Métis

The Métis are a mixed-ancestry Indigenous people whose historical homelands include Canada's three Prairie Provinces extending into parts of Ontario, British Columbia, the Northwest Territories and the northwest United States. They have a shared history and culture, deriving from specific mixed European and Indigenous ancestry, which became distinct through ethnogenesis by the mid-18th century, during the early years of the North American fur trade.
In Canada, the Métis, with a population of 624,220 as of 2021, are one of three legally recognized Indigenous peoples in the Constitution Act, 1982, along with the First Nations and Inuit.
The term Métis typically refers to the specific community of people defined as the Métis Nation, which originated largely in the Red River Valley and organized politically in the 19th century, radiating outwards from the Red River Settlement. Descendants of this community are known as the Red River Métis. In 1870, the Métis Provisional Government of Louis Riel negotiated the entry of the Red River Settlement into Confederation as the Province of Manitoba, making Manitoba the only province to be founded by an Indigenous person.
Alberta is the only Canadian province with a recognized Métis land base: the eight Métis settlements, with a population of approximately 5,000 people on and the newer Metis lands near Fort McKay, purchased from the Government of Alberta in 2017.

Background

Etymology

The word métis itself is originally French for 'person of mixed parentage' and derives from the Latin word mixticius, from mixtus, 'mixed'. It is a cognate of the Spanish term mestizo.

Semantic definitions

The definitions and usage of the terms "Métis", "Metis", and "métis" have at times been controversial and contentious; however, there are also legal definitions.
Descendants of English or Scottish and Indigenous were in some cases also historically called "half-breeds" or "Anglo-Métis" or "countryborn". They sometimes adopted a more agrarian culture of subsistence farming and tended to be reared in Protestant denominations.

Lowercase 'm'

Starting in the 17th century, the French word métis was initially used as a noun by those in the North American fur trade, and by settlers in general, to refer to people of mixed European and North-American Indigenous parentage in New France. At the time, it applied generally to French-speaking people who were of partial Indigenous and partial ethnic French descent. It also came to be used for people of mixed European and Indigenous backgrounds in other French colonies, generally the children of unions between French men and non-French women from the colonized areas, including Guadeloupe in the Caribbean; Senegal in West Africa; Algeria in North Africa; and the former French Indochina in Southeast Asia.
The first documented "métis" child was a girl born about 1628 near Lake Nipissing, given the first name Marguerite, who was the daughter of a Nipissing woman and Jean Nicollet de Belleborne.
Today, the spelling métis with a lowercase 'm' typically functions as an adjective. The definition of the word has at times been disputed, as some people have attempted to use lower-case métis in the archaic sense of having a single, distant Indigenous ancestor or being in some other way "mixed".

Uppercase 'M'

As French Canadians followed the North American fur trade to the west, some of the settlers made unions with different Indigenous women, including the Cree. Over time, the Métis emerged as a distinct Indigenous people during the late 18th century, with the term referring to a particular sociocultural heritage and an ethnic identification.
In this regard, the term Métis is more than a racial classification and refers to the Métis Nation, an Indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States who originated largely in the Red River Valley and organized politically in the 19th century, developing and dispersing outwards from the Red River Settlement. Descendants of this community are therefore also often known as the Red River Métis.
Numerous spellings of Métis have been used interchangeably, including métif, michif; currently the most agreed-upon spelling is Métis; however, some prefer to use Metis as inclusive of persons of both English and French descent.
The majority of Indigenous groups and legal scholars define Métis as the people who originate from the historic homeland of the Métis Nation, which encompasses the Prairie Provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta and extends into contiguous parts of Ontario, British Columbia, the Northwest Territories, and the northern United States.
The Métis National Council, in 2002, defined Métis as: "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."
Canadian Geographic's Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada identifies Métis people as one of three Canadian Indigenous peoples in the following terms:

Within non-Indigenous society, there are two competing ideas of what being Métis means. The first, when spelled with a lowercase "m", means individuals or people having mixed-Ancestry parents and ancestries, e.g., North American Indigenous and European/Euro-Canadian/Euro-American. It is a racial categorization. This is the oldest meaning of métis and is based on the French verb métisser , to mix Ancestry or ethnicities. The related noun for the act of Ancestry-mixing is métissage. The second meaning of being Métis, and the one that is embraced by the Métis Nation, relates to a self-defining people with a distinct history in a specific region with some spillover into British Columbia, Ontario, North Dakota, Montana and Northwest Territories. In this case, the term Métis is spelled with an uppercase "M" and often, but does not always, contain an accent aigu.

