Moose Deer Point [Pottawatomi Rights]
March 1999 This pre-Confederation claim involves the rights of aboriginal military allies who moved to Canada following the War of 1812. The Moose Deer Point First Nation, descendants of the Pottawatomi, asked the Indian Claims Commission (ICC) to inquire into its claim for the land, presents, protection, and equality it says were promised in a 1837 speech by a British official and not delivered. The federal government rejected the First Nation's claim in 1995. Because of the historical nature of this claim, the First Nation and Canada agreed a community session was unnecessary. After an extensive review of the historical record, the Commission found that the promises made in the 1837 speech had the weight and effect of a treaty and should have been honoured. The inquiry found that the effect of breaching the promises particularly harmed the Pottawatomi. The report, released in March 1999, recommended further research to establish the nature of promises and whether they had been fulfilled. The Pottawatomi were allies of the British in the War of 1812. Their traditional territory was in the Lake Michigan area of the United States, but both before and after the War, the British provided them with presents of guns, powder, clothes and other things as a matter of diplomacy and commerce. The Pottowatomi, for their part, were concerned they would lose their traditional lands around Lake Michigan. At the time, the US government was pushing First Nations west of the Mississippi, requiring them to relinquish their annuities and their rights to land in exchange for new lands in the West. As a result of the 1837 promise, at least 3000 Pottawatomi released their rights to land and annuities in the United States to move to Canada. In the 1850s, however, concerns about cost outweighed concerns about US aggression, and the government stopped delivery of presents to all aboriginal military allies, including the Pottawatomi. The Commission's inquiry revealed that this hurt all aboriginal military allies, especially the Pottawatomi. It left the Pottawatomi without annuities, a recognized land base, or the inducements promised in the 1837 speech that had brought them to Canada in the first place. The Pottawatomi had no aboriginal rights in Canada and, unlike other aboriginal military allies, were not party to the Robinson-Huron Treaty of 1850 or the Williams Treaty of 1923. Canada, in fact, did not consider the Pottawatomi eligible to receive treaty benefits. It was only by the intervention of a benefactor that Moose Deer Point Indian Reserve was set apart for the First Nation on the east shore of Georgian Bay in 1917. Response: In March 2002, the government rejected the recommendations made in the March 1999 report. Download Government Response Click Here for the Report |
