That is factually incorrect.
The Métis are a recognized band in Canada, and you need to provide proof to be a part of it. It seems like you are using the word Métis to mean “mixed” or “biracial” and that is not what Métis means, yes that is the original etymology of the word but it doesn’t mean that now, not since the early 20th century. The Métis are their own band with their own history, their own culture, and their own identity, and to be officially Métis in Canada you need to have proof.
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This is the line I’m going to use when I come across someone who claims they are the victim in the way this thread has covered: “So you’re a victim here too then.” Or if called for: “So you’re the real victim here.”
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I don’t really care what I am called, but who I am and what my ethnicity is is not up for debate with the government of Canada, I don’t live there. Ethnicity is not a club. It is a complete double standard with regards to how most of the rest of the world handles racial and ethnic identity. People fuss at me about official tribal membership, yet nobody who does this ever has a membership card for whatever their own heritage supposedly is. Like I asked before, does anybody pester Euros for “proof” of their ancestry? It feels like a huge institutional framework dedicated to denying my very existence.
Even knowing what tribes my lineage can be traced from will not do anything to root me in the traditions of those tribes. I would still be a free agent. Maybe I will start my own tribe, there’s a scary thought. XD
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Only when we want to get passports to the UK because thats where our Mothers were born. So, yes?
(Also its pretty tricky for us whities to talk about our “heritage” per se, cuz uh, there are some really nasty people out there like to yell about “white” & “heritage” and I really don’t want to be associated with them, at all.)
Edit to add: I’m not actually complaining about not being able to talk about my “heritage” - my family is from Bow Road, LOL we don’t have one. 
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It’s pretty acceptable if you go nation-specific. I’ve lived in towns outside of Scotland with a higher proportion of Scots than many in Scotland.
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I recommend FamilyTreeDNA’s FamilyFinder test for you. It’s the site with the fewest total testers, but something like 75% of them are Jewish and most have significant genealogical work already done. I think there might be a sale on, even.
Not the haplogroup testing (that’s very distant heritage, from thousands to tens-of-thousands of years ago) unless you are curious.
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I’ll pass it onto my dad; he’s got all of the notes, research and such. Thanks!
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Yeah, actually, it’s always best to test the oldest generation you can. Although, if your mom is still alive, have her test too, because half of your ancestors are on that side.
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And now I do.
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My family (as many in America) made the claim based on family rumor until we examined it and no longer make that claim.
Why it’s a more common lie: the American myth. Many Americans choose to accept the identity/ethnicity because it gives them a story, an authentic claim/tie to be truly “American”.
It’s not exclusive to Native populations either, others may adopt a different story of American struggle-
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None of that really explains one’s physiology. Believe it or not there are physical traits associated with various ethnic groups, which make it more than a matter of abstract identity. It is often (but not always) not very difficult to roughly estimate where people are from based upon their appearance. I seriously doubt if that is news to anyone here.
Whether or not people want to “adopt” an ethnicity does not explain away that they can be said to have an ethnicity regardless. A person doesn’t become a chunk of sculpey because you don’t know where they are from, they are still from somewhere. People more often “adopt” the other way, as trying to pass for a non-minority group for perceived advantages, as some in my family had done.
Anyway, I still don’t appreciate being subject to double standards of ethnic “proof”. Nobody ever offers me any evidence of their family lineage, and I don’t ask for it. I did date somebody for a year or so who was adopted and was inexplicably certain that they were Irish. They looked like they might have been but I never had any reason to challenge them on it. Since people are often proud of their heritage, anyone could say that one is only claiming it to feel good about themselves.
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Do I seem neurotypical? I think I fake it okay, but it’s hard to tell. I’m not sure I’d call being irritated sometimes the same thing as obsessively determined to find offense, but maybe it’s so.
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You can ask any of us for any proof you want. Especially if after years of interaction one of us suddenly claims to be a part of a specific ethnic group, one they’ve never mentioned before. If I suddenly claim to be anything other than white anglo saxon of English extraction by way of Canada, feel free to ask me for any and all proof you require!
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To be fair, he had mentioned it before, quite a while ago though. I think he stopped mentioning it for a time because he discovered that I know a lot more than he does on the subject! (As do you, and a couple of other regular posters.)
The reason it’s an issue here is because you don’t get to claim “oh, I’m biracial (because somewhere back in the sands of time my family says there was a mixed race Native ancestor or two) so I can use derogatory terms against blacks and pretend I’ve never heard about the problem” and everyone will just accept it. THAT’S when you start to get blowback.
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Ah! I did not see that! But yes, you are correct! I also object to the use of the Métis band name to seemingly mean “mixed” (yes I know the origin of the word) - as is often the case in our conversations here, words have specific meanings and one should not use them to mean other things. 
