ground, the Council rarely commanded enough of a constabulary to compel Métis to follow its laws, so the Council was often forced to compromise with the community to ensure the enforcement of its laws.

The Red River Provisional Government, 1869-70

Councillors of the Provisional Government of the Métis Nation, 1870.

The consequent efforts of government surveyors to map Red River without regard for local residents' holdings resulted in the establishment of the Métis National Committee, and a provisional government in late 1869. These events established Louis Riel as the leader of the Métis resistance ( see also: Louis Riel Timeline). After consolidating their alliance with the "Half-breed" population and the old British settler population, the three constituencies formed the Provisional Government of Assiniboia's Legislative Assembly in March 1870, and sent a delegation to Ottawa to negotiate Red River's entrance into Confederation. The outcome was theManitoba Act, which established Manitoba as a new province in Confederation as well as several other commitments to protect Métis landholdings (including a 1.4 million acre land reserve), language and local political control over the new province.

However, the agreement recorded by the Provisional Government's chief negotiator varies in important ways from the Manitoba Act, and Métis leaders have argued since the 19th century that the original agreement has never been properly implemented. The promised land reserve was never properly allotted; and when it was, it was granted piecemeal to individual families, taking well over a decade to be allocated. The settlers and troops who arrived in the new province after 1870 were generally hostile to the Métis, many of whom were "beaten and outraged by a small but noisy section" of the newcomers, according to a report by the new governor, Adams Archibald. Métis landholders were harassed, while new laws and amendments to the Manitoba Act undermined Métis power to fend off speculators and new settlers.

Of the approximately 10,000 persons of mixed descent in Manitoba in 1870, two-thirds or more are estimated to have departed in the following few years. While some went north and some went south to the United States, most headed west to the existing Métis settlements around Fort Edmonton (Lac Ste Anne, St Albert and Lac La Biche) and to the South Saskatchewan River, where they joined many Métis families already living at St Laurent, Batoche and Duck Lake.

The North-West Resistance

Louis Riel, circa 1873.

As Saskatchewan Métis communities grew due to the Manitoba exodus, several sought to clarify their land titles with the Canadian government. The government ignored Métis concerns while negotiating major Indigenous treaties and pre-empting land for railways. In deep frustration, the Saskatchewan Métis took up arms under Riel and Gabriel Dumont in the North-West Resistance of 1885.

The Métis defeat at Batoche and the execution of Riel for treason set off a second dispersal, particularly to Alberta, and a renewed weakening of political influence and cohesiveness ( see also: Battle of Batoche). Sir John A. Macdonald in 1885 articulated a view that would begin the process of denying Métis identity for the next century: "If they are Indians, they go with the tribe; if they are half-breeds they are whites." Where Métis individuals did receive land allowances (or financial equivalents), they usually were granted them in paper scrip - transferable certificates which unscrupulous speculators often pressured them to sell cheaply on the spot. The "scrip hunters" followed the Treaty No. 8 Half-Breed Commission in 1900 as it made its awards to Métis in the Dene settlements, and bought up many $240 scrip certificates for cash amounts of $70 to $130.

From 1885 to the mid-1900s, poverty, demoralization and racism commonly connected to being identified as a "half-breed" led many Métis to deny or suppress that part of their heritage if they could. In 1896 Father Albert Lacombe, concerned for Métis interests, founded St-Paul-des-Métis northeast of Edmonton on land furnished by the government. For financial and other reasons, the colony failed as a formal entity by 1908, and settlers from Québec began to dominate the area. The multiple dispersals of Métis families across the west has led to the existence of Métis communities across the Prairies, and into British Columbia and the Northwest Territories, as well as the northern United States and northwestern Ontario.

20th Century Métis Activism

Despite the struggles of the 19th century, some developments after 1900 were more positive. In 1909, the Union nationale métisse St-Joseph de Manitoba, founded by former associates of Riel and others, began to retrieve (from Métis documents and memories) their own history of the events of 1869-70 and 1885, resulting in A.H. de Trémaudan's classic work, Hold High Your Heads: History of the Métis Nation in Western Canada (1936). The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise of new leaders - notably James Patrick (Jim) Brady and Malcolm Norris - who, as Prairie socialist activists, built a new political and organizational base to defend their people's interests. Many Métis and non-Status Indigenous peoples had been considered "squatters" (although they asserted title of their own to these lands) on Crown lands in Alberta. Threatened by a federal plan to place these lands under provincial jurisdiction, Joseph Dion and others organized petitions and delegations to the Alberta government to seek land title for the Indigenous peoples living there.

After Brady and Norris joined the movement in 1932, the first of several provincial organizations was founded - the Métis Association of Alberta, open to all persons of Indigenous ancestry. Its efforts led to the appointment of the Ewing Commission in 1934-36 to "make enquiry into the condition of the Half-breed population of Alberta." The association eventually secured land for Métis settlements alongside the passage of the Métis Population Betterment Act in 1938. That same year, the Saskatchewan Métis Society (later the Association of Métis and Non-Status Indians of Saskatchewan) was founded and began to organize for the recognition and protection of Métis rights.

Métis Organizing and the Constitutional Era

In the late 1960s, Métis political activity intensified with the founding of numerous other organizations, such as the Manitoba Métis Federation, the Ontario Métis and Non-Status Indian Association, and the Louis Riel Métis Association of BC. These organizations confronted such issues as the federal government's White Paper of 1969, and the on-going exclusion of Métis and Non-Status Indians from federal policy considerations.

In the 1970s, alongside their Non-Status Indian counterparts, Métis organizations were successful in developing programming that provided social, economic and educational supports for Indigenous peoples. However, due to the federal policy that limited federal funding to Métis and Non-Status Indians, these groups dealt mostly with individual provinces, which in turn considered them to be a federal concern. Nonetheless, Métis and Non-Status Indian organizations developed meaningful partnerships with provincial governments, which have, over the long term, produced an impressive array of social services still in existence today.

During the 1970s, Métis organizations were primarily concerned with social programming for Métis and Non-Status Indians, but during the lead-up to Canadian constitutional patriation, Métis organizations, like their Indian and Inuit counterparts, were increasingly concerned about constitutional protection of their rights and title. During the patriation process, Métis successfully lobbied for inclusion in what became Section 35 of the Constitution Act of 1982, protecting "the existing aboriginal and treaty rights" of Indigenous peoples, who were defined as "Indian, Inuit and Métis." While Métis (and other Aboriginal) rights and title remained undefined in constitutional practice, Métis did gain a constitutional protection from unjustifiable Canadian infringement on their rights.

Before the constitutional recognition of Métis Aboriginal rights, Métis and Non-Status Indians had worked together out of common interest and necessity. With the Métis recognized as a distinct group in 1982, the alliance began to dissolve. From 1970 to 1983 the Native Council of Canada (NCC, now the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples) represented Métis interests on the national level. However, for the 1983 First Ministers Conference, the Métis National Council was formed to secure Métis representation as a distinct people independent of Non-Status Indians. The First Ministers Conferences of the 1980s, meant to define Section 35 Aboriginal rights, were widely regarded as a failure, and the Métis/Non-Status split became more permanent. Métis organizations began to develop membership codes that reflected Métis-specific membership, excluding many previous Non-Status Indian members. For example, to become a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation, a person must trace their genealogy back to the original Red River Settlement, typically using scrip, parish or census records.

The Courts: Métis Aboriginal Rights

As the recognized Métis "rights and title" of Section 35 were never defined during the First Ministers Conferences, the Métis initiated a series of lawsuits in order for the courts to determine what these rights protected. Since Métis rights were constitutionalized in 1982, three major court decisions have started the long process of defining Métis Aboriginal rights in the Canadian constitutional system, and have highlighted the complexities involved in defining Métis identity.

A transformative movement in Métis rights jurisprudence came in in 2003. Two Métis hunters, Steve and Roddy Powley shot and killed a moose outside of Sault Ste Marie and were charged with hunting without a licence and unlawful possession of game hunted in contravention of Ontario's Game and Fish Act. In defence, they claimed that their rights as Métis allowed them to hunt in a manner consistent with their Aboriginal rights, which predated Canadian assertion of sovereignty over their community. As a result, the Supreme Court established the three-part "Powley test" for determining who may claim Métis Aboriginal rights under section 35 of the constitution. A person must: a) self-identify as Métis; b) have an ancestral connection to a historic Métis community; and c) be accepted by a contemporary community that exists in continuity with a historic rights-bearing community.

In 2013, the Supreme Court determined in MMF v. Canada that the government failed in its obligation to properly distribute and safeguard the 1.4 million acres set aside for the Métis in the Manitoba Act. Since this victory, the Manitoba Métis Federation has been lobbying the federal government to enter into a land claims negotiation to compensate the Métis people for lost lands and resources, with the ultimate goal of securing a legally recognized land base for Métis in Manitoba. On 15 November 2016, Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett and president of the Manitoba Métis Federation David Chartrand signed an agreement to bring an end to this 146-year land dispute. Parties must still negotiate the financial settlement for the land as well as some other issues, but this is a step forward in settling the land claim.

Most recently, Daniels v. Canada offered transformative potential for Métis-Canada relations, ending the "jurisdictional wasteland" that stymied relations for generations. In 2016, following a 17-year court battle launched by the late Métis leader Harry Daniels, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Métis and Non-Status Indians are considered "Indians" under federal jurisdiction as per Section 91(24) of the . This means that jurisdiction for Métis relations falls to the federal government, rather than the provinces, as has been the common practice for decades. The decision could transform how Métis organizations function, where their funding comes from, the kind of services they are able to offer, and their ability to demand consultation and compensation from the federal government.

Contemporary Life

The blending of European and Indigenous traditions has created a unique and rich Métis culture. In traditional music and dance, Métis fiddling and jigging combine European and Indigenous influences ( see Music of the Métis). Métis fiddle music is generally up-tempo and is accompanied by the fast footwork of jiggers. Though there are many fiddle tunes and dances, the most well-known is the Red River Jig, which emerged in the early to mid-1700s. Today, the Métis people still perform traditional music and dances at local and national competitions, community gatherings, powwows and conferences.

Métis art also reflects their unique heritage. Adopting Indigenous beading practices and popular European floral designs, the Métis created an art form all their own. Famous for their floral beadwork, the Métis are often referred to as the "Flower Beadwork People." Perhaps one of the most famous mainstream beadwork artists is Christi Belcourt, who has been awarded with many national and provincial honours for her work, including the Governor General's Innovation Award (2016), the Ontario Arts Council Aboriginal Arts Award (2014) and Influential Women of Northern Ontario, Aboriginal Leadership Award (2014). The Métis are also well-known for their finger-woven, colourful sashes that have historical, practical and sentimental value.

Like Métis music and art, their language, Michif, is rooted in a mixture of Cree and/or Saulteaux ( Ojibwe) verbs and French nouns. Historically, the Métis could speak various Indigenous languages and were often literate in French or English. Today, many Métis communities speak and teach Michif as a means of keeping the language alive.

According to the 2021 Census completed by Statistics Canada, there are 624,220 people who self-identify as Métis in Canada. This represents a 6.3% increase in the Métis population between 2016 and 2021. Of the 624,220 people who self-identify as Métis, 224,655 claim membership in a Métis organization or settlement.

Landmark Agreements on Métis Rights and Self-Government

On 27 June 2019, the Métis Nation of Alberta (MNA), Métis Nation of Ontario (MNO), and Métis Nation-Saskatchewan (MN-S) signed historic self-government agreements with the Government of Canada. The "Métis-Ottawa Accords" represent a landmark in Métis history, the first self-government agreements between the Métis Nation and the federal government. The historic signing took place in Ottawa between Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett, MNA president Audrey Poitras, MNO president Margaret Froh, and MN-S president Glen McCallum.

The agreements are the result of decades of struggle by the Métis people to gain recognition and self-government rights from the federal government. The 2019 accords represent the greatest steps forward for Métis rights since the important hunting, recognition and self-identity rights gained in 2003 ( see Powley Case) and 2016 ( see Daniels Case). The 2019 accords will be followed by future negotiations that will give the Métis Nation control over its own affairs in areas such as childcare, leadership selection, government operations, and citizenship. Most importantly, the accords give the Métis control over the creation of future constitutions for their various nations.

Carolyn Bennett, speaking on behalf of the federal government, considers the accords the beginning of a new and better relationship between Canada and the three Métis nations involved: "What we're signing today is a true acknowledgement of the Métis Nation and the relationship we will have going forward - government to government. We're here to sign not one, not two, but three historic self-government agreements and to recognize that you, the Métis, have control over your own governance."

Métis Nation of Alberta president Audrey Poitras believes that the accords are a "dramatic shift in attitude for Canada" towards her people and a truly historic moment for the Métis: "It's not an exaggeration to say the agreements signed today are something we've been fighting for for close to a century. Finally, Canada has recognized our right to self-government."

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Métis are people of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry, and one of the three recognized Aboriginal peoples in Canada. The use of the term Métis is complex...

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According to the 2016 Census, there are 537,855 Métis in Canada, representing about 32% of the Indigenous population. At present, the Census does not distinguish members of the Métis Nation from others who self-identify as Métis.
I believe that this informations is true because it is a government website, and everything is facts.

