Weaving Knowledge Systems Resource Materials

The mediation of Indigenous identity in Canada cannot be disentangled from the ways that non-Indigenous Canadians attempt to mediate their own settler identities. For significant numbers of non-Indigenous Canadians, this mediation occurs through uncritical and problematic mobilizations of what is often perceived to be Métis identity—an identity which, for many with little connection to Indigenous histories or politics, simply signifies the mixing of cultures, Indigenous and non-Indigenous. Indeed, countless Canadians who otherwise would not identify themselves as Indigenous, will inevitably cite a distant First Nations or Métis relative, claiming they themselves are Métis, part-Métis, or possess Métis heritage. Hardly a month goes by that notions of “Métis-ness” do not appear to be up for debate, or, more often, especially in the east, uncritically championed as part of Canada’s own national identity. If my claims here appear merely anecdotal, the recent controversies over the supposed Indigenous identity of author Joseph Boyden, along with the deluge of non-Indigenous op-eds in support of his lucrative and ambiguous claim to various Indigenous communities—at times Mi’kmaq, Anishnaabe, and of course Métis—is indicative of just how much investment settler Canadians put into propping up and leaning into unsubstantiated claims to Indigenous identity, while deriding legitimate assertions of Indigenous rights. [From Author]

As a kid, I spent my formative years growing up in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. In addition to the numerous visits to family living north of the city, we used to attend “Back to Batoche,” an annual Métis celebration held adjacent to the historic battleground between Métis troops and Canada’s army during the 1885 Battle of Batoche (and now a national historic site). For those who don’t know, the Batoche Days festival represents both a commemorative and a “living” site of Métis politics and national identity. What I remember most about the Batoche Days of my childhood, however, is not its more overt political symbolism but, rather, a t-shirt my mom bought me one year. It featured a fairly iconic picture of Gabriel Dumont on a horse, captioned underneath with the phrase “I’m Métis, what’s your excuse?” What I remember thinking at the time was that the phrase meant “I’m Métis, this is why I – why we –act this way: what’s your excuse?” To be honest, I wasn’t sure what “acting this way” entailed, exactly, although I suppose I have since roughly equated it with part of the original sentiments behind the title of Murray Dobbin’s excellent account of Métis political activity during the twentieth century, “The One and a Half Men.” According to Dobbin, the term was coined by a priest in Red River during the nineteenth-century heyday of the Métis nation, to describe to a newcomer the Métis he saw as “one-and-a-half men: half white, half Indian and half devil.” [From Author]

First Nations, Inuit and Métis have long advocated learning that affirms their own ways of knowing, cultural traditions and values. However, they also desire Western education that can equip them with the knowledge and skills they need to participate in Canadian society. First Nations, Inuit and Métis recognize that “two ways of knowing” will foster the necessary conditions for nurturing healthy, sustainable communities. [From Author]

The Gabriel Dumont Institute is pleased to include the Paul Chartrand Papers on The Virtual Museum of Métis History and Culture. In 2004, Paul graciously donated his papers to the Institute. This collection is very important to the Métis Nation. Paul has spent his entire adult life fighting for Métis rights, as a lawyer, an educator and a community activist. This collection focuses on restoring the Métis’ Aboriginal rights through litigation and social activism. [From Website]

The story of the Métis and residential schools is not new; it is, though, a story that has been underemphasized for a long time in the realms of both residential school and Métis history. Throughout the twentieth century, the collective lives of the Métis have often been disconnected from other dominant community structures in Canada. The policies that were created for the Métis and residential schools acutely reflected how administrators felt about where they thought the Métis’ station in society should be. The Métis, in the eyes of the administration, were either to be considered Indians or assimilated as non-Aboriginal Canadians. Any future the Métis had as a nation was not given consideration by the dominant EuroCanadian society at that time. [From Author]

