Our Long Struggle for Home

The Ipperwash Story

By Aazhoodenaang Enjibaajig
Categories: History, Canadian History, Indigenous Studies, Indigenous History
Publisher: UBC Press
Paperback : 9780774890571, 208 pages, October 2022
Ebook (PDF) : 9780774890595, 208 pages, October 2022
Ebook (EPUB) : 9780774890601, 208 pages, October 2022

Table of contents

Foreword / John Borrows

Maps

Genealogy

Introduction

1 No Word for Surrender

2 “The House Was Gone”

3 Disruption and Determination

4 Under Cover of Prayer Meetings

5 Burying the Hatchet under a Peace Tree

6 Peacekeepers and Nation Builders

7 Taking the Barracks

8 September 5–6, 1995, Project Maple

9 September 5–6, 1995, from Our Point of View

10 After the Shooting

Epilogue: Two Boats Travelling Side by Side

Afterword: Learning to Be Treaty Kin / Heather Menzies

Notes; Index

In this disquieting story of broken promises and thwarted justice, the Anishinaabe of Stoney Point tell of the long struggle to reclaim their ancestral homeland, both before and after the Ipperwash crisis.

Description

Most Canadians know only a tiny part of the Ipperwash story – the 1995 police shooting of Dudley George. Our Long Struggle for Home recounts the history as told by George’s sister, cousins, and others from the Stoney Point Reserve, which was turned into an army training camp in the Second World War. They describe their decades-long efforts to reclaim their ancestral homeland, Aazhoodena, both before and after the police action culminating in George’s death, and offer insights into Nishnaabeg lifeways and treaty traditions in a way that brings history vividly alive. It is a compelling lesson on colonialism and the power of resistance.

Reviews

"[Our Long Struggle for Home] is a particular telling of a pivotal and often overlooked chapter of Canadian history."

- Literary Review of Canada