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This first annual report to Parliament is organized into three parts. Part 1 provides a broad overview of the socioeconomic gaps between First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples, and the non-Indigenous population in Canada.

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Metis are an individuals who may have Aboriginal ancestry or no Aboriginal ancestry and self-identify as Metis. The language they speak is Michif (Metis-French language) I know that this source is reliable because the website is a well-known informative page. I also know that this source is reliable because the article gives a thorough discussion on the topic while providing strong evidence. https://www.facinghistory.org/stolen-lives-indigenous-peoples-canada-and-indian-residential-schools/chapter-1/m-tis

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Much like the term Indian, the word Métis is a European term (French for "mixed") that refers to indigenous people of French or British descent. While the French-speaking and English-speaking groups were previously distinct, today the Métis identity more broadly includes people of mixed First Nations descent and both European heritages.

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"Métis are people of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry, and one of the three recognized Aboriginal peoples in Canada. The use of the term Métis is complex and contentious, and has different historical and contemporary meanings. The term is used to describe communities of mixed European and Indigenous descent across Canada, and a specific community of people — defined as the Métis Nation — which originated largely in Western Canada and emerged as a political force in the 19th century, radiating outwards from the Red River Settlement. While the Canadian government politically marginalized the Métis after 1885, they have since been recognized as an Aboriginal people with rights enshrined in the Constitution of Canada"https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/metis I believe this to be credible because the information came from the The Canadian Encyclopedia

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Louis Riel, circa 1873.
(courtesy Provincial Archives of Manitoba/N-5733)

Definitions and Terminology
Editorial Note: In the interest of promoting a better understanding of the complex issue of Métis identity and how it is defined, The Canadian Encyclopedia has commissioned two opinion pieces exploring different perspectives on the topic. Métis Are a People, Not a Historical Process explores Métis identity from the perspective of Métis with ancestral ties to the Red River Settlement. The "Other" Métis explores Métis identity from the perspective of Métis who do not have ancestral ties to the Red River Settlement.
The Congress of Aboriginal Peoples (CAP) has been critical of this definition of Métis, asserting that it excludes "many people who have legitimate claims to Métis identity." Despite CAP's stance, the MNC's position is the one that has generally been adopted by federal and provincial governments and the courts. For example, Métis Aboriginal rights defined in the decision and section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 have only been applied to Métis communities west of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. While several lawsuits claiming section 35 Métis rights have been brought before the courts by other communities, none have been successful. For example, R. v. Vatour in 2010 ruled against the notion of a Métis community in the Maritimes. Further, the implementation of these rights defined by the Powley decision and by various provincial governments all fall within the MNC's definition of the "Métis Homeland, " which includes the Prairie provinces, and parts of Ontario, BC and the NWT.

Typically, when written with a small-m, métis refers to any community of European-Indigenous ancestry, including those in Ontario and Québec and non-status settlements near First Nations reserves. It is often used to describe mixed-descent families and communities during the 18th and early 19th century Great Lakes fur trade, although some scholars now avoid using the term.

Contemporary usage of Métis is also different from its historical meaning. At Red River in the 19th century there were two prominent communities of mixed-descent people. In addition to a sizeable French-speaking and nominally Catholic Métis population, there was a large group of English-speaking "Half-breeds" who were mainly Anglican agriculturists. While these interrelated communities can be considered to be distinct constituencies - even though the boundaries between them were quite porous - the derogatory nature of the term "Half-breed" has caused it to fall largely into disuse. Thus, the contemporary meaning of "Métis" typically includes people of both French- and English-speaking heritage.

There are also Canadian legal definitions that further complicate Métis terminology. Section 35(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982 recognizes " Indian, Inuit and Métis peoples" as Aboriginal peoples under Canadian law, yet despite several Supreme Court of Canada decisions, Métis Aboriginal rights - and who may possess these rights - remain, for the most part, undefined. However, in 2016, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in the Daniels case that the federal government has jurisdiction over Métis people, and that both members of the Métis Nation and Non-Status Indians are "Indians" as defined by the Constitution Act. The Court stopped short of clarifying the legal definition of Métis, but removed one barrier governments used for generations to avoid dealing with outstanding Métis issues.

Métis Communities in Canada

There are people of mixed ancestry throughout Canada. The earliest mixed Indigenous-European marriages can be traced to the earliest days of contact, yet whether these marriages resulted in distinct Métis communities has long been the subject of scholarly debate. Some academics have argued that any mixed-descent person should be considered Métis. However, other scholars, along with the MNC, suggest that only those who were part of distinct Métis communities and used the term "Métis" in a self-referential way, should be called Métis. "Labrador Métis" for example, have dropped Métis for this reason and instead prefer a term their ancestors used to define themselves: NunatuKavut. Scholars who defend the Red River definition of "Métis" argue that Métis identity is not simply the result of a dual heritage, but rather a matter of possessing a singular cultural heritage of dual origins; someone of Cree and French Canadian descent would be considered Métis not solely by virtue of their mixed-descent, but whether they have Métis heritage that can be traced back to the Red River community.

Others have argued that such a narrow definition offers a limited understanding of Métis history. Communities in Ontario and Eastern Canada that have sought official recognition as Métis, for example, have expressed frustration at the popular notion that a traceable ancestry to the Red River settlement is a necessary requirement to "authentically" identifying as Métis. They argue that mixed-descent families and communities have existed since the 18th and early 19th century Great Lakes fur trade, before the establishment of the Red River Settlement. However, for many Red River Métis, the term is an important part of their specific history, heritage and identity, as enshrined by Canadian law. This remains an issue of heated debate among many métis people in Canada. ( See The "Other " Métis; Métis Are a People, Not a Historical Process).

Great Lakes Communities

The first small-m métis communities emerged during the Great Lakes fur trade in the 18th century. Great Lakes Indigenous diplomatic and economic protocols encouraged French fur traders to establish family connections through marriage and ceremonial adoption with prominent Indigenous families in the region. Such unions with Indigenous women - referred to as marriages à la façon du pays, "according to the custom of the country" - usually involved mutual commitments with local Indigenous kin and communities. French traders often lived out their lives with these families, whether formally employed at the forts or subsisting as gens libres (French and Métis freemen who supplied the posts or served intermittently as guides, interpreters or voyageurs). Game, fish, wild rice and maple sugar furnished sustenance, supplemented by small-scale slash-and-burn agriculture. Over time small groups of mixed families situated themselves in specific economic niches, with many rising to economic and social prominence throughout the Great Lakes region.

Scholarship has suggested that the application of the term "métis" to the Great Lakes region at this time is problematic since these mixed communities favoured terms like Saulteurs, bois brûlés (literally "burnt wood"), or chicots. While the term "métis" appears occasionally in contemporary writing, it was used predominantly by outsiders to make sense of a complex set of relationships between Indigenous communities and their relatives, not necessarily by the Great Lakes "métis" themselves. Likewise, the term "Métis" did not make its way into common language at Red River until the early 19th century, several years after the decline of the Great Lakes fur trade and the mixed communities it supported. Despite this distinction in terminology, the Métis of Red River and the métis of the Great Lakes were often connected through marriage and kinship practices.

The Western Métis

The success of the fur trade in the region that the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) called Rupert's Land also relied on intermarriage. While the Company initially attempted to suppress these "country marriages," the effectiveness of these unions in establishing trade networks, along with the successful use of intermarriage by the rival North West Company (NWC), convinced the HBC to modify its policy. Initially, the children of these marriages lacked the distinct community and economic base upon which to build a separate identity. While some HBC officers' mixed children were educated in England, Scotland or in the Canadas ( see Upper and Lower Canada, later the Province of Canada), and other families were left in the care of other HBC employees when senior officers returned to Europe, not all mixed-descent children faced difficult prospects. Many of these mixed-descent children remained in the North-West, living near one another and developing a sense of themselves as a unique cultural and social community. This sense of self would eventually evolve into a sense of political commonality.

Nor'Wester William McGillivray admitted in a letter of 14 March 1818 that the Métis were linked to the NWC by occupation and kinship. "Yet," he emphasized, "they one and all look upon themselves as members of an independent tribe of natives, entitled to a property in the soil, to a flag of their own, and to protection from the British government." Further, it was well proved "that the half-breeds under the denominations of bois-brûlés and métifs have formed a separate and distinct tribe of Indians for a considerable time back."

The early Red River Colony did not allay these fears, but rather antagonized the Métis and the NWC. Decrees from the governor of the colony forbade the export and sale of pemmican to anyone but local HBC forts, and later banned hunting buffalo from horseback ( see Pemmican Proclamation). These were direct economic sanctions against Métis families who provisioned the NWC with pemmican made from buffalo meat (which had been hunted on horseback). After escalating raids on rival fur trade forts by HBC and NWC officers, many prominent Métis grew hostile to the Selkirk settlement's leaders and, under the leadership of Cuthbert Grant, in 1815 decided to evict the settlers from the region. In 1816, after Selkirk himself had decided to evict the Nor'Westers, the governor of the settlement, Robert Semple, confronted a group of Métis soldiers at Seven Oaks. A battle broke out and the Métis soldiers killed Semple and several colonists. The event was memorialized in Pierre Falcon's "La Chanson de la Grenouillère." ( See also: Music of the Métis.)

The Battle of Seven Oaks resulted in an agreement between Cuthbert Grant and the Selkirk settlement's interim leader, Peter Fidler. By 1821, any inter-company conflicts were ended with the merger of the HBC and NWC. After the merger a number of traders were deemed redundant and many took up residence at the Red River Colony, which thus gained an increasing Métis presence. Company employees with Métis families lobbied for the founding of a community where they could retire and have lands, livelihoods, schools, churches and other amenities. The HBC itself hoped to reduce costs by relocating dependent populations to a place where they could become self-supporting under the Company's governance.

From 1821 to 1870, Red River's overwhelmingly mixed-descent population continued to reflect its dual origins: Montréal, the Great Lakes and Prairies, and the NWC; and Britain, the Scottish Orkney Islands (a major HBC recruiting ground) and Rupert's Land. Some argue that these groups expressed mutual solidarity on the basis of their numerous intermarriages, business ties, shared involvements in the buffalo hunt, the HBC transport brigades and provisional government of 1869-70. A contrary view emphasizes the split between Roman Catholic francophones and Protestant anglophones. Whatever their internal ties and tensions, the rapidly growing population in the Northwest was, by the 1830s, increasingly seen as a racial aggregate, as racially based interpretations of human behaviour reigned in the 19th century. As such, Métis were often limited in their advancement through Company ranks.

While the HBC claimed to govern the population of Red River through the Company-appointed Council of Assiniboia, it governed more through influence than command. Throughout the 1840s and 1850s, Métis challenged the HBC trade and administrative monopoly in Red River. In 1849 Métis disrupted the trial of free trader Pierre-Guillaume Sayer, effectively ending the HBC fur monopoly and ushering in an era of free trade. In the mid-1850s, Métis petitioned the Imperial Government in London through Red River-born lawyer Alexander Kennedy Isbister to limit the Council of Assiniboia's power. On the ground, the Council rarely commanded enough of a constabulary to compel Métis to follow its laws, so the Council was often forced to compromise with the community to ensure the enforcement of its laws.

The Red River Provisional Government, 1869-70

Councillors of the Provisional Government of the Métis Nation, 1870.

The consequent efforts of government surveyors to map Red River without regard for local residents' holdings resulted in the establishment of the Métis National Committee, and a provisional government in late 1869. These events established Louis Riel as the leader of the Métis resistance ( see also: Louis Riel Timeline). After consolidating their alliance with the "Half-breed" population and the old British settler population, the three constituencies formed the Provisional Government of Assiniboia's Legislative Assembly in March 1870, and sent a delegation to Ottawa to negotiate Red River's entrance into Confederation. The outcome was theManitoba Act, which established Manitoba as a new province in Confederation as well as several other commitments to protect Métis landholdings (including a 1.4 million acre land reserve), language and local political control over the new province.

However, the agreement recorded by the Provisional Government's chief negotiator varies in important ways from the Manitoba Act, and Métis leaders have argued since the 19th century that the original agreement has never been properly implemented. The promised land reserve was never properly allotted; and when it was, it was granted piecemeal to individual families, taking well over a decade to be allocated. The settlers and troops who arrived in the new province after 1870 were generally hostile to the Métis, many of whom were "beaten and outraged by a small but noisy section" of the newcomers, according to a report by the new governor, Adams Archibald. Métis landholders were harassed, while new laws and amendments to the Manitoba Act undermined Métis power to fend off speculators and new settlers.

Of the approximately 10,000 persons of mixed descent in Manitoba in 1870, two-thirds or more are estimated to have departed in the following few years. While some went north and some went south to the United States, most headed west to the existing Métis settlements around Fort Edmonton (Lac Ste Anne, St Albert and Lac La Biche) and to the South Saskatchewan River, where they joined many Métis families already living at St Laurent, Batoche and Duck Lake.

The North-West Resistance

Louis Riel, circa 1873.

As Saskatchewan Métis communities grew due to the Manitoba exodus, several sought to clarify their land titles with the Canadian government. The government ignored Métis concerns while negotiating major Indigenous treaties and pre-empting land for railways. In deep frustration, the Saskatchewan Métis took up arms under Riel and Gabriel Dumont in the North-West Resistance of 1885.

