Re: Algonquin land claims

First, I must express my thanks to you for bringing to public awareness that we are in a land claims process. I find myself in the position to help clarify a few things in regards to your recent article "Algonquin Land Claim faces many hurdles", page 2 of your February 16, 2006 issue. 

The Algonquin in the Sharbot Lake and surrounding areas did have the opportunity to become reservation natives but our Chief at the time in the 1700's wanted us to remain on our lands to keep our culture and traditions alive and to work our own relationship with the new comers.  Assimilation comes with contact and adopting different customs, attire and detachment from one’s own customs and beliefs and traditions. We refuse to be assimilated, we are here and we are staying.  We are working on making all our local communities vibrant multi-cultural communities. We Algonquin are not a "vanished culture" or "eliminated" and we don't have "only a faint connection to this past".  In the Sharbot Lake area alone we are approximately 1,700 strong. And to your statement "non-status Algonquin are anything but a unified group and have many divergent, seemingly irreconcilable, viewpoints about the land claim and their own future as a community" - yes, we may have political differences, but that is no different than the mainstream society having at least threepolitical parties. Not even all members of the same parties agree on everything. It in no way detracts from our community.

I am Danka (Timmerman) Brewer, daughter of Paul Timmerman Sr., son of Mary Ann Guigue, daughter of Margaret Innes Sharbot, who is the daughter of Mary Ann Sharbot, who is the daughter of Chief Francis Sharbot and Mary Susan Negig (one of the first Algonquin persons settled in Sharbot Lake) and proudly Algonquin.

Danka Brewer