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This week Canadians are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of our nation. The myth continues that Canada was built on two founding nations — a myth that needs to be destroyed if we expect to be the inclusive country that we are selling to the world.

Canada was built on three founding nations: the French, the British and the First Nations. The First Nations’ role in the development and settlement of Canada has been overlooked and ignored in the schools and the public perception. To many Canadians, Canada was an empty land ripe for settlement.

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The reality is that First Nations played an important role in the nation’s survival. The fur trade opened the northwest part of the nation as the company of adventurers received a grant to trade in the territory that drained into Hudson’s Bay, a territory far greater than they realized at the time.

The Iroquois confederacy sided with the British in the American War of Independence, which forced them north into southern Ontario. Once he had defeated the British, George Washington turned his attention to removing the Mohawk nation from the Mohawk valley that extended west from the Hudson River toward Lake Ontario.