{"id":54261,"date":"2017-06-25T22:53:30","date_gmt":"2017-06-25T22:53:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=54261"},"modified":"2017-06-25T22:58:26","modified_gmt":"2017-06-25T22:58:26","slug":"what-it-means-to-be-metis-university-of-ottawa-researcher-sharpens-our-understanding-of-the-term","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=54261","title":{"rendered":"What it means to be M\u00e9tis: University of Ottawa researcher sharpens our understanding of the term"},"content":{"rendered":"

What it means to be M\u00e9tis: University of Ottawa researcher sharpens our understanding of the term<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Research Matters<\/a>
\n2017-06-01<\/p>\n

Sharon Oosthoek<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nThe University of Ottawa\u2019s Brenda Macdougall<\/a> brings her expertise in M\u00e9tis<\/a> and First Nations<\/a> history to bear on how a group of people become a nation. (University of Ottawa)<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Every second Thursday, we will be featuring an Ontario Research Chair (ORC)<\/a> from one of the province\u2019s universities. ORCs\u00a0are university research professorships created to drive provincial research and develop excellence, to create world-class centres of research, and to enhance Ontario\u2019s<\/a> competitiveness in Canada\u2019s<\/a> knowledge-based economy. See previous profiles here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

More than a century after being hanged for treason, M\u00e9tis<\/a> leader Louis Riel<\/a> still has the power to polarize Canadians along ethnic lines.<\/p>\n

Riel was born in 1844 in a fur-trading community known as the Red River Settlement<\/a>, near modern-day Winnipeg<\/a>. He came to fame in the fight for M\u00e9tis rights and culture as the newly-formed Canadian government sought to expand its reach into his people\u2019s prairie homeland.<\/p>\n

Riel remains today one of the most studied figures in Canadian history and his \u201cblood line\u201d is still a topic of heated discussion because he was of French and Dene<\/a> heritage.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople talk about Riel in fractions all the time\u2014that he is 1\/8 Indian and so more white than native\u201d says Brenda Macdougall<\/a>. \u201cWhen we discuss him in this fashion, it not only undermines who Riel was, it undermines who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Macdougall is the province\u2019s first Chair in M\u00e9tis Research at the University of Ottawa, a position funded by an endowment from the government of Ontario<\/a> and the University of Ottawa. As chair, and a M\u00e9tis woman herself, she has thought deeply about what the term means.<\/p>\n

Historically, it was the French word for a person of mixed European and Indian ancestry, much like the word half-breed meant \u201cmixed\u201d in English. But Macdougall says the term has evolved over time to mean something more profound: a people who share a history, culture, and geography…<\/p>\n

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

More than a century after being hanged for treason, M\u00e9tis leader Louis Riel still has the power to polarize Canadians along ethnic lines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,19,459,8,3015],"tags":[2720,7454,14456,27145,27146,22557],"class_list":["post-54261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-canada","category-history","category-media-archive","category-native-americans","tag-brenda-macdougall","tag-louis-riel","tag-ontario","tag-research-matters","tag-sharon-oosthoek","tag-university-of-ottawa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54261","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=54261"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54265,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54261\/revisions\/54265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}