Their Home and Native Land

<p><span style=color: rgba(102 102 102 1)>In </span><em style=color: rgba(102 102 102 1)>Their Home and Native Land </em><span style=color: rgba(102 102 102 1)>Scottish-born Toronto author Robert MacBain writes about Indigenous people forbidden to own their own homes or get a loan from the bank and needing permission from an Indian agent to sell their chickens or cows.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(102 102 102 1)>He writes about pregnant 13-year-olds at an Ojibway community in northwestern Ontario where the houses are in good condition satellite dishes bring in news and entertainment cars and pickups are new or less than five years old lawns are littered with toys - and 90% of the residents are on welfare with no hope of getting a job.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(102 102 102 1)>He interviews an Ojibway chief in northwestern Ontario who was prepared to go to war and die if the Canadian Army opened fire during the 78-day standoff between Mohawk Warriors and the Royal 22</span><sup style=color: rgba(102 102 102 1)>nd</sup><span style=color: rgba(102 102 102 1)> Regiment at Oka Quebec in 1990.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(102 102 102 1)>He describes the devastating impact on an Ojibway community in northwestern Ontario when their lakes and rivers were poisoned with mercury from a British-owned pulp and paper mill.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(102 102 102 1)>Indigenous leaders talk about the iron-clad control bureaucrats at the Department of Indian Affairs exercise over the lives of their people and how well-meaning ministers are hobbled by the bureaucrats in Ottawa.</span></p><p><em style=color: rgba(102 102 102 1)>Their Home and Native Land </em><span style=color: rgba(102 102 102 1)>provides detailed reports about the treaties the new Dominion of Canada made between 1871 and 1877 with the scattered bands of Ojibways Crees Blackfoot and other tribes on the former Hudson's Bay Company lands lying between Thunder Bay and the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(102 102 102 1)>Read about Indigenous people forced off fertile land reserved for them and their children under the treaties by greedy land speculators aided and abetted by corrupt government officials.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(102 102 102 1)>The first organized native protest march in Canadian history and the events and circumstances leading up to it.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(102 102 102 1)>Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau threatening bloodshed in 1983 if Indigenous leaders try to set up their own independent government.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(102 102 102 1)>Ojibways fighting alongside Montcalm at the battle on the Plains of Abraham in 1759 and slaughtering English soldiers and civilians at Fort Michilimackinac in 1763.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(102 102 102 1)>How a culture clash between Indigenous leaders from western Canada and those from Quebec led to the demise of the National Indian Council which morphed into the National Indian Brotherhood in 1968 and today's Assembly of First Nations in 1982.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(102 102 102 1)>You'll meet some truly remarkable and fascinating Ojibways Mohawks and Crees whose positive approach to life - despite the conditions they live under - is truly inspirational.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(102 102 102 1)>They have stories worth telling worth reading.</span></p>