What Universe is David Frum?

Wateridge Village

​We call upon Canadian journalism programs and media schools to require education for all students on the history of Aboriginal peoples, including the history and legacy of residential schools, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Treaties and Aboriginal rights, Indigenous law, and Aboriginal Crown relations. (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015)

In David Frum’s December 2025 article titled, “Good Intentions Gone Bad: How Canada’s 'reconciliation' with its Indigenous people went wrong”, he incites hatred toward Indigenous Peoples. How do white men obtain the space to spew such ignorance? Clearly as an Indigenous woman with a disability I have no power. Recently in my effort to explain who the Algonquin Anishinaabeg are, hosts of Canada's parliament, I was politely offered a kill fee. It seems my writing style and the embodied knowledge that shapes and directs it fails to qualify, and is not up to the standard of good readership. While I don’t offer this recently killed work here, I want to offer a part of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg story that places Frum’s ignorance in a more accurate context of what is Canada.

My Algonquin Anishinaabe great grandfather, Joseph Gagnon, was a World War 1 veteran of the 207th Battalion.  At the time of his enlistment, he was a member and resident of the Golden Lake Reserve, now called Pikwàkanàgan First Nation. He lived there with his Algonquin Anishinaabe wife, Annie Jane Meness, her Algonquin Anishinaabe father Frank Meness, and their children. He came home from war with gunshot wounds to his arm and leg, and with a bad heart. His war records state he was gassed. Upon his return in 1919 he applied for a disability pension but a medical examiner reported that he did not suffer from a valid pensionable disability and as such he was denied. Then in 1930 with his heart quikly failing, he again applied for a disability pension where in 1931 he was awarded a Great War Pension of $7 monthly from the Department of Pensions and National Health. Shortly after in 1932 Joseph applied for unemployment relief but his application would only be considered if he left his home reserve because his Indigenous-ness travelled through his mother line, Algonquin Anishinaabe Angeline Jocko, versus his father line, a French Canadian also named Joseph. This of course was sex discrimination (Gehl v Canada, 2021). Regardless, in need of assistance to care his family Joseph relocated, initially to the Village of Golden Lake and after to the city of Pembroke. Presumably my grandmother Viola went with her parents. After Joseph relocated from the reserve in 1933, and now paying rent, he continued to seek financial assistance in the form of unemployment relief and a disability pension. Afterall, he needed to feed his family.

Returning veterans were offered benefits through the Soldier Settlement Act such as a grant of land, financial assistance, and farming equipment. But this did not apply to returning Indigneous veterans. At the time Joseph and Annie were taking care of some of their grandchildren, but Joseph was told that his grandchildren would not be provided for. My father was one such grandchild. While at some point Joseph did receive a small pension, he was denied land for him and his family to live on. Joseph died in 1939 and was buried in an unmarked grave (Gehl, 2017; Veterans Affairs, 2025). I am not sure what happened during my father’s early life but I am sure it was a life full of neglect, hell, and horror. That neglect, hell, and horror is the legacy that many Algonquin Anishinaabeg inherited at the wrath of the genocide of the British and French, and all those that followed.

In Frum’s article he incites fear mongering of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg offering that the Algonquin land claim in Ontario is 36,000 square kilometers, yet he fails to explain that within this genocidal process Canada and Ontario continue to hold all the power; only offering us 1.7% of our territory, and a one-time buy-out of $800 million. While I may not be a thinker and writer that is entitled to the same space as Frum, it does not take much to reason a nation denied their own land is a direct act of genocide, and further it does not take much to reason that a one-time buy-out represents more of a boost to the Canadian economy than to the Algonquin Anishinaabeg. Offering an example, a 2010 real estate transaction involving unceded Algonquin land, specifically the former Canadian Forces Base Rockcliff now called Wateridge Village, between the federal crown corporation Canada Lands Company Ltd. and the Algonquins of Ontario will skim $10 million off the top of the final settlement (Agreement in Principle, 2016, p. 45).

Frum also fails to point out that the land that Canada’s Parliament squats on is Algonquin Anishinaabeg territory. It was in 1857 when Queen Victoria identified the City of Ottawa as the capital of what became the confederated country of British Canada. At that time, Garrison Hill, the location where the parliament buildings were built, was estimated to be worth $1.1 million (Report of the Commissioner, 1859). It is reasonable for me, and all Canadians to ask, “Did British Canada do the right thing and purchase the land from the Algonquin?” No, they did not.

