Indigenous peoples of Ontario

The Indigenous peoples of Ontario are the inhabitants of the Canadian province of Ontario whose descendants lived in the region before the arrival of European settlers. The Canadian government considers Indigenous peoples to be members of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit. Métis are mixed-race descendants of First Nations people and Europeans, while the Inuit are Indigenous residents of the northernmost regions of North America. Ontario had the largest Indigenous population of any province or territory in Canada in 2021. The province was home to 406,590 Indigenous peoples, more than one-fifth of the nation's total Indigenous population. Ontario's First Nations people are generally divided along two linguistic and cultural lines. The Algonquian language family includes the Ojibway, Cree, and several other groups; the Iroquoian family includes the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee—the Mohawk, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, and Tuscarora.

Demographics

Ontario has the largest population of Canada's thirteen provinces and territories and is the fourth largest geographically. According to the 2016 Canadian census, Ontario was home to about 13.5 million people. The province borders Quebec to the east, Manitoba to the west, Hudson Bay to the north, and the Great Lakes states of the United States to the south. Its total area is 668,840 square miles (1.1 million square kilometers), about 99,000 square miles (158,654 square kilometers) of which is water. Ontario has more than a quarter of a million lakes, a geographical feature that inspired the province's name. Ontarí:io is a Huron word meaning "great lake" or "beautiful lake." Ontario, along with Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, became one of Canada's original four provinces in 1867 when the British confederated its North American colonies and formed the Dominion of Canada.

Ontario's geography varies widely from north to south. The northern regions near Hudson Bay are tundra-like wetlands, while lakes and thick forests dominate much of the remaining areas of the province. The southern lowlands near the St. Lawrence River are predominantly rolling plains. Wintertime temperatures near Hudson Bay can average about -13 degrees Fahrenheit (-25 degrees Celsius). The southern regions are more temperate with temperatures in Toronto averaging 22 degrees Fahrenheit (-6 degrees Celsius) in January and 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees Celsius) in July.

About 94 percent of the population resides in Ontario's southern region, including about 2.78 million people in Toronto, Canada's largest city. The nation's capital, Ottawa, had a 2021 population of 1.072 million. According to the 2021 census, 251,030 people claimed First Nations status in Ontario; 134,615 identified as Métis; 4,310 as Inuit; and the remainder reported other Indigenous identities. About 8 percent of the province's Indigenous population lived in Toronto.

Background

The first humans are estimated to have journeyed to North America from Asia sometime between 13,000 and 15,500 years ago. About 10,000 years ago, nomadic hunters stalked caribou in the northern regions of Ontario soon after the glaciers from the last ice age began to recede. As the climate warmed, the ancestors of the Algonquian-speaking peoples established hunting and fishing communities and foraged for berries and roots. Archeological evidence suggests the people of the region began making pottery and developed a widespread system of trade about 3,000 years ago. The ancestors of the Iroquoian people are believed to have moved north and settled in the region of southern Ontario about 100 to 500 CE. In contrast to the hunter-gatherers of the north, the Iroquoians were an agricultural society who introduced farming to the region.

When European fur traders first encountered the native people of the region in the seventeenth century, Ontario was divided into the hunting and fishing Ojibway, Cree, and Algonquin tribes in the north and the agricultural-based Huron, Petun, and Neutral Confederacy to the south. In the 1640s, the Haudenosaunee of upstate New York began attacking the Iroquoians of southern Ontario, driving them out of their traditional homelands. The Huron were dispersed and some were pushed eastward into Quebec, while the Petun and Neutrals were scattered and absorbed into other tribes.

The landscape of Ontario changed dramatically after Britain lost its American colonies in the Revolutionary War (1775–1783). As British loyalists fled the newly formed United States, they flooded into Ontario and established settlements. In 1784, a group of loyalist Haudenosaunee led by Mohawk chief Joseph Brant arrived in Canada seeking land in return for their service during the war. The British governor granted them a large section of territory near the Grand River in southern Ontario. The reserve established there would become the largest in Canada.

In the nineteenth century, disputes arose between the growing white population of Canada and its native people. To accommodate the need for more territory, the Canadian government negotiated a series of land-surrender treaties with several First Nations groups from 1871 to 1921. Treaty Three—so named because it was the third treaty signed—turned over a portion of Ojibway land in western Ontario to the government in 1873. In 1905, Treaty Nine was negotiated with the Ojibway and Cree, giving the government control of most of northern Ontario.

After the treaties had been implemented, many groups felt the Canadian government had not honored its promises and had unfairly seized native lands. Over the twentieth century, First Nations groups began organizing politically to fight for their Indigenous rights. In the 1970s, several groups took their land disputes to court and won significant victories. The rulings opened up a wave of land-claim negotiations with federal and provincial governments, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements. By 2024, the government of Ontario had settled sixty-five First Nations land claims.

Overview

By 2021, the Government of Canada listed 133 registered First Nations communities in Ontario. Many of these are blended communities with more than one First Nations identity. In general, the Cree, Oji-Cree, and Inuit reside in the northern regions of the province; the Ojibway, Algonquin, and related tribes live in the central to southern areas; and the Iroquoian Haudenosaunee inhabit the southern region near the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes.

The Ojibway are an Eastern Woodlands people whose traditional homeland stretches from western Quebec into Manitoba and south into Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Their name is often spelled as Ojibwe or Ojibwa, and in the United States, they are referred to as the Chippewa, an English mispronunciation of Ojibway. They are the second largest Indigenous group in Canada with an estimated registered population of 160,000 in 2014. The Ojibway language is also the second most commonly spoken Indigenous language in the nation with more than 25,000 speakers in 2021. In Ontario, Ojibway is spoken by about 14,500 people.

