Who is Telling Our Story?

I was recently in the Rotary Park in Pentatanguishene, ON looking for a new mural that had been installed.  I hadn’t been to this park since the Rendezvous de Champlain Festival in 2015.  Many new statues had been erected including one depicting the meeting of Samuel de Champlain and the Chief of the Wendat people who inhabited the area.  It is pictured here along with a local ring-billed gull atop Champlain’s hat.

Several new statues had been erected depicting some of the early Catholic priests in the area, the Metis Nation and the Wendat people.  In addition to these were three information plaques which will look familiar to anyone who has visited an historical site in Ontario.  But why three?  English, French and what else?  Upon closer inspection, I discovered that there were also plaques on the back of the plaques, totaling 6 languages.  Well, I have never seen this before so I examined each one and discovered that indeed the information was in English, French, the language of the Anishinabe people, the language of the Mohawk people, the language of the Montagnais-Innu people and in the language of the Wendat people.  Each plaque said that Champlain had encountered these people in 1615.

French

Here is what it says in English:

Champlain in Ontario, 1615

In April 1615, Samuel de Champlain (c.1574-1635) embarked from Honfleur, upon his seventh voyage to New France.  Upon arrival in Quebec, Champlain was informed of increasing tensions with the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) the traditional rival of his Anishinabe (Algonquin) and Wendat (Huron) allies.  He travelled west to Huronia on a diplomatic and military expedition where he visited several villages including Cahiague, a large and important Wendat settlement.  With a mixed force of 400-500 First Nations warriors and a few Europeans, Champlain travelled southeast along the Trent River system, crossed Lake Ontario and attacked a fortified Haudenosaunee village in present-day New York State.  Lacking reinforcements, facing a formidable enemy and in early winter, the allies withdrew to Cahiague with the wounded Champlain.  During his recovery in Huronia he visited nearby Anishinabe and Tionontati (Petun) settlements.  Although later European contact brought epidemics and escalating conflict that had a profound impact on indigenous peoples, the alliances that Champlain helped establish survived.  He returned to France the following August and later published important detailed descriptions of the peoples, societies and landscapes of what would become Ontario.

Ontario Heritage Trust, an agency of the Government of Ontario.

I am not a linguist so I don’t know if the plaque was written first in English or French but the French was on the back of the English so perhaps it was first written in English.  I remember the old saying that history is written by the victorious and so when I read the plaque in English I looked for that bias.  I have to wonder what the plaques would have read if they had been written in the other five languages first.  What story would the Wendat who got virtually wiped out in Ontario soon after Champlain visited,would have told?  I wonder what story the Haudenosaunee would have told or the Anishinabe? I’m not sure but it’s worth thinking about how our history, our story as a province, as a nation would be told from the perspective of the other people who did not end up holding the majority of the power and so did not write the story on the commemorative plaque.

Language of the Anishinabe people

Language of the Wendat people

Language of the Mohawk people

Language of the Montagnais-Innu people

Having the story told in six languages is a good step.  How many of us have tried to read these languages out loud?  How many of us have heard the languages spoken?  I took pictures of all six plaques because this seems to me to be part of our new story.  But to get to the actual story of the impact that Samuel de Champlain had here in Ontario, we would have to listen to it being told from many different perspectives.  Imagine sitting in a big circle and hearing the story told in different languages, with different voices and different perspectives.  It would be challenging to be sure but the collective story would hold more truth than the narrative that the English plaque reveals.  

As we work through identifying colonial stories and decolonizing our own thinking to move ahead with open minds and open hearts, we can begin to hear the story told from other viewpoints and co-create a new story that is closer to the truth.

English