The Métis are an Indigenous people that originated in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century on the northern plains of what is now southern Manitoba. Centred historically in and around Red River (now Winnipeg) and intimately tied to the buffalo-hunting economy, the Métis became a powerful force by the middle of the nineteenth century, pushing back against the Hudson’s Bay Company’s claims to economic monopoly and later leading two armed resistances against the Canadian state. Despite this powerful historic presence and the fact that the 1982 Constitution Act enumerated the Métis, along with First Nations and Inuit, as one of three Aboriginal peoples in Canada, the term has, in recent years, largely fallen into racialized disrepute. [From Author]

Developing appropriate risk messages during challenging situations like public health outbreaks is complicated. The focus of this paper is on how First Nations and Metis people in Manitoba, Canada, responded to the public health management of pandemic H1N1, using a focus group methodology (n = 23 focus groups). Focus group conversations explored participant reactions to messaging regarding the identification of H1N1 virus risk groups, the H1N1 vaccine and how priority groups to receive the vaccine were established. To better contextualize the intentions of public health professionals, key informant interviews (n = 20) were conducted with different health decision makers (e.g., public health officials, people responsible for communications, representatives from some First Nations and Metis self-governing organizations). While risk communication practice has improved, ‘one size’ messaging campaigns do not work effectively, particularly when communicating about who is most ‘at-risk’. Public health agencies need to pay more attention to the specific socio-economic, historical and cultural contexts of First Nations and Metis citizens when planning for, communicating and managing responses associated with pandemic outbreaks to better tailor both the messages and delivery. More attention is needed to directly engage First Nations and Metis communities in the development and dissemination of risk messaging. [From Author]

Background: During the first wave of the H1N1 influenza pandemic in 2009, Aboriginal populations in Canada experienced disproportionate rates of infection, particularly in the province of Manitoba. To protect those thought to be most at-risk, health authorities in Manitoba listed all Aboriginal people, including Metis, among those able to receive priority access to the novel vaccine when it first became available. Currently, no studies exist that have investigated the attitudes, influences, and vaccine behaviors among Aboriginal communities in Canada. This paper is the first to systematically connect vaccine behavior with the attitudes and beliefs that influenced Metis study participants' H1N1 vaccine decision-making. Methods: Researchers held focus groups (n = 17) with Metis participants in urban, rural, and remote locations of Manitoba following the conclusion of the H1N1 pandemic. Participants were asked about their vaccination decisions and about the factors that influenced their decisions. Following data collection, responses were coded into the broad categories of a social-ecological model, nuanced by categories stemming from earlier research. Responses were then quantified to show the most influential factors in positively or negatively affecting the vaccine decision. Results: Media reporting, the influence of peer groups, and prioritization all had positive and negative influential effects on decision making. Whether vaccinated or not, the most negatively influential factors cited by participants were a lack of knowledge about the vaccine and the pandemic as well as concerns about vaccine safety. Risk of contracting H1N1 influenza was the biggest factor in positively influencing a vaccine decision, which in many cases trumped any co-existing negative influencers. Conclusions: Metis experiences of colonialism in Canada deeply affected their perceptions of the vaccine and pandemic, a context that health systems need to take into account when planning response activities in the future. Participants felt under-informed about most aspects of the vaccine and the pandemic, and many vaccine related misconceptions and fears existed. Recommendations include leveraging doctor-patient interactions as a site for sharing vaccine-related knowledge, as well as targeted, culturally-appropriate, and empowering public information strategies to supply reliable vaccine and pandemic information to potentially at-risk Aboriginal populations. [From Author]

