Researching Your Aboriginal Ancestry at Library and Archives Canada

Part I: Researching Your Aboriginal Genealogy at Library and Archives Canada

Métis

Group photograph of Métis and Indian prisoners from the North West Rebellion, Regina, Saskatchewan, 1885. Photographer: O.B. Buell. Library and Archives Canada, C-006688B.

The Métis are people of mixed First Nation and European ancestry who identify themselves as Métis as distinct from First Nations people, Inuit or non-aboriginal people. In the 1870s, the federal government acknowledged de facto responsibility for the Métis by passing legislation affecting them and by creating a system for ending their "Indian title" by means of compensation with Métis scrip. Records and genealogical information relating to Métis people can be found in the Department of the Interior fonds (RG 15) and to some extent in the Indian and Inuit Affairs Program sous-fonds (in RG 10). Some records in the Department of Justice fonds (RG 13) provide accounts of the 1870s and 1880s in Manitoba and the unrest that prevailed between the Métis population and the Canadian government.