Introduction

Identity is a tricky subject. Particularly cultural identity and especially Indigenous identity. Today, I identify as Métis. However, this has not always been the case. Because of my fair appearance, I was (and am) often met with disbelief when claiming to be Métis so I came to identify as white. This is something my father, who is a registered Status Indian and a former member of the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan, does not like. He often told me “You don’t understand identity if you think you’re white.” What I understood was that physical appearance seemed to be a large part of legitimizing one’s cultural identity. It was certainly the main way I judged whether someone was legitimately Indigenous or not. I would evaluate a person’s claim to Indigenous heritage based almost entirely on their skin tone, hair and eye color. I assumed that this is how others, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, evaluate cultural identity as well, and my experience seems to confirm this. Non-Indigenous people will often outright disagree with my claim to any sort of Indigenous identity and I often am treated, I feel, as an outsider by Indigenous people. For example, I have recently taken to wearing my sash around to Indigenous events. The sash is a woven belt-like garment that Métis men and women wear as a symbol of their heritage. I was once asked at an event for an Indigenous community: “Who did you get that sash from?” (implying that it couldn’t be mine). As well, an Indigenous studies teacher once quipped after I made a comment in class that it was “interesting to get the white perspective on this.” This is why I often bring my father, my sister, or even my son, who all look more like what people instinctively assume an Indigenous person should, for “street cred” when I am around Indigenous people. This strategy does seem to increase people’s confidence in my claim to Indigeneity.

What I and others who think this way are essentially saying is that being Indigenous is about the way you look, and if it is about the way you look, then it is not about what we do, believe or how we see the world and relate to each other. When Indigenous people engage in judging each other in this way we reduce ourselves to mere caricatures and deny the array of distinct and unique cultures that fall under the term “Indigenous” and instead assign ourselves a racial category. In doing this we participate in advancing race ideology and, with it, colonialism’s goals.

This chapter will go into greater detail regarding how we advance race and colonialism by explaining what race ideology is, why it is false, and how it is connected to settler colonialism and its goals. I will also detail how we as Indigenous people internalize and express this ideology. I will then explore, from the perspective of a member of the Métis community, how the Métis experience race ideology in Canada. Using this experience, I will then examine some possible solutions to this problem. Finally, while acknowledging the complexity of this issue, I will suggest that we, Indigenous and non-Indigenous people alike, begin to move past racial ideology and explore more meaningful ways to identify ourselves and one another.

Race

I will begin with Indigenous scholar Joyce Green’s account of colonialism. She considers Canada to be a country that has not only been built on colonial interests, but one that continues to pursue these interests.^[1] A central tool that colonizers utilize in pursuing these interests is racism. We will define racism here as the idea that some “races” are superior to others. Racism is a useful ideological tool in that it provides justification to colonial efforts to dominate Indigenous people.^[2] This is done, Green explains, by emphasizing “three major ideological components: one, the gulf between the culture of the colonist and the colonized; two, the exploitation of these differences for the benefit of the colonialist; and three, the use of these supposed differences as absolute fact.”^[3] Before components two and three can be accomplished, the first needs to be seen as legitimate. In other words, it needs to be obvious and explainable that these differences exist—the idea of race provides this explanation, thus acting as the logic behind racism. Race ideology makes it possible for people to believe that there are significant and unchangeable differences between the “races,” which in turn makes room for the idea that some “races” are better than others. The American Anthropological Association’s statement on race suggests that race is a mode of classification tied “specifically to people in the colonial situation, having become popular as a means of social classification and distinction when people from different populations were brought together under colonial rule.^[4] If this is true, then in order to understand, deconstruct, and oppose colonialism, we must first understand what race ideology is, as well as how it is expressed in contemporary society and the role it plays in preserving and advancing colonialism.