The Métis defeat at Batoche and the execution of Riel for treason set off a second dispersal, particularly to Alberta, and a renewed weakening of political influence and cohesiveness ( see also: Battle of Batoche). Sir John A. Macdonald in 1885 articulated a view that would begin the process of denying Métis identity for the next century: "If they are Indians, they go with the tribe; if they are half-breeds they are whites." Where Métis individuals did receive land allowances (or financial equivalents), they usually were granted them in paper scrip - transferable certificates which unscrupulous speculators often pressured them to sell cheaply on the spot. The "scrip hunters" followed the Treaty No. 8 Half-Breed Commission in 1900 as it made its awards to Métis in the Dene settlements, and bought up many $240 scrip certificates for cash amounts of $70 to $130.

From 1885 to the mid-1900s, poverty, demoralization and racism commonly connected to being identified as a "half-breed" led many Métis to deny or suppress that part of their heritage if they could. In 1896 Father Albert Lacombe, concerned for Métis interests, founded St-Paul-des-Métis northeast of Edmonton on land furnished by the government. For financial and other reasons, the colony failed as a formal entity by 1908, and settlers from Québec began to dominate the area. The multiple dispersals of Métis families across the west has led to the existence of Métis communities across the Prairies, and into British Columbia and the Northwest Territories, as well as the northern United States and northwestern Ontario.

20th Century Métis Activism

Despite the struggles of the 19th century, some developments after 1900 were more positive. In 1909, the Union nationale métisse St-Joseph de Manitoba, founded by former associates of Riel and others, began to retrieve (from Métis documents and memories) their own history of the events of 1869-70 and 1885, resulting in A.H. de Trémaudan's classic work, Hold High Your Heads: History of the Métis Nation in Western Canada (1936). The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise of new leaders - notably James Patrick (Jim) Brady and Malcolm Norris - who, as Prairie socialist activists, built a new political and organizational base to defend their people's interests. Many Métis and non-Status Indigenous peoples had been considered "squatters" (although they asserted title of their own to these lands) on Crown lands in Alberta. Threatened by a federal plan to place these lands under provincial jurisdiction, Joseph Dion and others organized petitions and delegations to the Alberta government to seek land title for the Indigenous peoples living there.

After Brady and Norris joined the movement in 1932, the first of several provincial organizations was founded - the Métis Association of Alberta, open to all persons of Indigenous ancestry. Its efforts led to the appointment of the Ewing Commission in 1934-36 to "make enquiry into the condition of the Half-breed population of Alberta." The association eventually secured land for Métis settlements alongside the passage of the Métis Population Betterment Act in 1938. That same year, the Saskatchewan Métis Society (later the Association of Métis and Non-Status Indians of Saskatchewan) was founded and began to organize for the recognition and protection of Métis rights.

Métis Organizing and the Constitutional Era

In the late 1960s, Métis political activity intensified with the founding of numerous other organizations, such as the Manitoba Métis Federation, the Ontario Métis and Non-Status Indian Association, and the Louis Riel Métis Association of BC. These organizations confronted such issues as the federal government's White Paper of 1969, and the on-going exclusion of Métis and Non-Status Indians from federal policy considerations.

In the 1970s, alongside their Non-Status Indian counterparts, Métis organizations were successful in developing programming that provided social, economic and educational supports for Indigenous peoples. However, due to the federal policy that limited federal funding to Métis and Non-Status Indians, these groups dealt mostly with individual provinces, which in turn considered them to be a federal concern. Nonetheless, Métis and Non-Status Indian organizations developed meaningful partnerships with provincial governments, which have, over the long term, produced an impressive array of social services still in existence today.

During the 1970s, Métis organizations were primarily concerned with social programming for Métis and Non-Status Indians, but during the lead-up to Canadian constitutional patriation, Métis organizations, like their Indian and Inuit counterparts, were increasingly concerned about constitutional protection of their rights and title. During the patriation process, Métis successfully lobbied for inclusion in what became Section 35 of the Constitution Act of 1982, protecting "the existing aboriginal and treaty rights" of Indigenous peoples, who were defined as "Indian, Inuit and Métis." While Métis (and other Aboriginal) rights and title remained undefined in constitutional practice, Métis did gain a constitutional protection from unjustifiable Canadian infringement on their rights.

Before the constitutional recognition of Métis Aboriginal rights, Métis and Non-Status Indians had worked together out of common interest and necessity. With the Métis recognized as a distinct group in 1982, the alliance began to dissolve. From 1970 to 1983 the Native Council of Canada (NCC, now the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples) represented Métis interests on the national level. However, for the 1983 First Ministers Conference, the Métis National Council was formed to secure Métis representation as a distinct people independent of Non-Status Indians. The First Ministers Conferences of the 1980s, meant to define Section 35 Aboriginal rights, were widely regarded as a failure, and the Métis/Non-Status split became more permanent. Métis organizations began to develop membership codes that reflected Métis-specific membership, excluding many previous Non-Status Indian members. For example, to become a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation, a person must trace their genealogy back to the original Red River Settlement, typically using scrip, parish or census records.

The Courts: Métis Aboriginal Rights

As the recognized Métis "rights and title" of Section 35 were never defined during the First Ministers Conferences, the Métis initiated a series of lawsuits in order for the courts to determine what these rights protected. Since Métis rights were constitutionalized in 1982, three major court decisions have started the long process of defining Métis Aboriginal rights in the Canadian constitutional system, and have highlighted the complexities involved in defining Métis identity.

A transformative movement in Métis rights jurisprudence came in in 2003. Two Métis hunters, Steve and Roddy Powley shot and killed a moose outside of Sault Ste Marie and were charged with hunting without a licence and unlawful possession of game hunted in contravention of Ontario's Game and Fish Act. In defence, they claimed that their rights as Métis allowed them to hunt in a manner consistent with their Aboriginal rights, which predated Canadian assertion of sovereignty over their community. As a result, the Supreme Court established the three-part "Powley test" for determining who may claim Métis Aboriginal rights under section 35 of the constitution. A person must: a) self-identify as Métis; b) have an ancestral connection to a historic Métis community; and c) be accepted by a contemporary community that exists in continuity with a historic rights-bearing community.

In 2013, the Supreme Court determined in MMF v. Canada that the government failed in its obligation to properly distribute and safeguard the 1.4 million acres set aside for the Métis in the Manitoba Act. Since this victory, the Manitoba Métis Federation has been lobbying the federal government to enter into a land claims negotiation to compensate the Métis people for lost lands and resources, with the ultimate goal of securing a legally recognized land base for Métis in Manitoba. On 15 November 2016, Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett and president of the Manitoba Métis Federation David Chartrand signed an agreement to bring an end to this 146-year land dispute. Parties must still negotiate the financial settlement for the land as well as some other issues, but this is a step forward in settling the land claim.

Most recently, Daniels v. Canada offered transformative potential for Métis-Canada relations, ending the "jurisdictional wasteland" that stymied relations for generations. In 2016, following a 17-year court battle launched by the late Métis leader Harry Daniels, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Métis and Non-Status Indians are considered "Indians" under federal jurisdiction as per Section 91(24) of the . This means that jurisdiction for Métis relations falls to the federal government, rather than the provinces, as has been the common practice for decades. The decision could transform how Métis organizations function, where their funding comes from, the kind of services they are able to offer, and their ability to demand consultation and compensation from the federal government.

Contemporary Life

The blending of European and Indigenous traditions has created a unique and rich Métis culture. In traditional music and dance, Métis fiddling and jigging combine European and Indigenous influences ( see Music of the Métis). Métis fiddle music is generally up-tempo and is accompanied by the fast footwork of jiggers. Though there are many fiddle tunes and dances, the most well-known is the Red River Jig, which emerged in the early to mid-1700s. Today, the Métis people still perform traditional music and dances at local and national competitions, community gatherings, powwows and conferences.

Métis art also reflects their unique heritage. Adopting Indigenous beading practices and popular European floral designs, the Métis created an art form all their own. Famous for their floral beadwork, the Métis are often referred to as the "Flower Beadwork People." Perhaps one of the most famous mainstream beadwork artists is Christi Belcourt, who has been awarded with many national and provincial honours for her work, including the Governor General's Innovation Award (2016), the Ontario Arts Council Aboriginal Arts Award (2014) and Influential Women of Northern Ontario, Aboriginal Leadership Award (2014). The Métis are also well-known for their finger-woven, colourful sashes that have historical, practical and sentimental value.

Like Métis music and art, their language, Michif, is rooted in a mixture of Cree and/or Saulteaux ( Ojibwe) verbs and French nouns. Historically, the Métis could speak various Indigenous languages and were often literate in French or English. Today, many Métis communities speak and teach Michif as a means of keeping the language alive.

According to the 2021 Census completed by Statistics Canada, there are 624,220 people who self-identify as Métis in Canada. This represents a 6.3% increase in the Métis population between 2016 and 2021. Of the 624,220 people who self-identify as Métis, 224,655 claim membership in a Métis organization or settlement.

Landmark Agreements on Métis Rights and Self-Government

On 27 June 2019, the Métis Nation of Alberta (MNA), Métis Nation of Ontario (MNO), and Métis Nation-Saskatchewan (MN-S) signed historic self-government agreements with the Government of Canada. The "Métis-Ottawa Accords" represent a landmark in Métis history, the first self-government agreements between the Métis Nation and the federal government. The historic signing took place in Ottawa between Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett, MNA president Audrey Poitras, MNO president Margaret Froh, and MN-S president Glen McCallum.

The agreements are the result of decades of struggle by the Métis people to gain recognition and self-government rights from the federal government. The 2019 accords represent the greatest steps forward for Métis rights since the important hunting, recognition and self-identity rights gained in 2003 ( see Powley Case) and 2016 ( see Daniels Case). The 2019 accords will be followed by future negotiations that will give the Métis Nation control over its own affairs in areas such as childcare, leadership selection, government operations, and citizenship. Most importantly, the accords give the Métis control over the creation of future constitutions for their various nations.

Carolyn Bennett, speaking on behalf of the federal government, considers the accords the beginning of a new and better relationship between Canada and the three Métis nations involved: "What we're signing today is a true acknowledgement of the Métis Nation and the relationship we will have going forward - government to government. We're here to sign not one, not two, but three historic self-government agreements and to recognize that you, the Métis, have control over your own governance."

Métis Nation of Alberta president Audrey Poitras believes that the accords are a "dramatic shift in attitude for Canada" towards her people and a truly historic moment for the Métis: "It's not an exaggeration to say the agreements signed today are something we've been fighting for for close to a century. Finally, Canada has recognized our right to self-government."

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Métis are people of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry, and one of the three recognized Aboriginal peoples in Canada. The use of the term Métis is complex...

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The use of the term Métis is complex and contentious, and has different historical and contemporary meanings. The term is used to describe communities of mixed European and Indigenous descent across Canada,
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/metis
I found this to be a credible source, it shows who updated it, when it was posted as well as edited.

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Louis Riel, circa 1873.
(courtesy Provincial Archives of Manitoba/N-5733)

Definitions and Terminology
Editorial Note: In the interest of promoting a better understanding of the complex issue of Métis identity and how it is defined, The Canadian Encyclopedia has commissioned two opinion pieces exploring different perspectives on the topic. Métis Are a People, Not a Historical Process explores Métis identity from the perspective of Métis with ancestral ties to the Red River Settlement. The "Other" Métis explores Métis identity from the perspective of Métis who do not have ancestral ties to the Red River Settlement.
The Congress of Aboriginal Peoples (CAP) has been critical of this definition of Métis, asserting that it excludes "many people who have legitimate claims to Métis identity." Despite CAP's stance, the MNC's position is the one that has generally been adopted by federal and provincial governments and the courts. For example, Métis Aboriginal rights defined in the decision and section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 have only been applied to Métis communities west of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. While several lawsuits claiming section 35 Métis rights have been brought before the courts by other communities, none have been successful. For example, R. v. Vatour in 2010 ruled against the notion of a Métis community in the Maritimes. Further, the implementation of these rights defined by the Powley decision and by various provincial governments all fall within the MNC's definition of the "Métis Homeland, " which includes the Prairie provinces, and parts of Ontario, BC and the NWT.

Typically, when written with a small-m, métis refers to any community of European-Indigenous ancestry, including those in Ontario and Québec and non-status settlements near First Nations reserves. It is often used to describe mixed-descent families and communities during the 18th and early 19th century Great Lakes fur trade, although some scholars now avoid using the term.

Contemporary usage of Métis is also different from its historical meaning. At Red River in the 19th century there were two prominent communities of mixed-descent people. In addition to a sizeable French-speaking and nominally Catholic Métis population, there was a large group of English-speaking "Half-breeds" who were mainly Anglican agriculturists. While these interrelated communities can be considered to be distinct constituencies - even though the boundaries between them were quite porous - the derogatory nature of the term "Half-breed" has caused it to fall largely into disuse. Thus, the contemporary meaning of "Métis" typically includes people of both French- and English-speaking heritage.

