Missanabie Cree have a home

Missanabie Cree First Nation celebrated a successful land transfer with a signing ceremony Aug. 17.
The extraordinaire day came after Missanabie Cree’s patience was tested for over a hundred years waiting for a place to call home.
Located near the community of Missanabie, Ont. off of Highway 101 between Chapleau and Wawa, people had gathered by the water in anticipation. Smiles were rampant and joyful tears engulfed the Missanabie Cree citizens in a circle of relief. The culminated spirit of the people was jubilant as everyone hugged and welcomed each other home. They travelled through a gauntlet of emotions into the finality of this environmental disconnect.
Hearts raced as the women’s drum group began to sing. The people watched as the chief, council members and Elders paddled into shore. The canoes displayed a literal and ceremonial homecoming. As they beached the banks of the shore paddlers were greeted by fellow citizens and again good feelings flourished. A parade-of-flags led the people from the shore to the hall where the official signing was to take place.
Missanabie Cree Chief Kim Rainville hosted special dignitaries including Chief Keith Corston of neighbouring Fox Lake Cree First Nation, Grand Chief Stan Louttit of Mushkegowuk Council and Assembly of First Nations Ontario Regional Chief Angus Toulouse.
Assistant Deputy Minister Doug Carr from the Ontario Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs and John Peluch, district manager with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources were the two provincial government dignitaries on hand as signatories.
There were no Federal representatives at this signing.
The parties negotiating for this agreement were the Ontario Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs and the Missanabie Cree land transfer committee.
Jutta Horn, implementation coordinator for Missanabie Cree said the federal government was initially involved.
“Negotiations at first did involve Canada, although as the 15 square kilometres were given back the federal government dropped out,” Horn said.
A Missanabie Cree press release said Ontario and Canada could not agree on the exact of amount of land the community was entitled to.
The new lands will now be held in trust as Missanabie Cree waits for word on an application with the federal government to include the lands as a reserve under the Indian Act.
Nevertheless, the signing was reclamation of connection to land and an inter-generational portrayal of a persevering people. The Missanabie Cree was a designated band without reserve status. The land entitlement was lost as the Treaty Commissioners left them out of the treaty signing process. Their first attempt to claim their homelands was in the year 1897, according to a press release from Missanabie Cree. Other attempts to claim lands were made in 1906, 1915 and 1929.
Elder Christianne Wesley reminisces about her childhood.
“I was born in Moose Factory,” she said. “I used to joke, the place where they make Mooses.”
Mrs. Wesley moved to the Missanabie area when she was eight months old.
“I remember when my Grandpa Fletcher, Uncle’s Jimmy and Albert along with Cephus Sheshequin went to Ottawa to see where our land was going to be,” Wesley said. “They fought and fought and they kept going and going and going until my grandfather was really fed up. It’s a hard story to tell, its been holding onto me for a long time.”
Wesley and the rest of the Missanabie Cree citizens have come full circle and pushed through what many others could not do.
Rainville is encouraged by the community and counts on the “imagination of our youth and the potential they will find in our traditional homelands of the Missanabie Cree.”
Grand Chief Stan Louttit expressed the resilience of the people with an inspiring speech.
“If there was ever a people with patience that’s the Missanabie people,” he said. “If there was ever a people with integrity that’s the Missanabie people. If there was ever a people who stood up for your rights that’s you the Missanabie people.”
AFN Ontario Regional Chief Angus Toulouse iterated the point.
“The people must take back what was inherently ours, we have to go back to the original understandings of how we shared the land, we need to go back and remind Canada they did a horrible job of protecting the natural resources,” he said.
Toulouse also emphasized that there were nation-to-nation agreements long before the onslaught of contact.
“We had treaties with the Haudenosaunee, treaties with the Mushkego and treaties amongst ourselves,” he said. “We’ve always had these and it is not something new that the government came in and created.”
Toulouse feels those treaties between nations should be resurrected.
“We need to find ways to rekindle our treaties … as rich nations, powerful nations we always were,” he said.
The future seems bright for Missanabie citizens. However, it does not come without a hitch or an encroachment of its own.
The Anishinabek Nation and Robinson Huron Treaty Chiefs oppose the land transfer. According to the Anishinabek, the land given to Missanabie Cree is not in Treaty 9 territory but in Robinson Huron Treaty territory.
Anishinabek Grand Chief Patrick Madahbee said the land transfer is illegal because the land is not Ontario’s to transfer.
“Why didn’t the Missanabie Cree land transfer happen within the vast region of Treaty 9, especially when the Missanabie Cree belong to Treaty 9?” Madahbee said.
Horn said the issue lies with the government systems, “which is not devoid of potential conflict.”
“We will maintain positive relations with our neighbouring Nations with the utmost respect,” Horn said. “Although we must impart our history that we have been on these lands since time immemorial.”