Métis in Alberta

Métis in Alberta are Métis people, descendants of mixed First Nations/native Indian and White/European families, who live in the Canadian province of Alberta. The Métis are considered an aboriginal group under Canada's constitution but are in some respects separate from the First Nations (though they live in the same regions and have cultural similarities), and have different legal rights. In Alberta, unlike in the rest of Canada, Métis people have negotiated certain lands to be reserved for them, known as Métis Settlements (Metis Betterment Act 1938). These Metis Settlements Federated in 1975 and are governed by a distinct and unquie Metis Government known as the Metis Settlements General Council (MSGC). The Metis Settlements General Council is the legislator of the Federation of Metis Settlements. MSGC is the second largest land owner in the Province of Alberta.

Métis history in Alberta begins with the Fur Trade in North America. The Métis were created as a people by the interactions of White fur trading agents with First Nations communities. Métis populations grew up around fur trading posts of the North-West and Hudson's Bay companies. For example, Fort Edmonton spawned a large Métis population that was involved in an annual buffalo hunt for many years. These Métis helped to establish the nearby settlements of Lac Ste Anne (1844),St. Albert (1861),Lac la Biche (1853), and St. Paul de Métis. The Hudson's Bay Company's claim in the west (called Rupert's Land) was sold to Canada in 1869 and its legal monopoly on the fur trade (not enforced since the trail of Métis trapper Guillaume Sayer in 1849) was officially ended in 1870. On the one hand this was an economic boom to the Métis as it opened the fur and buffalo meat trades to private Métis traders; however, it also exposed them to a flood of White European and Canadian people into their traditional homelands. Other Métis living further east in what later became Manitoba and Saskatchewan took up arms against the Canadian government in the two failed (or "Riel Resistance", 1870 and 1885) in attempt to assert their rights in the face of the newcomers. The end of these rebellions combined with the collapse of the fur and buffalo meat industries forced many Albertan Métis off their lands and reduced them to poverty. On the whole, the Métis cultures and communities survived, with farming replacing bison hunting and fur trading as the main economic activity in the Parkland Belt, though trapping and hunting have remained very important in the Rocky Mountain and Boreal Forest regions. More urban Metis who live in close proximity to other cultural groups may have intermarried and assimilated into mainstream Albertan society to the point that their descendants no longer think of themselves as Métis. However, in much of Northern Alberta, the Métis in more remote rural and isolated communities have remained culturally distinct. Many of the Metis Settlements have retained their unique cultural heritage and history.

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