Remembering the Past Reveals the Present
64th Annual Wiikwemikoong Cultural Festival, August 5, 2024
The work we have done to uncover the truth of residential schools has led me several times this summer to Indigenous communities across Northern Ontario. In this second summer of outreach, I have seen a reality that few non-Indigenous Canadians have really accepted. The Anishinaabe nation is alive and kicking.
Not only did residential schools fail to erase this nation and the many others in this country. The Anishinabek are driving a dramatic resurgence of their nation.
One of the centres of this resurgence is Wiikwemikoong First Nation, spanning the eastern end of Manitoulin Island and the north shore of Lake Huron.
In 1960 elder Rosemary Fisher-Odjig attended a pow wow south of the border, decades after Canada had banned these celebrations of national identity and culture. She managed to acquire a big drum and bring it across the border without incident. The next year it beat the rhythm around which her community gathered – and has continued to gather for 63 years.
The Wiikwemikoong Cultural Festival is the oldest public pow wow in Canada. I can only imagine the inspiration it has given, the relationships strengthened, the plans made and the determination deepened around the drum I heard at the pow wow ground this past August. What I can share is that the size of the crowd, the commitment they shared to ceremony and the pride they exuded all revealed that this is a nation, in every sense of the word.
Remembering Project volunteers now have an opportunity to see for themselves. On September 30, a group of us will travel to Manitoulin Island. We will start the day paying our respects to the children lost to the Spanish River Residential School, then meet the survivors as we offer our help in their search for their fellow students. That afternoon we will travel to Wiikwemikoong First Nation where we will hear its history.
Our country is already host to many nations. As we open our eyes to harms done in the past we can see the full reality of the present.
Come join us in Manitoulin on September 30. You’ll see that we non-Indigenous Canadians failed in our attempt to erase other nations. And you’ll be glad we did.
Ben Rowswell
