DCHP-3

half-breed

Colonialism, Offensive, Derogatory
DCHP-3.1 (Sep 2025)

Spelling variants:
half-breed, "half-breed", "Half breeds", halfbreed

This term and def. 1 and def. 2 are no longer acceptable usage. Do not use.
1n. — Extremely offensive

a person of mixed Indigenous and European ancestry.

Type: 6. Memorial — This term is a residue of Canada's colonial past and offensive. In COD-1 and COD-2, it is defined as "a person of mixed race," and labelled as "offensive." Additionally, in COD-1 and COD-2, the term is listed as meaning 3 in s.v. "half-blood", and is defined as "= HALF BREED." In Gage-3, the term is listed as meaning 1 of s.v. "half-blood" but not listed in Gage-5.

In DARE, s.v. "breed (n.)" is defined as "a person of American Indian and White parentage", first attested in 1892. In DA, s.v. "half-breed", the term is defined as "A half-blood, esp. the offspring of a white father and an Indian mother". In OED-3, "half-breed' is dated to 1732.

In Canada, the term has been in use at least from the 18th century to the early 1960s (see the 1775 and 1962 quotations) as a term whose negative implications were disregarded. In the 1960s and 1970s, Indigenous authors began to attack the term directly in writing, e.g. Maria Campbell's 1973 book by that name (see the 2023 quotation and Campbell 2025 [1973])). When used today, it generally occurs in quotation marks as a historical term (e.g. the 1989 quotation). [Though, there have been instances of the term having neutral usage (she the 1985 quotation).]
See: Metis,country-born(meaning 1)

Quotations

1775
... when the Buck, a native of Nuquose-town, died, none of the warriors would help to bury him, because of the dangerous pollution, they imagined they should necessarily contract from such a white corpse; as he was begotten by a white man and a half-breed Cheerake [sic] woman -- and as the women are only allowed to mourn for the death of a warrior, they could not assist in this friendly duty.
1815
Article of Agreement entered into between the Half-Breed Indians of the Indian Territory on the one part and the Honorable Hudson's Bay Company on the other. . . .
1862
In this country, in fact, the name applies to all who have Indian blood in greater or less degree. This is the general acception of the term, and, in this sense nine-tenths or more of the civilised people of Rupert's Land are "Half breeds."
1882
The conversation drifted upon the subject of half-breeds.
1903
I am married to a half-breed and have three ornery looking, copper-colored brats.
1939
In earlier days they had handled the situation by contracting a so-called country marriage . . . marrying their half-breed daughters to dog-runners or hunters.
1962
"Ari-stock-rats," sometimes "moccasin aristocracy," is a term used to designate the half-breeds (or Metis) which they prefer being called.
1973
The term "Country-born" offers a solution to this problem in terminology. Originating among the British-born residents of Red River, possibly as a polite affectation, the term is not entirely satisfactory as its use suggests social class connotations. Apparently the term had particular reference to the mixed-blood children of British-born officers. Nevertheless, as the term defines a community distinct from the Métis, as it would have been recognized and understood by the community it designated, and as the term avoids the confusion in meaning and the pejorative sense associated with "Halfbreed", "Country-born" appears to be adequate to describe the second mixed-blood community in Red River. "Country-born," in short, signifies the English-speaking mixed bloods of the Red River Settlement.
1985
Earl Danyluk calls himself a half-breed and is proud of it. Although the word would appear to be loaded with racial connotations and left over from a John Wayne movie, it is the way Mr. Danyluk prefers to be identified. "Metis is a new word around here," the 39-year-old explains. "We've always used the word half- breed here on the Coast and that's what we want to be called." Not that being a half-breed has anything to do with Mr. Danyluk's ancestry. As far as he knows, he had no white forebears at all. He is pure James Bay Cree. But in the eyes of the Government, he is no Indian.
1989
(When the Territory of Ungava [...] was given to Quebec as a province of Canada in 1912, its population consisted of 663 Indians, 543 "Eskimos," 46 "half-breeds," 8 "English" and 2 "Scotch." Sir Robert Borden placed the figures in Hansard 1912, at p.6161)
2023
Fifty Years of Halfbreed: How the Memoir Opened Up Indigenous Literature. Maria Campbell’s landmark book remains as captivating and unforgettable as it was on publication
2adj. & n. — Extremely offensive, rare

of Inuit and Indigenous descent.

