Abstract
Viewing Métis identity not as a natural, essential, or fixed phenomenon, but as an experience formed through internal and external factors, this article examines the mechanisms by which people residing in British Columbia identify as Métis. Through interviewing Métis Peoples and engaging in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Narrative Analysis (NA), this research demonstrates how Métis narratives centre on and replicate three hegemonic discourses based on racial mixedness, Métis cultural values, and Métis nationalism. The ‘Métis subject’ is then not an easily described coherent subject, but rather a co-constructed description based on transient identification with multiple and sometimes contradictory texts, which are themselves made meaningful through discourses. Understanding ‘Métis’ in this way allows for an exploration of the role of power in producing meanings of ‘Métis’ and how individuals, groups, and institutions can strategically mobilize particular meanings and resist definitions of Métis prescribed by Eurocentric perspectives embedded in colonial institutions.
Highlights
The 1982 redrafting of the Canadian Constitution Act, Section 35, affirmed existing Aboriginal rights and in describing “aboriginal peoples of Canada” included “the Indian, Inuit and Métis peoples of Canada” (Constitution Act Section 35, 1982)
Framed as a case study to better understand identity, this article seeks to observe the mechanisms by which Métis People identify in British Columbia, Canada, namely through examining three hegemonic discourses of racial mixedness, cultural values centred on relationality, and nationhood
By understanding this subject of identity as constructed through structural processes situated within specific historical and geographic contexts, this discussion aims to move beyond racist framings of Métis as innate beings with universal attributes in order to focus on groups of Métis People who assert their own authority of how they identify with their ethnic identity beyond external definitions
Summary
The 1982 redrafting of the Canadian Constitution Act, Section 35, affirmed existing Aboriginal rights (without defining them) and in describing “aboriginal peoples of Canada” included “the Indian, Inuit and Métis peoples of Canada” (Constitution Act Section 35, 1982). Framed as a case study to better understand identity, this article seeks to observe the mechanisms by which Métis People identify in British Columbia, Canada, namely through examining three hegemonic discourses of racial mixedness, cultural values centred on relationality, and nationhood. By understanding this subject of identity as constructed through structural processes situated within specific historical and geographic contexts, this discussion aims to move beyond racist framings of Métis as innate beings with universal attributes in order to focus on groups of Métis People who assert their own authority of how they identify with their ethnic identity beyond external definitions (including those determined through colonial institutions such as the Canadian judiciary)
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