Photo credit Galt Archives and Museum
They are so united that, if one offends the least among them, they consider themselves all equally offended.
~Paul Le Jeune, 1637
Website by Professor Peter Campbell, BA, MA, PhD. Retired history professor Queens University, Kingston, ON CA
The man on the left is Senator William Buchanan, politician and publisher of the Lethbridge Herald. The man in the middle is Jim Shot Both Sides, the last hereditary chieftain and first elected chieftain of the Kainai. The man on the right is Dr. Peter Campbell, my great-uncle. Senator Buchanan and my great uncle are honourary chieftains of the Kainai. Photo Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, circa 1950.
Is it Rite, Right or Re-Write?
Anti-racist historians in this country’s universities want the public to believe that they are replacing the lies and myths of the European invaders of this country with Indigenous truth. Far too often, however, they are actually replacing one set of lies and myths with another set of lies and myths. In the process, anti-racist historians, most of them white, have created a collective racial identity for Indigenous Peoples they can twist and turn for their political purposes. In the process, these self-declared diversity champions are writing Indigenous diversity out of history. As Chelsea Vowell points out in her book Indigenous Writes, the positive stereotypes they have created can be as damaging, if not more damaging, than the negative ones they seek to destroy. There are Indigenous Peoples who do not live on Turtle Island. I welcome you to read my articles.
Truth Lies Bleeding
Anti-Racist Historians and the Destruction of Wendake
In recent years, a body of academic work has argued that the destruction of Huron-Wendat civilization in 1648-49 did not happen. It is just one of a number of claims made by anti-racist historians seeking to decolonize Canadian universities, and thereby to decolonize Canadian public opinion. In the process it has become much more important to create a favourable image of Indigenous Peoples in the eyes of non-Indigenous Peoples in the present day than it is to record their history as truthfully as the evidence will allow. In the case of the destruction of Huronia, the main goal of anti-racist historians is to change a longstanding depiction of the Iroquois as bloodthirsty savages. It is a worthy cause, but it does not justify the falsification of history. It also does not justify the creation of a university in this country in which students no longer attend in order to learn to think historically, but rather to learn to think racially. Racial thinking does not explain what happened to the Huron-Wendat but, as George Orwell tells us, “exhaustive discussion” will get us closer.
Keywords:
Huronia, Wendake, Indigenous History
Pride And Paganism
The Hidden History of the Algonquins of the Ottawa Valley
For four hundred years, the Algonquins of the Ottawa Valley have been stereotyped and misrepresented. It began with Jesuit priests in 17th century New France, who condemned the Kichesipirini and other Algonquins of the Ottawa Valley as haughty, arrogant, and savage people resisting attempts to convert them to Christianity. This attitude has been hidden by the unquestioned assumption in the existing literature that the Algonquins were allies of the French. In reality, that alliance only involved Algonquin Christians, while the traditionalists were abandoned, left to be destroyed by the Iroquois in what the Jesuits considered a well deserved humbling of a sinfully proud people. In the 20th century the decimation of the Algonquins of the Ottawa Valley was cast into the shadow of the mourning wars argument, the claim that the Iroquois were looking for captives to replace their own people killed by disease and war. In reality, the search for captives was only one aspect of a years-long campaign to destroy the Algonquins of the Ottawa Valley that reached its apotheosis in 1647. The final indignity came in 1648-49 with the destruction of Huronia, which has completely overshadowed the destruction of the Algonquins of the Ottawa Valley. We are well into the 21st century, and they are still a forgotten people.
Keywords:
Algonquins, Iroquois, Jesuits, Montagnais
Absence Of Evidence Is Hardly Evidence Of Absence
Saint Lawrence Iroquoians, Algonkians, and The Politics of Disappearance
The disappearance of the Saint Lawrence Iroquoians, the peoples Jacques Cartier encountered in the 1530s, is one of the great mysteries of Canadian history. The mystery will likely never be solved, but our understanding of that period of history includes the histories of the Algonkian peoples who were, in different periods, their neighbours, trading partners, and rivals. Intentionally or not, there has been a tendency to emphasize the history, culture, and identity of the Saint Lawrence Iroquoians at the expense of the Attikamegue, Montagnais (Innu), Maliseet (Wolastoqiyik), Mi’kmaq, and Algonquins of the Ottawa Valley. Many issues will remain in dispute, but it is important to have a sense of the way in which the history of the Saint Lawrence Iroquoians has been written, and how that historiography tends to leave the Algonkian peoples on the margins of history.
Keywords:
Hochelaga, Stadacona, Mi’kmaq, Algonquins