DCHP-2

Road Allowance People road allowance people DCHP-2 (July 2016)

• n. — historical, derogatory, offensive

  Métis people in the Prairies.

  Type: 1. Origin — After the Riel Resistances in Manitoba in 1869 and Saskatchewan in 1885, most Métis became landless. They were reduced to living illegally on the road allowances throughout western and northern Canada, strips of land that are retained by the government to allow for the later expansion or construction of roads.

  See also: road allowance (meaning 1)  Métis    country-born (meaning 1)  

  • The term is included for reasons of historical accuracy and completeness. It is not intended, as clearly indicated in the usage labels "derogatory" and "offensive", as a term for current use or a term, meaning or usage that is in any way condoned.

  • 1985  The film, to be made in Saskatchewan next spring, is set from 1860 to 1885 and deals with the settlement of the Red River colony when Metis women, accustomed to the attention of the settlement's men, were shunted aside in favor of white women from England. The third part, called Little Women, takes place in the 1930s and focuses on what were called road allowance people, usually Metis who had no land titles or reserves to go to and were forced to live as squatters, often on allowances set out on each side of the road. 
  • 1992  Their land long ago grabbed by the government for settlers, and dust still settling from the 1885 Louis Riel Rebellion, the Metis lived in poverty. "Whites called us the road allowance people. And Indians called us the wagon people . . . we were also called skunk eaters . . . it was pretty derogatory." Unlike Indians, the Metis were not granted treaty rights, leaving them with inadequate compensation and without a land base. 
  • 2000  After the Metis defeat at Batoche, the dispossessed "road allowance people" spent a century at the outer fringes of Saskatchewan society. That marginalization is now ending. 
  • 2009  Chartier testified at length about his organization's evolving definition of what it means to be part of the Metis Nation."It's a way of life, a culture,'' he said. "It's more than being mixed ancestrally.'' He went on to testify how not only have Metis been historically transient but also described those who were resettled in the last 100 years as "road allowance people'' who would squat on available lands. 
  • 2013  If you haven’t heard of the Road Allowance People, I urge you to ask your library or bookstore to order Jacqueline Guest’s new book, Outcasts of River Falls. The Road Allowance People were the Métis, who, without a homeland, were forced to build homes and communities on the crown land known as “road allowance” land set aside for a highway. They lived a precarious existence, welcome neither in white settlements nor allowed to live on Treaty land. The Crown land, of course, could be appropriated or developed at any time; people were often burned out of their homes or otherwise forced to move.