First, it may be most useful to break down the concept of race: what does it really mean to categorize people in this way? The idea is that humans are divided naturally into a few categories called “races” that are genetically significant. We sort people into these “races” based on their appearance—specifically, on features deemed racial such as skin color, hair texture, and eye shape. These physical characteristics are supposed to be indicative of more complex characteristics such as intellect and certain abilities and inabilities.[v] This ideology affects Indigenous people’s experiences of their identity when it is posited that stereotypical physical features associated with being Indigenous—for instance tan skin, brown eyes, long straight dark hair and sharp facial features—are tied to assumed characteristics. In Canada, a person that generally subscribes to this physical description of “Native” might be thought to be inherently unintelligent. This is not a new stereotype, as William Warren’s account of the Ojibwa published in 1885 describes them throughout his book as an inherently “simple” people.^[5] Such assumptions continue to exist and influence the lives of Indigenous people. For instance, researchers have found that medical students often find stereotypes relating to Indigenous people as functional, and sometimes base their treatment of patients upon them.^[6]

Even if you do not believe or put much stock in stereotypes, chances are that it is not difficult for you to come up with certain assumptions that are commonly applied to different “races” of people—it is far from a foreign concept to people. If I am correct, then this speaks to how easily we fall into this thinking. However, despite the ease with which these assumptions come to us, they are nothing but an expression of race ideology and they have no basis in fact. By looking at work on racial ideology we can see that it can be divided into three main assumptions: that people can be divided into racial categories based on appearance; that these categories are genetically significant; and that the physical characteristics which act as the criteria by which people are sorted into these categories are indicative of deeper, more complex behavioral traits.

First, as Fish argues, racial ideology asserts that people can be neatly sorted into categories according to physical traits.^[7] This assertion then assumes that certain traits deemed racial occur together. However, this is not the case. You just have to look around to determine that all sorts of combinations of physical traits exist in people. For example, a person can have curly hair and light skin, or straight hair, narrow features and darker skin. But the racial ideology does not allow for this. It presents racial categories as species in that racial traits are supposed to occur together and appear in every person that is of that race.^[8] If a person is of mixed parentage, racial ideology would then assume, as Fish explains, that that person would have traits in the exact middle of each parent’s race.^[9] This assumption is often applied to Metis people, who are defined racially as a “mix” between white and First Nation (or “red”) races. It is assumed that Métis people will appear as a compromise between the stereotypical appearance of a First Nations person and a white person, constituting a look that might be called “native light.” This however, is not reality, as Métis people exist among a long spectrum appearance-wise. The point is that people cannot be sorted neatly into racial categories because not everyone will fit the description of the stereotypical image of a person in that race.

Second, following Gravlee, the thought that racial categories are genetically significant may be critiqued. By “genetically significant” what is meant is that races represent groups that are naturally and fundamentally different from each other.^[10] This too however is based on an incorrect assumption. In fact, actual genetic difference among humans is small and what little exists is not represented by what we call “races”.^[11] In fact there may be more genetic difference among people assigned to one race than there is between races.[xiii]

The third tenet is most appropriately described by the film “Race: The Power of an Illusion.” The film explains that it is often thought that physical features used to sort people into different races are significant because they are representative of more meaningful behavioral characteristics such as athletic ability and intellect.^[12] This is the driving assumption behind most stereotypes, as discussed earlier. But this idea too is false, since physical traits we see as racial involve few genes and are the product of relatively new human evolution while characteristics associated with behavioral characteristics such as athletic ability and intellect involve a complex array of genetic material and are much more ancient.^[13] In short, while physical differences can be obvious, they are not connected to deeper, more complex behavioral traits and thus only account for superficial differences between people. This all adds up to the conclusion that race as a way to categorize people does not make biological sense, nor is it a practical or meaningful way to describe differences among people.

However, that does not mean that it is not useful. As I previously suggested, it serves colonialism’s means and ends in a number of ways. For instance, it is race ideology that is behind the idea of identifying people with various languages, cultural practices, and ways of life under the term “Indian” because of shared physical traits. This identification essentially says that race is the source of all difference. When we define people in this narrow and racial way, it has two functions, both of which serve colonialism’s goals.

