Echoes of the Iroquois Wars: Contested Heritage and Identity in the Ancestral Homeland of the Huron-Wendat

The Wendat (Huron) and Haudenosaunee (Five Nations Iroquois) were two of the most powerful tribal confederacies during the seventeenth century in eastern North America. Traditional rivalries amongst these and neighbouring Algonquian groups escalated as they all were drawn into a complex web of global geopolitics and economics locally fueled by competition for trade in beaver pelts. After the dispersal of the Wendat and their allies from southern Ontario in 1650, the Haudenosaunee briefly occupied the north shore of Lake Ontario, but by 1700 the region was held by Anishinaabeg. Power struggles amongst the First Nations and their European allies continued well into the eighteenth century, but gradually abated and by the mid-nineteenth century, encroachment by European settlers largely had circumscribed First Nations communities. Today, beaver pelts have been replaced by archaeological sites as contested commodities in the ongoing quest for land, rights, resources, and power. This paper explores the role archaeological heritage plays in the modern-day identity politics of Aboriginal peoples in southern Ontario.