Jeff Monague a former chief of the Beausoleil First Nation on Christian Island, former Treaty Research Director with the Anishnabek (Union of Ontario Indians), and current superintendent of Springwater Provincial Park, writes on the de facto segregation of the Christian Island Anishinaabe community along Protestant and Catholic lines, which had begun at Beausoleil Island in what is now Georgian Bay Islands National Park:
“Mewizha (Meh-whi-zhah), long ago, when I was a boy, I lived in a segregated community. And I’m not just talking about the racial segregation of ‘Indians’ on reserves of land set that were set aside for them by settler governments. That did exist. But not by itself. There was an even further segregation of our peoples. That segregation was enacted by the churches…”
Wild Great Lakes 