NOTE: Brock University announced the creation of its Indigenous Research Grant in 2021. This is one in a series of articles profiling the research of the latest recipients of this yearly internal award. Read more on the series on The Brock News.

It was the sight of charcoal studded tree stumps scattered throughout the bush that first caught Joshua Manitowabi’s eye — and imagination.

The curious youth asked his father about the mysterious stumps as they worked together in the forests of Manitoulin Island. His father’s answer, and similar stories from older foresters, spoke of the “Great Fire” set by their ancestors, the Anishinaabek.

More than a decade later, the Assistant Professor of History’s curiosity is leading him to resolve discrepancies between settler and Indigenous accounts of the 18th century event and the colonial belief that the Island was deserted for 100 years after the fire.

Manitowabi is doing so with the support of Brock’s Indigenous Research Grant.

But his project, “The Anishinaabe Story of the Great Fire of Manitoulin Island,” is not just an academic exercise.

“The Anishinaabek and Wiikwemikoong First Nation has a land claim in Manitoulin and the islands, and when we negotiate land claims with the Canadian government, you have to prove continued occupancy throughout time, and that’s what this research is proving,” he says.

Manitowabi says oral history concerning the cause of the Great Fire, believed to have occurred around the 1730s, is divided.

Some stories say the fire was intentionally started to prevent invasions from neighbouring nations and others report it was an attempt to cleanse the island from “bad Manitous,” or evil spirits believed to be causing smallpox or other diseases brought by early settlers.

“The oral history says there was a fire, that the whole island didn’t burn, that everyone didn’t leave and that some families stayed behind after the fire,” he says. “I’m tying in the oral history with the archival record and scientific evidence at the same time.”

The 1830s saw programs to “resettle” the Anishinaabe into what they claimed was empty land, Manitowabi says.

When he examined census records of that time in his previous research, he found evidence of families who had been living in the area for generations back.

For this project, Manitowabi put together a research team consisting of Professor of Earth Sciences Michael Pisaric, Queens University Professor of Biology John Smol, Laurentian University Professor of Biology John Gunn and Northern Ontario School of Medicine Assistant Professor Darrel Manitowabi.

The research will take a deep dive into archives from the early 1600s to the late 1800s, searching for letters, maps, photos, census records, newspapers, journals from traders and military personnel and other materials to understand the island’s colonial history.

Oral and written histories will also be collected from the island’s elders and knowledge keepers to determine the validity of widely believed population and fire theories.

To get more details of the size and cause of the fire, the team will collect sediment from lake bottoms within the Wiikwemikoong Unceded Territory in an attempt to find and carbon date charcoal fragments.

Manitowabi is eager to get a full understanding of a historical event that has intrigued him for years.

“That’s my quest,” he says. “It’s exciting to dive into the archives. It’s like being a detective; I might get lucky and find something right away.”