First, in determining that physical features are the criteria for Indigenous identification, other more meaningful markers of identity like language, customs, spiritual practices, social structures, and kinship ties are ignored. And when these group characteristics are discounted or denied, colonizers are better able to justify the notion that these cultures are not worth preserving, thus legitimizing their efforts to discount, disrupt and decimate these cultures. Second, lumping people into racial groups based on physical appearance enables a person to judge another person immediately, since, as the racial logic goes, much can be told about a person by determining their “race”. We can tell, for instance, if that person will be intelligent or whether they are easily influenced or not—we might even judge their ability or inability to make moral decisions. Since white people have placed themselves at the top of the racial hierarchy and placed Indigenous people on the bottom, people judged as belonging to the Indigenous or “red” race, as well as other racialized people, are likely to be associated with negative characteristics. This association results in discriminatory practices which, when expressed by those with power and authority, function as racism.

This phenomenon shows itself both in everyday social interactions as well as in our institutions. Such an instance can be seen in British Columbia’s 1992 public inquiry into the treatment of the province’s Indigenous peoples by their justice system.^[14] After hearing testimony and considering hundreds of articles of evidence brought forth by Indigenous peoples from various central B.C. communities, the commission established that the B.C. justice system and its actors had engaged in racial discrimination against Indigenous peoples.[xvii] It is important to note that by this, what is meant is that criminal justice actors, police, judges, and lawyers treated people differently, based upon their judgement of them as belonging to a specific “race.” This is an expression of race ideology and it represents a way of thinking that is embedded into the system and the individuals who make that system up.

Blood

However, what is written into Canadian law is not so explicit, yet still representative of colonial race ideology. This is the concept of “blood.” “Blood” is a main tenet of racial ideology and is how we describe how race is transferred from parent to child.^[15] In the case of First Nations, this concept is used to determine what the Government calls “Indian Status.” Indian Status is determined by having what the Government decides is enough First Nations “blood” transferred to you by your parents. While the Indian Act has been amended to allow for less of this “blood” to be necessary to qualify someone as an “Indian,” the idea behind it is the same: there is a certain quality that indicates “Indian-ness” in a person’s blood and it is diluted with each successive non-status parent introduced into ancestral line. Such a definition uses racial ideology to reduce the number of people able to claim Indian Status and the rights and privileges that comes with it. In fact, Chelsea Vowel points out that according to the current approach, Indian Status would be exterminated within a family in two generations, once a parent and grandparent marry out.^[16]

Despite these negative consequences, some Indigenous groups have adopted this ideology as a way of identifying themselves. For example, a review of band membership rules found that 13% had blood quantum criteria, while another 38% had a one parent rule, and 28% had two-parent rule—which is essentially just another way to institute blood quantum rules, only now using parentage as a way to measure the amount of “Indian blood” a person has.^[17] An additional 21% rely on Indian Act rules which, as discussed, institute criteria with the same type of logic.^[18]

The idea of assessing “blood” to determine membership is also expressed informally. For example, in the case of the Métis, as Vowel points out, a common question that is asked once a person identifies themselves as Métis is “Which one of your parents is Indian?”^[19] The assumption reduces a people, a nation, and a culture, down to a crude calculation of blood. Though crude as it is, Indigenous people themselves are not immune from such calculations. I myself have had a tendency to inquire into who a person’s parents are with the intention not of establishing kinship ties but for the purpose determining how much First Nations or Métis “blood,” they have, and thus the authenticity of their claim. I do not think I am alone in this assessment as I too have been asked what “amount” or “percentage” of Métis I am. This indicates that racial ideology is not just something that was and is used by colonizing powers in Canada—it is also one that the colonized themselves have often unconsciously come to adopt. Understanding how this came to be is perhaps one way in which Indigenous peoples can come to reject this harmful ideology.

