Mixed Race Studies

The Mestizo Concept: A Product of European Imperialism

Onkwehón:we Rising: An Indigenouse Perspectic on Third Worldism & Revolution
2013-08-29

Jack D. Forbes, Professor Emeritus of Native American Studies
University of California, Davis

What is the concept of Mestizaje? What are its origins? What role does it have to play in the liberation, or rather the obstructing of the liberation, of occupied Abya Yala? These are important questions that face Our liberation movement, both here in Anówarakowa Kawennote, but also in Anawak and Tawantinsuyu, indeed all of occupied Abya Yala.

The well known radical onkwehón:we scholar Jack D. Forbes examines these questions in the following essay.

The terms mestizo and metis (as well as such comparable words a half-caste, half-breed, ladino, cholo, coyote, and so on) have been and are now frequently used in Anishinabe-waki (the Americas) to refer to large numbers of people who are either of mixed European and Anishinabe (Native American) racial background or who poses a so-called mixed culture.

In Canada, people of mixed European and Anishinabe background are ordinarily referred to as metis, that is, “mixed.” In the United States, terms such as half-breed, half-blood and quarter-blood are most commonly used but, mustee (derived from mestizo) and even mulatto have been used in the South. From Mexico through Argentina mestizo (“mixed”) is the standard term, but cholo, ladino, coyote, and other words are also commonly used. In Brazil, caboclo, mameluco and a variety of other terms are used, along with mestizo. The concept of mestizo has also been introduced into the United States scholarly literature and is becoming accepted among anthropologists and sociologists as a technical term replacing half-breed and similar words…

…The Mestizo Concept and the Strategy of Colonialism

One of the fundamental principles of the European invaders, and especially of the Spaniards, was to follow the policy of divide and conquer, or keep divided and control. This policy pitted native against native, and tribe against tribe, until Spanish control was established. Later this same policy prevented a common front of oppressed people from developing, by creating tensions and jealousies between the different sectors of the population…

…The concepts of mestizo, coyote, lobo, cholo, pardo, color quebrado, and many others, were invented by the Spaniards, and Spanish policy kept these categories alive throughout the colonial epoch. Were those concepts of any real objective value, apart from being useful to the ruling class? It is extremely doubtful if the differences between a coyote (three-quarters Anishinabe), a mestizo (one-half Anishinabe), a lobo (Anishinabe-African), a pardo (Anishinabe-African European), and so on were at all significant except in so far as the Spanish rulers sought to make them significant. It is true that there may have been cultural differences between natives and mixed-bloods speaking a native language and living in a native village, on the one hand, and Spanish-speaking person (of whatever ancestry) on the other hand. But those differences relate to political loyalty and culture and not directly to mestisaje as such…

Read the entire article here.

Owning my mixed-race identity: Why I don’t have to choose sides

Salon
Wednesday, 2014-03-12

Eternity E. Martis
London, Ontario, Canada

People can’t seem to understand that I’m not either black or Anglo-Pakistani, but all of the above

My mother is Anglo-Pakistani and my father is Jamaican (and a quarter Chinese). I grew up with my mother and her family, a chubby, curly-haired, dark-skinned child eating chana masala, aloo paneer and chicken makhani.  As a child, I didn’t know I was any different from the rest of my family. But as I grew up, I realized that I was different, because I looked different.

My mom is fair-skinned with pin-straight hair. My uncle and several other members of my family are also fair with clear, light green eyes. I did not get any of those traits — I’m the darkest-skinned person in my immediate family, and the only one who’s mixed-race. As a child, I envied my mother’s skin; I longed to be white. She didn’t have to feel uncomfortable in the spaces white people inhabited. She wasn’t sneered at, followed around department stores by an employee as if she was a thief, or pushed off the sidewalk when she was walking to school by white kids. Life seemed easy for her.

I despised my father; his absence humiliated me. Not only did I loathe his withdrawn parenting, but I hated his genes. I inherited his dark skin and large nose. All six of his kids did. They were markers of my presumed inferiority, giving people a reason to treat me unkindly, giving boys a reason to rate me a “4” for my “monkey face” while my other female classmates received a generous “9.” It also didn’t matter that I was my mother’s child; nowhere did people recognize me in her…

…Someone asked me why people who are mixed with black try to distance themselves from their black ancestry, as if we are ashamed. It has nothing to do with shame; on my part, I find myself more in touch with s side now that I am older. However, I do want to bring awareness to mixed race politics and break down rigid categories of race. I do not have to be black because I am mixed; I do not have to be white because I am mixed. I do not have to be Pakistani because I am mixed. I do not have to choose a side, because I am everything…

Read the entire article here.

