The pipe is among a number of items the ROM will be returning to the Sault Ste. Marie-area Ojibwa Anishinaabe First Nation

Toronto Star:  200-year-old tomahawk pipe was returned to the Garden River First Nation by the Royal Ontario Museum on Thursday, with Chief Andy Rickard calling it “another step” in repatriating a number of artifacts.

“It’s bringing it back home,” he told reporters at Queen’s Park, where he’d earlier announced a lawsuit against both the provincial and federal governments over land Garden River First Nations says should be returned to them under an 1850 treaty. “This is another step of repatriating these items back to our community,” he said of the 19th-century pipe, made of iron and wood. “This is bringing some of our items home that rightfully belong in the community.”

The pipe is among a number of items the ROM will be returning to the Sault Ste. Marie-area Ojibwa Anishinaabe First Nation, and belonged to Chief Shingwauk. 

In the legislature Thursday, New Democrat MPP Sol Mamakwa (Kiiwetinoong) said the “leadership and the members from the Ojibways of Garden River First Nation travelled here today to enforce a long overdue promise of the 1850 treaty to their people. That treaty promised them land that Ontario and Canada took back for mining, timber and farming … will this government honour the 1850 treaty and give back the land Ontario owes to Garden River First Nation?”

House Leader Paul Calandra said the government has “a very good tradition of working with Indigenous partners. In fact, I think this government has secured more agreements than any other government in the past.”

Indigenous leaders forced to sign treaty

However, he added “that doesn’t suggest that the work is done, by any account. I know this is something that is before the courts right now and as you can appreciate … when something is before the courts, there’s very little more that we can say on the matter.”

Calandra said the government remains “committed to working with Indigenous partners to not only settle land claims across the province of Ontario but to ensure that Indigenous communities participate in the economic growth, because they are the leaders that will help us shape the Ontario of the future. They’re such an important part of it. We owe them that.”

In the lawsuit, the Garden River First Nation says leaders at the time were forced to sign a treaty in 1859 giving up their land east of Sault Ste. Marie.

Rickard said the court challenge “is a way for the community to really right the wrongs of the past … this is something that we’ve been told by our elders — stories of how the lands were dispossessed from our community, 30,000 hectares that used to be Garden River.” He said private landowners are not affected by the lawsuit, adding “our fight isn’t with any homeowners. It’s the government that took our land.” 

The ROM has returned items to other First Nations, including a pipe and saddle to the Poundmaker Cree Nation in Saskatchewan earlier this year after acquiring it in 1936.

Kristin Rushowy is a Toronto-based reporter covering Ontario politics for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @krushowy