Allyson Stevenson is a Métis scholar and adoptee whose family migrated out of Red River in the 1870s, establishing deep roots in Kinistinio, Saskatchewan/Kisiskâciwan. Dr. Stevenson is an Assistant Professor of Indigenous Studies and the Gabriel Dumont Institute Chair in Métis Studies at the University of Saskatchewan. Her work focuses on Prairie Indigenous diplomacy, the history of decolonizing the care of Métis children in Saskatchewan, and Indigenous women’s political organizing.
Stevenson is the author of Intimate Integration: A History of the Sixties Scoop and the Colonization of Indigenous Kinship (2021). Privileging Indigenous voices and experiences, Intimate Integration documents the rise and fall of North American transracial adoption projects, including the Adopt Indian and Métis Project and the Indian Adoption Project. Stevenson argues that for Indian and Metis children, transracial adoption was seen to ideally mirror the new direction of “integration” so consistent in post-war Indian policy and welfare services. Her book illustrates how the removal of Indigenous children from their families and communities took on increasing political and social urgency, contributing to what we now call the “Sixties Scoop.” To learn more about this work, listen to her interview with Witness to History by the Champlain Society: https://champlainsociety.utpjournals.press/podcast/wty/the-history-of-the-1960s-scoop-of-indigenous-children-in-prairie-canada
In her Gabriel Dumont Institute Chair position, Stevenson is overseeing the research program “Métis Communities in the West: Politics and Place.” This program seeks to generate a comprehensive history of the diverse Métis communities that emerged in Western Canada in the twentieth century and involves the gathering and examining scrip records, homestead records and government documents along with oral histories. She is also now undertaking a new research project that will explore the significance of water to Métis identity and culture, working in collaboration with the Métis community of kah-ministik-ominahkoskahk (Pine Island), otherwise known as Cumberland House.
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Select Recent Publications:
Stevenson, Allyson, “From Rehabilitating Metis Families to Removing Metis Children: The Long Sixties Scoop,” Metis Talks, Rupertsland Centre for Metis Research, 4 November 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLmoArSqKY4
Stevenson, Allyson, and Cheryl Troupe. “‘From Kitchen Tables to Formal Organization: Indigenous Women’s Social and Political Activism in Saskatchewan to 1980.” In Compelled to Act: Histories of Women’s Activism in Western Canada, edited by Sarah Carter and Nanci Langford, 218-52. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2020.
Stevenson, Allyson, “Teaching Canadian History After the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) Active History 10 March, 2020: http://activehistory.ca/2020/03/teaching-canadian-history-after-the-united-nations-declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples-undrip-i/
Stevenson, Allyson D. “Karen B., and Indigenous Girlhood on the Prairies: Disrupting the Images of Indigenous Children in Adoption Advertising in North America.” In Children’s Voices from the Past: New Historical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, edited by Moruzi, Kristine, Nell Musgrove, and Carla Pascoe Leahy, 159–90. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
Stevenson, Allyson, “Selling the Sixties Scoop: Saskatchewan Adopt Indian and Metis Project,
Active History 19 October 2017, http://activehistory.ca/2018/08/activehistory-ca-repost-selling-the-sixties-scoop-saskatchewans-adopt-indian-and-metis-project/
Stevenson, Allyson. “The Adoption of Frances T: Blood, Belonging, and Aboriginal Transracial Adoption in Twentieth-Century Canada.” Canadian Journal of History 50, no.3 (2015): 469-491.
Stevenson, Allyson. “Vibrations Across a Continent: The 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, and the Politicization of First Nations leaders in Saskatchewan.” American Indian Quarterly 37, no. 1- 2 (2013): 218-36.