Lands

Ontario’s natural heritage is rich and diverse, and Indigenous peoples have served as stewards of the land for thousands of years. Today, the Trust supports this work through co-management of sacred sites, as well as amplifying Indigenous voices on the importance of the natural environment.

The Trust works with Indigenous partners and organizations to protect lands in the province. Here are two examples:

Nochemowenaing

The Ontario Heritage Trust and the Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation co-steward lands in the northern Bruce Peninsula that are part of an Indigenous cultural landscape known as Nochemowenaing.

Read an interview or watch a video featuring Nawash Elder Miptoon (Anthony Chegahno) as he teaches about the site’s special meaning and significance.

Thonnakona

Between 2010 and 2013, the Huron-Wendat Nation, the University of Toronto and the Ontario Heritage Trust worked in partnership to return 1,760 Huron-Wendat ancestors and their funerary objects to the land. The ancestors from 12 communities were reburied in one large, new ossuary to be known as Thonnakona, on the site from which 561 of them were removed in 1970.This was, at the time, the largest reburial of Indigenous Ancestors undertaken in North America. Today, through an agreement with the Huron-Wendat Nation the connection of the ancestors to their people continues.

Learn more about this site through Thonnakona: Returning the ancestors to the land, by Beth Hanna.

From the Heritage Matters e-magazine:

• Present. Preserve. Protect., by Kayleigh Speirs and Art Hunter
• Kinomaage Waapkong – The Teaching Rocks, by Anne Taylor
• All land is sacred, by Anne Taylor
• Pimachiowin Aki – Canada's newest World Heritage Site, by Gord Jones
• The heart of North America, by Konrad Sioui
• I’m not hunting on your farm … you’re farming on my hunting territory, by Paul General
• Nochemowenaing: You don’t need to walk through here (An interview with Anthony Chegahno), by Sean Fraser
• Reconnecting with Cree culture, language and land: An interview with Bob Sutherland, by Sean Fraser
• Understanding Indigenous agricultural systems, by Ryan DeCaire
• Bkejwanong: Sustaining a 6,000-year-old conservation legacy, by Clint Jacobs
• The archaeology of southwestern Ontario, by Robert Pearce
• Walking with the water, by Josephine Mandamin
• Christ Church, Her Majesty’s Chapel Royal of the Mohawk – Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, by R. Donald Maracle

From our Plaque database:

• The Anishinaabeg at Lake of Bays
• Champlain in Ontario 1615
• The Huron Fish Weirs
• Jean-Baptiste Lainé Site
• Upper Gap Archaeological Site

From MyOntario – A vision over time:

• Her Majesty’s Chapel of the Mohawks, by Nathan Tidridge