Getting My Whiteducks in a Row

Photo credit Ben Weiss

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When it comes to Algonquin politics it will be a wonderful day when the Mississauga people learn to respect the teaching inherent in the Two Row Wampum Belt. I say this because all too often when Algonquin political leaders talk about our territory in what is now located in the province of Ontario we are faced with this idea that the land the Mississauga ceded through the 1819-1822 Rideau Purchase and the 1923 Williams Treaties was Mississauga territory. It was not and is not.

In addition to this, when Algonquin people stand up and say that the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation and Allies group is fictious, some of us are again approached from behind the scenes with Mississauga interference. This interference assumes that we do not know where the Algonquin are located. We do. We know there are Algonquins in the Ardoch area; this however does not make Ardoch First Nation and Allies a legitimate collectivity. And further, it is well known it is a collectivity of mostly non-Algonquins.

The Pretendians:
 www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoVE9JaIFJg

Queens University Report:
https://www.queensu.ca/indigenous/sites/oiiwww/files/uploaded_files/FPG%20Queens%20Report%20Final%20July%207.pdf

Lynn Gehl comments on Ardoch:
https://www.lynngehl.com/gehl-blogging/the-first-peoples-group-report-re-queens-u-and-ardoch

Jeff Green:
frontenacnews.ca/article.php?id=478

That said, out of my love for fellow Algonquin Merv Sarazin I have opted to compile this short list that he and other Algonquins can rely on when they need a quick way of addressing Mississauga claims to Algonquin territory.
 
1 In 1613, Samuel de Champlain identified the Algonquin Anishinaabeg along the Ottawa River and all the tributaries leading into the Ottawa River. We were the Weskarini, the Matouweskarini, the Kichesipirini … .

2 Champlain also recorded Chief Tessouat as holding the jurisdiction of the passageway at Allumette Island/Calumet Island/Morrison Island,  charging tolls for the use of the river. 

3 In 1761, Alexander Henry, while travelling on the Ottawa River encountered Algonquin and Nipissing who claimed their territory as encompassing all of the lands north and south of the Ottawa River as far as Lake Nipissing. 

4 Many government officials, such as James Hughes and A. E. St. Louis, investigated the various competing claims to the Ottawa River Valley concluding that much of the territory the Mississauga ceded was indeed Algonquin and Nipissing territory.

• An 1847 report prepared by Indian Superintendent James Hughes argued that the Mississauga “. . . clandestinely [took] upon themselves to sell this tract of land which they were well aware belonged and formed part of the hunting grounds of the Algonquin an Nipissingue Tribes” (Hughes cited in Hansen, 1986, p. 37).
• St. Louis sided with the Algonquin and Nipissing who “have been in possession of certain lands bordering on both sides of the Ottawa River and have always had the exclusive privilege of hunting on the same” (St. Louis, 1951, p. 7). 

5 Holmes and Associates (1993) provide a lengthy analysis of Algonquin and Nipissing petitions, oral speeches, and appeals regarding their traditional territory arguing, the earliest detailed petitions from Algonquins and Nipissings date from 1772. 

6 Finally, it is well known that from 1776 to 1983 the Algonquin submitted to the British and their successors as many as 28 petitions and speeches. This was a genocide that continues to this day.
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​Lynn is an author, advocate, artist, and public speaker. She is one of only two Algonquin in the world with a doctorate in Indigenous Studies. Her work encompasses both anti-colonial work and the celebration of Indigenous knowledge. She challenges Canada’s practices, policies, and laws of colonial genocide such as the Algonquin land claims, and in 2017 she was successful in Gehl v Canada regarding unknown and unstated paternity in the Indian Act. She is fascinated with Indigenous knowledge, in particular ancient modalities of symbolic literacy and she continues to learn about them.

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