To explore how the threat of prejudice can interfere with a learner’s ability beliefs, expectancies of success and subjective task value 165 Métis post-secondary students were asked to consider themselves applying for a job with a non-Indigenous employer. Participants were grouped into high and low Métis identifiers and then placed into one of three groups: (1) Employer-prejudiced, (2) Employer non-prejudiced, and (3) Employer’s attitudes about Indigenous peoples unknown. A 2x3 Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to examine the relationship between Métis identity (high/low) and five concepts: (1) expectations about being hired, (2) value placed on being hired, (3) learners’ beliefs about the mock employer’s integrity, (4) the extent to which learner’s held negative over-generalized negative beliefs about non-Indigenous people, and (5) actual task performance. Although there were no interaction effects a number of main effects are reported. While students with a stronger sense of Métis identity reported more overall optimism about being hired that those learners with a weaker sense of Métis identity, they nevertheless reported less motivation to perform an assigned task to the best of their respective abilities. Students in the prejudiced condition reported lower expectations about being hired and less motivation to perform the assigned task to the best of their ability. Students in the prejudiced condition also reported stronger negative generalized beliefs about both the mock employer and non-Indigenous people in general. Although the students in the prejudiced condition reported less motivation to exert high effort on the assigned task, their actual performance on the task was not related to whether or not the hypothetical employer was described as prejudiced, non-prejudiced, or neither about Indigenous peoples. Future studies should explore how one’s sense of Métis identity and other minority group identity can influence reactions to a threatening academic environment and suppress academic motivation. [From Author]

There is a wealth of research showing the demotivating effects of prejudice on the academic achievement of historically marginalized social groups. However, there is a lack of research involving Metis students. The purpose of the present study was to examine how the task performance and attitudes of Metis post-secondary students can be influenced by prejudice. Data from 165 Metis post-secondary students were analyzed. The participants were asked to role play applying for a job with a non-Aboriginal employment manager, who may or may not have held negative attitudes towards Aboriginal people. The study involved a 2 X 3 research design. The participants were categorized into two groups: High and low Metis identifiers. They were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: (1) Prejudiced (manager held negative attitudes about Aboriginal people); (2) Unknown attitudes (students were not given any information about the manager’s attitudes), and; (3) Non-prejudiced (manager thought favourably about Aboriginal people). The participants completed a battery of questionnaires, the scores of which functioned as dependent variables: the Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWAT) was used to assess verbal fluency, and to infer motivation; the Selection Attitudes (SA) Scale was used to assess the students’ expectations of being hired, the value they placed on being hired, their motivation to perform the verbal task, as well as their beliefs about the manager’s sense of fairness; and the Stereotyping of Whites (SW) Scale which assessed the extent to which the participants stereotyped the non-Aboriginal employment manager. The Metis Identity (MI) Scale was used to categorize the participants into high or low Metis identifiers. As a preliminary procedure, a psychometric investigation was conducted on the Metis Identity (MI) and Selection Attitudes (SA) Scales. The investigation found the MI Scale to be a reliable measure of high or low Metis identity. The SA Scale consisted of four subscales: expectations, valuing, motivation, and fairness. The valuing subscale was shown to be unreliable and therefore removed from the SA Scale. The primary analysis tested six research hypotheses, which considered the extent to which the high and low Metis identifiers responded to the questionnaires within each of the three research conditions (Prejudiced, Unknown attitudes, Non-prejudiced). It was hypothesised that, while the reactions of the high and low Metis identifiers would not differ significantly in the Prejudiced condition (i.e., where the possibility of prejudice was likely and imminent), the reactions of the high identifiers would be significantly more negative than the reactions of the low identifiers in the Unknown and Non-prejudiced conditions (i.e., where the possibility of prejudice was either ambiguous or unlikely). The hypotheses were not supported. Although there were no significant interaction effects that would support the hypotheses, there were several main effects for both the Metis identity and Prejudice factors. The high Metis identifiers reported more motivation and overall optimism about being hired than did the low identifiers. There were also several main effects for the Prejudice factor. Participants in the Prejudiced condition reported less of an expectation of being hired than those students in either the unknown attitudes or non-prejudice conditions. The participants in the Prejudiced condition also reported less motivation to perform the verbal fluency task to the best of their ability than did the participants in the unknown attitudes condition. The participants in the Prejudiced condition also stereotyped the manager more negatively than those participants in the other two, less threatening conditions. Even though the participants in the Prejudiced condition reacted more negatively to the possibility of prejudice than did those in the Unknown attitudes and Non-prejudiced conditions, whether the participants were high or low Metis identifiers did not significantly influence their reactions. In addition to the primary analyses, multiple regression analyses were performed with the COWAT and motivation as dependent variables. The analysis found that length of post-secondary education, reported motivation, and perceived fairness predicted the COWAT. The Selection Attitudes (SA) Scale and Metis Identity (MI) Scale predicted reported motivation. The study showed that Metis post-secondary students can react negatively to perceived prejudice, especially when it appears to be likely and imminent. However, their reactions may have little to do with whether they are high or low Metis identifiers. Since the perceived possibility of prejudice can influence Metis post-secondary students, it is important for non-Aboriginal educators to be aware of their attitudes and beliefs about Metis students in order to better appreciate how these beliefs can influence their students for the better or worse. [From Author]

