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.

French Canadian workers who paddled canoes, transported goods, and staffed the interior posts of the northern North American fur trade became popularly known as voyageurs. Scholars and public historians alike have cast them in the romantic role of rugged and merry heroes who paved the way for European civilization in the wild Northwest. Carolyn Podruchny looks beyond the stereotypes and reveals the contours of voyageurs' lives, world views, and values.

"Making the Voyageur World" shows that the voyageurs created distinct identities shaped by their French-Canadian peasant roots, the Aboriginal peoples they met in the Northwest, and the nature of their employment as indentured servants in diverse environments. Voyageurs' identities were also shaped by their constant travels and by their own masculine ideals that emphasized strength, endurance, and daring. Although voyageurs left few conventional traces of their own voices in the documentary record, an astonishing amount of information can be found in descriptions of them by their masters, explorers, and other travelers. By examining their lives in conjunction with the metaphor of the voyage, Podruchny not only reveals the everyday lives of her subjects--what they ate, their cosmology and rituals of celebration, their families, and, above all, their work--but also underscores their impact on the social and cultural landscape of North America.

British traders and Ojibwe hunters. Cree women and their metis
daughters. Explorers and anthropologists and Aboriginal guides and
informants. These people, their relationships, and their complex
identities and worldviews were not featured in histories of North
America until the 1970s, when scholars from multiple disciplines began
to bring new perspectives and approaches to bear on the past.

"Gathering Places" presents some of the most innovative and
interdisciplinary approaches to metis, fur trade, and First Nations
history being practised today. Whether they are discussing dietary
practices on the Plateau, trees as cultural and geographical markers in
the trade, the meanings of totemic signatures, issues of representation
in public history, or the writings of Aboriginal anthropologists and
historians, the authors link archival, archaeological, material, oral,
and ethnographic evidence to offer novel explorations that extend
beyond earlier scholarship centred on the archive. They draw on
Aboriginal perspectives, material forms of evidence, and personal
approaches to history to illuminate cross-cultural encounters and
challenge older approaches to the past.

These fascinating essays on aspects of the history of Rupert's
Land mark a significant departure from the old paradigm of history
writing and will serve as models for recovering and communicating
Aboriginal and cross-cultural experiences and perspectives.