Community Tourism - Wikwemikong Unceded Indian Reserve

The peoples of the Three Fire Confederacy - the Ojibway, Odawa and Pottawatomi - say that when the Great Spirit, the Gitchi Manitou, was creating the world, he made a special place for himself: an island in which he combined the best of all the parts of his creation - water, air and earth. Today, the island of Manitou is still known by his name, we call it Manitoulin Island.

Manitoulin Island lies near the north shore of Lake Huron, southwest of Sudbury and North Bay. It is the largest fresh water island in the world. People have lived on the island for more than 30,000 years. Today, the Wikwemikong Unceded Indian Reserve covers 417 square kilometers on the Manitoulin's eastern peninsula. It is home to 2,700 people, with another 3,600 members who live off reserve. Locally the people of Wikwemikong call themselves Wiky. Their reserve is the only unceded reserve in Canada. This means that they never signed any treaties with the government and still lay claim to the lands of the ancestors.

Manitoulin Island is a popular summer vacation spot for many people. A good deal of business in Wikwemikong focuses on the tourist industry. The reserve has a marina, a golf course and a number of tour companies, one of which runs islands tour with all-terrain-vehicles or ATVs.

ATVs were developed in Japan as a farm-to-town vehicles for isolated, mountainous areas. During spring thaws and rainy seasons steep mountains roads were often impassable with conventional vehicles, so ATVs became a very popular mode of transportation. When they were imported to Turtle Island, they immediately became popular, especially in rural and remote communities where they could travel over land which was impassable by other vehicles.

WaWashkesh Wilderness ATV Tours runs 2-hour and day-long tours of areas in and around Wikwemikong, including Be-Nong-Ghong (The Cliffs) and Mid-Weh-Ghong (Where-you-can-hear-the-rapids). The tours are fun, and designed to show people areas of the island they wouldn't normally be able to visit. WaWashkesh is also very safety conscious. ATVs often have little or no built-in suspension and balloon wheels, these features make them fun and bouncy, but also very unstable. To avoid injuries and accidents WaWashkesh insists all clients wear helmets, ride with a guide who knows the land, and drive at safe speeds.

For more information check out, www.quadtours.com.

Pine Forest and Logging Protection - Temagami: Deep Water by the Shore

Temagami is a region in Northeastern Ontario, north of Sudbury and North Bay, which covers 680,000 hectares of forest, lakes and rivers. It is named for the Teme-Augama Anishnabai (the Deep Water People) who have lived in the area for many generations. Their population numbers around 1700. The Temagami First Nation (TFN) and the Teme-Augama Anishnabai (TAA) are currently in negotiations with the Government of Ontario, to extend their claim to lands beyond their current holdings on Bear Island in Lake Temagami.

Their land claim goes back to 1877 when Chief Tonene protested to the federal government that lumber companies were felling trees in n'Daki Menan, his people's traditional homeland. The protest was based on the fact that the Teme-Augama Anishnabai had been excluded from the 1850 Robinson-Huron Treaty, and had not given up title or rights to their traditional lands. Chief Tonene asked the government to create a reserve which would protect his people and their land from the lumber companies. More than 100 years later, the situation is still not resolved. Lumber companies have been interested in the Temagami region for so long because it is home to the densest area of old growth Red and White Pine forest in the world. These trees are quite large, and because of their size can be used for many products, like furniture and giant plywood sheets. The trees also hold a spiritual significance for First Nations peoples of the region. The forest stands have been in place for over 7,000 years. Some of the trees are over 350 years old. Old growth forests are living entities: because of their age, they house highly developed, stable and self-sustained ecosystems. Within these systems are complex and delicate food webs which are sensitive to changes in the local environment, and very sensitive to the effects of forest harvesting. A good proportion of the old growth forest is now protected from logging in order to protect the ecosystems they contain.

Some of the information in this article was found at http://www.nativenet.uthscsa.edu/archive/ nl/9306/0090.html, and www.ancientforest.org/explore.html

Land claims, the future and measurement - Fort William First Nation

The Ojibwa of Fort William First Nation live at the head of Lake Superior, near Thunder Bay, Ontario. They know first hand the importance of accuracy when dealing with measurement. Units, such as the league or the mile were foreign to the Ojibwa before contact with Europeans was established. The Ojibwa had their own terms for measuring distances based on the time it took to get from one place to another. This was a unique way to measure things which took into account whether travel was by water or land, the difficulty of the terrain and the weather.

The first Europeans the Ojibwa came into contact with were the French. It was the French who introduced them to measurement using 'leagues'. (A league is about 3 miles or just under 5 kilometers.) The Ojibwa did not completely understand the term and, in fact, the Ojibwa word for 'league' originally meant 'a measure used by the French'. In time, it came to mean just 'measure'. The word for 'measure' was not limited to distances however. It could also be used to describe weight or volume.

This imprecise use of the terms caused confusion when the Ojibwa negotiated with the British for reserve land. By this point in time, the Ojibwa unit was the league, which they had learned from the French. The British, however, used the mile as their unit of measurement for distance. It was a misunderstanding of which units were being used to measure the land that created a problem which is still unresolved today. Under current land claims, the Ojibwa of Fort William First Nation are arguing that the British used the mile where they should have used the league, and that the reserve is actually 3 times smaller than it should be.

The information in this article was found in the Report on the Leagues and Miles Claim of the Fort William First Nation.