Fractured Homeland: Federal Recognition and Algonquin Identity in Ontario

by Bonita Lawrence

In 1992, the Algonquins of Pikwakanagan, the only federally recognized Algonquin reserve in Ontario, launched a comprehensive land claim. The action not only drew attention to the fact that Canada had acquired Algonquin land without negotiating a treaty, but it also focused attention on the two-thirds of Algonquins who have never been recognized as Indian. Fractured Homeland is Bonita Lawrence’s stirring account of how the claim forced federally unrecognized Algonquin in Ontario to confront both the issue of their own identity and the failure of Algonquin leaders – who launched the claim – to develop a more inclusive vision of nationhood.

Genres: Indigenous, Nonfiction

327 pages, Hardcover

First published June 15, 2012

About the author

Bonita Lawrence teaches in the Indigenous Studies Program at York University. She is Mi'kmaw, with Acadian and English background as well. Her research and publications have focused primarily on urban and non-status identities, and federally unrecognized Aboriginal communities. She is the author of "Fractured Homeland: Federal Recognition and Algonquin Identity in Ontario" (UBC Press, 2012) and "Real" Indians and Others: Mixed-Blood Urban Native People and Indigenous Nationhood (University of Nebraska Press and UBC Press, 2004). She is also the author of N'In D'la Owey Innklan: Mi'kmaq Sojourns in England, a historical novel spanning 500 years of Mi''kmaq history both in Atlantic Canada and in London.

Reviews

[Annika Dyck · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an extremely dry and academic book, but it is an important topic, and something I should know more about, so I read the whole book.