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Métis Foodways

Métis

Indigenous

⚠ A PEOPLE THE FUR TRADE CREATED, WITH THEIR OWN LANGUAGE AND THEIR OWN FOOD. The Métis emerged from unions of Cree, Anishinaabe and Saulteaux women with French and Scottish traders around the Red River and across the Northwest, and are a distinct Indigenous people — not "mixed" as a category but a nation. MICHIF, their language, is famously a mixed one: French nouns with Cree verbs, and the registry holds it. The food is likewise both and neither: PEMMICAN, which the Métis produced at scale and traded as the fuel of the entire fur trade; the buffalo hunt with its captains and its rules; BOULETTES, meatball soup; LI RUBABOO, the stew; BANNOCK (li galet); tourtière alongside dried meat; boiled berries and saskatoon; and the fiddle at the meal. ⚠ THE COLLAPSE OF THE BUFFALO ENDED THE ECONOMY, and the dispossession that followed Red River and Batoche is why Métis foodways were pushed underground for generations.

Atlas — where and when

Where in the world

Communities and languages

  • Métis community documented

Languages: Heritage Michif, Plains Cree, French

What is recorded

  • The Métis are recorded as a distinct Indigenous people who emerged from the fur trade, not as a category of mixed ancestry. Michif, their language, is documented as a mixed language combining French noun phrases with Cree verbal structure. Métis production of pemmican at scale is documented as having supplied the fur trade, and the collapse of the buffalo is documented as having ended that economy. documented
  • The Métis emerge as a distinct people around Red River, producing pemmican at scale for the fur trade and speaking Michif. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

  • related to First Nations Foodways documented

    The Métis emerged from unions of Cree, Anishinaabe and Saulteaux women with French and Scottish traders; Michif is French nouns with Cree verbs.

  • related to French documented

Recipes

No recipes are filed under this cuisine yet.