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5/12/2022 0 Comments

​Four Short Stories on Algonquin Enrollment

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A 16th Century Algonquin Ancestor

People who have 1 Algonquin ancestor from the 1600s are 4 centuries or 400 years away from this ancestor. Considering that in each 100 years there are 4 generations of lineage, a person of today is approximately a 16th generation descendant of the said Algonquin ancestor. Furthermore there were 4oo years of intermarriage with other socio-cultural-ethnic-linguist peoples. This points to the reality that although you claim to be Algonquin, you are not. This is reasonable.

The Deep Love of the Brown Brothers

Thomas Brown and Robert Brown were best friends. They did everything together such as play, sing, dance, feast, and hunt. They were so close as brothers that they were married on the same day on July 1, 1779. Thomas Brown married a lovely Irish woman named Beth who became Beth Brown, and Robert Brown married a lovely Algonquin woman named Akik who became Akik Brown. Both marriages resulted in many children both boys and girls. These two families lived in the same town where every subsequent generation also had their own families who carried the Brown surname and many of them continued to live in the same town. The larger family network of cousins remained close and intact where through family folklore and stories the descendants of Thomas and Beth and the decedents of Robert and Akik all claimed that they had an Algonquin ancestor. Yet, only the descendants of Akik Brown were genuine descendants of an Algonquin woman named Brown. This conflation is un-reasonable.

The Creation of Identity Gaps and Traps

All cultures contain a dense tapestry of rituals, dance, language, and foods that sustain them physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Sadly, with the emergence of state nationalism, where nation states destroy the cultural features and inherent deep meaning people need as they move through the world, a gap is created. In its place, state nationalism offers a thin veneer of culture such as a song and a flag. It is precisely because of this gap in deep cultural meaning and identity that too many settler peoples fall into the trap of usurping Algonquin identity.

Performance as an Indigenous Way of Knowing

Performance is a traditional Anishinaabeg way of coming to know and embodying knowledge. Performance is not solely defined as an explicit and consciously constructed story for a stage play. Not at all. Everything we do daily is a performance where the inherent activities and practices of the performance shape who we are and how we think. It is through the repetitive process of performing activities and practices that moves knowledge into our bodies which thus becomes embodied. This embodied knowledge then seeps into our subconscious, seeps into our hearts, and seeps into our dreams where through this embodiment we further become who we think we are. Today there are many settler people who, due to an identity gap created through state nationalism, have mistakenly stepped into administrative and leadership activities and practices of being Algonquin, where consequently they now think and feel and dream that they are genuinely Algonquin when they are not. The power of performance and embodied knowledge in these situations has become the trap many settler people are entangled in so much so that reason fails them.

Author

​© Lynn Gehl, Ph.D. is an Algonquin Anishinaabe-Ikwe from the Ottawa River Valley. She is a member of Pikwàkanàgan First Nation She is a published author of Claiming Anishinaabe: Decolonizing the Human Spirit and The Truth that Wampum Tells: My Debwewin on the Algonquin Land Claims Process.  Her most recent book is titled Gehl v Canada: Challenging Sex Discrimination in the Indian Act. You can reach her and see more of her work at www.lynngehl.com.

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5/4/2022 0 Comments

The Algonquin Land Claim and Pretendians

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​A Meandering Story: Truth, Evidence, and the Lack of Evidence
 
Prior to contact the Anishinaabeg had a traditional practice of learning about people, who they were, and their integrity. Essentially we told each other stories about who we were. We told people our names, who are family members and relatives were, and we told them our clan. This practice provided us with the beginning of what could be or would be a trustworthy relationship. We had this ancient tradition because it spoke to the integrity of the person. In the modern context we now want to know what kind of education and training a person has, what they do for employment, and how they have lived their lives. This is reasonable.
 
The Anishinaabeg tradition has always respected the greatest gift that Creator bestowed humans: our minds and our very ability to reason. Reasoning ability was respected and nurtured in our methods of parenting, teaching, and training. What I mean by this is parents and teachers value that individuals needed to develop their own ability to reason from within their being so much so that our methods of teaching are never didactic. Rather we always left room for the person to think through issues on their own. Respecting and nurturing an individual’s ability to reason was our way.
 
European Enlightenment brought forward the idea and methodology of positivism, that truth is rooted in evidence such as scientific positivism where knowledge and truth is rooted in atoms and molecules, historical positivism where knowledge and truth is rooted in artifacts and archival documents, and legal positivism where knowledge and truth is rooted in evidence.
 
