Profs to ponder Metis political organizations

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Two Brandon University professors have been awarded a $45,500 grant to research Metis political organizations.

Over three years, Gerard Ens of the history department and Joe Sawchuk of the Native studies department will collect and analyze 20th century materials related to Metis political organizations. The research will focus on organizations which were instrumental in redefining Metis identity in Canada and the United States.

Research will be done in archival, government and Native organization records in Canadian provinces and the Northwest Territories and in the northern U.S. Researchers will interview Metis leaders, politicians and Elders to compile an oral history of Metis organizations.

The project is part of a larger project to write a comprehensive history of the Metis people from the 18th century to the present. The only detailed history of the Metis people, Marcel Giraud's Le Metis Canadien, was published in 1945. It was imbued with an ethnocentric bias that white civilization was superior to Native groups and that the Metis were a disappearing race.

Professor John Foster of the University of Alberta will also contribute to the writing of this more comprehensive history.

Metis students will be employed during the research period, which is funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council.

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