| Petitions
Native North American history as been predominantly recorded, analysed, compiled and interpreted by non-Native scholars, Indian Agents and missionaries. Early colonial and archival documents are rarely authored by Native people themselves. It was during the late 19th century some Anishinaabeg had been educated by missionaries and started to write their ‘tribes’ history. Some noteworthy Anishinaabeg authors include the Reverend Peter Jones, a Mississauga Chief from Credit River (near Toronto, Ontario), the Reverend George Copway, a Mississauga Anishinaabe from Alnwick (near present day Peterborough, Ontario) and an Odawa named Andrew Blackbird from L’Arbre Croche, Michigan as well as Francis Assikinack, son of the famous War Chief and Orator Chief Jean Baptiste Assiginack. The above mentioned Anishinaabe authors wrote their books, articles, speeches and memoirs in English. The petitions included on this website differ from the published Native records because these petitions were predominantly written by the chiefs (sometimes the missionary) in Ojibwe. This collection of digitized documents is unique because they can be said to represent an authentic Anishinaabe perspective on events that occurred in the past. The Chiefs recorded their understanding of the Treaty of Niagara in which the Anishinaabeg became allies of the British and joined the Covenant Chain. The petitions also include the aspects of the chiefs’ understanding of the Robinson Huron Treaty as well as the Manitoulin Treaty of 1862. Each of the petitions have been re-transcribed from the obsolete Jesuit orthography (made famous by Bishop Baraga) into the current double vowel orthography (aka Fiero orthography). Some of the petitions had accompanying English translations but other petitions did not have an English translation. In these situations, translations have been provided by Kinoomaadoog and the elders of M’Chigeeng. The petitions have been broken into sentence by sentence bilingual format with Ojibwe sound files included so that people may have an opportunity to hear how the words sound when pronounced. |
