The War in the Country by Thomas F. Pawlick

Author:Thomas F. Pawlick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SOC055000, NAT000000
ISBN: 9781926812328
Publisher: Greystone Books
Published: 2010-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

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Since Time Immemorial

. . .it is expressly provided that the Indians shall not, under any pretense whatever, be deprived of the lands claimed by them . . .

JOHN JOHNSON, British Superintendent of Indian Affairs, November 5, 1824. 1

THE ARDOCH ALGONQUINS’ STRUGGLE to protect their and their white neighbors’ land from pollution by uranium miners was not the only battle they were forced to fight in 2006 -08. Nor were the Algonquins’ multiple confrontations the only ones going on in the area. Barely more than an hour’s drive away from Ardoch (if you knew the shortcuts and went a bit over the speed limit) was the Tyendi-naga Mohawk Reserve, where the descendants of the famed Joseph Brant were engaged in another fight, also in part with would-be miners.

Headlines in the local weeklies and the daily Kingston Whig-Standard ping-ponged between the two battles, recording the most recent moves, first of the Algonquins, then the Mohawks. The tactics in each fight were different, but the stakes in both were the same, and both were of national importance—physically, geographically, politically, financially, socially, and especially morally.

In fact, if one looks at the picture in many countries elsewhere in the world, they were no more than the local examples of a worldwide battle being fought by once forcibly colonized indigenous peoples, from Australia’s Aboriginals and the Ainu of northern Japan, to the Hmung of Vietnam and the decimated tribes of the Amazon, to regain the rights and human dignity their one-time conquerors had taken from them at the point of a gun or sword, or by simple swindling, by insisting on equitable treatment today.

In Australia, the Wangkumarra people have engaged in battle with mining giant Santos over oil exploration and mining activity on their traditional Outback lands.2 In the U.S., the Dineh-Navajo of Arizona have struggled against forced relocation of their people to make room for coal mining operations,3 while in Canada, British Columbia’s Coast Salish people have had to struggle against gold mine expansion on their lands that would have damaged local lakes.4 Other First Nations peoples are still fighting against loggers, recreational land developers, and others who encroach on their lands.

Rights, and A Priceless Gift

The Ardoch Algonquins’ other big fights, before the uranium controversy began, were to maintain their traditional hunting and fishing rights, and to give the region in which they lived a priceless gift, which too few seemed to want to accept: a cultural center at Pine Lake, called the Manomin Center after the rice which had been a staple of the traditional Algonquin diet. Open to all, the center would tell the story of the area’s aboriginal people and foster the preservation of the Algonquin language, way of life, and traditions.

Hunting and fishing rights had been crucial to the Algon-quins for decades. Even after the initial onslaught of white invasion and land-taking, they still depended on such activity to survive. As the authors of the Canadian Algonquin history Since Time Immemorial: Our Story recall, the Great Depression of the

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