Words & Language

Akwesasne is a Mohawk Nation (Kanienʼkehá꞉ka) Territory.  It straddles the Canadian/US boarder and is also divided by the Ontario/Quebec provincial boundary on both the north and south banks of the St Lawrence River. The Mohawks are called Kanienkehaka or People of the Flint and they are considered the Eastern Door Keepers, because their villages and homes are in the eastern portion of the Haudenosaunee’s ancestral territory.  The Mohawks are the guardians and protectors of the eastern Haudenosaunee territory.  Akwesasne Territory is known as “The Land Where the Partridge Drums.”

Below is what Grand Chief Mike Kanentakeron Mitchell said about the Akwesasne Nation Community in 2015:

The Dish With One Spoon Treaty Agreement far precedes European contact, and has been ratified many times between many Indigenous nations over the centuries.   The dish represents the land: a common hunting ground. The land provides everything humans need and the idea that we should come peaceably together to use one spoon to share from one collective bowl.  There are many Wampum Belts associated with this Treaty. They show a small bowl at the centre of the belt which is sometimes depicted as a beaver tail, a common dish to both eat and eat from.

The Dish With One Spoon treaty is unique from other treaties because it is also a covenant with nature. The three basic tenets of the agreement are: take only what you need, always leave something in the dish for everybody else, and keep the dish clean.

Dish With One Spoon Territory is a vast region throughout Southern Ontario, east into Quebec, around the Great Lakes and down into northern parts of Michigan and Ohio.  The DWOS Agreement is one of the oldest treaties on Turtle Island.  In recent years the Dish With One Spoon Treaty agreement has been extended to anyone living in this Great Lakes Region as a way to inspire care for this common land.  It is important to remember, however, that for most of us we may share from this dish, but it is not our dish.

I use the word *explore in the blog post “Walking the Land” saying “I planned to explore the Nutfield Tract to get to know the landscape where Robert lived when he came to Canada.”

*Settler Insight: It was brought to my attention that the word explore has colonial roots and conjures up images of heroic adventurers appropriating Indigenous territory under Imperial ideologies like the Discovery Doctrine and Manifest Destiny.  In this version of history European Explorers discover a “New World” that is empty and available for the taking.  Terms like Old World,  New World and Discovery reinforce this Eurocentric bias of White supremacy and entitlement.

Indian is generally an inaccurate and offensive word for a non-Indigenous person to use when referring to an Indigenous person.  The term Indian continues to have legal use, specifically within the Indian Act.  The Indian Act not only decides who gets to be an “Indian” but then also decides what the “Indian” can and cannot do.  Indigenous people often use the term internally to refer to themselves.  For example, Thomas King’s most recent book is called Indians on Vacation.   As a Settler I can say the title of his book, but I probably shouldn’t say, Hey Tom!  How’s life as an Indian today?

NOTE: I do occasionally use the term “Indian” in this website when I think it is historically accurate to the terminology of the time, or when I am referring to government policy and legislation that would use the word Indian.  Please feel free to let me know if you think I have misused the term anywhere here.

The Indian Act is a federal law that governs all aspects of Indian status, Indian bands and reservations.  It’s predecessor, the Gradual Civilization Act, passed in 1857 and tried to force all Indigenous people to assimilate into Settler society through enfranchisement.  In 1869 the government created the Gradual Enfranchisement Act which established the elected band council system (overthrowing hereditary chiefs and other traditional systems of self-government).  The Indian Act came into existence in 1876 and retained both the focus on assimilation and on the elected band council system which effectively erases Indigenous Nationhood and the legal framework for a Nation-to-Nation relationship between Indigenous Nations and the Canadian government.

Since it’s first draft, the Indian Act has changed and morphed.  Some of the most gruesome sections of the Act (like residential schools, day passes, and making it illegal for Indigenous people to hire a lawyer) have been revised.  But the key aims of the legislation (to assimilate and/or control Indigenous peoples, and to acquire Indigenous land for non-Indigenous use) continue.  Duncan Campbell Scott, one of the key architects of the Indian Act infamously said, “I want to get rid of the Indian problem  . . .  Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the whole object of this Bill.” 

