From New Peoples to New Nations: Aspects of Métis History and Identity from the Eighteenth to Twenty-First Centuries by Gerhard J. Ens and Joe Sawchuk (review)

From New Peoples to New Nations, by Gerhard J. Ens and Joe Sawchuk, offers an important update to Métis history and historiography through a metanarrative lens. A longue durée analysis synthesizes over 300 years of historical events, countless political choices, machinations by government(s), and the outcome of complex processes on the formation and transformation of Métis identity. The authors track the changes and continuities that shaped and reshaped Métis ethnicity from the genesis of an Indigenous post-contact nation to 2014. (5) Ens and Sawchuk’s novel approach to the topic allows them to convincingly posit that Métis ethnogenesis is perpetual and continues to the present day via “dialogical processes.” (514) Their undertaking is also significant because it has not been attempted in a similar form since the mid-20th century. In so doing, they bring forth a considerable revision to Métis historiography and edify considerations of legal, political, and economic factors that influenced the historical development of the Métis nation. The condensed academic language in the beginning of the book thins out quickly, making understandings of Métis identity in Canada and the United States more accessible.

The authors’ methodological approach distinguishes them from analyses heavily rooted in social histories and kinship. Instead, Ens and Sawchuk examine the history of Métis peoples’ ethnicity, paying particular attention to the social construction of socioeconomic, cultural, legal, and imagined boundaries, shaped by both the people who self-identify as Métis and outsiders. This “instrumentalist approach” blends historical and anthropological research, enabling the authors to seamlessly blend numerous interviews with archival and historiographical texts, with a heavy penchant on secondary sources. The monograph unites content from twelve archives located across Canada and the United States. Because of the nature of the analysis, there are no bottom-up studies therein. The voices of women and the marginalized are absent, and the authors acknowledge this limitation. Although the authors provide no exploration of Quebec and British Columbia, Métis in Alberta, Ontario, Manitoba, the Northwest Territories, Saskatchewan, and the United States borderlands each have at least one chapter summarizing their individual histories, even if their treatment varies greatly in tone and scope. The first half of the book is attributed in part to Gerhard Ens, while most of the second half is credited to Joe Sawchuk.

The analysis begins with a survey of early Métis history, from the 18th to the early 20th century. The monograph examines how the labour of voyageurs, and later the Métis, made social and economic choices that set them on the path to a distinct national identity. This distinction crystallized with the wintering of men among Indigenous nations and, later, by becoming freemen – independent hunters and traders that not hired by fur trade consorts. With an economy heavily rooted in the bison robe trade, Métis communities were born following similar socioeconomic patterns, albeit in different places. Examining the Battle of Seven Oaks and its role in Métis identity creation, the authors explain that commercial interests were central to the conflict and influenced how it was remembered. (87)

Chapter 4 explains that Louis Riel’s Métis nationalism diverges tremendously from the nationalist interpretations of contemporary Métis political elites. Although the historical argument put forth is an important contribution, its execution is a testament to the field’s Anglo-centrism. In attempting to make clear how Louis Riel’s past is curated to define the Métis nation today, Ens and Sawchuk rely on an erroneous translation from a secondary source and anachronistic nationalisms. They state: “Even in his more private writing – his poetry – Riel put more emphasis on God’s creation of the Métis Nation or People and Catholicism and Quebec Nationalism as the font...