There are also Canadian legal definitions that further complicate Métis terminology. Section 35(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982 recognizes " Indian, Inuit and Métis peoples" as Aboriginal peoples under Canadian law, yet despite several Supreme Court of Canada decisions, Métis Aboriginal rights - and who may possess these rights - remain, for the most part, undefined. However, in 2016, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in the Daniels case that the federal government has jurisdiction over Métis people, and that both members of the Métis Nation and Non-Status Indians are "Indians" as defined by the Constitution Act. The Court stopped short of clarifying the legal definition of Métis, but removed one barrier governments used for generations to avoid dealing with outstanding Métis issues.

Métis Communities in Canada

There are people of mixed ancestry throughout Canada. The earliest mixed Indigenous-European marriages can be traced to the earliest days of contact, yet whether these marriages resulted in distinct Métis communities has long been the subject of scholarly debate. Some academics have argued that any mixed-descent person should be considered Métis. However, other scholars, along with the MNC, suggest that only those who were part of distinct Métis communities and used the term "Métis" in a self-referential way, should be called Métis. "Labrador Métis" for example, have dropped Métis for this reason and instead prefer a term their ancestors used to define themselves: NunatuKavut. Scholars who defend the Red River definition of "Métis" argue that Métis identity is not simply the result of a dual heritage, but rather a matter of possessing a singular cultural heritage of dual origins; someone of Cree and French Canadian descent would be considered Métis not solely by virtue of their mixed-descent, but whether they have Métis heritage that can be traced back to the Red River community.

Others have argued that such a narrow definition offers a limited understanding of Métis history. Communities in Ontario and Eastern Canada that have sought official recognition as Métis, for example, have expressed frustration at the popular notion that a traceable ancestry to the Red River settlement is a necessary requirement to "authentically" identifying as Métis. They argue that mixed-descent families and communities have existed since the 18th and early 19th century Great Lakes fur trade, before the establishment of the Red River Settlement. However, for many Red River Métis, the term is an important part of their specific history, heritage and identity, as enshrined by Canadian law. This remains an issue of heated debate among many métis people in Canada. ( See The "Other " Métis; Métis Are a People, Not a Historical Process).

Great Lakes Communities

The first small-m métis communities emerged during the Great Lakes fur trade in the 18th century. Great Lakes Indigenous diplomatic and economic protocols encouraged French fur traders to establish family connections through marriage and ceremonial adoption with prominent Indigenous families in the region. Such unions with Indigenous women - referred to as marriages à la façon du pays, "according to the custom of the country" - usually involved mutual commitments with local Indigenous kin and communities. French traders often lived out their lives with these families, whether formally employed at the forts or subsisting as gens libres (French and Métis freemen who supplied the posts or served intermittently as guides, interpreters or voyageurs). Game, fish, wild rice and maple sugar furnished sustenance, supplemented by small-scale slash-and-burn agriculture. Over time small groups of mixed families situated themselves in specific economic niches, with many rising to economic and social prominence throughout the Great Lakes region.

Scholarship has suggested that the application of the term "métis" to the Great Lakes region at this time is problematic since these mixed communities favoured terms like Saulteurs, bois brûlés (literally "burnt wood"), or chicots. While the term "métis" appears occasionally in contemporary writing, it was used predominantly by outsiders to make sense of a complex set of relationships between Indigenous communities and their relatives, not necessarily by the Great Lakes "métis" themselves. Likewise, the term "Métis" did not make its way into common language at Red River until the early 19th century, several years after the decline of the Great Lakes fur trade and the mixed communities it supported. Despite this distinction in terminology, the Métis of Red River and the métis of the Great Lakes were often connected through marriage and kinship practices.

The Western Métis

The success of the fur trade in the region that the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) called Rupert's Land also relied on intermarriage. While the Company initially attempted to suppress these "country marriages," the effectiveness of these unions in establishing trade networks, along with the successful use of intermarriage by the rival North West Company (NWC), convinced the HBC to modify its policy. Initially, the children of these marriages lacked the distinct community and economic base upon which to build a separate identity. While some HBC officers' mixed children were educated in England, Scotland or in the Canadas ( see Upper and Lower Canada, later the Province of Canada), and other families were left in the care of other HBC employees when senior officers returned to Europe, not all mixed-descent children faced difficult prospects. Many of these mixed-descent children remained in the North-West, living near one another and developing a sense of themselves as a unique cultural and social community. This sense of self would eventually evolve into a sense of political commonality.

Nor'Wester William McGillivray admitted in a letter of 14 March 1818 that the Métis were linked to the NWC by occupation and kinship. "Yet," he emphasized, "they one and all look upon themselves as members of an independent tribe of natives, entitled to a property in the soil, to a flag of their own, and to protection from the British government." Further, it was well proved "that the half-breeds under the denominations of bois-brûlés and métifs have formed a separate and distinct tribe of Indians for a considerable time back."

The early Red River Colony did not allay these fears, but rather antagonized the Métis and the NWC. Decrees from the governor of the colony forbade the export and sale of pemmican to anyone but local HBC forts, and later banned hunting buffalo from horseback ( see Pemmican Proclamation). These were direct economic sanctions against Métis families who provisioned the NWC with pemmican made from buffalo meat (which had been hunted on horseback). After escalating raids on rival fur trade forts by HBC and NWC officers, many prominent Métis grew hostile to the Selkirk settlement's leaders and, under the leadership of Cuthbert Grant, in 1815 decided to evict the settlers from the region. In 1816, after Selkirk himself had decided to evict the Nor'Westers, the governor of the settlement, Robert Semple, confronted a group of Métis soldiers at Seven Oaks. A battle broke out and the Métis soldiers killed Semple and several colonists. The event was memorialized in Pierre Falcon's "La Chanson de la Grenouillère." ( See also: Music of the Métis.)

The Battle of Seven Oaks resulted in an agreement between Cuthbert Grant and the Selkirk settlement's interim leader, Peter Fidler. By 1821, any inter-company conflicts were ended with the merger of the HBC and NWC. After the merger a number of traders were deemed redundant and many took up residence at the Red River Colony, which thus gained an increasing Métis presence. Company employees with Métis families lobbied for the founding of a community where they could retire and have lands, livelihoods, schools, churches and other amenities. The HBC itself hoped to reduce costs by relocating dependent populations to a place where they could become self-supporting under the Company's governance.

From 1821 to 1870, Red River's overwhelmingly mixed-descent population continued to reflect its dual origins: Montréal, the Great Lakes and Prairies, and the NWC; and Britain, the Scottish Orkney Islands (a major HBC recruiting ground) and Rupert's Land. Some argue that these groups expressed mutual solidarity on the basis of their numerous intermarriages, business ties, shared involvements in the buffalo hunt, the HBC transport brigades and provisional government of 1869-70. A contrary view emphasizes the split between Roman Catholic francophones and Protestant anglophones. Whatever their internal ties and tensions, the rapidly growing population in the Northwest was, by the 1830s, increasingly seen as a racial aggregate, as racially based interpretations of human behaviour reigned in the 19th century. As such, Métis were often limited in their advancement through Company ranks.

While the HBC claimed to govern the population of Red River through the Company-appointed Council of Assiniboia, it governed more through influence than command. Throughout the 1840s and 1850s, Métis challenged the HBC trade and administrative monopoly in Red River. In 1849 Métis disrupted the trial of free trader Pierre-Guillaume Sayer, effectively ending the HBC fur monopoly and ushering in an era of free trade. In the mid-1850s, Métis petitioned the Imperial Government in London through Red River-born lawyer Alexander Kennedy Isbister to limit the Council of Assiniboia's power. On the ground, the Council rarely commanded enough of a constabulary to compel Métis to follow its laws, so the Council was often forced to compromise with the community to ensure the enforcement of its laws.

The Red River Provisional Government, 1869-70

Councillors of the Provisional Government of the Métis Nation, 1870.

The consequent efforts of government surveyors to map Red River without regard for local residents' holdings resulted in the establishment of the Métis National Committee, and a provisional government in late 1869. These events established Louis Riel as the leader of the Métis resistance ( see also: Louis Riel Timeline). After consolidating their alliance with the "Half-breed" population and the old British settler population, the three constituencies formed the Provisional Government of Assiniboia's Legislative Assembly in March 1870, and sent a delegation to Ottawa to negotiate Red River's entrance into Confederation. The outcome was theManitoba Act, which established Manitoba as a new province in Confederation as well as several other commitments to protect Métis landholdings (including a 1.4 million acre land reserve), language and local political control over the new province.

However, the agreement recorded by the Provisional Government's chief negotiator varies in important ways from the Manitoba Act, and Métis leaders have argued since the 19th century that the original agreement has never been properly implemented. The promised land reserve was never properly allotted; and when it was, it was granted piecemeal to individual families, taking well over a decade to be allocated. The settlers and troops who arrived in the new province after 1870 were generally hostile to the Métis, many of whom were "beaten and outraged by a small but noisy section" of the newcomers, according to a report by the new governor, Adams Archibald. Métis landholders were harassed, while new laws and amendments to the Manitoba Act undermined Métis power to fend off speculators and new settlers.

Of the approximately 10,000 persons of mixed descent in Manitoba in 1870, two-thirds or more are estimated to have departed in the following few years. While some went north and some went south to the United States, most headed west to the existing Métis settlements around Fort Edmonton (Lac Ste Anne, St Albert and Lac La Biche) and to the South Saskatchewan River, where they joined many Métis families already living at St Laurent, Batoche and Duck Lake.

The North-West Resistance

Louis Riel, circa 1873.

As Saskatchewan Métis communities grew due to the Manitoba exodus, several sought to clarify their land titles with the Canadian government. The government ignored Métis concerns while negotiating major Indigenous treaties and pre-empting land for railways. In deep frustration, the Saskatchewan Métis took up arms under Riel and Gabriel Dumont in the North-West Resistance of 1885.

The Métis defeat at Batoche and the execution of Riel for treason set off a second dispersal, particularly to Alberta, and a renewed weakening of political influence and cohesiveness ( see also: Battle of Batoche). Sir John A. Macdonald in 1885 articulated a view that would begin the process of denying Métis identity for the next century: "If they are Indians, they go with the tribe; if they are half-breeds they are whites." Where Métis individuals did receive land allowances (or financial equivalents), they usually were granted them in paper scrip - transferable certificates which unscrupulous speculators often pressured them to sell cheaply on the spot. The "scrip hunters" followed the Treaty No. 8 Half-Breed Commission in 1900 as it made its awards to Métis in the Dene settlements, and bought up many $240 scrip certificates for cash amounts of $70 to $130.

From 1885 to the mid-1900s, poverty, demoralization and racism commonly connected to being identified as a "half-breed" led many Métis to deny or suppress that part of their heritage if they could. In 1896 Father Albert Lacombe, concerned for Métis interests, founded St-Paul-des-Métis northeast of Edmonton on land furnished by the government. For financial and other reasons, the colony failed as a formal entity by 1908, and settlers from Québec began to dominate the area. The multiple dispersals of Métis families across the west has led to the existence of Métis communities across the Prairies, and into British Columbia and the Northwest Territories, as well as the northern United States and northwestern Ontario.

20th Century Métis Activism

Despite the struggles of the 19th century, some developments after 1900 were more positive. In 1909, the Union nationale métisse St-Joseph de Manitoba, founded by former associates of Riel and others, began to retrieve (from Métis documents and memories) their own history of the events of 1869-70 and 1885, resulting in A.H. de Trémaudan's classic work, Hold High Your Heads: History of the Métis Nation in Western Canada (1936). The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise of new leaders - notably James Patrick (Jim) Brady and Malcolm Norris - who, as Prairie socialist activists, built a new political and organizational base to defend their people's interests. Many Métis and non-Status Indigenous peoples had been considered "squatters" (although they asserted title of their own to these lands) on Crown lands in Alberta. Threatened by a federal plan to place these lands under provincial jurisdiction, Joseph Dion and others organized petitions and delegations to the Alberta government to seek land title for the Indigenous peoples living there.

After Brady and Norris joined the movement in 1932, the first of several provincial organizations was founded - the Métis Association of Alberta, open to all persons of Indigenous ancestry. Its efforts led to the appointment of the Ewing Commission in 1934-36 to "make enquiry into the condition of the Half-breed population of Alberta." The association eventually secured land for Métis settlements alongside the passage of the Métis Population Betterment Act in 1938. That same year, the Saskatchewan Métis Society (later the Association of Métis and Non-Status Indians of Saskatchewan) was founded and began to organize for the recognition and protection of Métis rights.

Métis Organizing and the Constitutional Era

In the late 1960s, Métis political activity intensified with the founding of numerous other organizations, such as the Manitoba Métis Federation, the Ontario Métis and Non-Status Indian Association, and the Louis Riel Métis Association of BC. These organizations confronted such issues as the federal government's White Paper of 1969, and the on-going exclusion of Métis and Non-Status Indians from federal policy considerations.

In the 1970s, alongside their Non-Status Indian counterparts, Métis organizations were successful in developing programming that provided social, economic and educational supports for Indigenous peoples. However, due to the federal policy that limited federal funding to Métis and Non-Status Indians, these groups dealt mostly with individual provinces, which in turn considered them to be a federal concern. Nonetheless, Métis and Non-Status Indian organizations developed meaningful partnerships with provincial governments, which have, over the long term, produced an impressive array of social services still in existence today.

