Adam Gaudry

Research norms in the social sciences and humanities have also undergone significant transformation in the past two decades—owing mainly to the pressure of Indigenous communities and Indigenous scholars demanding researchers adopt collaborative approaches to produce relevant scholarship in partnership with communities. These practices, now increasingly institutionalized, have led in many cases to fundamentally different kinds of academic research projects—research that has community-defined research questions, community oversight, and community engagement and underlying values. But, as the benefits of Indigenous community-engaged research become clear, I contend that researchers must also push themselves to a deeper form of engagement with community, one that further empowers Indigenous research practice and supports Indigenous peoples in creating research self-sufficiency in our communities.

Those calling for the displacement of Macdonald, progressive voices have never actually sought to downplay Macdonald’s role in the formation of Canada. Instead, these voices seek to communicate Macdonald’s legacy in a more honest way by naming Canada’s first prime minister as the architect of many of Canada’s imperialistic structures, structures which are integral to Canada’s existence. Without the theft of Indigenous lands, without ignoring nation-to-nation treaty relations, and without the longstanding and often violent denial of on-going Indigenous self-determination, Canada would not be what it is today. The goal has never been to change the past, but to change the way people learn about it, and more fundamentally to end Canada’s multifaceted and ongoing colonization of Indigenous peoples.

To predict what is on the horizon of the Métis legal landscape, we can look to jurisprudence on First Nations’ rights, given that Métis rights cases are typically ten to fifteen years behind those of First Nations. With the release of the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Tsilhqot’in, the next big issue in Métis law may be Métis title. Scholars have doubted the ability of Métis to establish Aboriginal title in Canada for two reasons: first, Métis were too mobile, and second, Métis were too immobile. This paper critically analyzes these positions and argues that the case for Métis title in Canada is a strong one. As such, governments in Canada would do well to focus on resolving outstanding Métis title claims.

Contrary to the claims of European empires, Indigenous peoples in the North-West exercised more or less unconstrained political authority over most of their lands both before and after 1870. However, throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, British and Canadian institutions mobilized a complex array of legal arguments to claim posses- sion of huge expanses of territory they “discovered” but did not control. For the most part, Canadian political institutions have traced their ownership of the North-West to the Hudson’s Bay Company transfer in 1870, which is rooted in the problematic logic of the Doctrine of Discovery. Therefore, this article shows that at the heart of Canadian claims to ownership of Indigenous lands in the North-West lies an impractical mythology that, in the words of John Borrows, allowed the Crown to secure legal control of Indigenous lands through “raw assertion.”3 In demonstrating this point, I critically analyze five major public political events that position the Hudson’s Bay Company trans- fer agreement as the foundation of Canada’s 1870 assertion of sovereignty over the North-West. These events include: (1) the British Crown’s initial dis- covery claim at Hudson Bay; (2) the Hudson’s Bay Company Charter of 1670; (3) the Selkirk Grant of 1811 and Treaty of 1817; (4) Canada’s North-West discovery via New France; and (5) the HBC transfer agreement in 1869. This article demonstrates that Canada’s political claims to ownership over the North-West lay in problematic claims of sovereignty made by British and Ca- nadian explorers, politicians, and businessmen, using language of discovery and sovereignty to obscure Indigenous governance already in practice. These claims are further complicated as they are more assertively invoked at the moment of a settler-colonial transition in the North-West, and are bound up in the changing status of an Indigenous-centered fur trade economy with a new settler project that sought to displace Indigenous peoples from the land both conceptually and physically.

This article asks how post-secondary education and scholarship can facilitate critical and engaged reclamations of Metis knowledge through critical intellectual and experiential engagement. First, it explores dominant representations of Metis political and cultural experience in historical perspective, and considers these implications for Metis students and communities. The examination identifies a problem that we address by envisioning models of engaged pedagogy, based on the insights from bell hooks, which draw upon a particular stream of thought in Michel Foucault’s later work. It concludes with a discussion of the possibilities of decolonizing representations of Metis history and politics, through the exploration of relational land- and community-based pedagogies.

The historical narrative around Métis political leader Louis Riel has undergone a extraordinary change since the 1960s—once reviled by Anglo-Canadians, Riel is now paradoxically celebrated as a Canadian hero, and this “Riel-as-Canadian” narrative has become a common trope in contemporary Canadian political culture. Emanating from the Canadianization of Louis Riel is a parallel colonial discourse that distances itself from past attempts to assimilate Indigenous people into Canada, arguing instead for the assimilation of Canadians into a pan-Indigenous political identity. Central to this dialogue is a discourse on “métissage” and “Canadian métisness” that is heralded as the founding myth of Canada. This paper deconstructs this logic, as put forward by Jennifer Reid in Louis Riel and the Creation of Modern Canada and John Ralston Saul in A Fair Country. Both works uncritically assume that Canada’s colonial problem is largely a failure of non-Indigenous people to embrace their underlying Indigenous political identity and acclimate themselves to this continent as a people of mixed political descent. This claim, however, is simply an inversion of colonization, a re-hashing of age-old colonial fantasies of unity, and an attempt to unite all the Indigenous and non-Indigenous polities in Canadian territory under a single sovereign entity—Canada.

