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The Algonquins or Algonkins are an aboriginal North American people
speaking Algonquin, an Algonquian language. Culturally and linguistically,
they are closely related to the Odawa and Ojibwe, with whom they form the
larger Anishinaabe grouping. The tribe has also given its name to the much
larger group of Algonkian peoples, who stretch from Virginia to the Rocky
Mountains and north to Hudson Bay. Most Algonkins, however, live in Quebec;
the nine Algonkin bands in that province and one in Ontario have a combined
population of about 11,000.
Although theirs was largely a hunting and fishing culture, some Algonkins
practiced agriculture and cultivated corn, beans, and squash, the famous
"Three Sisters" of indigenous horticulture.
From 1603 they allied themselves with the French under Samuel de Champlain. In
1632, after Sir David Kirke's occupation of New France had demonstrated French
colonial vulnerability, the French began to trade muskets to the Algonkins and
other aboriginal allies. French Jesuits began to actively seek Algonkin
conversions to Roman Catholicism, opening up a bitter divide between
traditionalists and converts.
Starting in 1721, many Christian Algonkins began to summer at Oka, a Mohawk
settlement near Montreal that was then considered one of the Seven Nations of
Canada. Algonkin warriors continued to fight in alliance with France until the
British conquest of Quebec in 1760. Fighting on behalf of British Crown, the
Algonkins took part in the Barry St Leger campaign during the American
Revolutionary War.
Loyalist settlers began encroaching on Algonkin lands shortly after the
Revolution. Later, the lumber industry began to move up the Ottawa valley, and
the Algonkins were relegated to a string of small reserves.
In recent years, tensions with the lumber industry have flared up again among
Algonkin communities, in response to the practice of clear-cutting. In
Ontario, an ongoing Algonkin land claim has, since 1983, called into dispute
much of the southeastern part of the province, stretching from near North Bay
to near Hawkesbury and including Ottawa, Pembroke, and most of Algonquin
Provincial Park.
In 2000, Algonkins from Timiskaming First Nation played a significant part in
the local popular opposition to the plan to convert Adams Mine into a garbage
dump.
Source:
Wikipedia.org
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