During the 1970s, Métis organizations were primarily concerned with social programming for Métis and Non-Status Indians, but during the lead-up to Canadian constitutional patriation, Métis organizations, like their Indian and Inuit counterparts, were increasingly concerned about constitutional protection of their rights and title. During the patriation process, Métis successfully lobbied for inclusion in what became Section 35 of the Constitution Act of 1982, protecting "the existing aboriginal and treaty rights" of Indigenous peoples, who were defined as "Indian, Inuit and Métis." While Métis (and other Aboriginal) rights and title remained undefined in constitutional practice, Métis did gain a constitutional protection from unjustifiable Canadian infringement on their rights.

Before the constitutional recognition of Métis Aboriginal rights, Métis and Non-Status Indians had worked together out of common interest and necessity. With the Métis recognized as a distinct group in 1982, the alliance began to dissolve. From 1970 to 1983 the Native Council of Canada (NCC, now the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples) represented Métis interests on the national level. However, for the 1983 First Ministers Conference, the Métis National Council was formed to secure Métis representation as a distinct people independent of Non-Status Indians. The First Ministers Conferences of the 1980s, meant to define Section 35 Aboriginal rights, were widely regarded as a failure, and the Métis/Non-Status split became more permanent. Métis organizations began to develop membership codes that reflected Métis-specific membership, excluding many previous Non-Status Indian members. For example, to become a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation, a person must trace their genealogy back to the original Red River Settlement, typically using scrip, parish or census records.

The Courts: Métis Aboriginal Rights

As the recognized Métis "rights and title" of Section 35 were never defined during the First Ministers Conferences, the Métis initiated a series of lawsuits in order for the courts to determine what these rights protected. Since Métis rights were constitutionalized in 1982, three major court decisions have started the long process of defining Métis Aboriginal rights in the Canadian constitutional system, and have highlighted the complexities involved in defining Métis identity.

A transformative movement in Métis rights jurisprudence came in in 2003. Two Métis hunters, Steve and Roddy Powley shot and killed a moose outside of Sault Ste Marie and were charged with hunting without a licence and unlawful possession of game hunted in contravention of Ontario's Game and Fish Act. In defence, they claimed that their rights as Métis allowed them to hunt in a manner consistent with their Aboriginal rights, which predated Canadian assertion of sovereignty over their community. As a result, the Supreme Court established the three-part "Powley test" for determining who may claim Métis Aboriginal rights under section 35 of the constitution. A person must: a) self-identify as Métis; b) have an ancestral connection to a historic Métis community; and c) be accepted by a contemporary community that exists in continuity with a historic rights-bearing community.

In 2013, the Supreme Court determined in MMF v. Canada that the government failed in its obligation to properly distribute and safeguard the 1.4 million acres set aside for the Métis in the Manitoba Act. Since this victory, the Manitoba Métis Federation has been lobbying the federal government to enter into a land claims negotiation to compensate the Métis people for lost lands and resources, with the ultimate goal of securing a legally recognized land base for Métis in Manitoba. On 15 November 2016, Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett and president of the Manitoba Métis Federation David Chartrand signed an agreement to bring an end to this 146-year land dispute. Parties must still negotiate the financial settlement for the land as well as some other issues, but this is a step forward in settling the land claim.

Most recently, Daniels v. Canada offered transformative potential for Métis-Canada relations, ending the "jurisdictional wasteland" that stymied relations for generations. In 2016, following a 17-year court battle launched by the late Métis leader Harry Daniels, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Métis and Non-Status Indians are considered "Indians" under federal jurisdiction as per Section 91(24) of the . This means that jurisdiction for Métis relations falls to the federal government, rather than the provinces, as has been the common practice for decades. The decision could transform how Métis organizations function, where their funding comes from, the kind of services they are able to offer, and their ability to demand consultation and compensation from the federal government.

Contemporary Life

The blending of European and Indigenous traditions has created a unique and rich Métis culture. In traditional music and dance, Métis fiddling and jigging combine European and Indigenous influences ( see Music of the Métis). Métis fiddle music is generally up-tempo and is accompanied by the fast footwork of jiggers. Though there are many fiddle tunes and dances, the most well-known is the Red River Jig, which emerged in the early to mid-1700s. Today, the Métis people still perform traditional music and dances at local and national competitions, community gatherings, powwows and conferences.

Métis art also reflects their unique heritage. Adopting Indigenous beading practices and popular European floral designs, the Métis created an art form all their own. Famous for their floral beadwork, the Métis are often referred to as the "Flower Beadwork People." Perhaps one of the most famous mainstream beadwork artists is Christi Belcourt, who has been awarded with many national and provincial honours for her work, including the Governor General's Innovation Award (2016), the Ontario Arts Council Aboriginal Arts Award (2014) and Influential Women of Northern Ontario, Aboriginal Leadership Award (2014). The Métis are also well-known for their finger-woven, colourful sashes that have historical, practical and sentimental value.

Like Métis music and art, their language, Michif, is rooted in a mixture of Cree and/or Saulteaux ( Ojibwe) verbs and French nouns. Historically, the Métis could speak various Indigenous languages and were often literate in French or English. Today, many Métis communities speak and teach Michif as a means of keeping the language alive.

According to the 2021 Census completed by Statistics Canada, there are 624,220 people who self-identify as Métis in Canada. This represents a 6.3% increase in the Métis population between 2016 and 2021. Of the 624,220 people who self-identify as Métis, 224,655 claim membership in a Métis organization or settlement.

Landmark Agreements on Métis Rights and Self-Government

On 27 June 2019, the Métis Nation of Alberta (MNA), Métis Nation of Ontario (MNO), and Métis Nation-Saskatchewan (MN-S) signed historic self-government agreements with the Government of Canada. The "Métis-Ottawa Accords" represent a landmark in Métis history, the first self-government agreements between the Métis Nation and the federal government. The historic signing took place in Ottawa between Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett, MNA president Audrey Poitras, MNO president Margaret Froh, and MN-S president Glen McCallum.

The agreements are the result of decades of struggle by the Métis people to gain recognition and self-government rights from the federal government. The 2019 accords represent the greatest steps forward for Métis rights since the important hunting, recognition and self-identity rights gained in 2003 ( see Powley Case) and 2016 ( see Daniels Case). The 2019 accords will be followed by future negotiations that will give the Métis Nation control over its own affairs in areas such as childcare, leadership selection, government operations, and citizenship. Most importantly, the accords give the Métis control over the creation of future constitutions for their various nations.

Carolyn Bennett, speaking on behalf of the federal government, considers the accords the beginning of a new and better relationship between Canada and the three Métis nations involved: "What we're signing today is a true acknowledgement of the Métis Nation and the relationship we will have going forward - government to government. We're here to sign not one, not two, but three historic self-government agreements and to recognize that you, the Métis, have control over your own governance."

Métis Nation of Alberta president Audrey Poitras believes that the accords are a "dramatic shift in attitude for Canada" towards her people and a truly historic moment for the Métis: "It's not an exaggeration to say the agreements signed today are something we've been fighting for for close to a century. Finally, Canada has recognized our right to self-government."

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Métis are people of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry, and one of the three recognized Aboriginal peoples in Canada. The use of the term Métis is complex...

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The first small-m métis communities emerged during the Great Lakes fur trade in the 18th century. Great Lakes Indigenous diplomatic and economic protocols encouraged French fur traders to establish family connections through marriage and ceremonial adoption with prominent Indigenous families in the region.
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/metis
i choose this fact because it shows the author as well as who updated it

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Louis Riel, circa 1873.
(courtesy Provincial Archives of Manitoba/N-5733)

Definitions and Terminology
Editorial Note: In the interest of promoting a better understanding of the complex issue of Métis identity and how it is defined, The Canadian Encyclopedia has commissioned two opinion pieces exploring different perspectives on the topic. Métis Are a People, Not a Historical Process explores Métis identity from the perspective of Métis with ancestral ties to the Red River Settlement. The "Other" Métis explores Métis identity from the perspective of Métis who do not have ancestral ties to the Red River Settlement.
The Congress of Aboriginal Peoples (CAP) has been critical of this definition of Métis, asserting that it excludes "many people who have legitimate claims to Métis identity." Despite CAP's stance, the MNC's position is the one that has generally been adopted by federal and provincial governments and the courts. For example, Métis Aboriginal rights defined in the decision and section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 have only been applied to Métis communities west of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. While several lawsuits claiming section 35 Métis rights have been brought before the courts by other communities, none have been successful. For example, R. v. Vatour in 2010 ruled against the notion of a Métis community in the Maritimes. Further, the implementation of these rights defined by the Powley decision and by various provincial governments all fall within the MNC's definition of the "Métis Homeland, " which includes the Prairie provinces, and parts of Ontario, BC and the NWT.

Typically, when written with a small-m, métis refers to any community of European-Indigenous ancestry, including those in Ontario and Québec and non-status settlements near First Nations reserves. It is often used to describe mixed-descent families and communities during the 18th and early 19th century Great Lakes fur trade, although some scholars now avoid using the term.

Contemporary usage of Métis is also different from its historical meaning. At Red River in the 19th century there were two prominent communities of mixed-descent people. In addition to a sizeable French-speaking and nominally Catholic Métis population, there was a large group of English-speaking "Half-breeds" who were mainly Anglican agriculturists. While these interrelated communities can be considered to be distinct constituencies - even though the boundaries between them were quite porous - the derogatory nature of the term "Half-breed" has caused it to fall largely into disuse. Thus, the contemporary meaning of "Métis" typically includes people of both French- and English-speaking heritage.

There are also Canadian legal definitions that further complicate Métis terminology. Section 35(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982 recognizes " Indian, Inuit and Métis peoples" as Aboriginal peoples under Canadian law, yet despite several Supreme Court of Canada decisions, Métis Aboriginal rights - and who may possess these rights - remain, for the most part, undefined. However, in 2016, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in the Daniels case that the federal government has jurisdiction over Métis people, and that both members of the Métis Nation and Non-Status Indians are "Indians" as defined by the Constitution Act. The Court stopped short of clarifying the legal definition of Métis, but removed one barrier governments used for generations to avoid dealing with outstanding Métis issues.

Métis Communities in Canada

There are people of mixed ancestry throughout Canada. The earliest mixed Indigenous-European marriages can be traced to the earliest days of contact, yet whether these marriages resulted in distinct Métis communities has long been the subject of scholarly debate. Some academics have argued that any mixed-descent person should be considered Métis. However, other scholars, along with the MNC, suggest that only those who were part of distinct Métis communities and used the term "Métis" in a self-referential way, should be called Métis. "Labrador Métis" for example, have dropped Métis for this reason and instead prefer a term their ancestors used to define themselves: NunatuKavut. Scholars who defend the Red River definition of "Métis" argue that Métis identity is not simply the result of a dual heritage, but rather a matter of possessing a singular cultural heritage of dual origins; someone of Cree and French Canadian descent would be considered Métis not solely by virtue of their mixed-descent, but whether they have Métis heritage that can be traced back to the Red River community.

Others have argued that such a narrow definition offers a limited understanding of Métis history. Communities in Ontario and Eastern Canada that have sought official recognition as Métis, for example, have expressed frustration at the popular notion that a traceable ancestry to the Red River settlement is a necessary requirement to "authentically" identifying as Métis. They argue that mixed-descent families and communities have existed since the 18th and early 19th century Great Lakes fur trade, before the establishment of the Red River Settlement. However, for many Red River Métis, the term is an important part of their specific history, heritage and identity, as enshrined by Canadian law. This remains an issue of heated debate among many métis people in Canada. ( See The "Other " Métis; Métis Are a People, Not a Historical Process).

Great Lakes Communities

The first small-m métis communities emerged during the Great Lakes fur trade in the 18th century. Great Lakes Indigenous diplomatic and economic protocols encouraged French fur traders to establish family connections through marriage and ceremonial adoption with prominent Indigenous families in the region. Such unions with Indigenous women - referred to as marriages à la façon du pays, "according to the custom of the country" - usually involved mutual commitments with local Indigenous kin and communities. French traders often lived out their lives with these families, whether formally employed at the forts or subsisting as gens libres (French and Métis freemen who supplied the posts or served intermittently as guides, interpreters or voyageurs). Game, fish, wild rice and maple sugar furnished sustenance, supplemented by small-scale slash-and-burn agriculture. Over time small groups of mixed families situated themselves in specific economic niches, with many rising to economic and social prominence throughout the Great Lakes region.

Scholarship has suggested that the application of the term "métis" to the Great Lakes region at this time is problematic since these mixed communities favoured terms like Saulteurs, bois brûlés (literally "burnt wood"), or chicots. While the term "métis" appears occasionally in contemporary writing, it was used predominantly by outsiders to make sense of a complex set of relationships between Indigenous communities and their relatives, not necessarily by the Great Lakes "métis" themselves. Likewise, the term "Métis" did not make its way into common language at Red River until the early 19th century, several years after the decline of the Great Lakes fur trade and the mixed communities it supported. Despite this distinction in terminology, the Métis of Red River and the métis of the Great Lakes were often connected through marriage and kinship practices.

