The Bois-Brûlés of the Outaouais. An ethnocultural study of the Métis of the Gatineau

Michel Bouchard, Sébastien Malette, Guillaume Marcotte

Laval University Press, 2019

The Métis have long been confined to western Canada in the collective imagination.

The issue remains current given some people’s refusal to recognize the historical presence of Métis in Quebec. In Bois-Brûlés, it is proposed that the Métis instead emerge within a diaspora composed of numerous communities spread across the entire territory covered by the fur empires. This study of the Métis community of the Gatineau Valley opens a new chapter of Métis and Quebec historiography by incorporating the Outaouais region.

This book documents the history of a Métis community long obscured, assembling an impressive amount of previously unpublished archival and oral material. By adopting a comparative approach, the three authors combine their expertise in anthropology, legal studies, and history. They thus present the identity experience of the Métis of the Gatineau Valley, from the turn of the 19th century to the present day. Across two centuries of history, Bois-Brûlés urges us to rethink Métis indigeneity in Quebec.