The Long Journey Of A Forgotten People

Known as “Canada’s forgotten people,” the Métis have long been here, but until 1982 they lacked the legal status of Native people. At that point, however, the Métis were recognized in the constitution as one of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples. A significant addition to Métis historiography, The Long Journey of a Forgotten People includes Métis voices and personal narratives that address the thorny and complicated issue of Métis identity from historical and contemporary perspectives. Topics include eastern Canadian Métis communities; British military personnel and their mixed-blood descendants; life as a Métis woman; and the Métis peoples ongoing struggle for recognition of their rights, including discussion of recent Supreme Court rulings.

Hemispheric Indigeneities is a critical anthology that brings together indigenous and nonindigenous scholars specializing in the Andes, Mesoamerica, and Canada. The overarching theme is the changing understanding of indigeneity from first contact to the contemporary period in three of the world’s major regions of indigenous peoples. Although the terms indio, indigène, and indian only exist (in Spanish, French, and English, respectively) because of European conquest and colonization, indigenous peoples have appropriated or changed this terminology in ways that reflect their shifting self-identifications and aspirations. As the essays in this volume demonstrate, this process constantly transformed the relation of Native peoples in the Americas to other peoples and the state. This volume’s presentation of various factors—geographical, temporal, and cross-cultural—provide illuminating contributions to the burgeoning field of hemispheric indigenous studies. Hemispheric Indigeneities explores indigenous agency and shows that what it means to be indigenous was and is mutable. It also demonstrates that self-identification evolves in response to the relationship between indigenous peoples and the state. The contributors analyze the conceptions of what indigeneity meant, means today, or could come to mean tomorrow.

Exploring the relationship between the role of education and Indigenous survival, Digital Storytelling in Indigenous Education is an ethnographic exploration of how digital storytelling can be part of a broader project of decolonization of individuals, their families, and communities. By recounting how a remote Indigenous (Métis) community were able to collectively imagine, plan and produce numerous unique digital stories representing counter-narratives to the dominant version of Canadian history, Poitras Pratt provides frameworks, approaches and strategies for the use of digital media and arts for the purpose of cultural memory, community empowerment, and mobilization. The volume provides a valuable example of how a community-based educational project can create and restore intergenerational exchanges through modern media, and covers topics such as: Introducing the Métis and their community; decolonizing education through a Métis approach to research; the ethnographic journey; and translating the work of decolonizing to education. Digital Storytelling in Indigenous Education is the perfect resource for researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of Indigenous education, comparative education, and technology education, or those looking to explore the role of modern media in facilitating healing and decolonization in a marginalized community. .

Comparative Indigeneities of the Américas highlights intersecting themes such as indigenismo, mestizaje, migration, displacement, autonomy, sovereignty, borders, spirituality, and healing that have historically shaped the experiences of Native peoples across the Américas. In doing so, it promotes a broader understanding of the relationships between Native communities in the United States and Canada and those in Latin America and the Caribbean and invites a hemispheric understanding of the relationships between Native and mestiza/o peoples.

What does it mean to be Metis? How do the Metis understand their world, and how do family, community, and location shape their consciousness? Such questions inform this collection of essays on the northwestern North American people of mixed European and Native ancestry who emerged in the seventeenth century as a distinct culture. Volume editors Nicole St-Onge, Carolyn Podruchny, and Brenda Macdougall go beyond the concern with race and ethnicity that takes center stage in most discussions of Metis culture to offer new ways of thinking about Metis identity. Geography, mobility, and family have always defined Metis culture and society. The Metis world spanned the better part of a continent, and a major theme of Contours of a People is the Metis conception of geography—not only how Metis people used their environments but how they gave meaning to place and developed connections to multiple landscapes. Their geographic familiarity, physical and social mobility, and maintenance of family ties across time and space appear to have evolved in connection with the fur trade and other commercial endeavors. These efforts, and the cultural practices that emerged from them, have contributed to a sense of community and the nationalist sentiment felt by many Metis today. Writing about a wide geographic area, the contributors consider issues ranging from Metis rights under Canadian law and how the Library of Congress categorizes Metis scholarship to the role of women in maintaining economic and social networks. The authors’ emphasis on geography and its power in shaping identity will influence and enlighten Canadian and American scholars across a variety of disciplines.

These twelve essays constitute a groundbreaking volume of new work prepared by leading scholars in the fields of history, anthropology, constitutional law, political science, and sociology, who identify the many facets of what it means to be Métis in Canada today. After the Powley decision in 2003, Métis peoples were no longer conceptually limited to the historical boundaries of the fur trade in Canada. Key ideas explored in this collection include identity, rights, and issues of governance, politics, and economics. The book will be of great interest to scholars in political science and Indigenous studies, the legal community, public administrators, government policy advisors, and people seeking to better understand the Métis past and present. Contributors: Christopher Adams, Gloria Jane Bell, Glen Campbell, Gregg Dahl, Janique Dubois, Tom Flanagan, Liam J. Haggarty, Laura-Lee Kearns, Darren O'Toole, Jeremy Patzer, Ian Peach, Siomonn P. Pulla, Kelly L. Saunders.

These twelve essays constitute a groundbreaking volume of new work prepared by leading scholars in the fields of history, anthropology, constitutional law, political science, and sociology, who identify the many facets of what it means to be Métis in Canada today. After the Powley decision in 2003, Métis people were no longer conceptually limited to the historical boundaries of the fur trade in Canada. Key ideas explored in this collection include identity, rights, and issues of governance, politics, and economics. The book will be of great interest to scholars in political science and native studies, the legal community, public administrators, government policy advisors, and people seeking to better understand the Métis past and present. Contributors: Christopher Adams, Gloria Jane Bell, Glen Campbell, Gregg Dahl, Janique Dubois, Tom Flanagan, Liam J. Haggarty, Laura-Lee Kearns, Darren O'Toole, Jeremy Patzer, Ian Peach, Siomonn P. Pulla, Kelly L. Saunders.

This authored brief discusses how to conceptualize the socio-material complexity of contested energy spaces in the Canadian North, specifically in the context of indigenous communities that have allowed industrial developments to occur on their lands despite the environmental and lifestyle consequences. By applying assemblage theory, the author identifies contested energy spaces as complex places or situations that need to be understood through geographical concepts of place, scale, and power. In 6 chapters, the book challenges preconceptions of indigenous peoples as victims by examining communities that favor industrial developments, and identifies instabilities in the Canadian North to analyze the power relations between industry, state and indigenous communities. The book will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate students, teachers and lecturers, and geography scholars. Chapter 1 introduces the concept of energy spaces, and addresses the main research question posed in the text; why do some indigenous communities support extractive industry developments on their traditional territories, despite substantial destruction of the local environment and traditional indigenous land use practices? Chapter 2 further elaborates on the conceptualization of contested energy spaces, and chapter 3 applies this to the study area in Alberta, Canada. Chapter 4 discusses the methodology of the research process, and chapter 5 presents empirical cases in Alberta, from the changing governance structures of energy spaces to the networking of local indigenous communities. Chapter 6 concludes the brief by summarizing he findings, and by offering advice to all stakeholders regarding the dangers of leaving government processes to market forces alone.