Kaa-tipeyimishoyaahk – ‘We are those who own ourselves’: A Political History of Métis Self-Determination in the North-West, 1830-1870

University of Victoria, British Columbia
2014
394 pages

Adam James Patrick Gaudry

Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the Department of Indigenous Governance

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.

Read the entire dissertation here.

Research Project on “Mixed Race” Identity: Call for Edmonton, Canada Area Participants

University of Alberta
Edmonton, Canada
2014-01-31

Jillian Paragg, Ph.D. Student
Department of Sociology

Are you of mixed racial background? Do you/have you identified as “mixed race”, “multiracial”, or with other “mixed” self-identifications (i.e. biracial, mulatto, eurasian, happa, creole etc.)? Do other people identify you as “mixed”?

I am looking for residents in the Edmonton area to participate in life story interviews who:

• are 40-60 years of age
• are of mixed racial parentage
• were born in Canada or have been in Canada since the 1970s

I am conducting a project on mixed race identity for my doctoral dissertation in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta. The purpose of the project is to explore respondents’ experiences growing up and living as “mixed race” during the multicultural era in Canada.

Interviews will involve a minimum of two sittings, each taking at least 1 to 1.5 hours – for a total time commitment of 2 to 3 hours.

If you would like to be part of this study or have questions, please contact paragg@ualberta.ca (by March at the latest). This project is supervised by Dr. Sara Dorow, who can be contacted at sara.dorow@ualberta.ca. Please feel free to pass this call for participants on to anyone in the Edmonton area who may be interested in participating.

From Mushkegowuk to New Orleans: A Mixed Blood Highway

NeWest Press
April 2008
48 pages
ISBN: 978-1-897126-29-5

Joseph Boyden

In 2007, Joseph Boyden, author of the bestselling novel Three Day Road and 2008 Giller Prize winner for Through Black Spruce, was invited by the Canadian Literature Centre | Centre de littérature canadienne to deliver the inaugural Henry Kreisel Lecture at the University of Alberta. Boyden spoke passionately, relating Aboriginal people in Canada to poor African Americans, Whites, and Hispanics in post-Katrina New Orleans. At the end of his lecture he presented a manifesto to the audience, demanding independence from the shackles of North American governments on behalf of these oppressed cultures. The lecture was received with much acclaim and enthusiasm.

In collaboration with the Canadian Literature Centre, NeWest Press is pleased to present the Henry Kreisel Lecture Series publications, a forum for open, inclusive critical thinking, and a tribute to Henry Kreisel himself.

Defying Categorization: The Work of Suzette Mayr

Canadian Woman Studies / Les Caheiers de la Femme
Volume 23, Number 2 (2004)
pages 71-75

Katie Petersen

Le corpus littéraire de Suzette Mayr examine les croisements raciaux, la sexualité marginalisée et la formation de l’identité personnelle dans des espaces indéfinis. Ses recueils de poemès et ses nouvelles ont tous remis en question la situation et le classement des populations. L’auteure a exploré et validé les espaces non explorés et non compartimentés qui sont présents dans les réalités traditionelles.

The literary corpus of Suzette Mayr examines racial mixing, marginalized sexuality and the formation of personal identity in undefined spaces. Her collections of poems and novels have questioned the status and the classification of the groups concerned. The author has explored and validated the unexplored spaces and those spaces not compartmentalized that are present in traditional realities.

