From Riel to the Métis

Abstract

Although miscegenation must have been one of the earliest and most common effects of the expansion of Europe, its consequences have been relatively little studied by historians of Canada. Indeed, one of the few general histories of the western mixed-blood population suggests – only half-jokingly, one suspects – that the Métis people of Canada were founded nine months after the landing of the first European. Perhaps because of traditional historiographical emphases, a limited methodological sophistication, or simply as a consequence of racist inhibitions on the part of Euro-Canadian historians who dominated the field until recently, the history of the Métis has not received much concerted and systematic attention from academic historians.