"You have left Canada, and are now in the unceded territory of the
Chippewas of Nawash." Lenore Keeshig-Tobias, author, poet, and
educator, warmly welcomed eleven Ontario applicants to the CPT Reserve
Corps to the land of her people in late February.

" 'Nawash' means 'a branch that bends but never breaks'," she
explained. "Our people have been bent very far, but we have never
broken."

The Chippewas were hard pressed by white settlers and governments
in the 1800's to give up their lands. They did so in a series of
treaties which reduced their territory from 1.5 million acres of
Ontario's richest land to two reserves of a few thousand acres on
the rocky shores of the Bruce Peninsula.

Their land, their game, their burial grounds, and even their
stories have been appropriated by whites, often without their
permission or knowledge. But they have never broken.

"We are surrounded by you and so everything you do impacts on us,"
she said. "You need to know your history and our history so you
don't carry past mistakes into the future.

"There is a prophecy that the four colours of humans--red, white,
black, yellow--will come together as one. The circle of these four
colours would not be complete without the white or the red, and so
we must come to terms with our need for each other. You are a
living, breathing part of the prophecy."