This website is a resource for people who are concerned with or want to find out more about the rise of the so-called “Eastern Metis” in the eastern provinces (Ontario, Québec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia) and in New England (Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine). The actual Métis are a western-based Indigenous people whose culture grew out of kinship relations with the Plains Cree, Saulteaux, Assiniboine, and Dene. The so-called “Eastern Metis” are instead an example of what is referred to as race-shifting or self-indigenization, a process that, in the case of this research project, involves white French-descendants inventing and claiming an “Indigenous” identity, often in opposition to actual Indigenous peoples.

The website includes a “storymap” that features a GIS map of all of the organizations surveyed through our project (about 75). All of the organizations are involved or have been involved in the race shifting movement, mostly since 2000. The map also includes information for all of the “Eastern Métis” court cases (almost 60) filed in Québec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia that we have identified.

The website also includes all of the publicly-available court documents (expert reports, testimony, interviews, membership records) that have been submitted in several of the key “Eastern Métis” court cases in Québec.

Much of the material is analyzed in Darryl Leroux’s book Distorted Descent: White Claims to Indigenous Identity, which will be available by mid-September 2019.