For Pikwakanagan, the land claim is also about self governance

Jeff Green | Mar 16, 2022

Jim Meness has been a member of the Pikwakanagan First Nation Council since 1999. Apart from all of the other duties of council members, members of the Pikwakanagan Council are also Algonquin Nation Representatives (ANR) who sit at the Algonquin Land Claim table with representatives from the governments of Ontario and Canada.

On the invitation of the group, Mississippi Mills All My Relations, made a Zoom presentation to group members and the general public on Monday Night (March 14).

The presentation was called ‘Algonquin Nation Past and Present: The Land Claim Explained’

Meness was sitting in for Pikwanagan Councillor, and former Executive Director, Dan Kohoko, who was the originally scheduled presenter.

Meness brought a long-term perspective to the presentation, since he has been working on the land claim for over 20 years.

The first part of the presentation dealt with the history of the Algonquin people in the Kichesippi (Ottawa) river valley, which he said dates back 10,000 years according to archaeological records. There are artifacts which also indicate that the Algonquins of the Kichesippi enjoyed a trading relationship with a wide range of nations to the west, as far as the prairies, and to the east, as far as the ocean.

The last 500 years of Algonquin history have been unlike the previous 9,500, because of the impact of the arrival of European settlers and the imposition of colonial land use policies.

He pointed out that the Royal Proclamation of 1763 reserved lands as exclusive hunting grounds, and “prohibited any person from taking away those rights. We carried around the proclamation with us for 80 years,” Meness said. “ It means that our land is our land. If that proclamation was adhered to, we would not be here today talking about this land claim. Things could have been a lot better for us, but that is now 200 years ago. We can't do anything about the past. We have to move forward.”

In various forms, Algonquins have petitioned the federal government to enter into land claim negotiations more than ten times since the 1760s, without success. In that time, 11 Algonquin reserves have been established, 10 in Quebec and only 1, Pikwakanagan (formerly known as the Algonquins of Golden Lake) in Ontario.

In the mid 19th century, land was set aside, for a time, for the establishment of four more Ontario reserves as locations for Algonquins in those areas, but the land ended up being attractive for other uses and the reserves were never set up. They were in Whitney, Baptiste Lake, Mattawa, and in the former Bedford Township in Frontenac County.

“The Whitney Reserve became a park,” said Meness, “and we could not have Algonquins in Algonquin Park.”

Even in the Golden Lake case, the reserve is small, only 1,800 acres, and the Algonquins had to repurpose funds that were intended for community development, in order to buy back the land that was being returned to them from the federal government.

In 1983, the Algonquins of Golden Lake petitioned the federal government once again, and this time the claim was acknowledged, by Ontario in 1991, and Canada in 1992. With the exception of a three-year gap between 2001 and 2004, when the Algonquins left the table, in order to deal with internal matters, the claim has been under negotiation ever since.

An Agreement in Principle has been ratified by the Algonquins, and negotiations are continuing towards a final agreement.

In addition to members of the Pikwakanagan First Nation, who are registered Algonquins under the Indian Act of Canada, there are 9 other communities involved in the land claim process. They are made up of Algonquin electors, who satisfy criteria for membership. The criteria include documentation establishing Algonquin descendancy, as well as historical connection to an Algonquin community. Among the 9 communities, with representation at the land claim table, are the Shabot Obaadjiwan from the Sharbot Lake area, and the Snimikobe in the vicinity of Ardoch.

Each of these communities has one Algonquin Nation representative, and each of the Pikwakanagan Council members also sit at the table.

One of slides during Jim Meness' presentation showed the 9-million acre territory in the land claim. It is the Kichesippi River watershed, on the Ontario side only.

“This is the territory” he said, referring to the white section on a map of Eastern Ontario, “and this is what has happened to it,” he said as a second slide came up. The second slide was of the same territory, with all of the features of development; cities, roads, communications towers, etc.

A small portion of the second slide was tan coloured, mostly in the north western part of the territory. It marked “crown land” which is where all of the parcels that are included in the claim are taken from.

“We agreed, back when the negotiations started, not to petition for any of the land that was sold by the Crown to innocent third parties,” he said, people who were not aware at the time of purchase that the land had never been ceded to the Crown.

The largest piece of “crown land” is Algonquin Park, and Meness said “we are looking at co-management regimes for the park, hopefully it will actually become “Algonquin's Park instead of Algonquin Park.”

The umbrella group that is negotiating the land claim is the Algonquins of Ontario, which has an office in Pembroke. Pikwakanagan is part of the Algonquins of Ontario, along with the 9 other communities, and as such is involved in the enterprises being undertaken by the Algonquins of Ontario, outside of the land claim process itself, including the Tewin land development in the vicinity of Manotick.

For the Pikwakanagan Council, and their Chief Wendy Jocko, there is an extra aspect to the land claim negotiations, beyond land and money transfers. It is a self-government agreement.

The community is small, 500 members, but it is growing, and is seeking the capacity to determine its own future outside of the confines of the Indian Act.

Two of the slides in the presentation included lists of various areas of jurisdiction that are being negotiated, including: education, healthcare, policing, commercial and taxing authority.

Some of the land, near the existing reserve boundaries, has been purchased and some of the the land parcels that are included in the Algonquin Land Claim are also potential development land for Pikwakanagan's use.

“We have already set up our own court,” said Meness, which deals with harvesting, and it has worked out very well.”

Child and Family Services are also already being delivered within the community, he said.

In Pikwakanagan, the building that has housed the communities' cultural centre is old and cannot be used anymore, and the preliminary concept work is being done to look at a much larger, multi-purpose building that might include a repository for Algonquin artifacts in addition to cultural and other uses. This work is going on independently from the land claim, and fundraising is already underway for what will be a long term project.

At the end of his presentation, Jim Meness took questions from the zoom crowd. He was assisted during the presentation, and question period, by Kevin Lamarre, who also delivered the prayer to the creator at the beginning of the evening.