In the afterword to her Master’s thesis “Chimaera Lips” (1992), the Calgary poet and novelist Suzette Mayr states that

a positive approach to categorization would not rely on having to distinguish oneself through comparison to another group, but would emphasize the whole or merged self, rather than the categorized self. (59)

In this work, Mayr explores “existence between ‘realities.'” She investigates and attempts to undermine the binary constructions surrounding race, sexuality and gender, by writing about, and presumably from within, what she terms “middle spaces;” spaces which exist between the starkly delineated realities commonly associated with various racial, sexual and gender categories (61). Mayr posits an absorption of “realities” by these in-between spaces, leading to an integrated system in which neither reality nor intermediate space dominates. The novels Mayr wrote following “Chimaera Lips,” Moon Honey (1995) and The Widows (1998), and her chapbook of poems, Zebra Talk (1991), all serve to challenge the ways in which people are necessarily located or categorized and to explore, expose, and validate uncharted, uncompartmentalized middle spaces…

Mayr’s chapbook, Zebra Talk, is a collection of poems of a relatively personal nature which describe Mayr’s own perceptions as a lesbian and a Canadian of mixed, Black-Caucasian, race. She explores issues of race and sexuality, identity and family, describing middle and hybrid spaces. Mayr treats her poetic subjects in much the same way as she does the characters in her novels; their appearances, actions and significances are described in unique, creative and at times ambiguous ways which emphasize the difficulty, if not impossibility, of categorizing individuals without that action being destructive and/or reductive.

Zebra Talk contains poems which discuss the idea of being a “zebra,” a person of mixed race. Mayr details the process of coming to terms with racial hybridity and of understand ing how a person of mixed race locates herself within a multiracial family setting and within the larger setting of a multiracial community or nation. Clearly, racial and cultural hybridity create new spaces. People of in-between colors and in-between cultures have to forge in-between identities and locations for themselves. However, what stands in the middle cannot be identified simply in relation to the poles it stands between.

Mayr’s use of the repetitive imagery of skin, invertebrates, volcanic insides, and people made of earth turns ordered family and romantic structures into a tempestuous and vividly multicolored mixture. In the first poem, the speaker describes her family:

The skin on a drum
The skin stretched over a moving rib cage
The skin stretched and bitten by two other heads on this
three-headed body
2 brothers 1 sister 3 heads and 1 body
plus 1 and 1 parents. (2)

The children, each different versions of the same mixture, form a three-headed being, sharing a body. The parents, “1 and 1,” remain separate. The skin to which Mayr refers appears thin but strong, stretched and fitted over skeleton and roiling core: “(Zebra pelt stretched over a hot and bloody centre)” (2). This particular mixture of heat and blood and guts is never given a clear meaning. It could be a reference, as George Elliott Clarke suggests in “Canadian Biraciality and Its ‘Zebra’ Poetics,” to “a volcanic core—a history of violence and death … O the same seething hurt,” an internal upheaval particular to people of mixed race (233). Or, Mayr could be pointing out that everyone, regardless of race, is, at the core, composed of the same unstable material, which cannot be classified or associated in any way with outside appearance…

Read the entire article here.

The Widows

NeWest Press
April 1998
256 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-896300-30-6

Suzette Mayr

Hannelore, Clotilde, and Frau Schnadelhuber are three old women tired of living in a world which does not allow old women to be seen or heard. Deciding to shake their fists at such a world, the three women plot to go over Niagara Falls in a bright orange space-age barrel. With the assistance of Cleopatra Maria, the 26-year-old genius granddaughter of Hannelore and grandniece of Clotilde, the four women steal the barrel from a travelling show and drive it across Canada determined to prove their worth to a world devoted to youth.

“The Quiltings of Human Flesh”—Constructions of Racial Hybridity in Contemporary African-Canadian Literature

University of Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
2010-05-02
366 pages

Heike Bast

Dissertation to obtain the academic degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Division of the Humanities, University of Greifswald

