ABSTRACT
Archaeologists have used various methods to characterize past identities through material patterns. Under these models, the Métis of Canada have often been categorized as a mixed, hybrid ethnic group, based largely on racialized understandings of the early encounters between Indigenous women and European men. In this chapter, I discuss how archaeological uses of hybridity and creolization have influenced past archaeological research on Indigenous-colonial interaction, thereby enforcing the colonial idea that Métis identity is defined only through a racialized understanding of our mixedness. This framing poses a danger to Métis sovereignty, as increasing numbers of Canadians with one distant First Nations ancestor are now claiming Métis identity. Here, I develop a framework based on relationality to weave different threads of history and archaeology together, building on a Métis ontology to center geography, mobility, economy, and daily life grounded in Métis kinship to unsettle colonial characterizations of identity. Using examples from my research, I present a framework to conceptualize the spatial and material patterns of the archaeological record of the Métis as representative of an emergent Métis worldview and centering a Métis way of knowing.
