Like Indigenous people the world over, the Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg who have lived in the Kawartha Lakes for thousands of years have a culture rooted in a staple food: manoomin, which means "the good seed."
How do we tell the history of a people and a place when we have tried to erase that people from that place? The people I am referring to are the Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg, the original people of what is most recently called Kawartha Lakes. How do we recount their history when most people don’t even know their name? Do we begin with the treaties, the official documents of 1818 and 1923 that the Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg were forced to sign, ceding control of their land and later their hunting, fishing and gathering rights to the colonizers? Do we discuss how a people who did not consider the land something that could be “owned” or “sold” thought these were agreements to share the land peacefully, not agreements that relinquished their rights completely?