The Western Métis

The success of the fur trade in the region that the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) called Rupert's Land also relied on intermarriage. While the Company initially attempted to suppress these "country marriages," the effectiveness of these unions in establishing trade networks, along with the successful use of intermarriage by the rival North West Company (NWC), convinced the HBC to modify its policy. Initially, the children of these marriages lacked the distinct community and economic base upon which to build a separate identity. While some HBC officers' mixed children were educated in England, Scotland or in the Canadas ( see Upper and Lower Canada, later the Province of Canada), and other families were left in the care of other HBC employees when senior officers returned to Europe, not all mixed-descent children faced difficult prospects. Many of these mixed-descent children remained in the North-West, living near one another and developing a sense of themselves as a unique cultural and social community. This sense of self would eventually evolve into a sense of political commonality.

Nor'Wester William McGillivray admitted in a letter of 14 March 1818 that the Métis were linked to the NWC by occupation and kinship. "Yet," he emphasized, "they one and all look upon themselves as members of an independent tribe of natives, entitled to a property in the soil, to a flag of their own, and to protection from the British government." Further, it was well proved "that the half-breeds under the denominations of bois-brûlés and métifs have formed a separate and distinct tribe of Indians for a considerable time back."

The early Red River Colony did not allay these fears, but rather antagonized the Métis and the NWC. Decrees from the governor of the colony forbade the export and sale of pemmican to anyone but local HBC forts, and later banned hunting buffalo from horseback ( see Pemmican Proclamation). These were direct economic sanctions against Métis families who provisioned the NWC with pemmican made from buffalo meat (which had been hunted on horseback). After escalating raids on rival fur trade forts by HBC and NWC officers, many prominent Métis grew hostile to the Selkirk settlement's leaders and, under the leadership of Cuthbert Grant, in 1815 decided to evict the settlers from the region. In 1816, after Selkirk himself had decided to evict the Nor'Westers, the governor of the settlement, Robert Semple, confronted a group of Métis soldiers at Seven Oaks. A battle broke out and the Métis soldiers killed Semple and several colonists. The event was memorialized in Pierre Falcon's "La Chanson de la Grenouillère." ( See also: Music of the Métis.)

The Battle of Seven Oaks resulted in an agreement between Cuthbert Grant and the Selkirk settlement's interim leader, Peter Fidler. By 1821, any inter-company conflicts were ended with the merger of the HBC and NWC. After the merger a number of traders were deemed redundant and many took up residence at the Red River Colony, which thus gained an increasing Métis presence. Company employees with Métis families lobbied for the founding of a community where they could retire and have lands, livelihoods, schools, churches and other amenities. The HBC itself hoped to reduce costs by relocating dependent populations to a place where they could become self-supporting under the Company's governance.

From 1821 to 1870, Red River's overwhelmingly mixed-descent population continued to reflect its dual origins: Montréal, the Great Lakes and Prairies, and the NWC; and Britain, the Scottish Orkney Islands (a major HBC recruiting ground) and Rupert's Land. Some argue that these groups expressed mutual solidarity on the basis of their numerous intermarriages, business ties, shared involvements in the buffalo hunt, the HBC transport brigades and provisional government of 1869-70. A contrary view emphasizes the split between Roman Catholic francophones and Protestant anglophones. Whatever their internal ties and tensions, the rapidly growing population in the Northwest was, by the 1830s, increasingly seen as a racial aggregate, as racially based interpretations of human behaviour reigned in the 19th century. As such, Métis were often limited in their advancement through Company ranks.

While the HBC claimed to govern the population of Red River through the Company-appointed Council of Assiniboia, it governed more through influence than command. Throughout the 1840s and 1850s, Métis challenged the HBC trade and administrative monopoly in Red River. In 1849 Métis disrupted the trial of free trader Pierre-Guillaume Sayer, effectively ending the HBC fur monopoly and ushering in an era of free trade. In the mid-1850s, Métis petitioned the Imperial Government in London through Red River-born lawyer Alexander Kennedy Isbister to limit the Council of Assiniboia's power. On the ground, the Council rarely commanded enough of a constabulary to compel Métis to follow its laws, so the Council was often forced to compromise with the community to ensure the enforcement of its laws.

The Red River Provisional Government, 1869-70

Councillors of the Provisional Government of the Métis Nation, 1870.

The consequent efforts of government surveyors to map Red River without regard for local residents' holdings resulted in the establishment of the Métis National Committee, and a provisional government in late 1869. These events established Louis Riel as the leader of the Métis resistance ( see also: Louis Riel Timeline). After consolidating their alliance with the "Half-breed" population and the old British settler population, the three constituencies formed the Provisional Government of Assiniboia's Legislative Assembly in March 1870, and sent a delegation to Ottawa to negotiate Red River's entrance into Confederation. The outcome was theManitoba Act, which established Manitoba as a new province in Confederation as well as several other commitments to protect Métis landholdings (including a 1.4 million acre land reserve), language and local political control over the new province.

However, the agreement recorded by the Provisional Government's chief negotiator varies in important ways from the Manitoba Act, and Métis leaders have argued since the 19th century that the original agreement has never been properly implemented. The promised land reserve was never properly allotted; and when it was, it was granted piecemeal to individual families, taking well over a decade to be allocated. The settlers and troops who arrived in the new province after 1870 were generally hostile to the Métis, many of whom were "beaten and outraged by a small but noisy section" of the newcomers, according to a report by the new governor, Adams Archibald. Métis landholders were harassed, while new laws and amendments to the Manitoba Act undermined Métis power to fend off speculators and new settlers.

Of the approximately 10,000 persons of mixed descent in Manitoba in 1870, two-thirds or more are estimated to have departed in the following few years. While some went north and some went south to the United States, most headed west to the existing Métis settlements around Fort Edmonton (Lac Ste Anne, St Albert and Lac La Biche) and to the South Saskatchewan River, where they joined many Métis families already living at St Laurent, Batoche and Duck Lake.

The North-West Resistance

Louis Riel, circa 1873.

As Saskatchewan Métis communities grew due to the Manitoba exodus, several sought to clarify their land titles with the Canadian government. The government ignored Métis concerns while negotiating major Indigenous treaties and pre-empting land for railways. In deep frustration, the Saskatchewan Métis took up arms under Riel and Gabriel Dumont in the North-West Resistance of 1885.

The Métis defeat at Batoche and the execution of Riel for treason set off a second dispersal, particularly to Alberta, and a renewed weakening of political influence and cohesiveness ( see also: Battle of Batoche). Sir John A. Macdonald in 1885 articulated a view that would begin the process of denying Métis identity for the next century: "If they are Indians, they go with the tribe; if they are half-breeds they are whites." Where Métis individuals did receive land allowances (or financial equivalents), they usually were granted them in paper scrip - transferable certificates which unscrupulous speculators often pressured them to sell cheaply on the spot. The "scrip hunters" followed the Treaty No. 8 Half-Breed Commission in 1900 as it made its awards to Métis in the Dene settlements, and bought up many $240 scrip certificates for cash amounts of $70 to $130.

From 1885 to the mid-1900s, poverty, demoralization and racism commonly connected to being identified as a "half-breed" led many Métis to deny or suppress that part of their heritage if they could. In 1896 Father Albert Lacombe, concerned for Métis interests, founded St-Paul-des-Métis northeast of Edmonton on land furnished by the government. For financial and other reasons, the colony failed as a formal entity by 1908, and settlers from Québec began to dominate the area. The multiple dispersals of Métis families across the west has led to the existence of Métis communities across the Prairies, and into British Columbia and the Northwest Territories, as well as the northern United States and northwestern Ontario.

20th Century Métis Activism

Despite the struggles of the 19th century, some developments after 1900 were more positive. In 1909, the Union nationale métisse St-Joseph de Manitoba, founded by former associates of Riel and others, began to retrieve (from Métis documents and memories) their own history of the events of 1869-70 and 1885, resulting in A.H. de Trémaudan's classic work, Hold High Your Heads: History of the Métis Nation in Western Canada (1936). The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise of new leaders - notably James Patrick (Jim) Brady and Malcolm Norris - who, as Prairie socialist activists, built a new political and organizational base to defend their people's interests. Many Métis and non-Status Indigenous peoples had been considered "squatters" (although they asserted title of their own to these lands) on Crown lands in Alberta. Threatened by a federal plan to place these lands under provincial jurisdiction, Joseph Dion and others organized petitions and delegations to the Alberta government to seek land title for the Indigenous peoples living there.

After Brady and Norris joined the movement in 1932, the first of several provincial organizations was founded - the Métis Association of Alberta, open to all persons of Indigenous ancestry. Its efforts led to the appointment of the Ewing Commission in 1934-36 to "make enquiry into the condition of the Half-breed population of Alberta." The association eventually secured land for Métis settlements alongside the passage of the Métis Population Betterment Act in 1938. That same year, the Saskatchewan Métis Society (later the Association of Métis and Non-Status Indians of Saskatchewan) was founded and began to organize for the recognition and protection of Métis rights.

Métis Organizing and the Constitutional Era

In the late 1960s, Métis political activity intensified with the founding of numerous other organizations, such as the Manitoba Métis Federation, the Ontario Métis and Non-Status Indian Association, and the Louis Riel Métis Association of BC. These organizations confronted such issues as the federal government's White Paper of 1969, and the on-going exclusion of Métis and Non-Status Indians from federal policy considerations.

In the 1970s, alongside their Non-Status Indian counterparts, Métis organizations were successful in developing programming that provided social, economic and educational supports for Indigenous peoples. However, due to the federal policy that limited federal funding to Métis and Non-Status Indians, these groups dealt mostly with individual provinces, which in turn considered them to be a federal concern. Nonetheless, Métis and Non-Status Indian organizations developed meaningful partnerships with provincial governments, which have, over the long term, produced an impressive array of social services still in existence today.

During the 1970s, Métis organizations were primarily concerned with social programming for Métis and Non-Status Indians, but during the lead-up to Canadian constitutional patriation, Métis organizations, like their Indian and Inuit counterparts, were increasingly concerned about constitutional protection of their rights and title. During the patriation process, Métis successfully lobbied for inclusion in what became Section 35 of the Constitution Act of 1982, protecting "the existing aboriginal and treaty rights" of Indigenous peoples, who were defined as "Indian, Inuit and Métis." While Métis (and other Aboriginal) rights and title remained undefined in constitutional practice, Métis did gain a constitutional protection from unjustifiable Canadian infringement on their rights.

Before the constitutional recognition of Métis Aboriginal rights, Métis and Non-Status Indians had worked together out of common interest and necessity. With the Métis recognized as a distinct group in 1982, the alliance began to dissolve. From 1970 to 1983 the Native Council of Canada (NCC, now the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples) represented Métis interests on the national level. However, for the 1983 First Ministers Conference, the Métis National Council was formed to secure Métis representation as a distinct people independent of Non-Status Indians. The First Ministers Conferences of the 1980s, meant to define Section 35 Aboriginal rights, were widely regarded as a failure, and the Métis/Non-Status split became more permanent. Métis organizations began to develop membership codes that reflected Métis-specific membership, excluding many previous Non-Status Indian members. For example, to become a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation, a person must trace their genealogy back to the original Red River Settlement, typically using scrip, parish or census records.

The Courts: Métis Aboriginal Rights

As the recognized Métis "rights and title" of Section 35 were never defined during the First Ministers Conferences, the Métis initiated a series of lawsuits in order for the courts to determine what these rights protected. Since Métis rights were constitutionalized in 1982, three major court decisions have started the long process of defining Métis Aboriginal rights in the Canadian constitutional system, and have highlighted the complexities involved in defining Métis identity.

A transformative movement in Métis rights jurisprudence came in in 2003. Two Métis hunters, Steve and Roddy Powley shot and killed a moose outside of Sault Ste Marie and were charged with hunting without a licence and unlawful possession of game hunted in contravention of Ontario's Game and Fish Act. In defence, they claimed that their rights as Métis allowed them to hunt in a manner consistent with their Aboriginal rights, which predated Canadian assertion of sovereignty over their community. As a result, the Supreme Court established the three-part "Powley test" for determining who may claim Métis Aboriginal rights under section 35 of the constitution. A person must: a) self-identify as Métis; b) have an ancestral connection to a historic Métis community; and c) be accepted by a contemporary community that exists in continuity with a historic rights-bearing community.

In 2013, the Supreme Court determined in MMF v. Canada that the government failed in its obligation to properly distribute and safeguard the 1.4 million acres set aside for the Métis in the Manitoba Act. Since this victory, the Manitoba Métis Federation has been lobbying the federal government to enter into a land claims negotiation to compensate the Métis people for lost lands and resources, with the ultimate goal of securing a legally recognized land base for Métis in Manitoba. On 15 November 2016, Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett and president of the Manitoba Métis Federation David Chartrand signed an agreement to bring an end to this 146-year land dispute. Parties must still negotiate the financial settlement for the land as well as some other issues, but this is a step forward in settling the land claim.

