We Know Who We Are

We Know Who We Are
Author: Martha Harroun Foster
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2016-01-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0806182342

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.

Contours of a People

Contours of a People
Author: Nicole St-Onge
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2014-12-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0806146346

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.

Metis and the Medicine Line

Metis and the Medicine Line
Author: Michel Hogue
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2015-04-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1469621061

Born of encounters between Indigenous women and Euro-American men in the first decades of the nineteenth century, the Plains Metis people occupied contentious geographic and cultural spaces. Living in a disputed area of the northern Plains inhabited by various Indigenous nations and claimed by both the United States and Great Britain, the Metis emerged as a people with distinctive styles of speech, dress, and religious practice, and occupational identities forged in the intense rivalries of the fur and provisions trade. Michel Hogue explores how, as fur trade societies waned and as state officials looked to establish clear lines separating the United States from Canada and Indians from non-Indians, these communities of mixed Indigenous and European ancestry were profoundly affected by the efforts of nation-states to divide and absorb the North American West. Grounded in extensive research in U.S. and Canadian archives, Hogue's account recenters historical discussions that have typically been confined within national boundaries and illuminates how Plains Indigenous peoples like the Metis were at the center of both the unexpected accommodations and the hidden history of violence that made the "world's longest undefended border."

Montana: A Cultural Medley

Montana: A Cultural Medley
Author: Robert R. Swartout, Jr.
Publisher: Farcountry Press
Total Pages: 518
Release: 2015-07-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1560376449

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts when Montana historian Robert Swartout gathers the fascinating stories of the state’s surprisingly diverse ethnic groups into this thought-provoking collection of essays. Fourteen chapters showcase an African American nightclub in Great Falls, a Japanese American war hero, the founding of a Metís community, Jewish merchants, and Dutch settlement in the Gallatin Valley, as well as stories of Irish, Scots, Chinese, Finns, Mexican Americans, European war brides, and more.

Alberta History: West Central Alberta; 13,000 years of Indian History, Pt.3b: 1860

Alberta History: West Central Alberta; 13,000 years of Indian History, Pt.3b: 1860
Author: Joachim Fromhold
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 516
Release: 2016-06-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1365140938

A continuation of the History of Central Alberta from 1840-1860 covering the developments of the 1860's. The 1860's were both the apogee of the Plains Indian culture in the west, and the move towards the political and economic growth of the west as a successful Native State. At the same time, it marked a crisis period and the beginning of the end of the west and the First Nations as an independent sovreign people prior to the hostile annexation of the west by Canada.

Becoming Little Shell

Becoming Little Shell
Author: Chris La Tray
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2024-08-20
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1571317449

“Nothing less than the history of a people in the form of an absorbing and emotionally searing memoir.”—David Treuer, author of The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee “I’m committed to uncovering the culture of my people. I’m com­mitted to learning as much of the language as I can. I’ve always loved this land, and I’ve always loved Indian people. The more I dig into it, the more I interact with my Indian relatives, the more it blooms in my heart. The more it blooms in my spirit.” Growing up in Montana, Chris La Tray always identified as Indian. Despite the fact that his father fiercely denied any connection, he found Indigenous people alluring, often recalling his grandmother’s consistent mention of their Chippewa heritage. When La Tray attended his grandfather’s funeral as a young man, he finally found himself surrounded by relatives who obviously were Indigenous. “Who were they?” he wondered, and “Why was I never allowed to know them?” Combining diligent research and compelling conversations with authors, activists, elders, and historians, La Tray embarks on a journey into his family’s past, discovering along the way a larger story of the complicated history of Indigenous communities—as well as the devastating effects of colonialism that continue to ripple through surviving generations. And as he comes to embrace his full identity, he eventually seeks enrollment with the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians, joining their 158-year-long struggle for federal recognition. Both personal and historical, Becoming Little Shell is a testament to the power of storytelling, to family and legacy, and to finding home. Infused with candor, heart, wisdom, and an abiding love for a place and a people, Chris La Tray’s remarkable journey is both revelatory and redemptive.

Metis Pioneers

Metis Pioneers
Author: Doris Jeanne MacKinnon
Publisher: University of Alberta
Total Pages: 586
Release: 2018-03-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1772123633

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.

The New Peoples

The New Peoples
Author: Jacqueline Peterson
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780873514088

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

Gifts from the Thunder Beings

Gifts from the Thunder Beings
Author: Roland Bohr
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 487
Release: 2014-05-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0803254377

Gifts from the Thunder Beings examines North American Aboriginal peoples’ use of Indigenous and European distance weapons in big-game hunting and combat. Beyond the capabilities of European weapons, Aboriginal peoples’ ways of adapting and using this technology in combination with Indigenous weaponry contributed greatly to the impact these weapons had on Aboriginal cultures. This gradual transition took place from the beginning of the fur trade in the Hudson’s Bay Company trading territory to the treaty and reserve period that began in Canada in the 1870s. Technological change and the effects of European contact were not uniform throughout North America, as Roland Bohr illustrates by comparing the northern Great Plains and the Central Subarctic—two adjacent but environmentally different regions of North America—and their respective Indigenous cultures. Beginning with a brief survey of the subarctic and Northern Plains environments and the most common subsistence strategies in these regions around the time of contact, Bohr provides the context for a detailed examination of social, spiritual, and cultural aspects of bows, arrows, quivers, and firearms. His detailed analysis of the shifting usage of bows and arrows and firearms in the northern Great Plains and the Central Subarctic makes Gifts from the Thunder Beings an important addition to the canon of North American ethnology.