While it is well known that Samuel de Champlain recorded the Algonquin Anishinaabeg as residing in, and thus holding the jurisdiction, of the lands, waterways, and economy of the Ottawa River and larger Valley; and that Algonquin Anishinaabeg territory continues to be the geographic heart of what is Canada, during the historic treaty process we were completely denied a treaty. This was and remains a genocide. In what is now Ontario, the Mississauga Anishinaabeg ceded our lands through the 1783 Crawford and 1819/1822 Rideau Purchases, and the 1923 Williams Treaties. In what is now Quebec, the Algonquin Anishinaabeg were merely provided with reserve lands where some continue to be denied reserve land to this day. It is said this denial is because the French continue to think they obtained the right to our land through the Doctrine of Discovery. With this argument, French Quebec forgets that the land was and remains Algonquin territory, and further that the French were defeated by the British. While some legal scholars argue British common law applies to these lands, as an Algonquin, I know it is Algonquin law that applies. Regardless we continued to be denied whereby many of us live in horrible and destitute conditions. It was only recently the Kitsicakik First Nation was connected to the grid.

Frum also fails to point out that while the Algonquin Anishinaabeg were denied lands to live on, and the annuity fees the Mississauga received, we were also denied the right to generate remuneration through leasing our islands to settler people. Most Canadians are not aware that at one time the Algonquin leased our islands but in 1839 British Canada took this right away. Colonial agent Captain Dominique Ducharme determined there were 100 squatters occupying 3,030 acres of land on the islands in the Ottawa River and on the adjacent main shoreline. Superintendent of the Indian Department James Hughes, though, was of the thought that squatters were double this number. Ducharme proceeded to issue leases for two and four-year durations to fifty squatters on Allumette Island; twenty-six squatters on Calumet Island; fourteen squatters on Sundry Islands and Kettle Island; and two other squatters who each held 100 acres located on the mainland. This totaled ninety-two leases (Hansen, 1986). Unfortunately, on June 17, 1839, an order in council, passed by British colonial agent Sir J. Colborne, determined the Algonquin had no right to lease their islands (Holmes & Associates, 1993, Vol. 2, p. 94). So, this means we were denied our own lands, and we were denied the right to move into the cash economy needed to provide for our families. Contrary to what many may think Algonquin leaders did not sit by and allow this atrocity to happen. Not at all. Chief Kaondinoketch argued, “[s]ince 1839 the great majority of the Tenant Squatters, have refused to pay us, any rent whatever alleging that we can shew [sic] no authority from Government to oblige them to pay . . .” (Holmes & Associates, 1993, Vol. 2, pp. 103─105). 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.

Furthermore, it was in 1839 when the Crown Lands Protection Act came into existence in Upper Canada. Imposing British colonial law, this Act declared all Algonquin lands to be British land and thus subject to their jurisdiction and authority versus existing under Algonquin jurisdiction and authority. Between 1840 and 1870, the British awarded large grants of Algonquin land to timber companies. In addition, through the 1853 Public Lands Act and the 1868 Free Grant and Homestead Act, the British granted 100-acre plots of Algonquin land free to settlers after clearing a minimum of fifteen acres (Huitema, 2001).

Most Canadians are unaware of this history of genocide and that this genocide continues to be imposed today. For example, it has been estimated that in 1991 the forestry and hydro electric industries extracted $100 million from the Algonquins of Barrier Lake (ABL) First Nation’s territory (Pasternak, 2009). Actually the Ottawa River, which begins in ABL's territory, is currently burdened with more than forty dams producing $1 million of electricity per day (Marsh & Baker, 2018). Yet ABL and other Algonquin First Nations, are denied a cut of these resource dollars.

Lastly, the Ottawa River Valley contributes in a huge way to Canada’s economy in that Canada is the world’s fourth largest producer of pulp and paper. More specifically, it is said that the forest industry in Ontario generates as much as $573 million annually—or $1.6 million per day―with Algonquin Provincial Park producing the most wood and fibre (Ottawa River Heritage, 2005, p. 102). Pathetically Canada blames Algonquin destitute conditions on a culture of dependency, negligence, and irresponsibility (Crosby & Monaghan, 2012). In short, the colonial genocide is never-ending.

Canadians need not fear Indigenous Peoples and their rights. Rather, they should fear Frum’s journalism.
 
Note: This work must be evaluated through an Indigenist intersectional lens. If you rely on a different criteria set and judge this work through it you remain trapped in a colonial mindset and concept of truth.

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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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