On behalf of the Gabriel Dumont Institute (GDI)’s Board of Governors, Staff and Students welcome to The Virtual Museum of Métis History and Culture. GDI - in partnership with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Education, the Department of Canadian Heritage's Canadian Culture Online Program, the Canada Council for the Arts, SaskCulture, the Government of Canada and the University of Saskatchewan - is proud to provide you with this systematic look at Métis history and culture. This project is the culmination of years of research gathering and resource production and is based on the Institute's resolute desire to ensure that the Métis have their own stories told in a medium, which is user-friendly, free, and accessible to all those interested in Métis history and culture. [From Website]

The past several years have seen significant progress in addressing the challenges of Aboriginal education, but it is clear that more must be done. It will take a multi-pronged approach, which includes targeted educational and social supports (within and beyond the school), to close current knowledge, resource and achievement gaps. It will also require sustained efforts to ensure that Aboriginal students learn, together with their classmates, about their shared histories and cultures. [From Publisher]

The historical narrative around Métis political leader Louis Riel has undergone a extraordinary change since the 1960s—once reviled by Anglo-Canadians, Riel is now paradoxically celebrated as a Canadian hero, and this “Riel-as-Canadian” narrative has become a common trope in contemporary Canadian political culture. Emanating from the Canadianization of Louis Riel is a parallel colonial discourse that distances itself from past attempts to assimilate Indigenous people into Canada, arguing instead for the assimilation of Canadians into a pan-Indigenous political identity. Central to this dialogue is a discourse on “métissage” and “Canadian métisness” that is heralded as the founding myth of Canada. This paper deconstructs this logic, as put forward by Jennifer Reid in Louis Riel and the Creation of Modern Canada and John Ralston Saul in A Fair Country. Both works uncritically assume that Canada’s colonial problem is largely a failure of non-Indigenous people to embrace their underlying Indigenous political identity and acclimate themselves to this continent as a people of mixed political descent. This claim, however, is simply an inversion of colonization, a re-hashing of age-old colonial fantasies of unity, and an attempt to unite all the Indigenous and non-Indigenous polities in Canadian territory under a single sovereign entity—Canada. [From Author]

Urban spaces are an increasingly common indigenous reality, and while urban spaces often involve great social and geographic distances from traditional communities, many urban populations have built vibrant communities in cities. This thesis will examine the creation of Métis cultural spaces in Winnipeg, Manitoba, as a community building strategy. It is situated in thirteen in-depth interviews with Métis community builders conducted in Winnipeg over the Summer of 2008. The Winnipeg Metis community is rhizomatic in makeup, situated not in geographic locations, but in the networks of instantaneous and spontaneous social interaction of community members and institutions—elders, political organizations and governance structures. Rhizomatic space is a form of social organization, which emerges out of everyday social life, and because it is only observable during the brief instances of human interaction, it is nearly invisible to outsiders and thus difficult to colonize. It is also a primary means by which Métis people are reclaiming space in their traditional homeland on the Red River. This paper theorizes an alternative tactic to resistance through a decentered form of political organization, grounded in the community and its organic institutions. It proposes that the everyday creation of social and spaces in urban centres is an effective way to build urban indigenous communities with minimal interference or involvement of the State, and that this develops more or less organically without the need for bureaucratic oversight. The paper concludes that the everyday creation of rhizomatic space is a highly effective means of community building and resistance. [From Author]

