Members of the Huron-Wendat First Nation in Wendake, near Quebec City, will soon decide whether to drop the word Huron from their official title, with a consultation being held at the end of April.
Grand Chief Pierre Picard, who was elected in October, said dropping the word is part of the process of decolonization and a way for the nation to reclaim its identity.
“The word Huron was imposed on us by the colonizers,” Picard said.
“Wouldn’t it be important to appropriate for ourselves the name Wendat while letting go of the name given to us by the colonizers,” he mused.
The word Huron was derived from the French word “hure,” which refers to the long bristly black mane of a wild boar and was reminiscent of the hairstyle worn by Huron men at the time.
“They had their heads shaved on both sides and then they had what we would call today a mohawk,” said historian Denys Delâge.
What does decolonization mean to you?
Delâge said the word Huron came into use in the early 1600s.
Europeans at the time referred to Indigenous people as “savages” and giving them French names was one way to “civilize” them, he explained.
Wendat, on the other hand, means “people of the island” and refers to the origins of the Huron-Wendat people in the area around Georgian Bay.
Delâge says he fully understands and supports the nation’s efforts to reclaim its identity.
“It makes a lot of sense for them to take back their name,” he said. “It’s of the utmost importance, and it’s a way of saying that they were here before us.”
Picard said the idea to drop the word Huron isn’t new and is part of a movement of reappropriation that has been ongoing.
He pointed to how people used to refer to them as the Hurons of Loretteville, or the Village-des-Hurons, it wasn’t until the mid-1980s that the name of their town was officially changed to Wendake.
“It’s like we didn’t even have our own territorial identity,” he said.
Picard said while he believes there’s wide support in his community for an official name change, the consultation on April 26 is only a first step.
If there’s a general consensus, he said, resolutions will need to be adopted and a file submitted to Indigenous Services Canada — a process that could take several more months.
In the meantime, however, Picard has taken to introducing himself publicly as the grand chief of the Wendat First Nation.