The Ojibway population also includes several subgroups that have developed distinct identities based on geography. The Saulteaux of western Ontario, Manitoba, and parts of Saskatchewan and Alberta are a group of Ojibway who traveled west with the fur trade in the seventeenth century. Saulteaux derives from the French saulteurs, or "people of the rapids," a name referring to their origins around the St. Marys River near Sault Ste. Marie in southern Ontario. The Mississauga are an Ojibway group who reside in the area around Toronto, while the Nipissing live near Lake Nipissing, northeast of Lake Huron.

Traditionally, the Ojibway were hunter-gatherers and fisher folk who lived in cone-shaped birch bark dwellings called wigwams. Like most native peoples, Ojibway spiritual beliefs were animistic, the idea that the natural world was inhabited by spirits or Manitou. They believed the universe was guided by a Great Spirit they called Kitchi Manitou, a force of nature who manifested himself in the land, animals, and forests. The people communicated with these spirits through a human intermediary known as a shaman. Ojibway shamans formed religious societies called Midewiwin in which traditional rituals were performed to heal the sick and bring good luck. The societies became less common in the nineteenth century but still exist in Ojibway communities in western Ontario, Manitoba, and parts of the United States.

The Haudenosaunee is a confederacy of six First Nations groups commonly called the Iroquois. The term Iroquois most likely comes from one of their enemies, the Algonquin, who called them irinakhoiw, or "rattlesnakes." The people prefer to call themselves the Haudenosaunee, or "people of the longhouse," referring to their distinctive bark-covered traditional dwellings. According to legend, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy was formed between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries when two mythical figures, the Great Peacemaker and the leader Hiawatha, united the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, and Cayuga under the Great Law of Peace. In 1722, the Tuscarora tribe joined the confederacy creating the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee.

The Haudenosaunee formed a system of government that consisted of a tribal council of fifty tribal and clan chiefs called sachems. Each tribe was given proportional representation in the council, ranging from eight chiefs for the Seneca to fourteen for the Onondaga. Despite following the Great Law of Peace, the Haudenosaunee were an aggressive people, often at war with their neighbors in upstate New York and southern Canada. During the Revolutionary War, the Mohawk, Onondaga, Seneca, and Cayuga fought the Americans on the side of the British. At war's end, Haudenosaunee land in New York became American territory prompting many to flee north to British-held Canada.

The largest First Nations reserve in Canada is home to the descendants of Haudenosaunee led north by Joseph Brant in 1784. The Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve is located on 46,000 acres near Brantford, Ontario, about sixty miles southwest of Toronto. In 2024, the reserve had a registered population of 29,209, with about 12,834 living on reserve land. The Mohawk were the largest nation with a registered population of 10,277.

The Cree are the largest First Nations group in Canada and are spread over territory from western Quebec to central Alberta. In the 2021 census, 223,745 people reported Cree ancestry. That year the Cree had a registered population of more than 317,000 with about 36,000 living in Ontario. The name Cree comes from the French Kiristinon, itself derived from an Ojibway term for the people living near Hudson Bay. The Cree refer to themselves as Nêhiyawak. The Cree in Ontario reside in northern and eastern sections of the province in the marshlands near Hudson Bay. They are known as the Swampy Cree with a subgroup in the north called the Moose Cree. They are an Algonquian-speaking people with a long hunting and fishing tradition. Their spiritual beliefs are similar to the Ojibway.

The Oji-Cree are a culturally distinct First Nations group formed by intermarriage between the Cree and Ojibway. The Oji-Cree reside in northeastern Ontario and Manitoba and speak a dialect of Ojibway with heavy Cree influences. In 2021, Oji-Cree was spoken by 15,210 in Canada, with about 4,790 speakers concentrated in Ontario.

The Algonquin and Odawa are both closely related to the Ojibway. The Algonquin inhabit the region near the Ottawa River in eastern Ontario. Their largest community in Ontario is the Algonquins of Pikwakanagan First Nation in Golden Lake with a 2021 registered population of 490. The Odawa were traditional allies of the Ojibway and at one time may have been one people. The nation's capital of Ottawa was named after the Odawa, which in Ojibway means "to trade." The Delaware are an Algonquian people from eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In 1784, a group of Delaware moved north with the Haudenosaunee and settled at the Six Nations of the Grand River.

According to the 2021 census, 624,220 people identified as Métis in Canada. Ontario's Métis population of 15,210 was the largest of any province in the country. The Métis have been considered an Indigenous people by the Canadian government since 1982, but they were not granted the same federal protections as other First Nations people until 2016.

Most Métis in Ontario are descended from European fur trappers who married Cree women in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At one time, a Métis language known as Michif was used as a common language for trading purposes. Michif, a mixture of French and Cree with some Ojibway influences, was originally developed in Ontario and Manitoba. In the twenty-first century, it is an endangered dialect spoken primarily in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

The Inuit are an Indigenous people of the Arctic regions from Greenland to Russia with a total population of about 155,792. The Canadian Inuit population was 70,545 in 2021. The traditional Inuit homeland in Canada is called Inuit Nunangat, a region that encompasses the northern areas of the nation from Labrador to the Northwest Territories and Yukon. While many Inuit of Inuit Nunangat continue to rely on traditional hunting and fishing for their livelihoods, some have left their Arctic homeland to pursue education and employment opportunities in southern Canada. Of the 4,310 Inuit in Ontario, most reside in the urban centers of the province.

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