The Indian Act continues to exist and be enforced by the Canadian Government, although it has failed in its aim to “absorb every Indian.”  One of my favourite pieces of art is Nadia Myre’s Indian Act where she redacts the first 56 pages of the Act by beading over it.

I’m discovering that most Settlers don’t know what an Indian Agent is, so I’ll explain the term just in case it doesn’t instill the same fear and loathing inside of you that it did inside of me when I learned about Robert Colquhoun.

In 1755 a branch of the British military set up the Indian Department to manage relations with the “Indians.”  My ancestor Robert Colquhoun worked as an Indian Agent from 1813-1820 in Glengarry County, near present day Cornwall Ontario.  If you’ve read about them in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report you’ll remember them as the ones who dragged children off to the residential schools and then prohibited their parents from visiting. Over the decades since the birth of the Indian Act in 1876, Indian Agents have been responsible for issuing day passes to allow Indigenous people to come and go from their own reserves, enforcing bans on cultural practices like the Sundance and Potlatch, restricting political organizing and access to legal counsel, monitoring the consumption of alcohol, prohibiting entry to pool halls … the list goes on.    In a nutshell, the job of an Indian Agent was to control and assimilate Indigenous peoples by enforcing the laws of the Government “until there is not a single Indian in Canada.”

One of the best ways to enforce these policies of assimilation was (and is) through the control and on-going seizure of Indigenous land for non-Indigenous use.  In his role as Indian Agent my ancestor Robert collected rent from Settlers who were leasing land on the Nutfield Tract Indian Reservation and delivered this rent (less 10% for his wage) to the Akwesasne Chiefs.  I know the Mohawk word for Indian Agent, or agent is Roterihonte’.  I wonder if this word has always existed in the language.  Maybe you think I am being dramatic or theatrical (I know my Dad does), but I know that finding out that we had an Indian Agent in the family felt like discovering some kind of dark and shameful family secret.

A picture says 1000 words, and so I had to start with stating the obvious: Land Acknowledgements are not enough.  These days people are often split over how they feel about them, particularly Indigenous people.   Land Acknowledgment is the practice of acknowledging that the land where we live, work and play is Indigenous land. Land Acknowledgments recognize Indigenous lands, treaties and peoples, and are meant to honour and acknowledge the specific Territory and specific Indigenous Nation or Nations where you are physically standing at an event, ceremony or gathering.  They are a reminder that when Europeans arrived here they made Treaties: they made promises to Indigenous Nations in order to be granted the privilege of sharing this land. Generations later as we continue to live on this land we are all accountable to those historic promises.

Land Acknowledgements are not enough.  Words are just words: empty words, lip service. But they can be a beginning, a chance to begin to think about land if you never have, to learn about land, and to ask questions about land and the people who have allowed non-Indigenous people to settle here.

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The Mohawk Valley – Kanatsiohareke (the place of the clean pot) is the Ancestral Homeland of the Kanienkehaka, the People of the Flint.  The Mohawk Valley region is located in present-day New York State and includes the area surrounding the Mohawk River from the Adirondack Mountains to the Catskill Mountains.

After the American Revolution the British Crown surrendered the Mohawk Valley to the Americans, despite the fact that this land was not theirs to give away.  Sir William Johnson, British Superintendent of Indian Affairs promised that in return the Mohawks would be awarded huge tracts of land (equal to what was lost) north in what would become Canada.  Some people from the Mohawk Nation came to Akwesasne as Loyalist refugees in 1784.  The land they eventually secured, was nothing in comparison to this vast and fertile region.

Other First Nations displaced by this massive land grab include the Mohawk of Tyendinaga and the Six Nations of the Grand River.  They were relocated onto tiny reservations within the vast Mississauga Territory taken with the Crawford Purchase.

