{"id":33964,"date":"2013-10-01T01:38:58","date_gmt":"2013-10-01T01:38:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=33964"},"modified":"2013-10-01T01:42:53","modified_gmt":"2013-10-01T01:42:53","slug":"%e2%80%9ci%e2%80%99ve-never-heard-of-the-metis-people%e2%80%9d-the-politics-of-naming-racialization-and-the-disregard-for-aboriginal-canadians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=33964","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI\u2019ve Never Heard of the M\u00e9tis People\u201d: The Politics of Naming, Racialization, and the Disregard for Aboriginal Canadians"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019ve Never Heard of the M\u00e9tis People\u201d: The Politics of Naming, Racialization, and the Disregard for Aboriginal Canadians<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

ActiveHistory.ca<\/a>
\n2012-10-18<\/p>\n

Crystal Fraser<\/a><\/strong>
\nUniversity of Alberta<\/em><\/p>\n

Mike Commito<\/a><\/strong>
\nMcMaster University<\/em><\/p>\n

The controversial selection of a hamburger name by a Toronto<\/a> restaurant had customers and critics raising their eyebrows this past August. Holy Chuck Burgers<\/a>, located on Yonge Street<\/a>, specializes in gourmet hamburgers, some of which sport clever titles like \u201cGo Chuck Yourself\u201d and \u201cYou Fat Pig.\u201d Recently, the restaurant has come under criticism, not for its indulgent offerings, but because of the names of two of its items: \u201cThe Half Breed\u201d and \u201cThe Dirty Drunken Half Breed.\u201d It was not long before Twitterverse exploded, slamming Holy Chuck Burgers for its use of racially-charged, insensitive discourse that has had a longstanding history against Canada\u2019s Indigenous peoples. While the criticism was well deserved, the apparent disconnect to Aboriginal issues is unfortunately part of a much larger and longer colonial mentality of indifference.<\/p>\n

Like many racial designations in Canada, the term \u2018half-breed\u2019 is both complex and problematic. Historically, the designation was used to describe people of \u2018mixed\u2019 descent whose lineage originated from intimate relationships between non-Aboriginal newcomers and Aboriginal people. The racial designation of \u2018half-breed\u2019 was applied not only to M\u00e9tis people, but also to other Aboriginals as a way to essentialize and deauthenticate all forms of indigenity. Today, by way of colonial discourse, the M\u00e9tis are sometimes linked to the historic understanding of \u2018half-breed.\u2019 This was demonstrated when Holy Chuck Burgers\u2019 racist food names were viewed as a direct attack on M\u00e9tis<\/a> people. But the equation of \u2018half breed\u2019 to M\u00e9tis is intrinsically problematic, since many Indigenous peoples are of \u2018mixed\u2019 ancestry but not labelled as such. Nevertheless, Holy Chuck Burgers\u2019 owner explained that the poor selection in burger names originated from the fact that the burger patties consist of a mixture of ground pork and beef. In \u201cThe Dirty Drunken Half Breed,\u201d \u201cdirty\u201d refers to the chili that was poured all over the burger and \u201cdrunken\u201d denotes the wine that was used in the cooking preparation. When considering Holy Chuck Burgers\u2019 choice of language, it is difficult not to think about racial stereotypes about Aboriginal people that have been historically imposed and, to some extent, continue to be used…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019ve Never Heard of the M\u00e9tis People\u201d: The Politics of Naming, Racialization, and the Disregard for Aboriginal Canadians ActiveHistory.ca 2012-10-18 Crystal Fraser University of Alberta Mike Commito McMaster University The controversial selection of a hamburger name by a Toronto restaurant had customers and critics raising their eyebrows this past August. Holy Chuck Burgers, located on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,19,8,3015],"tags":[15991,15993,15992],"class_list":["post-33964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-canada","category-media-archive","category-native-americans","tag-activehistory-ca","tag-crystal-fraser","tag-mike-commito"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33964\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}