The small Christian church at Kitigan Zibi (Algonquin unceded territory, QC) is the pride of many residents of this Anishinabeg community, 135 km north of Ottawa on Highway 105. Many a wedding and baptism ceremony have occurred there over the passage of the church’s years on our reserve. My parents had their funeral masses held there. It was for them, in life, a sacred place.
Though I myself am not a Christian, I would do all possible to save the little church should anyone ever threaten her existence.
If someone, for example, entered our community and said, “I have been given authority by the government to remove this church from its very foundation, board by board, pew by pew. And upon the place where it once stood, I will build condos where only the very rich will live. To pacify you, I will create jobs for your community until the condos are built.”
I’m well aware that no one would dare support such a thing at Kitigan Zibi. If they tried, a great protest would arise. I would stand in solidarity with the people protesting the destruction of a sacred place, even to the point of risking the spilling of my own blood to save the church. I am not a Christian, but I stand behind Rabbi Bulka’s words, “An attack on one faith is an attack on all faiths.”
An ancient place of prayer and ceremony within the perimeters of the homeland of the Algonquin Anishinabe is under threat of being destroyed by a developer. There was a time in the past when “Akikodjiwan,” as it is called by Algonquins north of K.Z., or “Asinabka” as it was called by the late William Commanda, served the People so well that we were always spiritually at peace because of its existence. It is truly heart-wrenching and frightening to think that Akikodjiwan will become a place of condos and commerce if the developers, Windmill and Dream, get their way. Whatever your spiritual beliefs are, if you feel that Indigenous spirituality is worth preserving, we call on you to stand as one with us.
Remember that when only Indigenous spirituality existed here on our traditional lands, the People went, in an honourable and humble way, to places like Akikodjiwan. They requested guidance in their thoughts and healing for any negative deeds they perpetrated. There was no need for prisons at that time, nor were there the things of addictions to sink our People. There was no suicide epidemic! Our Indigenous spirituality was given to the First Peoples by Creator to honour and respect all life, especially that of water. It was beautiful and powerful. This is why our spirituality was outlawed by the colonizers who feared it and knew that with our spiritual beliefs intact, we as a people would never be controlled nor manipulated by anyone.
On June 22nd, at Victoria Island, let us meet and walk in peace and solidarity to Parliament Hill. Together, we will tell all Canadians that Akikodjiwan can and should become greenspace, parkland and a place of sacredness for all of us to benefit from.
Click here for more information about the walk.
Keep the Circle Strong,
South Wind (Albert Dumont)
PS – Please promote the walk on FB and here is my latest Newsletter you can share.
Over 20 years ago, Phil Jenkins wrote An Acre of Time. He extensively researched the history of the Lebreton Flats in Ottawa, near Akikodjiwan (Chaudière). Below is a quote from the book regarding the continued presence of the Anishinabe/Algonquin people in the National Capital region. This originally appeared as a comment on January 15th on my blog post, Algonquin Land. It is posted here with Jenkins’ permission.
South Wind
Excerpt from “An Acre of Time”
Because of a petition Constant made to the British department of Indian Affairs in the February of 1830, when he was 44, we know where those hunting grounds were. In the document Constant says,
“That after several years the hunt has more and more diminished with the destruction and the distancing of the beaver and of game. The only means of subsistence of the supplicant whose hunting grounds, situated to the South of the Ottawa at the top of the Rideau, are almost all ruined by the incursions that were made and the numerous settlements that now run along them.”
The expanse of Constant’s family territory can only be guessed at, but the average Algonquin grounds was 100 square miles, or an area ten miles by ten. The “incursions” that Constant mentioned in his petition were the first stirrings of settlement, stirrings that would divide, sub-divide and eventually become Bytown, then Ottawa, the capital city of the British invasion. Constant and his family were to be replaced, in six generations, by half a million people.
Within a couple of months of his petition, Constant got a form letter. It was a fancy-looking document dressed up as a certificate, flourishes and filigreed edges, designed to impress the receiver. It came from Sir James Kempt who was, as it said at the top of the paper, “Captain General and Governor-in-Chief in and over the provinces of Lower and Upper Canada,” as well as of other glories. Sir James wanted Constant to know that he was “reposing especial trust and confidence in your courage and good conduct, and in your zealous and faithful attachment to His Britannic Majesty King George.”
Four years after Constant, together with a Nippissing chief, went to visit James Hughes, an Indian Affairs agent in Montreal. Hughes later reported the meeting to his employers, giving his take on what the two chiefs had on their minds. An edited version of his letter reads,
“Old Constant Pinaisais [French spelling] was here a few days ago. He brought a map made a few years past. These lands on the borders of the Ottawa are now almost all settled.
They however have marked out a lot above the Grand Calumet Portage some distance above the last settlements. They would wish to have a township or a seignorie given to them there, before these lands are granted.
It is on the south side [of the river]. There is an island before it which they would also like to have, to make hay thereon and place their cattle in summer. They say they have no encouragement to work on pieces of land that are in manner only lent to them, whereas were they masters of a certain tract that they could call their own, they would be happy and industrious. They would have it in their power to make better hunts – find more deer and catch plenty of fish.
The history of the British theft of the Algonquin way of living is right there in those few words. No-one goes through life without feeling great change, but Constant Penency found himself pushed over the edge of an era. He was born a free hunter’s son, and by the age of 50 he was asking men born in another world for the right to relinquish any claim on his birthland, and to become a sharecropper and part-time trapper far away from their incursions.