The [|Métis of Canada] and the [|Métis of the United States] adopted parts of their Indigenous and European cultures while forming customs and traditions of their own, as well as developing a common language. Some argue that the ethnogenesis of the Métis began when the Métis organized politically at the Battle of Seven Oaks in 1816, while others argue that the ethnogenesis began prior to this battle, before fur traders emigrated from the Great Lakes region to the Western plains.

Other groups and individuals

Scholars, Métis people, and First Nations elders and community leaders state that only the descendants of the Red River Métis should be constitutionally recognized as Métis people, as they developed a distinct culture as a people historically, and have continued to exist as a distinct culture and community over many generations.
Objections to this stance have been made to the Métis National Council by both individuals and newly formed groups who do not meet the established citizenship criteria. These individuals and unrecognized groups have recently emerged largely in the Maritime, Quebec, and Ontario regions, and are generally referred to as "Eastern Metis". Those objecting usually state that having a single, distant, Indigenous or possibly Indigenous ancestor should be enough to be considered Métis. They also disagree that they should have to meet the resident requirement as defined by the federally recognized Métis organizations.
David Chartrand, president of the Manitoba Métis Federation, responding in 2020, said he does not believe these new, self-identified individuals and communities are Métis:
In a 2016 decision, Daniels v Canada , the Supreme Court of Canada stated in par. 17:
Indigenous elders from the Miꞌkmaq and other First Nations communities in the Eastern part of Canada, along with recognized Métis leaders, do not agree with this perspective. They say that there is no distinct Metis community or culture in the Maritimes or Quebec, and that these newly formed, "Eastern Metis" groups are not legitimate:

People of mixed blood in the region either integrated into Indigenous communities or assimilated with European newcomers, unlike the distinct Metis People of Louis Riel in Western Canada.
"When you're looking at the Maritimes and Quebec, the children of intermarriage were accepted by either party, in our case the Mi'kmaq or the Acadian," Mi'kmaw elder and historian Daniel Paul says. "There was no such thing as a Metis community here in this region."

Riel's Métis

Quoting Louis Riel from Tremaudan's Histoire de la nation métisse dans l'ouest canadien:

Métis people in Canada

Métis people in Canada are specific cultural communities who trace their descent to First Nations and European settlers, primarily the French, in the early decades of the colonization of Canada. Métis peoples are recognized as one of Canada's Indigenous peoples under the Constitution Act of 1982, along with First Nations and Inuit. On April 8, 2014, the Supreme Court of Canada Daniels v Canada appeal held that "Métis and non status Indians are 'Indians' under s. 91," but excluded the Powley test as the only criterion to determine Metis identity.
Canadian Métis represent the majority of people who identify as Métis, although there are a number of Métis in the United States. In Canada, the population is 587,545 with 20.5 percent living in Ontario and 19.5 percent in Alberta. The Acadians of eastern Canada, some of whom have mixed French and Indigenous origins, are not Métis according to Crown–Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada and other historic Indigenous communities. This viewpoint sees Métis as historically the children of French fur traders and Nehiyaw women of western and west central Canada.
While the Métis initially developed as the mixed-Ancestry descendants of early unions between First Nations and colonial-era European settlers, within generations, a distinct [|Métis culture] developed. The women in the unions in eastern Canada were usually Algonquin and Ojibwe, and in western Canada they were Saulteaux, Cree, Ojibwe, Nakoda, and Dakota/Lakota or of mixed descent from these peoples. Their unions with European men engaged in the fur trade in the Old Northwest were often of the type known as marriage à la façon du pays.
After New France was ceded to Great Britain's control in 1763, there was an important distinction between French Métis born of francophone voyageur fathers and the Anglo-Métis descended from English or Scottish fathers. Today these two cultures have essentially coalesced into location-specific Métis traditions. This does not preclude a range of other Métis cultural expressions across North America. Such polyethnic people were historically referred to by other terms, many of which are now considered to be offensive, such as Mixed-bloods, Half-breeds, Bois-Brûlés, Bungi, Black Scots and Jackatars, the latter term having meaning in a Newfoundland context.
While people of Métis culture or heritage are found across Canada, the traditional Métis "homeland" includes much of the present-day Canadian Prairies along with parts of Northwestern Ontario, British Columbia, and the Northwest-Nunavut Territory. The most well-known group are the "Red River Métis", centering on southern and central parts of Manitoba along the Red River of the North.
Closely related are the Métis in the United States, primarily those in border areas such as Northern Michigan, the Red River Valley and Eastern Montana. These were areas in which there was considerable Aboriginal and European mixing due to the 19th-century fur trade. However, they do not have a federally recognized status in the United States, except as enrolled members of federally recognized tribes. Although Métis existed farther west than today's Manitoba, much less is known about the Métis of Northern Canada.