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• ‘RACE’ MATTERS’: A PERSONAL NOTE ON BELONGING
• 1. INTRODUCTION: ‘SOLE OR WHOLE’ – QUILTING THE RACIALIZED SUBJECT
• 2. SIGNIFYING THE IN-BETWEEN: ‘RACE’, ‘RACIAL HYBRIDITY’ AND QUESTIONS OF BELONGING
  • 2.1. The Language of ‘Race’ – Notes on Terminology
  • 2.2. Identities in Flux: Discourses on ‘Race’ and Subjectivity
    • 2.2.1 ‘Race Theory’ – a Brief Historical Review
    • 2.2.2. “Identities Without Guarantees” and the Critique of Sameness: Contemporary Race Theory
  • 2.3. Uncertain Crossings: Racial Hybridity and Post-Colonial Belonging
• 3. APPROACHING AFRICAN-CANADIAN BORDERLANDS
  • 3.1. The African-Canadian Experience: Unearthing the History of Miscegenation in Canada
  • 3.2. Canadian Multiculturalism and Cultural Violence: Mixed-Race Identities and the Intricacies of Belonging
  • 3.3. Living and Writing the In-Between: Tracing a Black Literary Tradition in Canada
  • 3.4. From ‘Tragic Mulatto’ to ‘Zebra Poetics’? – Racial Hybridity in African-Canadian literature
• 4. EXPLORING AFRICAN-CANADIAN BORDERLANDS
  • 4.1. Borderlands Poetics in the Writings of Suzette Mayr
    • 4.1.1. Suzette Mayr’s Zebra Talk (1991)
    • 4.1.2. Metamorphoses and the Racialized Body: Suzette Mayr’s Moon Honey (1995)
    • 4.1.3. Canadian Hodgepodge in Suzette Mayr’s The Widows (1998)
  • 4.2. ‘Reverse Doublestuff’, or from Halfness to Wholeness: The Poetry of Mercedes Baines
  • 4.3. Polyvalent Blackness in African-Canadian Drama: Difference and Healing in Maxine Bailey’s and Sharon Lewis’s Sistahs (1994)
  • 4.4. ‘An Exile in the Land of My Birth’: Racial Mixture and National Belonging in the Autobiographical Writings of Camille Hernandez-Ramdwar
  • 4.5. Anti-Mulatto Rhetoric in Haitian and Haitian-Canadian History, Literature, and Culture
    • 4.5.1. Unmasking the Carnival: Max Dorsinville’s Erzulie Loves Shango (1998)
    • 4.5.2. Torment, Memory and Desire: Gérard Étienne’s La Pacotille (1991)
  • 4.6. ‘In Pursuit of Wholeness’: ‘Race’, Class and Black Masculinity in Kim Barry Brunhuber’s Kameleon Man (2003)
• 5. ‘FROM SOLE TO WHOLE’ – AFRICAN-CANADIAN MIXED-RACE POETICS
• 6. BIBLIOGRAPHY
• APPENDIX I: BIO-BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON AUTHORS
• APPENDIX II: INTERVIEW WITH SUZETTE MAYR (JULY 25TH, 2009)
• Danksagung

Read the entire dissertation here.

Is Race a Fiction?

Ideas with Paul Kennedy
CBC Radio-Canada
2013-12-04

Paul Kennedy, Host

Blood ties you to family, country and race. Should it? Watch a live panel discussion with Lawrence Hill, Priscila Uppal, Hayden King and Karina Vernon moderated by Ideas host Paul Kennedy.

What happens to personal identity when race is removed as a marker of who you are? What happens when we use the term “culture” to replace the idea of race?” The panelists explore these questions and more.

Panelists:

• Lawrence Hill: Blood: The Stuff of Life is Lawrence Hill’s ninth book. His earlier works include the novels Some Great Thing and, and the memoir Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada.
• Hayden King is an Anishinaabe writer, student, teacher, researcher at Ryerson University, McMaster University and Beausoleil First Nation.
• Priscila Uppal is a poet, novelist, playwright and York University Professor in the Department of English.
• Karina Vernon is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto and co-founder and editor of Commodore Books, the first black literary press in western Canada.

Victoria to fly flag in memory of executed Métis leader Louis Riel

Times Colonist
Victoria, British Columbia
2013-11-15

Richard Watts

The infinity-embossed flag of the Métis Nation will fly at municipalities around B.C. as they proclaim Saturday as Louis Riel Day.

Victoria, Langford and Sidney have agreed to the proclamation. Victoria has even agreed to fly the flag of the Métis Nation, a white infinity symbol (a sideways “8”) on a solid blue, black or red background.

Today, at Royal Roads University in the Blue Heron House, Métis culture will be showcased with a short film, bannock and tea, from 10 a.m. to noon.

Bill Bresser, president of Métis Nation Greater Victoria, said the celebration is part of a growing recognition across Canada that now sees Riel, not as an executed villain but as a defender of the Métis.

“He is now recognized not as a traitor but somebody fighting for his people and the rights and property of people that were being taken advantage of,” said Bresser.

Also, Bresser said, Métis people are now being recognized as legitimate builders of the modern country…

Read the entire article here.