The Métis people are one of Canada's three Aboriginal groups. While the characteristics of North American Indians and Inuit are relatively well documented, little is known about the Métis. Based on the 1991 Aboriginal Peoples Survey, this report provides an overview of the population who identify with the Métis. It analyzes the socio-economic situation of the Métis in terms of their demographic characteristics, family status, culture, education, labour force characteristics, income, housing and health. For purposes of comparison, informations are also provided for the non-Aboriginal, North American Indian and Inuit populations.

They know who they are. Of predominantly Chippewa, Cree, French, and Scottish descent, the Métis people have flourished as a distinct ethnic group in Canada and the northwestern United States for nearly two hundred years. Yet their Métis identity is often ignored or misunderstood in the United States. Unlike their counterparts in Canada, the U.S. Métis have never received federal recognition. In fact, their very identity has been questioned. In this rich examination of a Métis community—the first book-length work to focus on the Montana Métis—Martha Harroun Foster combines social, political, and economic analysis to show how its people have adapted to changing conditions while retaining a strong sense of their own unique culture and traditions. Despite overwhelming obstacles, the Métis have used the bonds of kinship and common history to strengthen and build their community. As Foster carefully traces the lineage of Métis families from the Spring Creek area, she shows how the people retained their sense of communal identity. She traces the common threads linking diverse Métis communities throughout Montana and lends insight into the nature of Métis identity in general. And in raising basic questions about the nature of ethnicity, this pathbreaking work speaks to the difficulties of ethnic identification encountered by all peoples of mixed descent.

This book contains a collection of articles concerning the Western Metis, published in Prairie Forum between 1978 and 2007. These articles have been chosen for the breadth and scope of the investigations upon which they are based, and for the reflections they will arouse in anyone interested in Western Canadian history and politics.

A collection of essays on the Metis Native americans by various authors.

There is a missing chapter in the narrative of Canada’s Indigenous peoples—the story of the Métis Nation, a new Indigenous people descended from both First Nations and Europeans Their story begins in the last decade of the eighteenth century in the Canadian North-West. Within twenty years the Métis proclaimed themselves a nation and won their first battle. Within forty years they were famous throughout North America for their military skills, their nomadic life and their buffalo hunts. The Métis Nation didn’t just drift slowly into the Canadian consciousness in the early 1800s; it burst onto the scene fully formed. The Métis were flamboyant, defiant, loud and definitely not noble savages. They were nomads with a very different way of being in the world—always on the move, very much in the moment, passionate and fierce. They were romantics and visionaries with big dreams. They battled continuously—for recognition, for their lands and for their rights and freedoms. In 1870 and 1885, led by the iconic Louis Riel, they fought back when Canada took their lands. These acts of resistance became defining moments in Canadian history, with implications that reverberate to this day: Western alienation, Indigenous rights and the French/English divide. After being defeated at the Battle of Batoche in 1885, the Métis lived in hiding for twenty years. But early in the twentieth century, they determined to hide no more and began a long, successful fight back into the Canadian consciousness. The Métis people are now recognized in Canada as a distinct Indigenous nation. Written by the great-grandniece of Louis Riel, this popular and engaging history of “forgotten people” tells the story up to the present era of national reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. 2019 marks the 175th anniversary of Louis Riel’s birthday (October 22, 1844)

Focusing upon the Mission Métis of Lac la Biche, the author examines the use of French, Cree, and English as a means of garnering insight into the mechanisms of western Canadian Métis cultural and linguistic variation. He concludes that the relationship of the people to their environment is inextricably bound to an understanding of their language and culture and that the delineation of cultural boundaries is, therefore, a highly complex matter.