Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History

Nicole St-Onge

ISBN 10: 0806144874 / ISBN 13: 9780806144870

Published by University Of Oklahoma Press Jan 2014, 2014

About this Item

Neuware - 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.

Seller Inventory # 9780806144870

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Contours of a People : Metis Family, Mobility, and History
• Publisher: University Of Oklahoma Press Jan 2014
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0806144874
• ISBN 13: 9780806144870
• Binding: Taschenbuch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 235W x 156H x 30D millimeters 235 millimeters width by 156 millimeters height by 30 millimeters depth
• Weight: 717 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Do law and legal procedures exist only so long as there is an official authority to enforce them? Or do we have an unspoken sense of law and ethics?To answer these questions, John Phillip Reid’s Contested Empire explores the implicit notions of law shared by American and British fur traders in the Snake River country of Idaho and surrounding areas in the early nineteenth century. Both the United States and Great Britain had claimed this region, and passions were intense. Focusing mainly on Canadian explorer and trader Peter Skene Ogden, Reid finds that both side largely avoided violence and other difficulties because they held the same definitions of property, contract, conversion, and possession.In 1824, the Hudson’s Bay Company directed Ogden to decimate the furbearing animal population of the Snake River country, thus marking the region a “fur desert.” With this mandate, Great Britain hoped to neutralize any interest American furtrappers could have in the area. Such a mandate set British and American fur men on a collision course, but Ogden and his American counterparts implicitly followed a kind of law and procedure and observed a mutual sense of property and rights even as the two sides vied for control of the fur trade.Failing to take legal culture into consideration, some previous accounts have depicted these conflicts as mere episodes of lawless frontier violence. Reid expands our understanding of the West by considering the unspoken sense of law that existed, despite the lack of any formalized authorities, in what had otherwise been considered a “lawless” time.

About the Author

Nicole St-Onge is author of Saint-Laurent, Manitoba: Evolving Metis Identities, 1850-1914.

Carolyn Podruchny is author of Making the Voyageur World: Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade.

Brenda Macdougall is author of One of the Family: Metis Culture in Nineteenth-Century Northwestern Saskatchewan.

Maria Campbell is a Metis elder, playwright, and author of the memoir Halfbreed.