Métis in Canada

The Métis in Canada are specific cultural communities who trace their descent to First Nations and European settlers, primarily the French, in the early decades of colonization

These Métis peoples are recognized as one of Canada's aboriginal peoples under the Constitution Act of 1982, along with First Nations and Inuit peoples.

The contemporary Métis in Canada are a specific Indigenous people; the term does not apply to every person of "mixed" heritage or ancestry.

As of 2016, they number over 587,545 individuals.

Canadian Métis represent the majority of people that identify as Métis, although there are a number of Métis in the United States.

While the Métis initially develop as the mixed-race descendants of early unions between First Nations and colonial-era European settlers (usually Indigenous women and French settler men), within generations (particularly in central and western Canada), a distinct Métis culture develops.

The women in the unions in eastern Canada are usually Wabanaki, Algonquin, and Menominee; and in western Canada they are Saulteaux, Cree, Ojibwe, Nakoda, and Dakota/Lakota, or of mixed descent from these peoples.

Their unions with European men engaged in the fur trade in the Old Northwest are often of the type known as Marriage à la façon du pays ("according to the custom of the country").[6]

After New France is ceded to Great Britain's control in 1763, there is an important distinction between French Métis born of francophone voyageur fathers, and the Anglo-Métis (known as "countryborn" or Mixed Bloods, for instance in the 1870 census of Manitoba) descended from English or Scottish fathers.

Today these two cultures have essentially coalesced into location-specific Métis traditions.

This does not preclude a range of other Métis cultural expressions across North America.

Such polyethnic people were historically referred to by other terms, many of which are now considered to be offensive, such as Mixed-bloods, Half-breeds, Bois-Brûlés, Bungi, Black Scots, and Jackatars.

While people of Métis culture or heritage are found across Canada, the traditional Métis "homeland" (areas where Métis populations and culture develop  as a distinct ethnicity historically) includes much of the Canadian Prairies.

The most commonly known group are the "Red River Métis", centering on southern and central parts of Manitoba along the Red River of the North.

Closely related are the Métis in the United States, primarily those in border areas such as northern Michigan, the Red River Valley, and eastern Montana.

These are areas in which there is considerable Aboriginal and European mixing due to the nineteenth-century fur trade, but they do not have a federally recognized status in the United States, except as enrolled members of federally recognized tribes.

Although Métis exis further west than today's Manitoba, much less is known about the Métis of Northern Canada.

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