Between Race and Nation: The Plains Metis and the Canada-United States Border |
Between Race and Nation: The Plains Metis and the Canada-United States Border
University of Wisconsin, Madison
May 2009
419 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3384469
ISBN: 9781109476347
Michel Hogue, Assistant Professor of History
Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin-Madison in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
This dissertation examines how the Plains Métis both experienced and shaped their incorporation into two nation-states: the U.S. and Canada. It explores how, as the northern Plains were pulled into the economic, political, and social orbits of distinct metropolitan centers, the social category of race emerged as a key measure of the boundaries of citizenship within new nation-states. The study encompasses a critical time period when ideas about race and the differences it marked were in flux. Set in a place that straddled national borders, where national territorial claims were weak, and where national borders marked different legal regimes, it explores the question of how and why mixed racial groups in North America formed or failed to form. This study asks, What effect did the new political boundaries and racial hierarchies emerging within these new states have on the potential for the creation of the Métis as a distinct people?
The study shows that, as this borderland world became more closely tied to national economies and polities through the nineteenth century, the socio-legal categories of nationality and race became key faultlines that circumscribed Métis claims to belonging in both countries. Incorporative projects, whether commercial or national, initially allowed Plains Métis communities to flourish. But, as settler-based societies supplanted fur trade societies, social relations changed dramatically. Even in Canada, where distinct legal and conceptual categories existed for people of mixed Indigenous and white ancestry and where fur trade interactions had given rise to separate Métis communities in other parts of the country, recurring questions about nationality and race undercut Plains Métis attempts to secure a more permanent place in the borderlands. The precise meanings of the categories of race and nation—or who could be included within them—remained the subject of intense negotiation among officials, the Métis, and their Indigenous neighbors. Ultimately, the absence of appropriate legal frameworks for the recognition of mixed-race groups and state willingness to guarantee the corporate rights of those groups created significant barriers for the continuation of separate, identifiable Plains Métis borderland communities.
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures
- Note on Terminology
- INTRODUCTION: Remapping Plains Metis History from the Borderlands
- CHAPTER ONE: Creating a Metis Borderland, 1800-1840
- CHAPTER TWO: Fur Trade, Free Trade, and the Franchise: The Politics and Economics of Metis Borderland Settlements, 1840-1870
- CHAPTER THREE: Crossing Boundaries: The Plains Metis in Montana, 1869-1878
- CHAPTER FOUR: White, Indian, Metis: Race and Incorporation on the Canadian Prairies, 1869-1879
- CHAPTER FIVE: Dismantling Plains Metis Borderland Settlements, 1879-1885
- CHAPTER SIX: Scrip & Enrollment Commissions and the Shifting Boundaries of Belonging, 1885-1920
- CONCLUSION
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
List of Figures
- “Heart of a Continent”
- Northern Plains in the 1860s
- Metis Wintering Sites, 1840s-1870s
- Metis Migrations
- Northern Plains in the 1870s
- Reduction of Montana Indian Reservations, 1885-95
Purchase the dissertation here.
Tags: Michel Hogue, University of Wisconsin