Indigenous–settler relations in Canada have a long and complex history, running the gamut from visions of treaty-based coexistence to fantasies of Indigenous disappearance to imaginings of uncomplicated cultural and political unification via intermarriage. Among the earliest European colonists, Samuel de Champlain famously told his Indigenous allies in May 1633, “Our young men will marry your daughters, and we shall become one people.” But the degree to which this vision of cultural unification typified colonial settlement is often overstated. While postcontact Indigenous peoples later came into being, such as the Métis Nation on the northern prairies or the NunatuKavut in Labrador, they exist not as societies unified with settlers through extensive intermarriage but as Indigenous peoples who have borne the brunt of colonial displacement, marginalization, and expropriation. Even without substantial evidence of the political and cultural unification of white settler populations and Indigenous peoples envisioned by Champlain, the “evocation of métissage” holds particular cultural currency among French-speaking and French-descendant populations in North America. Many of these French-speaking people, however, now imagine this cultural unification as establishing their place as founding settler-people, descended both culturally and politically from the Indigenous nations of the past. Such a move poses an easy solution to the cultural displacement that is a long-standing insecurity of white settler national consciousness and reimagines settler-colonial projects as Indigenous ones. In response, this article examines recent moves to Indigeneity among French-descendant peoples, notably French-Quebecois in Quebec and Acadians in Nova Scotia, and argues that current claims to métissage are deeply rooted in settler-colonial notions of race and Indigeneity. In examining the evocation of métissage, this article identifies its ubiquity in a variety of documentary forms. In combatting such representations, it first argues that French policy in New France was primarily an attempt at Frenchification. In other words, French colonists sought to assimilate Indigenous peoples rather than produce a culturally hybrid society with a deeply Indigenous way of life. With insufficient evidence of a historical métissage at the origins of Quebec and Acadia, the article then analyzes organizational arguments about the Métisness of French-speaking populations in what is now Eastern Canada. [From Author]

The relationship between intellectual property (IP) and the protection of Indigenous knowledge and cultural expressions is complex and challenging. The following is intended to provide an overview to stimulate and inform broader policy discussions in Canada. [From Website]

‘Indigenous peoples' is a collective name for the original peoples of North America and their descendants. Often, ‘Aboriginal peoples' is also used.

The Canadian Constitution recognizes three groups of Aboriginal peoples: Indians (more commonly referred to as First Nations), Inuit and Métis. These are three distinct peoples with unique histories, languages, cultural practices and spiritual beliefs.

More than 1.67 million people in Canada identify themselves as an Aboriginal person, according to the 2016 Census. Aboriginal peoples are:
--the fastest growing population in Canada – grew by 42.5% between 2006 and 2016
--the youngest population in Canada – about 44% were under the age of 25 in 2016 [From Website]

In 2005, the Council of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (RCPSC) set the following goal (3.4) for the Strategic Directions:

“To work toward improving the health status of Aboriginal Canadians”.

In pursuit of that objective, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada entered into a contribution agreement with Health Canada–First Nations and Inuit Health Branch (FNIHB) which supported the establishment of the Advisory Committee on Improving the Health of First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples Through Enhancements to Postgraduate and Continuing Medical Educational Programming. [From Author]

This article provides examples of introductory activities that engage students in initial steps in understanding the systemic structure of colonization. Examples of student group responses to the activities are provided. The understandings explored by students through these activities are then taken up through Indigenous literatures in university contexts in order to contribute to the ongoing decolonization of knowledge in the university and to explore indigenous understandings of pedagogies. The author explores various themes important to the decolonizing of educational practices through discussions of (a) colonizing and decolonizing agendas, (b) disrupting government ideology, (c) decolonizing government and reclaiming Indigenous governance, (e) decolonizing spirituality and ceremony, (f) disrupting colonizing ideologies and decolonizing minds, (g) reconnecting to land, (h) decolonizing history, and (i) community-based education and decolonizing education. Conclusions drawn include the importance of engaging students in Indigenous pedagogies so that they can find support for transforming understandings through Indigenous literatures and understand strategies and opportunities to decolonize education. [From Author]