One Métis scholar who explains this phenomenon well is Howard Adams in his book Tortured People: The Politics of Colonization.^[20] In order to make use of his explanation we must understand race as it has been described here: as an ideology that is critical to the operations of colonialism in that it provides the logic necessary to legitimate colonialism’s chief justification for its actions—racism. Adams further explains race as a means by which colonial authorities control the colonized population without having to resort to costly and messy military intervention.[xxiv] This type of control requires the colonized population to submit itself to the colonizers will by adopting their beliefs, values, and worldview and reproducing these beliefs among themselves.^[21]

What Adams identifies as the first step in this process of internalizing colonization is “intellectual and cultural debilitation.”^[22] This means to interfere with Indigenous people’s ability to participate in intellectual and cultural pursuits of their own and to deny that they have the ability to do so, hence making room for the need for Indigenous people to adopt the colonizers’ way. This is done, Adams says, by means of an aggressive socialization process. Canada’s institutions—the family, the education system, church, the justice system—all express the dominant ideology until the population, both those belonging to the colonizing and colonized groups, view these ideas not just as the right ideas but as natural and inevitable.^[23] As part of the

dominant ideology, race-based thinking is absorbed by Indigenous peoples despite the fact that its logic works to inferiorize them, thus polluting, as Adams puts it, the “Indigenous consciousness.”^[24] His solution is for Indigenous people to become aware of and consequently reject this colonial mentality completely.^[25]

However, we are then left with the question: How do we determine who belongs and who doesn’t? Because there is a need to determine this. If there are no limits to who can join an Indigenous Nation, then we cannot really be defined as an independent and distinct group. However, relying on appearance and the concept of “blood” does not seem to serve us. Given this, how can we come to identify ourselves by our own terms?

Self-identification

Something might be learned by looking at the Métis experience when it comes to identifying oneself as part of an Indigenous group and determining the parameters of that group. I use the Métis as an example first because as a member of this group, I feel I can speak most authentically about the Métis experience. Second, the Métis provide an interesting case study for this question since Métis people are by definition racially ambiguous, seeing as they exist along a long spectrum appearance-wise, and in terms of “blood.” Thus, as a category of people they already cause problems for race ideology.

Since the Métis emerged as a distinct Nation there have been efforts to define them racially, with the French word “Métis” referring to their mixed-race heritage.^[26] However, “mixed” has come to mean much more than just a mixed race of people. More recently the Métis have come to be conceptualized as a people who are mixed in the sense that their food, dance, music, language, and spiritual beliefs are the result of a mixing of both European and Indigenous      ways. While this is true, our practices and ways of life have come to be and exist today as distinctly our own. Anderson [xxxi] and Adese ^[27] have both argued this, evidencing how the assumptions of mixed-race lead to misunderstandings of the Métis that limit the conceptualization of authentic Indigeneity. Despite this reality the Métis continue to be defined in racial terms. An example of this is the idea mentioned earlier that Métis people are supposed to look physically like a compromise between the white and First Nation (or “red”) races. Because of this idea, though my sister and I share the same mother and father, the racial worldview would have us sorted into separate racial categories based upon our appearance. This arbitrary categorization completely ignores any marker of identity except for appearance.

The racial worldview also influences people’s perception of how Métis identity is passed on. As previously mentioned, the term “Métis” is often wrongly used to refer to peoples that carry a perfect fifty-fifty mixture of “Indian” and white blood. Following this logic, a parent stops being able to pass on their status as a Métis to their children unless they happen to parent these children with another Métis, and therefore preserve this formula. This, Vowel says, makes the Métis out to be a breed rather than a people—hence the name “half-breed”—and assumes the ridiculous notion that “Indian blood has some sort of magic quality that imbues one with legitimate Indigenous culture.”^[28] But culture is not “blood.” It exists when practiced among people who are connected by a shared history.