In terms of legal positivism, when there is an absence of evidence judges use their training and minds and reason in their process of making a determination. This is what happened in Gehl v Canada. There was a lack of evidence and the judge reasoned through the community and family context of my father’s existence to determine he was and I was, like his mother, an Indian. This speaks to the need for critical thinking, and appreciation that the lack of evidence must be reasoned through.
 
There is more to consider with the idea that truth is rooted in tangible evidence. Evidence, like truth, is shaped by assumptions about the world such as patriarchy and colonization and thus power where people with more power foremost become the producers of what is evidence. This means that critical thinking is required when considering what is evidence and what is not evidence. For example, people with power can and will create or manufacture evidence according to their own selfish needs. What is more, people with power can and will destroy evidence, and disturbingly some will even work hard to ensure that as they do corrupt things there is no evidence to be found. This speaks to the need for critical thinking, and appreciation that the presence of evidence and the lack of evidence must be reasoned through.
 
As I say this no one should interpret me as saying that judges rooted in colonial law are able to determine truth. Clearly their assumptions are an issue. Most judges cannot come to a genuine and moral truth because Canada’s legal history emerges from the racist and genocidal Doctrine of Discovery. Again power mediates evidence, the lack of evidence, and truth.
 
All this said, no one should interpret that I am suggesting that in the absence of evidence we just accept the person as Indigenous. Not at all because after all the very absence of evidence can itself be manufactured. What is more, when this so-called absence of evidence exists within a broader context where there is the creation of fraudulent archival documents doubt is reasonable. Again, Creator gave us the ability to reason, and Canada’s court system also relies on the ability to reason.
 
The issue with the excuse that a person lacks evidence of who they are as an Indigenous person is limited. Canada began conducting census-taking as early as the year 1666 and it was as early as the year 1765 when Canada began recording if a family was Indigenous. Also, it was in 1871 when Canada began to take census every ten years. Another source is the Jesuit Relations beginning in 1631 through 1673.
 
If you cannot prove you are Algonquin, you should not be enrolled in the land claims process. You should not be shaping the process in a leadership role and you should not be afforded the right or responsibility to vote on the final agreement. Rather, harness your integrity and walk away. When the time comes and the agreement is final you can then submit a community application and that community can rely on their own criteria set to determine if you are to be accepted as a member.
 
This is easy to reason. Creator bestowed you with this skill within your being.

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​© Lynn Gehl, Ph.D. is an Algonquin Anishinaabe-Ikwe from the Ottawa River Valley. She is a member of Pikwàkanàgan First Nation She is a published author of Claiming Anishinaabe: Decolonizing the Human Spirit and The Truth that Wampum Tells: My Debwewin on the Algonquin Land Claims Process.  Her most recent book is titled Gehl v Canada: Challenging Sex Discrimination in the Indian Act. You can reach her and see more of her work at www.lynngehl.com. Bare with me as I troubleshoot a new tool disseminating my blogs.


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12/1/2021 0 Comments

Gehl on the Agenda re:  Gehl v Canada

Check out this interview with Steve Paikin of the Agenda. I am receiving loads of good responses . . .
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The Agenda

See also:
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Active History

The Wakefield Writers Festival
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​© Lynn Gehl, Ph.D. is an Algonquin Anishinaabe-kwe from the Ottawa River Valley. She is a published author of Claiming Anishinaabe: Decolonizing the Human Spirit and The Truth that Wampum Tells: My Debwewin on the Algonquin Land Claims Process.  Her most recent book is titled Gehl v Canada: Challenging Sex Discrimination in the Indian Act. You can reach her and see more of her work at www.lynngehl.com.


0 Comments

9/30/2021 0 Comments

Lynn Gehl on Reconcili-ation with Lakehead University Sept 27, 2021


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© Lynn Gehl, Ph.D. is an Algonquin Anishinaabe-kwe from the Ottawa River Valley. She is a published author of Claiming Anishinaabe: Decolonizing the Human Spirit and The Truth that Wampum Tells: My Debwewin on the Algonquin Land Claims Process.  Her most recent book is titled Gehl v Canada: Challenging Sex Discrimination in the Indian Act. You can reach her and see more of her work at www.lynngehl.com.


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9/16/2021 0 Comments

Gehl v Canada

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So great! I received my box of Gehl v Canada today.

