Are Quebec and Ontario Algonquins at odds?

Jeff Green | May 06, 2010

In late April this year a delegation of eight Algonquin chiefs from communities in Quebec appeared at Parliament Hill to present a declaration that was written on a piece of buckskin. The chiefs said they were not making any kind of a land claim; they were just making a statement of fact. "We will not be entering into the current land claim process devised by the government," Grand Chief Lucien Wabanonik said in a statement, "because these lands are ours."

Wabanonik told Newstalk 1010 radio station that the government land claims process is not about recognizing rights but extinguishing them. He did not refer directly to the Ontario Algonquin Land Claim, but the territory that is covered in the statement stretches from Sault St. Marie through North Bay and Ottawa to the City of Montreal, encompassing part, if not all of the lands that are included in the Ontario Algonquin Land Claim.

The Algonquins of Ontario are immersed in land claims negotiaions with the Ontario and Canadian governments and work on an agreement in principle is slated to be completed within a year, as the land claim process reaches its 20th birthday.

The Algonquins of Ontario are represented at the land claims table by the Chief and Council of the Pikwakanagan First Nation an Algonquin Nation Representatives from nine off-reserve Algonquin communities.