It is also relevant to consider the “official” terms in which the Métis are identified. By “official” I am referring to how the Métis are defined by Canadian law. I use the term “official” not to imply legitimacy, but to recognize that just as is the case with Indian status, how the powers that be in Canada recognize us or do not, matters. While the Métis do not have a specific status outlined in Canadian law, the R. v. Powley, 2003 SCC 43 (CanLII), [2003] 2 SCR 207 (“Powley”) case more or less determined who, in the eyes of Canada, is considered Métis when they outlined the criteria necessary for determining whether a person can claim an Aboriginal right on the basis of Métis status.^[29] According to Powley, the three criteria are: a person must self-identify as Métis; they must have an ancestral connection to a Métis homeland; and they must be accepted by a modern Métis community.^[30] According to this definition, Métis-ness is not a biological quality passed down through blood and diluted by marriage outside the group, but is the result of  Indigenous agency, shared history and active community participation.

Additionally, it gives the Métis Nation the authority over who is accepted and who is not, as the criteria “acceptance by a modern Métis community” could be most easily proven by showing a Métis citizenship card which is issued only at the behest of ones provincial Metis Nation and according to their stipulations. Not everyone would agree, however: citizenship cards are not carried by all Métis people for various political reasons or because of how the rules are set and change. Additionally, this is a power allotted to Métis by the Canadian courts which is problematic in and of itself because we, as Indigenous peoples, have an inherent right to determine our nation without the permission of the Canadian courts. That said, it is still important because it allows the Métis community to shape its own group identity—its citizenship—by way of how they define members of the nation and, thus, who they allow to join. This is an expression of Article 33 of The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, SC 2021, c 14 or “UNDRIP” which states that “Indigenous peoples have the right to determine their own identity or membership in accordance with their customs and traditions.”^[31]

While provincial registries may vary slightly in how they define Métis and therefore who they accept as a citizen of the Nation, most definitions reflect the Powley decision. For instance, the Métis Nation-Saskatchewan’s website states that a Metis person is a person who “self-identifies as Métis, is distinct from other Aboriginal peoples, is of historic Métis Nation Ancestry and who is accepted by the Métis Nation.”[xxxvii]

Métis identity, in this formal sense at least, does not completely fall into the trap of racial ideology, because it emphasizes self-identification, ancestral connection and involvement and acceptance by the community over mere calculations of “blood.” That is not to say this definition is perfect. For one, it allows some Métis, that is, the provincial bodies (Adams would likely refer to them as the “Indigenous elites”), to determine individual identity, and as a consequence, group identity for all. For this reason, or because they might hold citizenship with a different Indigenous Nation (and, within Canada’s rules, you can hold citizenship with only one Nation) many Métis peoples do not hold citizenship with provincial registries. Others, for example, look at traditional practices for inclusion or consider their relations with other Métis to be what really ties them to their identity as Métis. However, the provincial registry does take a step away from framing Indigenous identity in purely racial terms. Therefore we can look at the Métis experience and see progress but not an end result.

Just what an end result would look like—that is, how we as Indigenous peoples want to define our Indigeneity—is not clear. What is clear is that when we do frame Indigeneity in the narrow way imposed on us by colonialism, we advance its goals by putting forth the image of ourselves as no more than stereotypical caricatures fit to be dominated by a people more complex and worthy of a continuing culture. Still, both appearance and ancestry are not irrelevant to people’s experiences of their cultural identity. My white appearance, for instance, has sometimes afforded me privilege. Such as when I was looking to rent and more than one landlord told me “we’re only looking for white tenants” or “we won’t rent to Indians.” Here my ability to hide my status as an Indigenous person was beneficial. As well, “blood,” if it is understood as parentage, is not irrelevant either. In fact, finding out who a person’s parents or grandparents are is often how we locate people in our community. We must acknowledge these factors, but not look at them in isolation. No people are defined by the amount of melanin in their skin and being Métis is about much more than who your parents are. It is about jigging and fiddling, it’s about dishes like neckbones and bannock. It’s about beading and sashes—we are a people, not a race.

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