Metissage

The term "Metissage" is used to refer to the process of creating a new ethnicity based on the coming together of two other ethnicities, specifically used for the creation of the Metis people in Western Canada. It is usually used to refer to the mix of French Canadian and Ojibwa or Cree, but historians have shown that it also includes individuals from the "Scottish Half-breeds" (descendants of the Hudson's Bay Company employees), and much earlier French Canadian family formation with the daughters of eastern Algonquin and Great Lakes peoples. (See Jacqueline Peterson's thesis: Peterson, Jacqueline. "The People In Between: Indian-White Marriage and the Genesis of a Metis Society and Culture in the Great Lakes Region, 1680-1830." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, 1981.)

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