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Digging For The Truth

By: Jon Cada-Doiron

"First Nation students get an opportunity to find out how they got their names"

Tucked away in old documents as far back in history as Cartier’s first maps of the great lakes region, history became revealed. Heidi Bohacker, a professor of History at the University of Toronto unraveled and answered long standing questions about clan systems, last name inheritances, and the cultural interaction that first nation people had with each other. Upon the arrival of French settlers and traders, woodland natives were a peaceful and accepting group and welcomed the arrival of the new comers. The woodland area stretches from the far end of Lake Superior and along the other great lakes through to the southern shoreline of what is now the St.Laurence River.

First Nation students from M’Chigeeng First Nation and Mississauga First Nation were present to listen to Bohaker’s findings. Bohacker had spent her time researching the history of the Anishnabek people for 10 years starting in 1999. With translation support from Alan Corbiere, a former researcher and now director of the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation Museum and Art Gallery, Heidi was able to find out where particular tribes and peoples originated from in one part of the Great Lakes region and track their movement through Jesuit and government records.

An interesting trend in the tracking of the documents revealed that when referring to the Anishnabek in the area, the French called the native people the Mississagi. This was how the natives were referred by the French transcribers after deciding it was easier than naming each individual group of people.

Students from the Mississauga First Nation reserve each found something that peaked their interest during the presentation.

Jordan Bisson spoke about how grand the festivals were and wished he could see it for himself, “The Festival of the Dead would have been awesome to see, the name is not what you would expect. I would love to see all the people from far away places came in on huge canoes and started dancing as soon as they got to shore. I would give up a lot to see that for myself.”

Natives had only one name before being given first names to use for government documentation.

Amanda Sayers says she liked how the Anishnabek signed their names, “Their signatures were really neat using Animal symbols like the eagle or the fish.”

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