“She demonstrates what Indigenous people, and Indigenous women in particular, have been fighting for, for so long.'
She travelled from her Ontario farm across the North Atlantic to Buckingham Palace. She gained Queen Victoria’s support for the Anishinaabe people’s struggle to keep their land, and made rousing speeches about Indigenous rights to the people of London. In between, she gave birth to her sixth child.Nahneebahweequay*, like many Indigenous women in history, remains largely unknown to Canadians.
“She’s a heroine,” said Morgan, who focuses on gender and colonial history in 19th century Ontario and has researched Nahneebahweequay extensively. “Reading her words over and over again, ‘I am an Indian woman, I am an Indian woman,’ I had to take her seriously. At 14 years old, Nahneebahweequay married English shoemaker, William Sutton. With the Mississaugas facing increasing pressure to give up their land to the government, Nahneebahweequay and Sutton relocated their growing family to Owen Sound, wrote Celia Haig-Brown, associate vice president of research at York University, in a 2002 research paper. The Anishinaabe band there allocated them 200 acres, where they cultivated a farm, built a house, barn and stables, and remained devout methodists.
Other Indigenous leaders made the journey before and after Nahneebahweequay, to petition the Crown, often as a last hope to reclaim their land, but they were mostly men, said Morgan. What also set her apart was her exceptional ability to make connections and friends “at a time when racial boundaries were more and more being firmly drawn.”
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