Métis

The Métis (French for “mixed”) are a distinct indigenous group living in the northern United States and Canada. Pockets of Métis in the United States are concentrated in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota. Approximately 400,000 identify as Métis in Canada, where the group enjoys government-to-government rights.

Written with a lower-case “m,” métis conveys the group's French or Anglo (usually English or Scots) and First Nations, American Indian, and/or Alaska Native heritage. Written with a capital “M,” Métis additionally implies a particular sociocultural heritage. Other terms historically used for the Métis have included Creole, Bois-Brûlés, mixed-bloods, half-breeds, Bungi, Black Scots, and Jackatars. The Anglo-Métis have also been referred to as countryborn. Generations of Métis followed the North American fur trade's primary competitors across the continent—the French-allied North West Company and the English-backed Hudson's Bay Company.

First Nations groups often used alliances with Europeans and other tribes to form enduring and reciprocal bonds of all sorts. The French government actively encouraged its citizens to marry First Nations women during the latter half of the 17th century. This stance did not obtain the assimilative results in the direction the French anticipated, with many men choosing to live in the manner of their indigenous relatives.

The Hudson's Bay Company also tried to regulate marriage, hoping to minimize the likelihood [Page 1441]that its employees would return to Europe, abandoning their wives and Métis children— outcomes that would have both practically and politically negative implications. Unions were most often formed à la façon du pays (according to indigenous customs) rather than according to the customs of the largely Catholic French and Scots or the Protestant Anglos.

The Scots and the French peasantry were already quite acquainted with the concept of “civil union” and readily took to the practice of “country marriage.” As a result, marriages, births, and deaths within the Catholic system frequently recorded their First Nations and Métis constituents using Francophone or Anglicized names.