This post is part of a series entitled “Land, Memory, and Schooling: Environmental Histories of Colonial Education.” You can find the introduction here.
This post and series discusses Indian residential and day schools. Please take care as you read. If you are a Survivor or intergenerational Survivor of residential or day school and you need help, there’s a free 24-hour support line. Call 1-866-925-4419. Additional resources are available here.
In 1923, the Williams Treaties were signed with seven Chippewa and Mississauga First Nations of the greater Anishinaabeg Nation in what is now southern and central Ontario. The agreements were signed under pressure, in the absence of legal counsel, without interpretation into Anishinaabemowin, and without full understanding of what was being given up. The Crown used the Williams Treaties to extinguish harvesting rights and claim title over vast swaths of land, territories rich with lakes, rice beds, traplines, and medicines.
The Crown used the Williams Treaties to extinguish harvesting rights and claim title over vast swaths of land, territories rich with lakes, rice beds, traplines, and medicines.
These lands were not just lost on paper. The Williams Treaties paved the way for the active removal of Anishinaabe people from their homelands, culturally, economically, and spiritually. One of the quiet but devastating tools used in this disconnection was the Indian Day School system.
At Curve Lake First Nation, just north of Peterborough, an Indian Day School operated from 1899 to 1978. At first glance, these schools might appear less destructive than residential schools. Students went home at the end of the day; there were no dormitories, no forced removal across great distances. But Indian Day Schools functioned with the same purpose: to assimilate Indigenous children into the Canadian way of life and sever their relationships to land, language, and kin. They just did it locally.
The Curve Lake Indian Day School sat within walking distance of Chemong Lake, and not far from Buckhorn, Pigeon, and Stony lakes, waters that had nourished the community for generations. Children came to school from households that lived close to the Land: harvesting rice, hunting deer, tapping maple trees, and fishing year-round. These practices were not hobbies. They were a way of life, an education, and a relationship.
And all of this happened in the shadow of a treaty that denied their rights to Land and harvesting in the first place.
The Williams Treaties offered no protection of rights. In fact, they explicitly denied hunting, fishing, and trapping rights, rights that had been understood as inherent and continuous in all the other treaties. For the people of Curve Lake and other Williams Treaties First Nations, the combined impact of the treaty and the day school system was suffocating. One removed them from the Land legally. The other worked to remove them from the Land ideologically.
Inside the school, traditional Anishinaabeg knowledge was dismissed or punished. Children were taught that their way of life was backwards. They were forced to speak English. They were taught the history of Canada but not of their own people. They learned to sit still, not to follow the rhythm of the seasons. Time became something measured by a bell, not by ice-out or first frost. Because of systemic racism, chronic underfunding by the government, and poor hiring practices by the Methodist and later United Church of Canada, many inexperienced, and at times abusive, white teachers were placed in these schools, where they consistently failed to support or advance their students’ learning.
In September 1923, Chief Daniel Whetung wrote about his significant concerns regarding the education provided by the government. He said,
[The community] has been without a teacher of any qualifications for a good number of years and as a result – I regret to say that not a single child has accomplished much as to pass the examination for high school in the last 50 or 70 years. I understand the government is spending money to advance Indians! Why not spend it in this section! We are willing to pay more for a qualified teacher and no other kind will do. We have from 45 to 55 children school age and what is the average?1
By the time the Williams Treaties was signed two months later, the federal government had already spent two decades significantly underfunding the day school on the Curve Lake Reserve. As none of the students had passed grade 3 by this period, this ensured that the Indigenous Peoples who signed the treaty were not fully educated in the “Western” system of treaty negotiations. Instead, with no legal representation and only a handful of Western educated community members, they were forced to relinquish approximately 52,000 square kilometres of Land, and for the first time in Canadian history, their traditional hunting and fishing rights.2
The Indian Day School at Curve Lake continued to act as an institution of discipline and surveillance … In doing so, it reinforced the logic of the Williams Treaties: that Indigenous peoples could be made into Canadians, and their claims to Land could be silenced through education and law.
The Indian Day School at Curve Lake continued to act as an institution of discipline and surveillance. It taught children to pledge allegiance to the British monarchy. It punished those who spoke their language. It discouraged connection to traditional lifeways, and promoted Canadian nationalism. In doing so, it reinforced the logic of the Williams Treaties: that Indigenous peoples could be made into Canadians, and their claims to Land could be silenced through education and law.
Further land grabs occurred in the 1950s, when islands that had been protected under the Williams Treaties of 1923 were once again taken. In 1958, the Department of Indian Affairs allowed the communities of Curve Lake, Hiawatha, and Scugog Lake to retain only seventy islands while auctioning off “about 640 Kawartha Lakes Islands.” Curve Lake Councillor Clifford Whetung noted that “Ottawa officials repeatedly failed to reply to the tribe’s request for information as to which islands they would get, and for information of past sales to establish who now legally owns them.” At the same time, white resort owners in the region were working with legal offices to secure paperwork for the lands on which they were already operating their businesses.3
But the Land did not forget. Nor did the people.
Knowledge was passed quietly between generations, sometimes in kitchens, sometimes in boats, sometimes in ceremony. The school did damage, but it did not complete the project of erasure.
Families continued to harvest rice in Chemong Lake, even when provincial authorities tried to restrict it. Knowledge was passed quietly between generations, sometimes in kitchens, sometimes in boats, sometimes in ceremony. The school did damage, but it did not complete the project of erasure.
Today, the legacy of the Williams Treaties and the Indian Day Schools continues to shape life in Curve Lake and across the region. While the Treaties were officially settled in a 2018 legal agreement that acknowledged the harm done, the impacts are ongoing. Access to Lands for harvesting and ceremony remains a struggle.4 Provincial and federal governments still control large portions of the territory.
And today, there is resurgence.
Language revitalization programs, Land-based education, and youth-led projects are reshaping the relationship between community, memory, and Land.5 What the treaties and the schools tried to end has instead become the foundation of renewal. The Land remains central. The knowledge is still here. The people are still here.
To understand the environmental history of this region, we cannot look only at forests and watersheds. We must also look at the systems, legal and educational, that sought to strip Indigenous peoples of their place within them. The Williams Treaties were about Land. The Indian Day Schools were about identity. Together, they tried to sever a bond that has proven much harder to break than the Crown ever expected.
Feature Image: Harvesting wild rice by canoe on Chemong Lake outside of Curve Lake First Nation, an Anishinaabe tradition that continues today. Credit: Photo by Jackson Pind. Used with permission.
Notes
1 Jackson Pind, Students by Day: Colonialism and Resistance at the Curve Lake Indian Day School (Montreal and Kingston: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2025), 79.
2 Ibid., 190.
3 Ibid., 191.
4 Please see Cottagers and Indians, directed by Drew Hayden Taylor (Toronto: CBC, 2017), documentary.
5 Please see the annual manoomin (wild rice festival held in Curve Lake): https://www.mnoominkewin.com
Jackson Pind