I just finished Lynn Gehls’ book The Truth the Wampum Tells. I really enjoyed this book. It is not a simple read. It is her dissertation translated to book form. Scholarly tomes are meant to challenge the mind so they are not written to be a facile walk in the park. The subject matter is as serious as serious can be: the continuity of the Algonquin Nation as a cohesive community connected to their traditional lands, living in a manner that embodies their language and culture.

The style of writing is academic but interestingly, it is circular. In the Indigenous world the circular is sacred as embodied in the medicine wheel, the four spirit directions, the circle in the longhouse. Each chapter is a journey around the circle from the perspective of the view presented in each chapter title. This approach allows the discussion of single events from 4 or 5 perspectives revealing the nuances that would be missed with a more linear approach.

Through the chapters I travelled with Lynn from her upbringing in a mixed family with clear Algonquin Anishinaabe roots. She was non-status as a re many Algonquin. A fact that was new to me. The sex discrimination of the Indian Act, denied her the right to partake of the benefits of her heritage as was my case until 2011 and Bill C-3. Status for Lynn remains an issue because sex discrimination and assimilation remain active ingredients of that Act. I strongly identified with the cultural frustration in this book as it mirrors my own experience.

Her book walks through her awakening awareness of the Algonquin Land Claims and Self Governance, the Algonquin Peoples in the context of Canadian history, to her awakening to the fact that the Algonquin were a people without a Treaty with Canada. She then delves into the Treaty and Land Claims process as it applied to the Algonquin seeking to formalize their existence with the colonial Government of Canada.

The negotiations process and the political dynamic she describes was complex and, it is symptomatic of the politics that seem to plague Indigenous issues across Turtle Island. There are the cultural divides between reserve and non-reserve Status Algonquians’, non-Status Algonquians’, non-Indigenous consultants and non-Indigenous “white shirts” as I call them from INAC and the province. There is paternalism and power plays and all the other signs of the impacts of colonialism on traditional Indigenous Governance. To read it is to feel both Lynn’s frustrations and worries and to feel my own worries for Indigenous People as we struggle to overcome hundreds of years of paternalism, colonial strategies to enforce assimilation through

termination policies and government structures meant to eliminate Indigenous People from Turtle Island.

This book though written in a scholarly manner will light a fire. It is easy to identify with the issues and the challenges though the intimacy of detail that comes from the methodology. Especially meaningful were her observations of the toxic, wiindigo relationship between the government of Canada and Indigenous People.

There are a few pictures to bring the reader to the sacred places of the Algonquin and illustrations of her “new editions” of the historical Wampum Belts that tell the Truth of the Treaties and the Indigenous relationship to colonial Canada.

As you read this book you will see the same issues that have stymied the journey of the Algonquin People to their place of having a Treaty relationship with Canada, are in the news today with the battle over Indigenous Educations and Bill C-33, and the prolonged battles over land claims to name just two.