And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 1999 07:57:44 -0400
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Lynne Moss-Sharman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: "much of Indian Toronto is under concrete"
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Home To The World
A peoples' history under our feet
July 17, 1999 By Sara Jean Green
Toronto Star Staff Reporter
DOUBLE-DECKER buses shuttling tourists around the city are missing some of
our oldest landmarks - the camps and villages of Indian Toronto. The truth
is, there's not a lot to see since much of Indian Toronto is now destroyed
or buried under concrete. And some of what's left, including sites older
than the Egyptian pyramids, is at risk being bulldozed in Toronto's
building boom, archeologists say. They suspect thousands of Indian sites -
going back as far as 10,000 years and reflecting EVIDENCE OF THE CITY'S
MULTI-CULTURAL PAST?? remain secreted in the Earth.
Long before it became known for its arts and culture and ethnic diversity,
Toronto was a destination point for First Nations people who came for
exactly the same reasons immigrants continue to move here. Toronto was a
junction point of land and water routes within the Great Lakes region. In
fact, artefacts from as far south as the Gulf of Mexico to the north shore
of Lake Superior have been found at most major archeological sites
throughout Greater Toronto.
Because of its location along the trade routes, particularly its proximity
to the Toronto Carrying Place Trail that runs east of the Humber River from
Lake Ontario to Lake Simcoe, this area has always attracted diverse peoples.
Toronto - originally called Taronto, with `t's being pronounced as `d's -
meant ``Trees in Water'' although ``Lake Opening'' and ``Place of Meeting''
are also possible translations of the Indian word.
Living up to its tradition as a gathering place, it still has the largest
aboriginal population in Canada. But for the 70,000 or so First Nation and
Metis people living in the city today, ignorance of the original occupants
is a continual source of frustration.
``Toronto has thousands of archeological sites. It's always been one of the
most densely populated places for Indian people,'' said Anishnawbe
historian Rodney Bobiwash, who says the Great Lakes region was to
indigenous woodland civilization what the Mediterranean Sea was to the
development of European culture.
The ancestors of First Nations people - called `paleo-Indians' by Western
archeologists - moved here after the retreat of the glaciers, 12,000 years
ago. Travelling the watersheds of the Humber, Don and Rouge rivers on a
seasonal basis, they lived off an abundance of wild game, fish, medicinal
plants and berries. Artefacts from occupation or camp sites have turned up
all over the GTA - even in people's backyards and gardens.
With the advent of agriculture, villages began dotting the landscape in the
early 13th century.
Home to Huron, Seneca, Anishnawbe, Neutral and Petun Indians, Toronto also
attracted other peoples - from the Mississippi River to the Rocky
Mountains, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico - who came here for
trade and cultural exchange. Universal sign language and at least a dozen
other languages were used to communicate.
``I guess it was kind of like the United Nations in the sense that all
people lived together, maintained their separate identities and got
along,'' says Bobiwash, who has led the Native Canadian Centre's Great
Indian Bus Tour of historical sites for the four years it has been operating.
Visiting about 20 pre-contact, early colonial and contemporary sites - like
Fran's Restaurant on College St. where urban Indians began meeting in the
early 1940s, long before the Native Canadian Centre opened - local
aboriginals along with out-of-town convention goers and a few Torontonians
learn about the city's early inhabitants and original geography.
The city ``was absolutely crucial to woodland culture - all the great
confederacies came out of this area,'' he says, referring to the Five
Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, and later, the Huron Confederacy and
the Three Fires Ojibway Confederacy.
Because of its prime location, Toronto became a political hotbed where
nations within the confederacies met for Indian councils to discuss
internal affairs, foreign policy and military strategy. The Queen Street
Mental Health Centre, at Queen St. and Ossington Ave., is on the historic
council grounds of the Mississauga Indians, a group within the Ojibway nation.
``Although the landscape has been irrevocably altered, philosophically
(Toronto) is still a gathering place where people of all kinds of cultures
meet together,'' says Bobiwash.
The Seed-Barker site, between Woodbridge and Kleinbrug, is a prime example.
In the 1530s, a group of 500 people - survivors of a Seneca massacre on the
Genesee River in upstate New York - escaped across Lake Ontario to seek
refuge with their enemies, the Huron.
Later, as the Seneca increased pressure in the area and the population of
Seed-Barker grew, the two groups split: the Hurons went to Midland while
their adopted brothers headed to the Creemore area, becoming what
archeologists believe are the first recognizable group of Petun Indians.
After both groups were decimated by a combination of European diseases and
Seneca warfare, they rebanded and spent several years travelling in the
Great Lakes region. They wound up in Kansas City before the American
government pushed them onto a reserve in Oklahoma to live, ironically, with
their blood enemies, the Seneca.
At Seed-Barker, archeologists have found pottery, made by the women,
bearing the unique patterns of the two peoples.
``We're finding a pottery style that shouldn't be here,'' because of the
enmity between the groups, says Toronto and Region Conservation Authority
archeologist Bob Burgar. But he has also uncovered ceramics that blend the
traditional designs.
The pottery ``is a real expression representing two groups of people coming
together on this site and becoming a new group of people,'' Burgar says.
``Something very unusual happened here. This site really represents Toronto
in microcosm - Toronto is a very diverse ethnic community living together
to become a solid community. Seed-Barker was like that.''
``By far the greatest threat to (the) sites is development,'' says Ron
Williamson, with Archaeological Services Inc., the province's largest
consulting company in its field.
Thousands of sites have been destroyed - most during Toronto's rapid
expansion in the 1950s and '60s, he says, but tougher laws are helping to
curb the problem. First introduced in 1975 and strengthened by subsequent
governments, the province's planning and environmental assessment acts give
archeologists the right to assess suspected sites well before proposed
projects get the green light.
``Prior to this legislation, thousands of sites were being destroyed by
developers every decade,'' Williamson says.
Current laws also require archeologists to be licensed before they can
start digging. But there isn't any legislation prohibiting the sale of
artefacts, Williamson says.
A top priority is to protect Indian Toronto from ``unscrupulous looters''
who raid sites to add artefacts to their own collections or sell them to
other private collectors.
``There's a huge underground market, particularly in the U.S., for Indian
artefacts'' such as human bones, burial objects, arrowheads, spear points,
and pottery, says John Hodgson, a Mohawk who helps archeologists make sense
of historical data from a native perspective.
The threat of looters is so great, they refuse to publish exact site locations.
"Let Us Consider The Human Brain As
A Very Complex Photographic Plate"
1957 G.H. Estabrooks
www.angelfire.com/mn/mcap/bc.html
FOR K A R E N #01182
who died fighting 4/23/99
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.aches-mc.org
807-622-5407
Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
doctrine of international copyright law.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
UPDATES: CAMP JUSTICE
http://shell.webbernet.net/~ishgooda/oglala/
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
