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Description
Ask any Canadian what “Métis” means, and they will likely say “mixed race.” Canadians consider Métis mixed in ways that other indigenous people are not, and the census and courts have premised their recognition of Métis status on this race-based understanding.
According to Andersen, Canada got it wrong. Our very preoccupation with mixedness is not natural but stems from more than 150 years of sustained labour on the part of the state and others. From its roots deep in the colonial past, the idea of “Métis as mixed” has pervaded the Canadian consciousness until it settled in the realm of common sense. In the process, “Métis” has become a racial category rather than the identity of an indigenous people with a shared sense of history and culture.
Andersen asks all Canadians to consider the consequences of adopting a definition of “Métis” that makes it nearly impossible for the Métis nation to make political claims as a people.
Contributor Notes
Chris Andersen is an associate professor, the associate dean (research), and the director of the Rupertsland Centre for Métis Research in the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta. He is also the current editor of aboriginal policy studies, an online, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to publishing on Métis, non-Status Indian, and urban Aboriginal issues in Canada and abroad. He is co-editor of Indigenous in the City: Contemporary Identities and Cultural Innovation (UBC Press, 2013).
Awards
- Winner, NAISA Best Subsequent Book Prize, NAISA
Editorial Reviews
Andersen does a superb job of engaging with the scholarship of the field, allowing the reader to gain a clear understanding of its historical trajectory and where Andersen’s work stands in comparison ... Métis is an important contribution and I expect that it will spur lively discussions, productive critiques, and shift the scholarship in the field.
— NAIS (Native American and Indigenous Studies) Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2015
Andersen's book is thorough and deep, insightful and provocative. Some will find it unsettling. But, for anyone interested in questions of Métis identity, or more generally Indigenous rights in Canada, it is an essential read.
— Review of Constitutional Studies
“Métis” is, without a doubt, essential reading for everyone who studies the Métis, Indigeneity, and/or race and racialization as it provides a powerful critique of Métis racialization and an example of the impact of racialization on Indigenous nations.
— Acadiensis
