What is this research about?

Fundamentally, dispossession.

This research inscribes itself in the Indigenous led movement in Canada to reclaim land and archival data from the Catholic Church. Recent investigations reveal that the Catholic Church remains one of the biggest landowners today, with an estimated $3.3 billion in assets from property in 2019. Not all congregations chose to hold on to the land, some sold it to settlers to fill their coffers. This is the case of the Seminary of St Sulpice, who received 539.9 km2 from the King of France by 1735, forming the Seigneurie du Lac des Deux Montagnes. The seigneurie was granted for the well-being and the instruction of the Indigenous people and for the transfer of the “Indian” mission originally situated in Sault au Récollet, on Montreal Island.

The fact that the people of Kanehsatà: ke were never recognized as landowners meant that they were entirely dependent on the Priests of Saint Sulpice, who never swore vows of poverty, to keep the land in “trust” for them. Instead, the Sulpicians sold 98% of the land and set up the deeply unequal and racist structures at the core of conflicts today.

There has never been an adequate response to right the historical wrongs from the Government nor the settler public.

Lucky for us, in their land registries the Sulpicians painstakingly recorded every property transaction they made with settlers for more than 300 years. Tracking down the first deed of sale for the 1830 lots comprising the Seigneurie du Lac des Deux Montagnes, and mapping them, allows us to visualize the physicality of these transactions as well as their broader implications for the people of Kanehsatà: ke.

Where did we get the data?

All of the data collected is publicly available.