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Title: |
The Metis in the Canadian West |
| Sub-title: |
Volume I |
Search Result:
| By (author): |
Marcel Giraud Translated by: George Woodcock |
| ISBN10-13: |
0888640994 : 9780888640994 |
| Format: |
Hardback |
| Pages: |
656 |
| Weight: |
1.070 Kg. |
| Published: |
The University of Alberta Press - January 1986 |
| List Price: |
53.99 Pounds Sterling |
| Availability: |
Out of Print
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| Subjects: |
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| Marcel Giraud's study of the social history of the Métis of western Canada portrays the birth of the Métis as a distinct group, defines the roles they played in the history of the fur trade era in the North West, and examines the decline of the Métis in the late 1800s. Giraud uses his own personal observations of the economic and social position of the Métis in the 1930s to conclude his study. With the arrival of the missionaries in the early 1800s and the ending of hostilities in the colony of Assiniboia, the Métis group embarked on a new phase of their history which continued until the incorporation of the West into the Canadian confederation. In volume II, Giraud examines this period of maturity in which the dominant feature was the establishment of a way of life that clearly separated the Métis from the white. These were also years of differentiation between the Métis of the West, who dwelt outside the nucleus of civilization established on the Red River, and the Métis of Red River, who gradually appeared as a more privileged group. The later half of the nineteenth century saw the disintegration of Métis society largely as a result of the extermination of the bison herds. The Métis had to abandon the nomadic life and adapt to farming. The insurrections of 1869-70 and 1885 led to the decline of the Métis to a marginal group in a predominantly white society. In the final chapter, Giraud looks at the Métis place in that society in the twentieth century. French historian Marcel Giraud became interested in the history of the Métis while he was on a Rockefeller scholarship that took him to the western provinces of Canada in the early 1930s. Looking for an original subject for a doctoral dissertation, Giraud spent a great deal of time visiting Métis communities and began researching historical documents preserved in Canadian archives. He continued his research at the Hudson's Bay Company's archives, which were then in London. He returned to Paris shortly after the beginning of the Second World War and throughout the German occupation of France he devoted himself to the writing of Le Métis canadien. In 1945 Giraud completed his work on the Métis which earned him his doctorate. Shortly after the publication of Le Métis canadien in 1945 by the University of Paris's Institute of Ethnology, Giraud was offered the chair of North American history at the prestigious Collège de France. Soon thereafter, he turned his attention to the French colony in Louisiana. The first volume of his monumental work Histoire de la Louisiane française was published in 1953. About the translator George Woodcock is a noted Canadian scholar and author of Gabriel Dumont, the biography of the famous Métis leader, as well as of more than fifty other volumes of biography, history, criticism, and poetry. He has taught at the Universities of Washington and British Columbia, and edited Canadian Literature-which he founded-from 1959 to 1977. |
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