From the back cover: "A follow-up to Claiming Anishinaabe, Gehl v Canada is the story of Lynn Gehl’s lifelong journey of survival against the nation-state’s constant genocidal assault against her existence. While Canada set up its colonial powers—including the Supreme Court, House of Commons, Senate Chamber, and the Residences of the Prime Minister and Governor General—on her traditional Algonquin territory, usurping the riches and resources of the land, she was pushed to the margins, exiled to a life of poverty in Toronto’s inner-city. With only beads in her pocket, Gehl spent her entire life fighting back, and now shares an insider analysis of Indian Act litigation, the narrow remedies the court imposes, and of obfuscating parliamentary discourse, as well as an important critique of the methodology of legal positivism. Drawing on social identity and Indigenous theories, the author presents Disenfranchised Spirit Theory, revealing insights into the identity struggles facing Indigenous Peoples to this day."
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To order click this link: https://uofrpress.ca/Books/G/Gehl-v-Canada


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© Lynn Gehl, Ph.D. is an Algonquin Anishinaabe-kwe from the Ottawa River Valley. 
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6/16/2021 1 Comment

#IWagWid

Kwey Kwey Friends and Family,

Please stand with me on this crucial human rights issue.

In the last several months I have been working on Indigenous women and girls with disabilities (#IWadWig) who are bigger targets of sexual violence. I completed a 90 page report that is now publicly available here:
www.lynngehl.com/indigenous-women-and-girls-with-disabilities-are-bigger-targets-of-sexual-violence.html


More recently I submitted a written statement to the United Nations 79th General Discussion Session on CEDAW; and I was granted permission to offer an “oral intervention” on the topic. The actual date of the UN session is June 24, due to issues around my vision disability I pre-recorded my three-minute statement. See below.

Indigenous women and girls with disabilities are living a life of intersectional oppression and what I call “Triple Jeopardy Magnified”. Many are unable to defend themselves against sexual violence because they cannot see, hear, run, or move. Canada, and all Canadians really, need to do more to protect these Indigenous women and girls. They have the right to be free from sexual violence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SKT8pUDXBc

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​© Lynn Gehl, Ph.D. is an Algonquin Anishinaabe-kwe from the Ottawa River Valley. Her most recent book Gehl v Canada is now available for pre-orders:  https://uofrpress.ca/Books/G/Gehl-v-Canada​

1 Comment

6/14/2021 1 Comment

The Algonquin are not “Identity Policing”

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© Art and Image by Lynn Gehl

Regarding Illegitimate Algonquin Identity Claims
 
In the context of ongoing colonial genocide through the Algonquin land claims process in Ontario, and Canada’s broader municipalization of First Nation communities that continues to deny land and resources, it is especially important for people claiming to be Indigenous or who are portraying themselves to be Algonquin Anishinaabe to clearly substantiate their identity beyond that of the oral tradition and beyond that of an ancestor who was, or might have been, Algonquin in the 1600s, 1700s, or 1800s. The traditional protocol is that we clearly state who we are and how we are related to one another.
 
In the current context of Algonquin genocide there are administrators, professors, teachers, language speakers, artists, ceremonialists, funders, chiefs, elders, heads of families, and cultural gate keepers who in their positions have access to power, yet they are not the Algonquin they claim to be or who they portray themselves to be. For that matter some are not even Indigenous.
 
Portraying as Algonquin is the Worst
 
Remember, and offering an example, being a language speaker in itself does not mean a person is Indigenous or Algonquin. Not at all. Language is foremost a social process. We need to keep in mind that many of the fur traders picked up the Anishinaabemowin language as it was the language of the fur trade. The same applies with picking up a jingle dress, a pipe, or an Eagle feather.
 
It is about a misuse of power
 
The biggest problem with people claiming to be Algonquin when they are not is that they are usurping and appropriating important positions, space, and resources in the process of making decisions on important topics, yet they lack a genuine legitimate Algonquin voice, where as such they are unable to shape, guide, or direct knowledge production, change, resurgence, and resistance in ways that are legitimately and genuinely Algonquin. Because they have less conviction, internal fortitude, and commitment in who they are claiming to be as Algonquin, these individuals become the tokens of powerful institutions because they are, and will be, more accommodating and obliging employees of the institution’s agenda. They will be easier to manage and manipulate because, ultimately, they are more needful in their identity claim. It is precisely in this way that they are interfering and harming legitimate Algonquin agency and direction forward. These people who do not have the conviction of who they claim to be, or who they portray themselves to be, are interfering with Algonquin recovery and sovereignty efforts. This is contrary to the Two Row non-interfering philosophy.
 
