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. Author Chris Andersen argues that Canada got it wrong. Andersen argues that Canada got it wrong. He weaves together personal anecdotes, critical race theory, and discussions of history and law to demonstrates that our understanding of "Métis" -- that our very preoccupation with mixedness -- is not natural but stems from more than 150 years of sustained labour on the part of the state, scholars, and Indigenous organizations. From its roots deep in the colonial past, the idea of "Métis as mixed" pervaded the Canadian consciousness through powerful sites of knowledge production such as the census and courts until it settled in the realm of common sense. In the process, Métis has become an ever-widening racial category rather than the identity of an Indigenous people with a shared sense of history and culture centred on the fur trade. Chris Andersen is associate professor, associate dean (research), and the current director of the Rupertsland Centre for Métis Research in the Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta.