When the Manitoba Act of 1870 created the new Province of Manitoba within the Dominion of Canada, it was predominantly a Métis province, yet within a matter of years, the Métis were a dispossessed, displaced, and dispersed people. Weinstein traces Métis aspirations for political autonomy as a unique nation with its own land base in the Canadian federation from the time of Louis Riel until the Kelowna Accord of 2005. He concentrates - in great detail and with deft accounts - on the political maneuvering and constitutional wrangling of the last three decades, cataloguing the contributions and disappointments of colourful Métis leaders. And he provides detailed reviews of legal cases relevant to long-standing Métis claims to land and other rights.

Such rights he places within the context of the world-wide movement among indigenous peoples for greater political autonomy, such as in Central America, and he ends his account with the prospects for self government among the Métis and the forms that such a government might take, given the dispersal of the Métis across Canada. Although the Métis have been recognized in the Constitution as one of the three groups of Aboriginal peoples in Canada, they remain the landless subjects of the Canadian government, and for this reason Quiet Revolution West is a timely account of resistance.