Loyalists of European descent who moved from the Mohawk Valley were awarded “free grants” of land in regions including Southern Ontario and the Maritimes.  This granting process privileged White Setters over Indigenous allies in every case.  The arrival of Loyalists (Indigenous and non) sparked a series of Treaty negotiations that displaced many other Indigenous Nations: including the Anishinaabe, Algonquin and Mi’kmaw to name but a few.

This project is about learning my history: the colonial history of Canada and the personal history of my ancestors.  I thought that making this quest personal would be a way to learn and internalize these stories since I can never seem to retain a history lesson.  During this process I’ve read lots of books – including tons of books by Indigenous scholars, historians and storytellers, but I can never seem to remember the facts.  Maybe it’s because I can live my everyday life without needing to acknowledge the land or think about how it came to pass that I am a property owner here in Canada.  However, the point of making these Land Acknowledgement Shoes has been to learn what I need to know to be able to stand on the land where my ancestors first set foot and deliver a personal, well researched and heartfelt Land Acknowledgment.

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A Nation is a sovereign state where a community of people share culture, history, laws and a political system.  Nations are self-governing: they have their own laws, jurisdictions, definitions of citizenship, and governing structures.  The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) described Indigenous Nations like this in 1996:

An Aboriginal Nation should be defined as a sizeable body of Aboriginal people that possesses a shared sense of national identity and constitutes the predominant population in a certain territory or collection of territories. Thus, the Mi’kmaq, the Innu, the Anishnabe, the Blood, the Haida, the Inuvialuit, the western Métis Nation and other peoples whose bonds have stayed at least partly intact, despite government interference, are nations. There are about 1,000 reserve and settlement communities in Canada, but there are 60 to 80 Aboriginal nations.

The concept of a Nation-to-Nation relationship between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian Government asserts that First Nations people belong to their own sovereign Nations and are NOT wards of the State.  The British North American Act (or the Constitution Act of 1867 which birthed the Canadian Federation) is the policy that changed the Indigenous / Crown relationship from a Nation-to-Nation relationship into one where Indigenous peoples were wards of the State.  The following 150+ years of policy have enforced this paternal, pejorative and insulting dynamic.  Many, many Indigenous peoples do not identify as Canadians, and most certainly not as “our Indigenous Canadians.”  Audra Simpson of the Mohawk nation at Kahnawà:ke is a fierce nationalist who refuses Canadian citizenship and travels only on a Haudenosaunee passport.

Using the term Nation-to-Nation also draws attention to the fact that there are many different Indigenous Nations throughout Canada with whom the Canadian Government must build relationships with individually and specifically.  Indigenous peoples are not from one big Nation.  Nor can Indigenous nationhood be compressed and categorized for ease (as Justin Trudeau recently did) into Métis, Innu and First Nations.  This is a beautiful and informative explanation of why a Nation-to-Nation approach matters by Sara Mainville.

The Nutfield Tract Indian Reservation, or Indian Lands as it was designated in the Land Registry Office, is a 2 mile-wide tract fronting the St Lawrence River and extending North up Glengarry for 21 concessions.  According to the Akwesasne Nation this land has always been used by the Mohawk people as a winter hunting ground.  According to the Indian Department the land was generously “given” to the Mohawks who did not have a paper deed or title to land north of the St Lawrence River.  During 1784 land in Upper Canada was being set aside for Loyalists, including for the “Loyalist Mohawks” who were evicted from their land: the Mohawk Valley – Kanatsiohareke (the place of the clean pot) – in New York State after the British Crown and its loyal subjects lost the war. The Nutfield Tract was begrudgingly set aside and designated as a Hunting and Trapping Territory for the Akwesasne people in addition to reserve land on the South shore of the St Lawrence River. The Nutfield Tract was never used by the Akwesasne because settlement to the east and west of this narrow strip immediately drove away any game and wildlife. From the late 1780s on the St Regis Chiefs rented out lots of land on the Nutfield to settlers from annual payments of cash and crops. Many of these lots were leased to tenants on 99 year leases.  The local Indian Agent collected rent from tenants, less 10% for themselves as payment.  The Akwesasne people call the Nutfield Tract the Tsienatsiarorokta, which translates to: where the wild rice/wheat is gathered/collected.

