Cheryl Troupe

Mapping Métis history and cultural heritage through women's work.

Centring kinship and the strength of women, Putting Down Roots reframes Métis road allowance communities as sites of profound resistance and resilience, restoring Métis life in places, times, and scholarship where it has been obscured by settler narratives. These communities were not peripheral spaces where Métis lived as squatters, but places where families culturally thrived by visiting each other, telling stories, sharing food, and providing mutual aid. With stories of Métis li vyeu (Elders) as its foundation, this innovative study reveals the agency embedded in the everyday actions of women's work, which sustained Métis identity, family systems, and relationships to land.

Cheryl Troupe charts a century of Métis presence and persistence in the Qu'Appelle Valley, from the end of the buffalo hunt in the 1850s, through displacement following the northwest resistances, resettlement on fringe Crown lands, ongoing political activism and opposition to Canadian land-use practices, and finally the dissolution of the road allowance community along Katepwa Lake in the 1950s. Focusing on female kinship relationships and food production, Putting Down Roots illuminates the ways women created the stability necessary to adapt to the rapidly changing economic, social, and political conditions that defined this period of Canadian history.

Troupe's sophisticated use of oral histories, archival sources, genealogies, photographs, and deep mapping links people and their stories to the spaces that are important to them. Adding a new dimension to the study of Métis history, Putting Down Roots brings to life the tremendous cultural strength that characterized Métis road allowance communities.

Reviews
"Engaging and well-documented, Putting Down Roots details the economic production of Métis women and should serve to permanently dispel the trope that Métis men were the dominant breadwinners in their society. Compelling anecdotes provided through the collected oral histories clearly delineate the major role of Métis women in family and community formation."— Heather Devine

Educator Information
Table of Contents
List of Tables
List of Figures
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. “Down there in the Valley”: Introducing Bob and Margaret
Chapter 2. Daughters of the Country: Women’s Labour in the Métis World
Chapter 3. Petitioning for Rights and Taking up Agriculture
Chapter 4. Asserting Sovereignty to Secure Land
Chapter 5. Securing Land Tenure: The North-West Half-Breed Scrip Commission and Homesteading
Chapter 6. “We Got Our House Built by Seneca Roots”: Life on the Road Allowance
Chapter 7. Going Hunting Rabbits: Women’s Labour in Feeding the Family
Chapter 8. Contesting Government Intervention into Harvesting Spaces
Chapter 9. “This is a Michif Road”: Métis Labour and Relief
Conclusion
Bibliography
Notes

Additional Information
408 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | 29 b&w illustrations, 10 b&w tables, 14 maps, index, bibliography | Paperback