PIKWAKANAGAN – Six times chief, Kirby Whiteduck, said this about the future of Pikwakanagan, “I think it is a much more promising future, a more secure future as long as we don’t try to be isolated. If we isolate ourselves then I think we might be left behind by the outside world.”
While Kirby has decided not to run in the forthcoming election for chief of the Algonquins of Pikwakanagan First Nation, he is very much concerned about the future of the community and the ongoing land claim with the federal government.
He has been involved in the land claim since 1989. That’s 31 years. The land claim covers nine million acres in eastern Ontario, and stretches from the parliament buildings in Ottawa, north to Mattawa, south to Kingston. Algonquin settlement and occupation of this area pre-dates the arrival of Champlain in 1613.
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