Jerry Fontaine Online Book Launch

Friday Oct 23 2020 3:00 pm, Virtual, Online Book Launch

Virtual ceremony and launch of Our Hearts Are as One Fire: An Ojibway-Anishinabe Vision for the Future (UBC Press).

Registration is required to directly participate in the Zoom webinar. It will be simultaneously streamed on YouTube and available for viewing thereafter.

Our Hearts Are as One Fire is a shared vision, a manifesto, and a remarkable work that talks about the need for the Anishinabeg to reconnect with non-colonized modes of thinking, social organization, and decision making in order to achieve genuine sovereignty.

Author Jerry Fontaine, with the help of elders and descendants, recounts the stories of three Indigenous leaders, Obwandiac, Tecumtha, and Shingwauk, who challenged aggressive colonial expansion.

Join author Jerry Fontaine and moderator Darrell Boissoneau along with family members Steve Pego, Patricia Shawnoo, and Doreen Pine Lesage for a ceremony and profound discussion about the importance of an Ojibway-Anishinabe vision for the future.

PARTICIPANT BIOS:

Author:

Jerry Fontaine, makwa ogimaa, is from the Ojibway-Anishinabe community of Sagkeeng. He currently teaches Indigenous Studies at the University of Winnipeg.

Moderator bio:

Darrell Boissoneau was born and raised in Garden River First Nation at the hub of the Great Lakes known as Bawating (Sault Ste. Marie). He is of the Sturgeon Clan (Namay Dodaim) and is Ojibway from the Anishinabek Nation. He has over 35 years of experience in First Nation-Government relations including 25 years as an elected member of the Garden River First Nation Council where he served as Chief for one term. His numerous accomplishments include establishing an accredited Anishinabe university, involvement in the development of the Anishinabek Discovery Center, and was part of the Indigenous Institutions who co-created the Indigenous Institutions Act 2017 legislation. As cultural advisor he worked with the Port of Algoma that led to the Reconciliation and Prosperity Accord with Garden River First Nation and the Unity Pact amongst the Ojibway leadership. He was also a special advisor to National Chief Phil Fontaine, Assembly of First Nations, that led to key recommendations for Landless Bands.

Speakers’ bios:

Patricia Shawnoo is from Kettle and Stoney Point in Ontario and is a second Degree Midewiwin Ogitchada-Quay of the Three Fires Midewiwin Lodge.  Ogima Quay and founder of the Tecumtha Ogitchada Society. The Society is named after Shawnee-anishinabe leader Tecumtha, (1768-1813) who united Anishinabe Nations against white settlement, development, and the destruction of their sovereign nation states in the United States and Canada. Tecumtha advanced Anishinabe sovereignty based on a confederacy of nations built on a shared heritage, language, and commonality of treaties, economic independence and political self-determination. She is an active force and staunch advocate for women’s issues and is widely respected across Turtle Island. 

Steve Pego is from the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe and former Tribal Chief of the community. The Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe covers 1,642 acres in Isabella and Arenac counties, and about 3,746 people all over the world belong to the tribe. In 2015 Chief Pego led the repatriation of 41 ancestral human remains from the American Museum of Natural History of New York City, one ancestor from the Toledo Zoological Society and one ancestor from the Dearborn Historical Museum. This became history for the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan on a national level as the first sitting Tribal Chief to travel to several locations to bring ancestors home.

Doreen ‘Shingwauk Pine’ Lesage is the great granddaughter of Chief Shingwauk. Her father Dan Pine Sr. was a well-known Anishinabe healer and was respected for sharing and teaching Ojibway stories, philosophies and theology. Doreen was the first welfare administrator for the Garden River First Nation and served several terms on elected Council. She grew up listening to the historic stories of Chief Shingwauk by her dad and many other elders in the community. Doreen is the keeper of Chief Shingwauk’s medals that mark his commitment to his people and the honour of the British Crown as a citizen of the Robinson-Huron Treaty of 1850, a nation-to-nation agreement between two sovereign nations, the Ojibway and the British.

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