Alderville Chief Dave Mowat: “Our people were in the way”
Article & images by Valerie MacDonald
Above image: (L-R) Suzanne Atkinson, Dave Mowat, unidentified getting ready for virtual broadcast
Writers with the Eastern Canada Farm Writers’ Association learned about two important agricultural institutions during a combined in-person and virtual visit to Northumberland County recently.
The first was about the Ontario Agri-Food Venture Centre in Colborne, a processing facility for food producers just getting into the business. The second was about Alderville First Nation where Chief Dave Mowat explained the agriculture-focused Industrial School (a precursor to the residential school model ) was unsuccessful.
Mowat provided a historical overview of a series of measures undertaken by the colonial government of the time forced on the Mississauga Nation of the Bay of Quinte, following the “failure” of the Crawford Purchase in 1783 and a series of other treaties that followed it, that resulted in the establishment of the Alderville First Nation reserve near Roseneath on the south shore of Rice Lake.
At the time, colonial governments derailed Indigenous attempts at self government trying to culturally transform band members with a Methodist Mission, and the establishment of an industrial school which they saw as a source of agricultural labour.
During a period that included the War of 1812 and the Seven Years War when the British involved First Nations as allies, up to and including the Egerton Ryerson Report of 1847, the British governments felt the best way to ensure the dominance of colonial power was through the imposition of the Protestant religion and a specific agricultural agenda.
With the colonial government curtailing the historic rights of fishing, hunting and trapping, including the right to harvest wild rice, Mowat explained the Alderville Industrial School of 1861 lasted about only eight or nine years. Students either ran away or their parents took them out of school.
Mowat thinks the historical failures of colonial powers were “racist “ in focus, and undertaken without an understanding of both aboriginal and treaty rights, that resulted only in “policy designed by white men in Ottawa.”
Understanding how First Nations were subjected to and directed by colonial laws and decisions is a critical to understanding Canadian history Mowat said adding that traditionally such an understanding has not been taught in the school system.
He says the governments of the time took the steps they did because “our people were in the way.”
In the 1980s and 1990s First Nations sued the governments over the Williams Treaties of 1923 which included First Nations in Central Ontario including Alderville. The court determined there had been lack of compensation, inadequate reserve lands and curtailment of harvesting rights due within the framework of the Treaty. In November, 2018 there was a settlement along with financial compensation and the right to purchase more lands at market value guaranteed.
This past March, Alderville First Nation purchased 525 acres between Buckhorn and Bobcaygeon, but it will take years to be finalized the Chief said. The land parcel is part of a 11,000 acre area that can be purchased at market value according to the settlement, that are not just adjacent to existing Alderville First Nation reserve lands.
When asked how journalists could find out more about the history of First Nations, the Chief said “my door is a good door to knock on” and he recommended that people read the treaties and reports of the past to better understand this critical part of our history.
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