Finding our way to reconciliation by questioning settler history

A part of reconciliation should be questioning the ideas that justified settlement and the removal of the First Nations from their lands.  These ideas continue to justify settler ownership and exploitation of 99.8 percent of Canada’s land. This talk will explore some of those ideas through the history of settlement on a tract of land adjacent to Cornwall, Ontario, then part of the Akwesasne community’s territory but first rented and then sold to settlers in 1847. This and other parts of what were Akwesasne lands are the subject of ongoing land claims.

Bob MacDermid is a retired York University professor and member of the Lanark County Neighbours for Truth and Reconciliation.