Twenty-first International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

The Indigenous Peoples of Canada have been separated by the Government of Canada into three distinct classifications—First Nations, Inuit, and the Métis. Unlike the First Nations and the Inuit, the Métis were not legally or politically considered Indigenous until 2016. The Supreme Court of Canada commented that Métis and Non-Status peoples have been subjected to a “jurisdictional wasteland.” By examining Métis subjectivity within a constellation of contexts—the representational corporeality of Louis Riel, the plurality of the diaspora and nationhood of the Métis experience, and the trope of the Métis body as a bridge between cultures—these spaces of tension reveal the Métis as Sophie McCall asserts “belonging in more than one place, time, memory, and body.”