The Nutfield Tract was apparently ceded by the St Regis Mohawks in 1847 and was sold to tenants and squatters (including two of Robert Colquhoun’s sons).  The Akwesasne Nation reject the terms of the St Regis Purchase Treaty and are currently researching this “settlement” as a present day land claim.

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I am using the definition for Settler from Chelsea Vowel’s book Indigenous Writes. In a nutshell she calls settlers “the non-Indigenous peoples living in Canada who form the European-descended sociopolitical majority.” This definition implies that Settlers are White.  There is on-going debate about who is and isn’t a Settler.  It’s a complicated discussion, so it’s probably best to …

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The terms below are gathered by Chelsea Vowel’s “Twitter pole” asking for Indigenous names for settlers:

Môniyaw (Plains Cree / Nêhiyawêwin) Some believe it is a Creecization of the French pronunciation of Montreal.  Some think it is a way of saying “not me” or “not Cree”.

Wêmistikosiw (Nêhiyawêwin) Refers to French people specifically, and describes the big wooden boats they came in on.

Kihcimôhkomân (Métis) Term used for people from the United States.  It means “great knives” and refers to the sabres that soldiers used to wear.  It was likely also used for British people.

Zhaagahaash (Anishinaabe) Term that refers to people of dubious character.  It is also defined as meaning “to put something outside” as in an outsider.

Sheme (Nl;kapamux of Salish Nation) The colour of a drowned person.

Xwelitem (Halq’eméylem of Stó:lō Nation) A hungry person.

Ose’ronni (Mohawk) The term translates to “other people” or “delicate white flower”.

Ratien:thos (Mohawk of Akwesasne) Farmers (Translated by Sheila Oakes)

Kapluunak / Kabloonak (Inuit of Ikaluktutiak) Term used to mean “bushy eyebrows.”

Qallunaat (Nunavut and Nunavik) The word refers to a non-Inuit.

Napikwan (Blackfoot) The Blackfoot have a trickster character named Napi who is a bit wild and unpredictable.  Settlers became known as “napikwan.”

Míla hanska (Lakota) Term for cavalry soldiers which means “long knives.”

Wašicu (Lakota) Translated as greedy, or “takes all the fat.”

Words with this teal *asterisk now have *Settler Insight.   This means someone has pointed out that I have used a word or concept which reinforces Colonialism, Eurocentricism, or other Setter bias.  I am marking these words instead of erasing them because there doesn’t seem much point in pretending I didn’t use the word (sometimes very recently).  While I want to “get it right” so I don’t continue to cause harm, this mindset becomes an excuse for inaction: for not saying anything at all.  So I stand behind these words I’ve written here, but it doesn’t mean I won’t change them … or eat them.  Do you see words which need an *asterisk?

I use the word *share in my blog post Sweater Vests and Saying Sorry: Generations later we continue to share this land, and we are all therefore accountable to these historic promises.  (I think I use the word a lot on this site when talking about land and Settler / Indigenous relationships.)

*Settler Insight:  I was reminded that it’s easy to talk about sharing when you have something that isn’t yours. It’s easy to feel like you are sharing when you didn’t have to give anything up to get what you have.  I was reminded by my friend that Canadians today are “sharing” the land with the Wet’suwet’en by spending $13 Million on RCMP violence to make sure a pipeline goes through unceded Indigenous territory.

I originally used the word *slave in my Rabbit Pelt post:  I know some of the British Loyalists brought slaves to Charlottenburg.  I wonder if Robert had any slaves or black servants.

*Settler Insight: I have changed the word slave to enslaved because the word enslaved reminds us that the conversation should be about the actions of the people who hold others as property, not about an identity forced upon those enslaved people.

Petun is a French name applied to the Tionontaté people.  This Nation lived near the Niagara Escarpment and was known for farming tobacco.   The Wyandot / Wyandotte Nations of today are comprised of people from the Tionontaté Nation and Wendat with ancestry tracing back to the Blue Hills near Georgian Bay. These two peoples merged after being attacked in 1649 by the Haudenosaune.  They fled south, eventually residing in the Detroit region where they picked up cultural practices from the Odawa, Ojibwa and Potawatomi Nations.  After 150 years of living near the Great Lakes they were dispersed again to Kansas and then Oklahoma States.

