What is Attawapiskat known for?
Known as “
People of the parting of the rocks” in the Swampy Cree language, Attawapiskat is home to about 2,000 people. Typical of the colonial practice of exploiting natural resources from Indigenous lands, resource extraction in Northern Ontario prospered thanks to Treaty 9, or the James Bay Treaty of 1905.Jan 20, 2017
Also this. Some Atta history and background. A local eccentric I know posted this on my Facebook birthday post for Moira. He is a very interesting fellow but also a little bit obsessive and maybe a bit crazy. Loves the dog, though:
What a great Northern Dog you are Moira! '...and 'such great 'fur baby parents' with whom you are blessed!
A fine example of Canis lupus familiarus!
A lovely
sweet
golden
hearted
Kimmiq (as she and members of her clan would be known in Inuktitut)!
'Fun fact; that great big island
almost a hundred miles offshore of Attawapiskat at the middle of the west side of James Bay, is known as Akimiski Island. It's about half the area of Algonquin Park and is a part of Qikiqtaaluk (Baffin and High Arctic Region of Nunavut (as almost all of the islands of James and Hudson Bay
The eastern two thirds of Akimiski Island has been a National Migratory Bird Refuge and a designated National Wildlife Area since the 1930s or early 40s. There's also a significantly sized National Mariine Conservation Area of modern day designation, adjacent to Akimiski Island.
In the dialect of the Northern James Bay Cree (AKA Swampy Cree) Attawapiskat means essentially 'the people of the parting of the rocks' as the community is located at the mouth of the Attawapiskat River and its adjacent marine estuary.
Fevillon Freres of Montreal once had a fur trading outpost there in competition with the Hudson's Bay Company fort (store and trading post) at relatively nearby Fort Albany.
Working as I did for almost a dozen years as the territorial Manager of Legislation and Compliance with the Nunavut Department of Environment (2004-2015), I was quite regularly in contact with the Chief and Council members of the Attawapiskat First Nation, in ensuring their understanding of there ongoing harvesting rights on Akimiski Island.
Akimiski is named in the Swampy Cree dialect and means something like the big island across the water'! It's Indigenous use has always been by the Cree of James Bay, rather than by Inuit folks.
The Nunavut Land Claims Agreement of 1994 grants specific and clearly specified harvesting rights, to perpetuity, to many Nunavut adjacent First Nations including the good folks of the Attawapiskat First Nation!
That's Moiras hometown of course and thus my midnight ramblings!
That's a really good Kimmiq, Moira!
