Negotiating Life Within the City: Social Geographies and Lived Experiences of Urban Metis Peoples in Ottawa

• Main Author: Dumas, Daniel
• Other Authors: Macdougall, Brenda
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa 2016
• Subjects: Indigenous peoples; Metis; Decolonization; Urban; Canada
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10393/35624; https://doi.org/10.20381/ruor-581

The majority of Indigenous peoples in Canada are now living in urban centres. Following the publication of the Final Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in 1996, academics and policy makers were encouraged to further research the heterogeneous experiences and realities of urban Indigenous peoples living in Canadian cities. This thesis responds to this call and seeks to explore the social geographies and lived experiences of urban Metis peoples, a segment of the urban Indigenous population that has to date been largely left out of the literature. This work relates specifically to Metis living in Ottawa, representing the first study of its kind in eastern Canada. Although Ottawa is not a traditional Metis community and is located outside of the traditional Metis Homeland, the city does represent an important Metis meeting place and space where various understandings of Metis identity from across the country come into contact with one another. The ways in which urban Metis identities are formed and maintained, the movement and strategies Metis peoples utilize to create a sense of place and home, and the ways in which individuals and the community at large come into contact with power at the municipal level are explored at length. Utilizing Henri Lefevbre and Iris Marion Young’s concepts of right to the city and unassimilated otherness, this thesis argues that urban Metis peoples in Ottawa merit greater recognition primarily through the creation of a permanent fixture, such as a Metis house, within the city’s urban landscape.