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I have chosen to use the word and spelling “Toronto” throughout this website because there have been many different words in many different Indigenous languages used to name this place.  Who am I to choose a Mohawk word over a Wendat one?

Here’s some background from the Talking Treaties Collective:

“There are multiple theories about the Indigenous origins of our city’s name.  One widely accepted version is that the word Toronto comes from the Kanien’kéha/Mohawk Tkarón:to (tree in the water there).  This word may refer to ancient fishing weirs at the narrows between Lakes Simcoe and Couchiching, where ancestors of contemporary Indigenous Peoples gathered for thousands of years. […] The Wendat word for the same narrows would be Karonto (log lying in the water); they are known in Anishinaabemowin as Mnjikaning (fish fence). […] Another possible origin for the same name comes from the Wendat Tonrontonhk (land of plenty) but recent linguistic research may not support this.

The name Toronto appears to have migrated down the Carrying-Place Trail to its present location. French maps from the 1670s and 1680s label Lake Simcoe as “Lac de Taronto.”  The portage route along the Humber River between Lakes Simcoe and Ontario became known as the “Passage de Taronto,” and the Humber as the “Rivière Taronto.”  The French fur-trading fort established in 1720 on the Humber and later French forts on the waterfront became known as Fort Toronto.  In 1793, John Graves Simcoe, the first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, named the settlement he founded York, but the Indigenous Name was restored when the city was incorporated in 1834.”

– Excerpt from page 8 “A Treaty Guide for Torontonians” Talking Treaty Collective

Treaty 18 was signed by William Clause, and Chief Leaders, Musquakie, or Yellow Head, Chief of Rein Deer Tribe, Kaqueticum, Chief of the Cat Fish Tribe, Maskigonce of the Otter Tribe, Manitonobe of the Pike Tribe,  and Principal Men of the Chippewa Nation of Indians on October 17 1818.  The land in question stretched roughly from Wassaga Beach to Georgian beach on the south shore of Georgian Bay and then south to around Orangeville Ontario.

When the British arrived in this area the territory was occupied by various Ojibwa and Chippewa Nations.  Treaty 18, Treaty 16, Treaty 36, Treaty 72 and Treaty 94 on Manitoulin Island were negotiated in early 1800s through to the 1860s.  Negotiations began as Nation-to-Nation relationships.  The British argued these treaties would help Indigenous Nations protect their relationship with their land, but the Treaties read as land surrenders.  Many Nations continue to contest these treaties saying that they never ceded the land or that treaty obligations were not fulfilled by the Crown.  The Saugeen Ojibway Nation is arguing an historic land claim to reclaim land and huge amounts of lakes, waterways, parks, shoreline and shoreline allowances.

Peace and Friendship Treaties were the first kind of treaty that Europeans entered into with Indigenous peoples in present day Canada. They were meant to sketch out details of a peaceful co-existence between Nations. A Nation-to-Nation relationship built on trust, trade and mutual respect.  These treaties were designed to allow both signatories to coexist in the territory under question.  They had nothing to do with surrendering Land.

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The first of these Friendship Treaties was signed in 1726 in present-day Nova Scotia, formally bringing to an end a three year long war between New England and the Wabanaki. The Wabanaki was a political alliance of the major aboriginal communities living in the Atlantic region. The alliance was composed of four societies: the Mi’kmaq, the Maliseet, the Passamaquoddy and a loosely-allied group of communities living between the Penobscot and the Kennebec Rivers.

The Crawford Purchase refer to land that the British took from the Mississauga living near the Bay of Quinte to deal with the influx of British Loyalist who moved North after the American Revolution.  The Crawford Purchase is not a Treaty because there is no Treaty. There is no official documentation or signed paperwork. The Crawford Purchase exists only a letter from Mr Crawford himself detailing in his own fancy script what he thinks he acquired.  Some say there were wampum belts traded between the Mississauga and the Crown, but again, no records exist.

