Executive summary
This report has as a research objective to determine if a mixed-ancestry community existed on the territory claimed by the Wabun Tribal Council anytime before 1906. If such a mixed-ancestry community is found to have existed, its characteristics are to be described.
The research uses an interactionist definition of ethnicity, attributed to anthropologist Fredrik Barth and widely accepted in the field of anthropology. This framework uses ethnic categories as defined by the users themselves, rather than defining ethnicity based on genealogical attributes or on lists of cultural traits. The research has attempted to retrieve ethnic categories that were used by the people of the appropriate time and place by analyzing the terminology they employed. A total of 120 primary documents were analyzed, written by a variety of observers: fur trade employees, members of the clergy, Anishnabe residents, surveyors, settlers, sport hunters and tourists, and dominion government civil servants. They span from 1794 to 1906.
No evidence of a mixed-ancestry community was found in the documentation examined. Rather, people interacted consistently either as Anishnabe (“Indian”, “sauvage”) or Euro-Canadian (“White”, settler, Englishman, Canadian) throughout the research period. Certain mixed-ancestry individuals existed within the research area but were considered to have been socially Anishnabe or Euro-Canadian. This is apparent from the way these individuals self-identified or were identified by others. Integration into Anishnabe society is by far the most visible outcome.
There are minimal occurrences of the expression “halfbreed” in historical sources. When the expression was used, it designated individuals rather than a distinct, ethnic entity. The expression was used increasingly at the end of the nineteenth century and appears to have been used arbitrarily by some outside observers based on traits that they considered less typically “Indian”, such as growing potatoes, farming or living in log huts. There is no evidence that the people so designated thought of themselves as any less “Indian” when adopting those traits. On the contrary, there is evidence showing that some people designated in this way self-identified as “Indians”.
The expression “halfbreed” is also sometimes used in Dominion government documentation, in the context of correspondence regarding membership in the Timiskaming band. When contextualized, that usage is shown to correspond to discussions attempting to determine if a given person had Indian status or not. In this context, the expression “halfbreed” corresponds to the contemporary expressions of non-status Indian.
The 1901 census was contextualized, and the instructions were analyzed. These explain what interpretations can correctly be drawn from the census returns. Moreover, the computations taken from the 1901 census were compared to other demographic observations made in other historical sources for the same period and the same area. The comparison shows that the people who were enumerated as “Red” of various “breeds” in the 1901 census were systematically designated as “Indians” in other demographic listings.