A new paradigm of Indigenous research is emerging, one that is linked into a broader movement of Indigenous resurgence and decolonization. As the first generation of scholars who have had regular contact with Indigenous professors, and belonging to a critical mass of educated, politically aware, and activist young people, new research principles are emerging that pose a challenge to the conservative academic status quo. Insurgent research is based on four key principles:

1.    Research is grounded in, respectful of, and ultimately seeks to validate Indigenous worldviews.

2.    Research output is geared towards use by Indigenous peoples, and in Indigenous communities.

3.    Research processes and final products are ultimately responsible to Indigenous communities, meaning that Indigenous communities are the final judges of validity and effectiveness of insurgent research.

4.    Research is action-oriented and works as a motivating factor for practical and direct action among Indigenous people, and in Indigenous communities.

This article discusses the role of research within Indigenous communities, grounded in an Indigenous knowledge system, and proposes an alternative to traditional extraction-oriented research methods that form the basis for mainstream academic research protocols.

Urban spaces are an increasingly common indigenous reality, and while urban spaces often involve great social and geographic distances from traditional communities, many urban populations have built vibrant communities in cities. This thesis will examine the creation of Métis cultural spaces in Winnipeg, Manitoba, as a community building strategy. It is situated in thirteen in-depth interviews with Métis community builders conducted in Winnipeg over the Summer of 2008. The Winnipeg Metis community is rhizomatic in makeup, situated not in geographic locations, but in the networks of instantaneous and spontaneous social interaction of community members and institutions—elders, political organizations and governance structures. Rhizomatic space is a form of social organization, which emerges out of everyday social life, and because it is only observable during the brief instances of human interaction, it is nearly invisible to outsiders and thus difficult to colonize. It is also a primary means by which Métis people are reclaiming space in their traditional homeland on the Red River. This paper theorizes an alternative tactic to resistance through a decentered form of political organization, grounded in the community and its organic institutions. It proposes that the everyday creation of social and cultural spaces in urban centres is an effective way to build urban indigenous communities with minimal interference or involvement of the State, and that this develops more or less organically without the need for bureaucratic oversight. The paper concludes that the everyday creation of rhizomatic space is a highly effective means of community building and resistance.

This dissertation offers an analysis of the history of Métis political thought in the nineteenth century and its role in the anti-colonial resistances to Canada’s and Hudson’s Bay Company governance. Utilizing the Michif concepts of kaa-tipeyimishoyaahk and wahkohtowin to shed light on Métis political practices, this work argues that the Métis people had established themselves as an independent Indigenous people in the nineteenth century North West. By use of a common language of prairie diplomacy, Métis had situated themselves as a close “relation” of the Hudson’s Bay Company, but still politically independent of it. Nineteenth century Métis had repeatedly demonstrated their independence from British institutions of justice and politics, and were equally insistent that Canadian institutions had no authority over them. When they did choose to form a diplomatic relationship with Canada, it was decidedly on Métis terms. In 1869-1870, after repelling a Canadian official who was intended to establish Canadian authority over the North-West, the Métis formed a provisional government with their Halfbreed cousins to enter into negotiations with Canada to establish a confederal treaty relationship. The Provisional Government of Assiniboia then sent delegates to Ottawa to negotiate “the Manitoba Treaty,” a bilateral constitutional document that created a new province of Manitoba, that would contain a Métis/Halfbreed majority, as well as very specific territorial, political, social, cultural, and economic protections that would safeguard the Métis and Halfbreed controlled future of Manitoba. This agreement was embodied only partially in the oft-cited Manitoba Act, as several key elements of the agreement were oral negotiations that were later to be institutionalized by the Canadian cabinet, although were only ever partially implemented. These protections included restrictions on the sale of the 1.4 million acre Métis/Halfbreed land reserve, a commitment to establish a Métis/Halfbreed controlled upper-house in the new Manitoba legislature, a temporary limitation of the franchise to current residents of the North West, and restrictions on Canadian immigration to the new province until Métis lands were properly distributed. While these key components of the Manitoba Treaty were not included in the Manitoba Act, they remain a binding part of the agreement, and thus, an unfulfilled obligation borne by the contemporary government of Canada. Without adhering to Canada’s treaty with the Métis people, its presence on Métis lands, and jurisdiction over Métis people is highly suspect. Only by returning to the original agreement embodied by the Manitoba Act can Canada claim any legitimacy on Métis territories or any functional political relationship with the Métis people.