It is about protecting our sovereignty
 
In offering this important critical thinking it must be kept in mind that just because some Algonquin are standing up and asking you to be clear about the identity you are claiming, or portraying to be, this does not mean we are identity policing, being unkind, suffering from internalized oppression, or flourishing lateral violence. Not at all. We are asking the question because our very framework understands how institutional power is used to manipulate people who have less conviction in who they are claiming to be.
 
It does not matter if they are your friend
 
As the Algonquin struggle to move forward within the context of genocide it may be a good idea to think to yourself that just because someone is a friend, did a good thing for you, or is doing work that you like, this in itself does not mean they are Algonquin. Please do not allow your subjectivity to interfere with who and who is not a legitimate Algonquin, and do not default to the notion that we are “identity policing” and engaging in lateral violence. We are not!
 
While I understand universal truths do not exist, and I understand that blood and community essentialism have huge limitations, and I understand the non-sense of the Status versus non-Status, and I understand that Indigenous nations adopted and assimilated new members into their nations, and I also understand that a “race shifting framework” is different than a “social identity framework”, within the context of ongoing Algonquin genocide illegitimately usurping Algonquin identity is really harmful.
 
If you cannot stand with conviction in who you claim to be as an Algonquin, or who you are portraying yourself to be, it is asked that you stop appropriating an Algonquin identity because you are harming the Algonquin.

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© Lynn Gehl, Ph.D. is an Algonquin Anishinaabe-kwe from the Ottawa River Valley. Her most recent book Gehl v Canada is now available for pre-orders:
https://uofrpress.ca/Books/G/Gehl-v-Canada​

1 Comment

6/11/2021 2 Comments

Cancel Canada Day! Witness Canada's Algonquin Genocide

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Akikpautik - Creator's First Sacred Pipe - Just upstream from Canada's Parliament Buildings - A site of grave desecration

Although Canada the nation State’s parliamentary base illegally squats on Algonquin Anishinaabeg traditional territory, inclusive of its House of Commons, its Senate Chamber, the Governor General and the Prime Minister’s residence, and the Supreme Court of Canada, very few Canadians know who the Algonquin Anishinaabeg are. We are still here!

Many Canadians do not know that the Algonquin Anishinaabeg were one of the first Indigenous nations recorded by Samuel de Champlain, nor do they know that through the creation of Canada, the British pitted the Algonquin and the French against one another when they gave the French colony Algonquin land. Yes, this is what the British did! This was an act of reprimand on the part of the British because the Algonquin were allies with the French. This action on the part of the British continues to undermine Algonquin sovereignty efforts today.

The Algonquin have been divided by the provincial federal order, language, law, and religion. In addition, the Algonquin have been divided through the imposition of the reserve system and the Indian Act where as a result some communities today are federally recognized First Nation communities and others are not, and where some are registered Status Indians and others are not. What is more, some of our traditional communities and subsistence lands were flooded, or converted into provincial parks for the social, physical, and entertainment activity of the Canadian citizenry. Through these means of power, a Canadian cultural hegemony (read oppressive power) was established.

Despite this historic genocide, what many Canadians also do not know is that this genocide continues in an evergreen way. Yes, this is correct. What Canada calls the “modern treaty process” is in fact a land claims process that forces economically impoverished First Nation communities and their Status membership, inclusive of the more disenfranchised non-Status Algonquin, to relinquish their land and resource rights.

There are several reasons why Canadians are not knowledgeable about the historic and ongoing evergreen Algonquin genocide. One reason is because the governments of Canada control the school curriculum, a curriculum that creates a foundation of ignorance versus truth. A second reason is because Canada manipulates the mindsets and hearts of the Canadian citizenry through song, art, museums, monuments, provincial park recreational activity, and the news media inclusive of social media. A third reason is that incoming prime ministers place their party’s political power and money behind electoral candidates who are accommodating and obliging because they will be the token cabinet ministers and members of parliament needed to control (through party whipping) and perpetuate the evergreen genocide against Indigenous people.