Most recently, Daniels v. Canada offered transformative potential for Métis-Canada relations, ending the "jurisdictional wasteland" that stymied relations for generations. In 2016, following a 17-year court battle launched by the late Métis leader Harry Daniels, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Métis and Non-Status Indians are considered "Indians" under federal jurisdiction as per Section 91(24) of the . This means that jurisdiction for Métis relations falls to the federal government, rather than the provinces, as has been the common practice for decades. The decision could transform how Métis organizations function, where their funding comes from, the kind of services they are able to offer, and their ability to demand consultation and compensation from the federal government.

Contemporary Life

The blending of European and Indigenous traditions has created a unique and rich Métis culture. In traditional music and dance, Métis fiddling and jigging combine European and Indigenous influences ( see Music of the Métis). Métis fiddle music is generally up-tempo and is accompanied by the fast footwork of jiggers. Though there are many fiddle tunes and dances, the most well-known is the Red River Jig, which emerged in the early to mid-1700s. Today, the Métis people still perform traditional music and dances at local and national competitions, community gatherings, powwows and conferences.

Métis art also reflects their unique heritage. Adopting Indigenous beading practices and popular European floral designs, the Métis created an art form all their own. Famous for their floral beadwork, the Métis are often referred to as the "Flower Beadwork People." Perhaps one of the most famous mainstream beadwork artists is Christi Belcourt, who has been awarded with many national and provincial honours for her work, including the Governor General's Innovation Award (2016), the Ontario Arts Council Aboriginal Arts Award (2014) and Influential Women of Northern Ontario, Aboriginal Leadership Award (2014). The Métis are also well-known for their finger-woven, colourful sashes that have historical, practical and sentimental value.

Like Métis music and art, their language, Michif, is rooted in a mixture of Cree and/or Saulteaux ( Ojibwe) verbs and French nouns. Historically, the Métis could speak various Indigenous languages and were often literate in French or English. Today, many Métis communities speak and teach Michif as a means of keeping the language alive.

According to the 2021 Census completed by Statistics Canada, there are 624,220 people who self-identify as Métis in Canada. This represents a 6.3% increase in the Métis population between 2016 and 2021. Of the 624,220 people who self-identify as Métis, 224,655 claim membership in a Métis organization or settlement.

Landmark Agreements on Métis Rights and Self-Government

On 27 June 2019, the Métis Nation of Alberta (MNA), Métis Nation of Ontario (MNO), and Métis Nation-Saskatchewan (MN-S) signed historic self-government agreements with the Government of Canada. The "Métis-Ottawa Accords" represent a landmark in Métis history, the first self-government agreements between the Métis Nation and the federal government. The historic signing took place in Ottawa between Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett, MNA president Audrey Poitras, MNO president Margaret Froh, and MN-S president Glen McCallum.

The agreements are the result of decades of struggle by the Métis people to gain recognition and self-government rights from the federal government. The 2019 accords represent the greatest steps forward for Métis rights since the important hunting, recognition and self-identity rights gained in 2003 ( see Powley Case) and 2016 ( see Daniels Case). The 2019 accords will be followed by future negotiations that will give the Métis Nation control over its own affairs in areas such as childcare, leadership selection, government operations, and citizenship. Most importantly, the accords give the Métis control over the creation of future constitutions for their various nations.

Carolyn Bennett, speaking on behalf of the federal government, considers the accords the beginning of a new and better relationship between Canada and the three Métis nations involved: "What we're signing today is a true acknowledgement of the Métis Nation and the relationship we will have going forward - government to government. We're here to sign not one, not two, but three historic self-government agreements and to recognize that you, the Métis, have control over your own governance."

Métis Nation of Alberta president Audrey Poitras believes that the accords are a "dramatic shift in attitude for Canada" towards her people and a truly historic moment for the Métis: "It's not an exaggeration to say the agreements signed today are something we've been fighting for for close to a century. Finally, Canada has recognized our right to self-government."

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Métis are people of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry, and one of the three recognized Aboriginal peoples in Canada. The use of the term Métis is complex...

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Métis are people of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry, and one of the three recognized Aboriginal peoples in Canada.  I found this on a credible source.( The Canadianencyclopedia)

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Louis Riel, circa 1873.
(courtesy Provincial Archives of Manitoba/N-5733)

Definitions and Terminology
Editorial Note: In the interest of promoting a better understanding of the complex issue of Métis identity and how it is defined, The Canadian Encyclopedia has commissioned two opinion pieces exploring different perspectives on the topic. Métis Are a People, Not a Historical Process explores Métis identity from the perspective of Métis with ancestral ties to the Red River Settlement. The "Other" Métis explores Métis identity from the perspective of Métis who do not have ancestral ties to the Red River Settlement.
The Congress of Aboriginal Peoples (CAP) has been critical of this definition of Métis, asserting that it excludes "many people who have legitimate claims to Métis identity." Despite CAP's stance, the MNC's position is the one that has generally been adopted by federal and provincial governments and the courts. For example, Métis Aboriginal rights defined in the decision and section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 have only been applied to Métis communities west of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. While several lawsuits claiming section 35 Métis rights have been brought before the courts by other communities, none have been successful. For example, R. v. Vatour in 2010 ruled against the notion of a Métis community in the Maritimes. Further, the implementation of these rights defined by the Powley decision and by various provincial governments all fall within the MNC's definition of the "Métis Homeland, " which includes the Prairie provinces, and parts of Ontario, BC and the NWT.

Typically, when written with a small-m, métis refers to any community of European-Indigenous ancestry, including those in Ontario and Québec and non-status settlements near First Nations reserves. It is often used to describe mixed-descent families and communities during the 18th and early 19th century Great Lakes fur trade, although some scholars now avoid using the term.

Contemporary usage of Métis is also different from its historical meaning. At Red River in the 19th century there were two prominent communities of mixed-descent people. In addition to a sizeable French-speaking and nominally Catholic Métis population, there was a large group of English-speaking "Half-breeds" who were mainly Anglican agriculturists. While these interrelated communities can be considered to be distinct constituencies - even though the boundaries between them were quite porous - the derogatory nature of the term "Half-breed" has caused it to fall largely into disuse. Thus, the contemporary meaning of "Métis" typically includes people of both French- and English-speaking heritage.

There are also Canadian legal definitions that further complicate Métis terminology. Section 35(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982 recognizes " Indian, Inuit and Métis peoples" as Aboriginal peoples under Canadian law, yet despite several Supreme Court of Canada decisions, Métis Aboriginal rights - and who may possess these rights - remain, for the most part, undefined. However, in 2016, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in the Daniels case that the federal government has jurisdiction over Métis people, and that both members of the Métis Nation and Non-Status Indians are "Indians" as defined by the Constitution Act. The Court stopped short of clarifying the legal definition of Métis, but removed one barrier governments used for generations to avoid dealing with outstanding Métis issues.

Métis Communities in Canada

There are people of mixed ancestry throughout Canada. The earliest mixed Indigenous-European marriages can be traced to the earliest days of contact, yet whether these marriages resulted in distinct Métis communities has long been the subject of scholarly debate. Some academics have argued that any mixed-descent person should be considered Métis. However, other scholars, along with the MNC, suggest that only those who were part of distinct Métis communities and used the term "Métis" in a self-referential way, should be called Métis. "Labrador Métis" for example, have dropped Métis for this reason and instead prefer a term their ancestors used to define themselves: NunatuKavut. Scholars who defend the Red River definition of "Métis" argue that Métis identity is not simply the result of a dual heritage, but rather a matter of possessing a singular cultural heritage of dual origins; someone of Cree and French Canadian descent would be considered Métis not solely by virtue of their mixed-descent, but whether they have Métis heritage that can be traced back to the Red River community.

Others have argued that such a narrow definition offers a limited understanding of Métis history. Communities in Ontario and Eastern Canada that have sought official recognition as Métis, for example, have expressed frustration at the popular notion that a traceable ancestry to the Red River settlement is a necessary requirement to "authentically" identifying as Métis. They argue that mixed-descent families and communities have existed since the 18th and early 19th century Great Lakes fur trade, before the establishment of the Red River Settlement. However, for many Red River Métis, the term is an important part of their specific history, heritage and identity, as enshrined by Canadian law. This remains an issue of heated debate among many métis people in Canada. ( See The "Other " Métis; Métis Are a People, Not a Historical Process).

Great Lakes Communities

The first small-m métis communities emerged during the Great Lakes fur trade in the 18th century. Great Lakes Indigenous diplomatic and economic protocols encouraged French fur traders to establish family connections through marriage and ceremonial adoption with prominent Indigenous families in the region. Such unions with Indigenous women - referred to as marriages à la façon du pays, "according to the custom of the country" - usually involved mutual commitments with local Indigenous kin and communities. French traders often lived out their lives with these families, whether formally employed at the forts or subsisting as gens libres (French and Métis freemen who supplied the posts or served intermittently as guides, interpreters or voyageurs). Game, fish, wild rice and maple sugar furnished sustenance, supplemented by small-scale slash-and-burn agriculture. Over time small groups of mixed families situated themselves in specific economic niches, with many rising to economic and social prominence throughout the Great Lakes region.

Scholarship has suggested that the application of the term "métis" to the Great Lakes region at this time is problematic since these mixed communities favoured terms like Saulteurs, bois brûlés (literally "burnt wood"), or chicots. While the term "métis" appears occasionally in contemporary writing, it was used predominantly by outsiders to make sense of a complex set of relationships between Indigenous communities and their relatives, not necessarily by the Great Lakes "métis" themselves. Likewise, the term "Métis" did not make its way into common language at Red River until the early 19th century, several years after the decline of the Great Lakes fur trade and the mixed communities it supported. Despite this distinction in terminology, the Métis of Red River and the métis of the Great Lakes were often connected through marriage and kinship practices.

The Western Métis

The success of the fur trade in the region that the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) called Rupert's Land also relied on intermarriage. While the Company initially attempted to suppress these "country marriages," the effectiveness of these unions in establishing trade networks, along with the successful use of intermarriage by the rival North West Company (NWC), convinced the HBC to modify its policy. Initially, the children of these marriages lacked the distinct community and economic base upon which to build a separate identity. While some HBC officers' mixed children were educated in England, Scotland or in the Canadas ( see Upper and Lower Canada, later the Province of Canada), and other families were left in the care of other HBC employees when senior officers returned to Europe, not all mixed-descent children faced difficult prospects. Many of these mixed-descent children remained in the North-West, living near one another and developing a sense of themselves as a unique cultural and social community. This sense of self would eventually evolve into a sense of political commonality.

Nor'Wester William McGillivray admitted in a letter of 14 March 1818 that the Métis were linked to the NWC by occupation and kinship. "Yet," he emphasized, "they one and all look upon themselves as members of an independent tribe of natives, entitled to a property in the soil, to a flag of their own, and to protection from the British government." Further, it was well proved "that the half-breeds under the denominations of bois-brûlés and métifs have formed a separate and distinct tribe of Indians for a considerable time back."

The early Red River Colony did not allay these fears, but rather antagonized the Métis and the NWC. Decrees from the governor of the colony forbade the export and sale of pemmican to anyone but local HBC forts, and later banned hunting buffalo from horseback ( see Pemmican Proclamation). These were direct economic sanctions against Métis families who provisioned the NWC with pemmican made from buffalo meat (which had been hunted on horseback). After escalating raids on rival fur trade forts by HBC and NWC officers, many prominent Métis grew hostile to the Selkirk settlement's leaders and, under the leadership of Cuthbert Grant, in 1815 decided to evict the settlers from the region. In 1816, after Selkirk himself had decided to evict the Nor'Westers, the governor of the settlement, Robert Semple, confronted a group of Métis soldiers at Seven Oaks. A battle broke out and the Métis soldiers killed Semple and several colonists. The event was memorialized in Pierre Falcon's "La Chanson de la Grenouillère." ( See also: Music of the Métis.)

The Battle of Seven Oaks resulted in an agreement between Cuthbert Grant and the Selkirk settlement's interim leader, Peter Fidler. By 1821, any inter-company conflicts were ended with the merger of the HBC and NWC. After the merger a number of traders were deemed redundant and many took up residence at the Red River Colony, which thus gained an increasing Métis presence. Company employees with Métis families lobbied for the founding of a community where they could retire and have lands, livelihoods, schools, churches and other amenities. The HBC itself hoped to reduce costs by relocating dependent populations to a place where they could become self-supporting under the Company's governance.

From 1821 to 1870, Red River's overwhelmingly mixed-descent population continued to reflect its dual origins: Montréal, the Great Lakes and Prairies, and the NWC; and Britain, the Scottish Orkney Islands (a major HBC recruiting ground) and Rupert's Land. Some argue that these groups expressed mutual solidarity on the basis of their numerous intermarriages, business ties, shared involvements in the buffalo hunt, the HBC transport brigades and provisional government of 1869-70. A contrary view emphasizes the split between Roman Catholic francophones and Protestant anglophones. Whatever their internal ties and tensions, the rapidly growing population in the Northwest was, by the 1830s, increasingly seen as a racial aggregate, as racially based interpretations of human behaviour reigned in the 19th century. As such, Métis were often limited in their advancement through Company ranks.