Last April I felt like weeping when I realized it had been a year and a half and I still couldn’t explain the Crawford Purchase. I think part of my confusion might be that no one really wants to commit to marking out the boundaries and details of this land acquisition because it was such a scandalous and ill defined deal.  In exchange for some lace hats, red cloth and gunshot, the Crawford “Purchase” has spawned many present day land claims and Land Back protests. In addition to ongoing land claims from the Mohawks of Tyendinaga, as well as claims and Land Back protests at the Six Nations Reserve on the Grand River, the Algonquin of Ontario are in the process of negotiating a claim which includes not only land surrendered by Old Chief Mynass, but an area of 9 million acres in eastern Ontario.

Whose land was it? What land was it? What was the deal? And were the promises kept?  If you want to know more about the specifics, it’s probably best to …

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The Simcoe Deed, or Treaty 3 1/2 is for land known as the Mohawk Tract or Tyendinaga Territory.  The British negotiated with the Mississauga to secure this land for the Mohawks fighting with the British in the American Revolution.  Their land – the Mohawk Valley – was given away when the British lost, but Sir William Johnson promised the Mohawk people land equal or greater in value to what they had lost farther north.  Chief John Deserontyon and his people chose to move to the Bay of Quinte because it is the birthplace of Tekanawita, the Peacemaker that brought the original Five Nations Haudenosaunee Confederacy under a constitution of peace in the 12^th century.   They arrived in canoes on the shores of the Bay of Quinte in 1784.

When they arrived, however, they found settlers already living on this land. Chief Deserontyon had been promised 92 700 acres of land for his people, but he had to fight for 9 years to get a deed. The Simcoe Deed or Treaty 3 ½ was finally signed on April 1, 1793 by Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe.  It was far smaller than the surrounding townships. Within a span of 23 years two-thirds of the original Mohawk Tract land was lost as the government granted it away to other Settler families.  Today, the Mohawks of Tyendinaga have approximately 18,000 acres remaining of the original 92, 700 acres promised.  Read more about The Simcoe Deed.

The St Regis Purchase, or Treaty 57 was signed on June 1, 1847 by representatives of the Crown and the Akwesasne Nation.   According to the Government, the Akwesasne ceded the Nutfield Tract Indian Reservation, but the Nation disagrees. The land in question is a parcel of land 2 miles wide and 25 miles deep, stretching north from the shore of the St Lawrence River. The Nutfield Tract was carved out of Akwesasne Territory in 1784 by a surveyor for the Crown and set aside as hunting ground for the Mohawk.  The Government pushed for the St Regis Purchase as a way to end years of disputes over boundaries, ownership, and unpaid rents from the Settler tenants leasing the land from the Akwesane people.  The government’s decision to sell this land to tenants and squatters continues to be rejected by the Akwesasne Nation. During this selloff of these “Indian Lands” two of Robert Colquhoun’s sons acquired title to waterfront lots.

I was shocked when I found a 2012 newsletter from the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne stating the Nutfield Tract Indian Reservation is currently a “claims in research.” I was shocked because I did not know then how much land in Canada is actively being fought for inside the Canadian court system. The Mohawk Council of Akwesasne Aboriginal Rights and Research office says information about this claim is provided only to the members of the community of Akwesasne, and not to the public, media or any external entity. I do not know if this claim will proceed to court, but I do know that in Ontario there are 32 Current Land Claims in review today.

So when I came up with the idea for this project I had this really romantic and quite frankly ridiculous vision of myself “walking the land.”   I imagined myself strolling peacefully through a wilderness landscape: holding aside brush, walking along creek banks, and scrambling up rocky embankments re-tracing the first steps of my ancestors, and searching for discarded materials I could use to make my shoes …

Of course this is the kind of romanticized, Eurocentric view of land that only a Settler would have.  A view held, embarrassingly enough, until I smacked right up into the cold harsh reality of Private Property as I stood there considering the pros and cons of trespassing to make my art …

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