Metis and the Medicine Line: Creating a Border and Dividing a People

David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History

by Michel Hogue

Born of encounters between Indigenous women and Euro-American men in the first decades of the nineteenth century, the Plains Metis people occupied contentious geographic and cultural spaces. Living in a disputed area of the northern Plains inhabited by various Indigenous nations and claimed by both the United States and Great Britain, the Metis emerged as a people with distinctive styles of speech, dress, and religious practice, and occupational identities forged in the intense rivalries of the fur and provisions trade. Michel Hogue explores how, as fur trade societies waned and as state officials looked to establish clear lines separating the United States from Canada and Indians from non-Indians, these communities of mixed Indigenous and European ancestry were profoundly affected by the efforts of nation-states to divide and absorb the North American West.

Grounded in extensive research in U.S. and Canadian archives, Hogue's account recenters historical discussions that have typically been confined within national boundaries and illuminates how Plains Indigenous peoples like the Metis were at the center of both the unexpected accommodations and the hidden history of violence that made the "world's longest undefended border."

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Indigenous, Canada

344 pages, Paperback

First published April 6, 2015

Reviews

[MargaretDH · Rating 4 out of 5]

This monograph argues that the presence and activities of the Metis in the Canadian-American borderlands helped to delineate and describe the border itself. He goes on to argue that the Metis, the descendants of European fur traders and Indigenous women, interacted with federal officials and Indigenous tribes on both sides of the border in an attempt to establish legal recognition of themselves.

This is fairly readable, though not the place to start if you're interested in Metis history. This is mostly about legal and policy 'solutions' to the Metis 'problem,' as well as the ways in which they were sometimes seen as intermediaries. But if that's what you're after, it's an interesting look at the way those engaged in nation-building used this group to further their own ends.

[Alex Milton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michel Hogue’s Metis and the Medicine Line: Creating a Border and Dividing a People focuses on the transformation of Metis people in the United States and Canada through the enforcement of a physical border. Through the extensive analysis of news publications, Hogue argues that the solidification of a border cutting across the lands occupied by Plains Metis people introduced challenges to cultural connection and identity through limitations on movement and differing concepts of race. While Plains Metis people gained tribal recognition in Canada, concepts of race based on blood quantums challenged tribal sovereignty of Plains Metis people who defended from the intermarriage of Native American and colonial French people. Despite significant attempts by the United States to regulate the movement on its border with Canada, Hogue asserts that Metis people continued to traverse the border, profiting from smuggling firearms and alcohol. However, border solidification introduced complications for traditionally-nomadic Plains Metis people in traveling with Bison herds. He concludes that United States definitions of race stifled Metis people from maintaining community south of the border.

[Sylvain Norget · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an excellent resource clearly well researched and informative. I dont really understand the title as there is little information about the spiritual practices, the book is more about the migratory practices and how that changed with the decline of Buffalo population. Perhaps the author infers our medicine line was broken in the subsequent dismantling of our way of life. Regardless this book is an important one on the subject of how the colonialism created separation and systematically forced the hands of its subjects to amalgamate into a foreign way of living. How the boarder was solidified by dismantling indigenous people specifically Métis and how a nomadic and semi nomadic people were destroyed by changing governmental systems, how the bloodlines and kin ties within the unique duplicity of the Métis people were stripped as disbanded.

The book is a lot about policy the above is my take.

[John Hansen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well researched history of the Metis people and culture and their struggle to find their niche along the border between Canada and America. For the most part I enjoyed the book although at times I felt the author was overly belaboring points already made. This is an excellent reference concerning the establishment of Indian reservations adjacent to the "Medicine Line" and where the Metis fit in, or not.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this was a great read on the history of the Metis.

I am not a huge history fan, but I still enjoyed it and found it a particularly important read.

Not extremely enthralling, but still a good one.

2.9/5

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

*read for class