In Metis Pioneers, Doris Jeanne MacKinnon compares the survival strategies of two Metis women born during the fur trade—one from the French-speaking free trade tradition and one from the English-speaking Hudson's Bay Company tradition—who settled in southern Alberta as the Canadian West transitioned to a sedentary agricultural and industrial economy. MacKinnon provides rare insight into their lives, demonstrating the contributions Metis women made to the building of the Prairie West. This is a compelling tale of two women's acts of quiet resistance in the final days of the British Empire. [From Publisher]

First Nations, Inuit and Métis populations in Canada suffer from a variety of health disparities, including higher rates of infant mortality, higher rates of diabetes and other chronic diseases, greater prevalence of tuberculosis and other communicable diseases, as well as a short life expectancy compared to non-Aboriginal Canadians. Public health experts, community health workers and health care providers are trying to reduce Aboriginal health disparities through research, programs and services. As part of this effort, a group of researchers from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States have proposed the development of a set of core competencies for Aboriginal public health. Together, they have established a collaboration called CIPHER: Competencies for Indigenous Public Health, Evaluation and Research. [From Author]

This project is the culmination of work done over the past two and a half years by 13 members of OSSTF/FEESO, most of whom are First Nation or Métis, or work extensively with Aboriginal students.

The lessons are designed to be implemented in a range of courses, such as civics, history, social sciences, English, geography, business, careers, physical education and science. The resource has been produced as a PDF file on CD with an accompanying video on DVD. Although the lessons are intended for use with high school curricula, the video and activity sheet may be of use to all Federation members who work with students. [From Website]

The phrase “women and 2spirits” has become increasingly popular in Indigenous gender-related activism, often noted through the expansion of the hashtag for missing and murdered Indigenous people to #MMIWG2. This article uses the phrase as a jumping-off point to think about how transgender Indigenous people remain marginalized even in feminist, queer, and Indigenous activist spaces. Emphasizing the scholarship of Indigenous trans women, the article argues that rhetorical exclusion has tangible negative impacts on transgender Indigenous people. The writing and activism of such individuals offers solutions that center decolonial love and interpersonal care work as sites for transforming gender relations in Indigenous communities. [From Author]

"In 1973, the Supreme Court's historic Calder decision on the Nisga'a community's title suit in British Columbia launched the Native rights litigation era in Canada. Legal claims have raised questions with significant historical implications, such as, "What treaty rights have survived in various parts of Canada? What is the scope of Aboriginal title? Who are the Métis, where do they live, and what is the nature of their culture and their rights?" [From Publisher]

This paper examines the perspectives of Metis people in the southern BC interior about how to deal with the rejection by the courts of all three Metis rights claims in the province. The perspectives of those directly involved in the three cases, along with community members in the subject areas (Thompson/Shuswap, south Okanagan, Kootenays) reveal that people generally prefer negotiation to litigation in the BC context, as lack of understanding of Metis history, territories and communities in BC creates difficulties for BC Metis litigants. Negotiation was viewed favourably by participants, but continuing to practise rights was seen as more important than gaining state recognition of rights. [From Author]

To acquire an understanding of the pathways of health information dissemination and use by Indigenous community members, the researchers applied an Indigenous participatory action research approach in partnership with one urban Inuit, one urban Métis, and one semirural First Nations community in Ontario, Canada. A descriptive community case study was conducted in each community through the use of focus groups, key informant interviews, and document inquiry. Results were corroborated by the communities. Each of the three community consultations generated distinct and striking data about health information sources and dissemination strategies; decision-making processes; locally relevant concepts of health, local health services, and programs; community structures; and mechanisms of interface with noncommunity systems. In addition, several crosscutting themes were identified. The participatory research approach successfully engaged community partners. These findings support the hypothesis that understanding local Indigenous processes of knowledge creation, dissemination, and utilization is a necessary prerequisite to effective knowledge translation in Indigenous contexts. [From Author]

This infographic series is a partnership project between Statistics Canada and Indigenous Services Canada. The infographics are available for various geographic areas including: Canada, provinces (on-reserve), territories, First Nation/Indian band or Tribal Council areas, Inuit regions, Métis settlements and select census subdivisions.