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I hope you aren’t praising Canada for it’s recognition of indigenous people or indigenous heritage. Our supreme court did say the government has to recognize Métis as “Indians” under the Indian Act but that’s a complicated legal issue and it only happened this past April. The scrutiny of indigenous people you are talking about in America is very much present in Canada.
I hope that other people in the thread who can understand why it is bad to call a black person “articulate” can understand that it offensive to subject indigenous people to this kind of scrutiny. When you are indigenous your ethnicity is considered up for discussion all the times. That has a lot to do with the legal framework that indigenous people find themselves in which is itself a product of mistreatment of indigenous people for centuries. This came up in that other thread about art being labelled as made by indigenous people.
Here’s a quotation from a helpful guide from Australia:
This is called the ‘three-part’ definition of Aboriginal identity and was soon adopted by all Commonwealth departments [2].
If you were to define your Aboriginality you could answer these three questions as follows [39]:
Descent: “I am a descendant of the Ngunnawal Nation from the South Slopes and Southern Tablelands of NSW”.
Identification: “I am an Aboriginal person and a proud descendent of the Biripi people of Taree and I proudly identify as an Aboriginal person”.
Community: “I am known as an Aboriginal person within the Aboriginal community of Yass, where my father was born and in the Chippendale/Redfern areas of Sydney where I grew up and in Earlwood where I now live”.
Variations of this definition were used later by legislative and government bodies. Many Aboriginal persons carry ‘certificates’ from Indigenous organisations which state their Aboriginality.
However, the fact remains that a white authority defines who is an Aboriginal person.
Okay, I see what you mean. Earlier I said that I ought to be more careful to not imply by my words that there are only white people and black people in America. Often when discussions of race come up that’s how they are portrayed - when it’s racism against black people there are white people and black people. When it’s racism against indigenous people there are white people and indigenous people. I can understand how and why that happens, but it’s obviously problematic (especially with a growing population of children of black and indigenous parents in my area).
I’m sure that some people would take a kind of back-handed race-specific “complement” like “articulate” differently from an indigenous person than from a white person, but then others wouldn’t. I think it’s safest to assume that if white people ought not say a black person is X then you can extend “white” to “non-black” (and the same with white people saying X about indigenous people).
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Pretty much.
When you use your identity as a specific point to stating immunity from questionable speech in an argument, persons are going to get head-scratchy when you’ve also stated that you have never and will never verify the validity of the family narrative.
It’s not questioning the ethnicity, it’s questioning the “authority” by which popo is claiming. Not that being one ethnicity prevents passive to active disdain for another, or using problematic phrases certainly.
Or, instead one could lose the naïf act and strive to avoid these loaded phrases with an “Oh! That makes sense.” without rushing immediately to find an excuse, I guess.
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Just wanna say that the direction this thread took from its inception is highly amusing to me.
That is all.
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It is inevitable that the title would call upon a certain performance of identity.
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That I “stopped” mentioning it suggests that it would be a relevant thing to continue discussing. The real deal is that there should be no reason to state it to the same people again. (like how everybody here has started referring to me as “he” recently) We never discussed it in any detail so I am not clear how we “know” what each other know. I think that making ethnicity into a contest sounds vaguely adversarial.
You (and others) are disregarding WHY some may think of the term as derogatory, which is the institutional oppression by Euro-colonial culture. That’s why I wanted to open up a discussion of what sort of consensus there was about language and stereotypes amongst others. To what extent are dealings between two ethnicities subject to the stereotypes foisted upon them by a third? And all that resulted was an epic trainwreck of personal insults, accusations, and “advice” which refused to accept a question about consensus at face value. The question was informed by my experience, but it wasn’t about me.
@anon50609448 was the first and so far only person to actually consider the question and offer a considered reply instead of lashing out with reactionary weirdness. For which I am grateful.
People are often of two minds about this. Of course words do have specific meanings, but they also have multiple meanings. Many who are eager to remind that words have multiple meanings contradict this by asserting that newer meanings invalidate older ones. I see them as not replacing, but accumulative. For example a meaning with 500 years of use is more established, has more precedent than a meaning of only 20 years does.
But I did not state or mean any such thing. Which is again why I am getting tired of your remarks. I don’t need you to tell me (or others) what I am stating. I certainly hope that you aren’t in journalism, because you don’t parse what people say very closely. If you think I meant something, then you are entitled to say so - but not to change what I said. I hope that you can appreciate why that comes off as dishonest. There is plenty wrong with what I actually say without you needing to make anything up.
How egalitarian… I was not claiming any “authority”. You still appear to be laboring under the misapprehension that I am seeking immunity, to excuse myself of something. Which suggests to me that you have been putting more effort into soapboxing than reading attentively.
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