While Canada has been manipulating the mindsets of its citizenry in these ways, Canadians need to come to the place of valuing that when it comes to understanding the truth of Canada’s history, the locus of control is best understood as internal, meaning individuals hold and manage the jurisdiction of their own agency and thus read, think, and learn what they want to or need to.
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Cancel Your Canada Day Celebrations! Witness Canada’s Algonquin Genocide Instead. Take the time needed to learn about how it is that the Algonquin Anishinaabe today are facing genocide through the land claims and self government processes. Compiled below is a series of news articles that I have written (one is collaborative). Once you have completed these readings, let me know and I will send you a certificate of completion: “I completed the Algonquin challenge: Witnessing Canada’s Algonquin Genocide”. See below.
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  1. https://rabble.ca/news/2013/03/heart-break-algonquin-genocide
  2. http://anishinabeknews.ca/2014/11/27/algonquin-chiefs-say-tsilhqotin-supreme-court-decision-is-no-more-than-colonial-policy/
  3. https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/canadas-indian-policy-is-a-process-of-deception
  4. https://ricochet.media/en/318/first-nations-finance-their-own-demise-through-land-claims-process
  5. https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/november-2016/deeply-flawed-process-around-algonquin-land-claim-agreement/
  6. https://ricochet.media/en/970/why-im-hoping-the-algonquin-land-claim-proposal-is-voted-down
  7. https://www.canadashistory.ca/explore/first-nations-inuit-metis/fighting-for-recognition
  8. https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/lynn-gehl/indigenous-land-claims-process_b_16368974.html
  9. https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/july-2017/is-acknowledging-indigenous-territory-enough/
  10. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/advocate-lynn-gehl-laurier-what-is-reconciliation-1.4597266
  11. https://www.electriccitymagazine.ca/2018/02/on-reconciliation/
  12. https://watershedsentinel.ca/articles/akikodjiwan/
  13. https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/seven-key-learnings-from-the-mmiwg-legal-analysis-on-genocide
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© Lynn Gehl, Ph.D. is an Algonquin Anishinaabe-kwe from the Ottawa River Valley. Her most recent book Gehl v Canada is now available for pre-orders:
https://uofrpress.ca/Books/G/Gehl-v-Canada​

2 Comments

6/2/2021 2 Comments

Residential Schools: What it Taught me About Embodied Knowledge

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Indigenous knowledge (IK) understands and talks about knowledge in a different way. It is valued that the primary portals of knowledge into who we are as human beings are our feet, hands, body, heart, and then after this the mind and reason. That is why we teach children through practice dance, song, and prayer before they are able to understand freedom of their own consciousness and thought, and thus, who they are as a human being. This very embodied knowledge gained through the practices of their feet, hands, body, and heart will then serve them when they are depressed or when they are grieving; meaning when their mind fails them their body will “remember” what they need to do. This is the life medicine of good embodied knowledge.

When people talk about trauma and/or intergenerational trauma, they are talking about the negative embodied knowledge that has been ascribed on their being, their bodies, through various pitiful human acts such as physical and sexual violence and demoralization. What happens in the situation of trauma is that in the place where good knowledge should be ascribed, the trauma knowledge is placed or located. The trauma becomes landscaped on, and within, the body and this is what is more easily “remembered” because the body is more familiar with the trauma knowledge versus the medicine of good knowledge. As stated, the body is the more important repository of knowledge; versus the mind and reason.

Growing up in a context where a mother loathes her children, because under the oppressive patriarchal industrial economic rule she had too many children, and worse no resources to care for them, what happens is this woman’s children become more familiar with her practices of loathe and disdain. In short, loathe is ascribed on the body of, or embodied on, the children where love should have been ascribed and embodied. This means the children will be more familiar with loathe so much so that they will confuse it with love. This trauma embodied knowledge is why so many women and men are "attracted" to the wrong partner and repeat the silly things humans do to one another. This "attraction" will continue until they do their most important work of looking deeply at the role their embodied knowledge has had in shaping their life, and they learn how to govern or manage the trauma of their embodied knowledge the best way they can.
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Lastly, when a persons embodied knowledge is trauma, the person has to constantly be aware of it, walk around it, and manage it so they do not repeat it or fall into its trap. At all times their mind has to be especially attuned to it.


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​© Lynn Gehl, Ph.D. is an Algonquin Anishinaabe-kwe from the Ottawa River Valley. Her most recent book Gehl v Canada is now available for pre-orders:

https://uofrpress.ca/Books/G/Gehl-v-Canada​


2 Comments

5/19/2021 5 Comments

Algonquin Belonging in the Context of Genocide

PictureGehl v Canada (Fall 2021)
My Algonquin Anishinaabe identity flows through my father, his mother, and her parents (my great-grandparents). Through learning who I am I can also link myself to the people who lived at the Lake of Two Mountains and thus to pre-contact relatives. Me saying that I can link to the historic community of the Lake of Two Mountains and pre-contact relatives does not mean my Algonquin identity, that I claim, merely comes from an ancestor that lived in the 1700s. Not at all. I am clear about my identity coming from my father. Please do not misunderstand what I am saying or cherry pick back to pre-contact times.