Select a geography of interest to access the infographic for that geography. [From Website]

A large collection profiles, key indicators of various topics including education, health, language, income and more.

The central goal of the Canadian residential school system was to ‘Christianize’ and ‘civilize’ Aboriginal people, a process intended to lead to their cultural
assimilation into Euro-Canadian society. This policy goal was directed at all Aboriginal people and all Aboriginal cultures. It failed to take into account the development of new Aboriginal nations, and the implications of the Indian Act’s definition of who was and was not a “status Indian” and the British North America Act’s division of responsibility for “Indians.” In the government’s vision, there was no place for the Métis Nation that proclaimed itself in the Canadian Northwest in the nineteenth century. Neither was there any place for the large number of Aboriginal people who, for a variety of reasons, chose not to terminate their Treaty rights, or for those women, and their children, who lost their Indian Act status by marrying a person who did not have such status. These individuals were classed or identified alternately as “non-status Indians,” “half-breeds,” or “Métis.” In different times or different places, they might also identify themselves by these terms, but often they did not. Instead, they might
view themselves to be members of specific First Nations, Inuit, or Euro-Canadian societies. For the sake of clarity, this chapter generally uses the term Métis to describe people of mixed descent who were not able, or chose not, to be registered as Indians under the Indian Act. It should be recognized that not all the people described by this term would have identified themselves as Métis during their lives, and that the histories of these people varied considerably, depending on time and location. [From Author]

Page numbers in italics refer to graphs, illustrations, or tables.
Residential schools are indexed under their geographic location, as listed in the Truth and
Reconciliation Report, volume 4, Canada’s Residential Schools: Missing Children and Unmarked
Burials, Appendix 1.1 and 1.2, 141–151.
Variations on similar names of people have in some cases been grouped together under one heading.
When this has been done, all variations are represented in the heading. [From Author]

The summary report, In Plain Sight: Addressing Indigenous-specific Racism and Discrimination in B.C. Health Care, concludes that this problem is widely acknowledged by many who work in the system, including those in leadership positions. The report makes 24 recommendations to address what is a systemic problem, deeply rooted in colonialism. [From Website]

The full report, In Plain Sight: Addressing Indigenous-specific Racism and Discrimination in B.C. Health Care, concludes that this problem is widely acknowledged by many who work in the system, including those in leadership positions. The report makes 24 recommendations to address what is a systemic problem, deeply rooted in colonialism. [From Website]

A collection of material from UFV library and elsewhere that explore Métis history and culture.

Online resources for K - 7 social studies curriculum including local Sto:lo resources.

Delgamuukw. Sixties Scoop. Bill C-31. Blood quantum. Appropriation. Two-Spirit. Tsilhqot'in. Status. TRC. RCAP. FNPOA. Pass and permit. Numbered Treaties. Terra nullius. The Great Peace... Are you familiar with the terms listed above? In Indigenous Writes, Chelsea Vowel, legal scholar, teacher, and intellectual, opens an important dialogue about these (and more) concepts and the wider social beliefs associated with the relationship between Indigenous peoples and Canada. In 31 essays, Chelsea explores the Indigenous experience from the time of contact to the present, through five categories--Terminology of Relationships; Culture and Identity; Myth-Busting; State Violence; and Land, Learning, Law, and Treaties. She answers the questions that many people have on these topics to spark further conversations at home, in the classroom, and in the larger community. Indigenous Writes is one title in The Debwe Series. [From Publisher]

As I write this in January of 2016, I am in my seventh year living in Quebec, where I’ve come to realize Métis still means “half-breed” to most. If you identify as Métis here, people will ask which of your parents is an Indian.
[From Author]