While the HBC claimed to govern the population of Red River through the Company-appointed Council of Assiniboia, it governed more through influence than command. Throughout the 1840s and 1850s, Métis challenged the HBC trade and administrative monopoly in Red River. In 1849 Métis disrupted the trial of free trader Pierre-Guillaume Sayer, effectively ending the HBC fur monopoly and ushering in an era of free trade. In the mid-1850s, Métis petitioned the Imperial Government in London through Red River-born lawyer Alexander Kennedy Isbister to limit the Council of Assiniboia's power. On the ground, the Council rarely commanded enough of a constabulary to compel Métis to follow its laws, so the Council was often forced to compromise with the community to ensure the enforcement of its laws.

The Red River Provisional Government, 1869-70

Councillors of the Provisional Government of the Métis Nation, 1870.

The consequent efforts of government surveyors to map Red River without regard for local residents' holdings resulted in the establishment of the Métis National Committee, and a provisional government in late 1869. These events established Louis Riel as the leader of the Métis resistance ( see also: Louis Riel Timeline). After consolidating their alliance with the "Half-breed" population and the old British settler population, the three constituencies formed the Provisional Government of Assiniboia's Legislative Assembly in March 1870, and sent a delegation to Ottawa to negotiate Red River's entrance into Confederation. The outcome was theManitoba Act, which established Manitoba as a new province in Confederation as well as several other commitments to protect Métis landholdings (including a 1.4 million acre land reserve), language and local political control over the new province.

However, the agreement recorded by the Provisional Government's chief negotiator varies in important ways from the Manitoba Act, and Métis leaders have argued since the 19th century that the original agreement has never been properly implemented. The promised land reserve was never properly allotted; and when it was, it was granted piecemeal to individual families, taking well over a decade to be allocated. The settlers and troops who arrived in the new province after 1870 were generally hostile to the Métis, many of whom were "beaten and outraged by a small but noisy section" of the newcomers, according to a report by the new governor, Adams Archibald. Métis landholders were harassed, while new laws and amendments to the Manitoba Act undermined Métis power to fend off speculators and new settlers.

Of the approximately 10,000 persons of mixed descent in Manitoba in 1870, two-thirds or more are estimated to have departed in the following few years. While some went north and some went south to the United States, most headed west to the existing Métis settlements around Fort Edmonton (Lac Ste Anne, St Albert and Lac La Biche) and to the South Saskatchewan River, where they joined many Métis families already living at St Laurent, Batoche and Duck Lake.

The North-West Resistance

Louis Riel, circa 1873.

As Saskatchewan Métis communities grew due to the Manitoba exodus, several sought to clarify their land titles with the Canadian government. The government ignored Métis concerns while negotiating major Indigenous treaties and pre-empting land for railways. In deep frustration, the Saskatchewan Métis took up arms under Riel and Gabriel Dumont in the North-West Resistance of 1885.

The Métis defeat at Batoche and the execution of Riel for treason set off a second dispersal, particularly to Alberta, and a renewed weakening of political influence and cohesiveness ( see also: Battle of Batoche). Sir John A. Macdonald in 1885 articulated a view that would begin the process of denying Métis identity for the next century: "If they are Indians, they go with the tribe; if they are half-breeds they are whites." Where Métis individuals did receive land allowances (or financial equivalents), they usually were granted them in paper scrip - transferable certificates which unscrupulous speculators often pressured them to sell cheaply on the spot. The "scrip hunters" followed the Treaty No. 8 Half-Breed Commission in 1900 as it made its awards to Métis in the Dene settlements, and bought up many $240 scrip certificates for cash amounts of $70 to $130.

From 1885 to the mid-1900s, poverty, demoralization and racism commonly connected to being identified as a "half-breed" led many Métis to deny or suppress that part of their heritage if they could. In 1896 Father Albert Lacombe, concerned for Métis interests, founded St-Paul-des-Métis northeast of Edmonton on land furnished by the government. For financial and other reasons, the colony failed as a formal entity by 1908, and settlers from Québec began to dominate the area. The multiple dispersals of Métis families across the west has led to the existence of Métis communities across the Prairies, and into British Columbia and the Northwest Territories, as well as the northern United States and northwestern Ontario.

20th Century Métis Activism

Despite the struggles of the 19th century, some developments after 1900 were more positive. In 1909, the Union nationale métisse St-Joseph de Manitoba, founded by former associates of Riel and others, began to retrieve (from Métis documents and memories) their own history of the events of 1869-70 and 1885, resulting in A.H. de Trémaudan's classic work, Hold High Your Heads: History of the Métis Nation in Western Canada (1936). The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise of new leaders - notably James Patrick (Jim) Brady and Malcolm Norris - who, as Prairie socialist activists, built a new political and organizational base to defend their people's interests. Many Métis and non-Status Indigenous peoples had been considered "squatters" (although they asserted title of their own to these lands) on Crown lands in Alberta. Threatened by a federal plan to place these lands under provincial jurisdiction, Joseph Dion and others organized petitions and delegations to the Alberta government to seek land title for the Indigenous peoples living there.

After Brady and Norris joined the movement in 1932, the first of several provincial organizations was founded - the Métis Association of Alberta, open to all persons of Indigenous ancestry. Its efforts led to the appointment of the Ewing Commission in 1934-36 to "make enquiry into the condition of the Half-breed population of Alberta." The association eventually secured land for Métis settlements alongside the passage of the Métis Population Betterment Act in 1938. That same year, the Saskatchewan Métis Society (later the Association of Métis and Non-Status Indians of Saskatchewan) was founded and began to organize for the recognition and protection of Métis rights.

Métis Organizing and the Constitutional Era

In the late 1960s, Métis political activity intensified with the founding of numerous other organizations, such as the Manitoba Métis Federation, the Ontario Métis and Non-Status Indian Association, and the Louis Riel Métis Association of BC. These organizations confronted such issues as the federal government's White Paper of 1969, and the on-going exclusion of Métis and Non-Status Indians from federal policy considerations.

In the 1970s, alongside their Non-Status Indian counterparts, Métis organizations were successful in developing programming that provided social, economic and educational supports for Indigenous peoples. However, due to the federal policy that limited federal funding to Métis and Non-Status Indians, these groups dealt mostly with individual provinces, which in turn considered them to be a federal concern. Nonetheless, Métis and Non-Status Indian organizations developed meaningful partnerships with provincial governments, which have, over the long term, produced an impressive array of social services still in existence today.

During the 1970s, Métis organizations were primarily concerned with social programming for Métis and Non-Status Indians, but during the lead-up to Canadian constitutional patriation, Métis organizations, like their Indian and Inuit counterparts, were increasingly concerned about constitutional protection of their rights and title. During the patriation process, Métis successfully lobbied for inclusion in what became Section 35 of the Constitution Act of 1982, protecting "the existing aboriginal and treaty rights" of Indigenous peoples, who were defined as "Indian, Inuit and Métis." While Métis (and other Aboriginal) rights and title remained undefined in constitutional practice, Métis did gain a constitutional protection from unjustifiable Canadian infringement on their rights.

Before the constitutional recognition of Métis Aboriginal rights, Métis and Non-Status Indians had worked together out of common interest and necessity. With the Métis recognized as a distinct group in 1982, the alliance began to dissolve. From 1970 to 1983 the Native Council of Canada (NCC, now the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples) represented Métis interests on the national level. However, for the 1983 First Ministers Conference, the Métis National Council was formed to secure Métis representation as a distinct people independent of Non-Status Indians. The First Ministers Conferences of the 1980s, meant to define Section 35 Aboriginal rights, were widely regarded as a failure, and the Métis/Non-Status split became more permanent. Métis organizations began to develop membership codes that reflected Métis-specific membership, excluding many previous Non-Status Indian members. For example, to become a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation, a person must trace their genealogy back to the original Red River Settlement, typically using scrip, parish or census records.

The Courts: Métis Aboriginal Rights

As the recognized Métis "rights and title" of Section 35 were never defined during the First Ministers Conferences, the Métis initiated a series of lawsuits in order for the courts to determine what these rights protected. Since Métis rights were constitutionalized in 1982, three major court decisions have started the long process of defining Métis Aboriginal rights in the Canadian constitutional system, and have highlighted the complexities involved in defining Métis identity.

A transformative movement in Métis rights jurisprudence came in in 2003. Two Métis hunters, Steve and Roddy Powley shot and killed a moose outside of Sault Ste Marie and were charged with hunting without a licence and unlawful possession of game hunted in contravention of Ontario's Game and Fish Act. In defence, they claimed that their rights as Métis allowed them to hunt in a manner consistent with their Aboriginal rights, which predated Canadian assertion of sovereignty over their community. As a result, the Supreme Court established the three-part "Powley test" for determining who may claim Métis Aboriginal rights under section 35 of the constitution. A person must: a) self-identify as Métis; b) have an ancestral connection to a historic Métis community; and c) be accepted by a contemporary community that exists in continuity with a historic rights-bearing community.

In 2013, the Supreme Court determined in MMF v. Canada that the government failed in its obligation to properly distribute and safeguard the 1.4 million acres set aside for the Métis in the Manitoba Act. Since this victory, the Manitoba Métis Federation has been lobbying the federal government to enter into a land claims negotiation to compensate the Métis people for lost lands and resources, with the ultimate goal of securing a legally recognized land base for Métis in Manitoba. On 15 November 2016, Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett and president of the Manitoba Métis Federation David Chartrand signed an agreement to bring an end to this 146-year land dispute. Parties must still negotiate the financial settlement for the land as well as some other issues, but this is a step forward in settling the land claim.

Most recently, Daniels v. Canada offered transformative potential for Métis-Canada relations, ending the "jurisdictional wasteland" that stymied relations for generations. In 2016, following a 17-year court battle launched by the late Métis leader Harry Daniels, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Métis and Non-Status Indians are considered "Indians" under federal jurisdiction as per Section 91(24) of the . This means that jurisdiction for Métis relations falls to the federal government, rather than the provinces, as has been the common practice for decades. The decision could transform how Métis organizations function, where their funding comes from, the kind of services they are able to offer, and their ability to demand consultation and compensation from the federal government.

Contemporary Life

The blending of European and Indigenous traditions has created a unique and rich Métis culture. In traditional music and dance, Métis fiddling and jigging combine European and Indigenous influences ( see Music of the Métis). Métis fiddle music is generally up-tempo and is accompanied by the fast footwork of jiggers. Though there are many fiddle tunes and dances, the most well-known is the Red River Jig, which emerged in the early to mid-1700s. Today, the Métis people still perform traditional music and dances at local and national competitions, community gatherings, powwows and conferences.

Métis art also reflects their unique heritage. Adopting Indigenous beading practices and popular European floral designs, the Métis created an art form all their own. Famous for their floral beadwork, the Métis are often referred to as the "Flower Beadwork People." Perhaps one of the most famous mainstream beadwork artists is Christi Belcourt, who has been awarded with many national and provincial honours for her work, including the Governor General's Innovation Award (2016), the Ontario Arts Council Aboriginal Arts Award (2014) and Influential Women of Northern Ontario, Aboriginal Leadership Award (2014). The Métis are also well-known for their finger-woven, colourful sashes that have historical, practical and sentimental value.

Like Métis music and art, their language, Michif, is rooted in a mixture of Cree and/or Saulteaux ( Ojibwe) verbs and French nouns. Historically, the Métis could speak various Indigenous languages and were often literate in French or English. Today, many Métis communities speak and teach Michif as a means of keeping the language alive.

According to the 2021 Census completed by Statistics Canada, there are 624,220 people who self-identify as Métis in Canada. This represents a 6.3% increase in the Métis population between 2016 and 2021. Of the 624,220 people who self-identify as Métis, 224,655 claim membership in a Métis organization or settlement.

Landmark Agreements on Métis Rights and Self-Government

On 27 June 2019, the Métis Nation of Alberta (MNA), Métis Nation of Ontario (MNO), and Métis Nation-Saskatchewan (MN-S) signed historic self-government agreements with the Government of Canada. The "Métis-Ottawa Accords" represent a landmark in Métis history, the first self-government agreements between the Métis Nation and the federal government. The historic signing took place in Ottawa between Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett, MNA president Audrey Poitras, MNO president Margaret Froh, and MN-S president Glen McCallum.

The agreements are the result of decades of struggle by the Métis people to gain recognition and self-government rights from the federal government. The 2019 accords represent the greatest steps forward for Métis rights since the important hunting, recognition and self-identity rights gained in 2003 ( see Powley Case) and 2016 ( see Daniels Case). The 2019 accords will be followed by future negotiations that will give the Métis Nation control over its own affairs in areas such as childcare, leadership selection, government operations, and citizenship. Most importantly, the accords give the Métis control over the creation of future constitutions for their various nations.

Carolyn Bennett, speaking on behalf of the federal government, considers the accords the beginning of a new and better relationship between Canada and the three Métis nations involved: "What we're signing today is a true acknowledgement of the Métis Nation and the relationship we will have going forward - government to government. We're here to sign not one, not two, but three historic self-government agreements and to recognize that you, the Métis, have control over your own governance."

Métis Nation of Alberta president Audrey Poitras believes that the accords are a "dramatic shift in attitude for Canada" towards her people and a truly historic moment for the Métis: "It's not an exaggeration to say the agreements signed today are something we've been fighting for for close to a century. Finally, Canada has recognized our right to self-government."

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Métis are people of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry, and one of the three recognized Aboriginal peoples in Canada. The use of the term Métis is complex...