What is more, while through Gehl v Canada today I am a registered status Indian I really do not have a community where I feel I am embraced. For one thing, I cannot go and live at Pikwakanagan First Nation as there is not enough space and, even if there was, I am not sure I would be welcomed by the people. What I have become, through Gehl v Canada, is a name on a membership list versus existing within a community. It is clear to me that my father’s, grandmother’s, and great-grandparents’ community has been greatly harmed by colonization and genocide. This is why I do the work that I do. My allegiance is with my kin relations.

I, though, am “fortunate” in the sense that the land where some of my extended kin relations now exist was not relocated or flooded, and that my great-grandmother with her mother (my great-great-grandmother) opted to move to a reserve. But the reality is that not all Algonquins in Ontario and Quebec wanted to go to reserve communities, and mixed bloods were not welcomed, or for that matter were pushed out of the community when they “married-out”. This was part of the genocide process. My point here is that just as DNA and a blood line have limitations, community essentialism also has many limitations. Identity is more than about being welcomed to a community or having a community. This is especially so when we appreciate that through colonization many communities and community relationships have been destroyed. What I have are kin relations with a particular community. I always had these kin relations as my father made sure he passed on to me these kinship stories, best known in the language as “gi-nwendaagininaanig dbaajimowinan”. Now that I have status registration as per the Indian Act things are not that much different. While the kin relations are there I would not say I belong to a community. Genocide happened; and genocide continues to happen such as through the land claims process.

Certainly the struggle Indigenous people are having regarding identity is difficult and heart breaking. Well, it is heart breaking for me. What is making it worse is all the settler academics and people jumping on board with who, and what is, in vogue. In doing this, settlers interfere with the Indigenous process of figuring it out; well, hopefully working it out. All this is not to say that I am not appreciative of the needed critical analysis of settlers claiming to be metis for the sole purpose of gaining Indigenous rights, and also appreciative of the needed critical analysis of settlers claiming to be Algonquin for the purpose of gaining rights through the land claims process – a land claims process that will only serve to extinguish Algonquin land and resource rights.

It is important for us to remember that historically, prior to contact, Indigenous nations adopted, assimilated, kidnapped, and nurtured new members into our communities. Through rituals such as initiations, dancing, ceremony, feasting, and loving kindness we socialized people into being new citizens of our Indigenous nations. While belonging was a blood process, we also valued the medicine of genetic diversity, and we also understood that belonging was very much a social process that was more about loyalty to the nation. Through genocidal laws, policies, and practices the nation state of Canada took all these inclusive processes of establishing our citizenries away from us; yet at the same time Canada appropriated the cultural process of socializing new citizens into their nation.

What I mean by this is that by usurping Indigenous land and resources Canada is able to embrace refugees and immigrants as new citizens of its nation. In this process Canada relies on Indigenous land and resources to socialize its new citizens into being good, obliging, loving, and loyal Canadians. Minister Maryam Monsef is one such celebrated Canadian citizen that the current prime minister likes to hold up as a success story. The socio-cultural processes and rituals that Canada relies on consist of such things as manipulating their minds by controlling the school curriculum and filling their hearts through the daily ritual of singing O Canada. Other mechanisms used to socialize new citizens of the Canadian nation consist of skewing media stories, offering national awards to accommodating people, creating provincial and national parks, filling national museums with state propaganda, and, to ensure the completion of hegemony, the ongoing creation and manipulation of national symbols and icons such as the Canadian flag and creating national monuments of acceptable heroes.

As Canada does this, creating new citizens of the state, Indigenous people fight about DNA and blood essentialism, fight about community belonging essentialism, and for that matter fight about cultural continuity essentialism, all the while forgetting about their own practices of inclusion. I know that DNA and blood, community belonging, and for that matter that even cultural continuity all have limitations. What is more important is kinship connections, loyalty, and allegiance.

Lastly, sadly Canada has pushed Indigenous people to the point where we have forgotten that in its anthropomorphic form, and after the human spirit has moved through the heart, morality, inclusive of loving kindness, takes that same heart pathway.


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© Lynn Gehl, Ph.D. is an Algonquin Anishinaabe-kwe from the Ottawa River Valley. Her most recent book Gehl v Canada is now available for pre-orders: https://uofrpress.ca/Books/G/Gehl-v-Canada​


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www.lynngehl.com