Type: 1. Origin — This term is a residue of Canada's colonial past. In OED-3, s.v. "half-breed", meaning 1.b., the definition is generalized as "any person or thing having mixed origins or characteristics," regardless of Indigenous ancestry and is dated to 1846. In COD-1 and COD-2, this meaning is generalized as a person of mixed ancestry (see meaning 1).

While also a Memorial term (type 6), the Canadian term predates other attestations.

Quotations

1842
Their number may be on an average, about forty-five souls, of these eight are white men, the remainder half-breed Esquimeaux.
1884
The population consists of fisherman, principally Newfoundlanders, a few French Canadians, Moravian missionaries, Montagnais Indians and Eskimo, and, of course, Indian and Eskimo half-breeds.
1907
She was accompanied by three Indian guides and a young Eskimo half-breed.
1920
In the Home we have only one pure Eskimo, a few half-breeds (Indian and Eskimo), and the remainder are of English descent.
1992
The film, titled Salmonberries, is sure to offend someone. Lang's character is "a half-breed Eskimo tomboy. It's a story of a relationship between these two women. It borders on a love story but it never really consummates," she says.
3n. — Historical, derogatory

a Métis.

Type: 6. Memorial — In OED-3, s.v. "metis" is defined as "A person of mixed descent", with meaning 1.a. labelled as North American, defined as "A person who is descended from parents or ancestors of differing ethnic (or occasionally national) origin; spec. a person of mixed white and North American Indigenous descent. Now derogatory and offensive," see the 2012 quotation.

Note that the 2024 quotation is an example of contemporary usage, in which the term is used in its historical context. Outside of such context, the use of half-breed is, as reflecting racist bias, strongly discouraged.

Quotations

1857
. . . the root which receives the name of the Prairie Turnip by the half-breeds, who, with Indians, use it as food, and sometimes crush it into a kind of flour and make bread from it. The root is very dry and almost tasteless, and even when boiled for a great length of time does not become soft, and is at best but insipid unnutritious trash.
1890
Immense numbers . . . had been annually slaughtered in the great plain hunt of the Red River half-breeds, a system . . . organized early in this century, and continued in full force down to about 1869, after which it began to languish.
1900
Of the many descendants of these people--those "Men of the Movement" who rebelled against civilization under the leadership of Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont--the writer will have something to say later on, when he comes to deal with those much misunderstood episodes, the half-breed rebellions of 1870 and 1885.
1923
Many stories from the lips of other Indians, of catholicized half-breeds from the east . . . may have reached his ears, possibly through the "free hunters" who resorted by the score to the Rocky Mountains even before the time when Thompson, in 1807, first wintered at lake Windermere.
2012
The terms "Métis" and "Half-Breed" are used synonymously throughout this database to refer to those people in western Canada who trace their roots to a shared Aboriginal and European ancestry - an ancestry which at some point would have been enumerated by a Commission with the authority to issue land or money scrip. [...] In keeping with the preferences of the Métis National Council, however, the term "Métis" is used when making a general reference to these people as a separate cultural group.
2024
Born in amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton), Victoria is the seventh generation of a large Métis family whose legacy includes her forefather, John Peter Pruden, an orphan from the UK (born in the borough of Edmonton in London, UK), who came to Canada, married a Cree Iskwew Patasagawis (Nancy Pruden) with whom he had 14 first generation half-breed children in Red River Settlement and Rupertsland.

References