Chippewas of Rama First Nation

The First Nation is adjacent to a 4,500-year-old wooden stake fishing weir system which at one time sustained many Native peoples but it is not clear who actually built this structure.

Following resolution of the Beaver Wars and the creation of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt, the Chippewas of Lakes Huron and Simcoe returned to Mnjikaning.

They still occupied their remaining lands about Lake Simcoe and the Holland River, and reportedly had "expressed a strong desire to be admitted to Christianity, and to adopt the habits of civilized life".

[2] In 1830, Musquakie/Yellowhead and his people were induced by agents of Lieutenant Governor John Colborne to settle in two purpose-built villages, one at the Atherley Narrows between Lakes Simcoe and Couchiching, and the other at Coldwater, between which they cleared a road on his instructions.

[3] In a surviving letter to Colborne dated September 1830, Yellowhead and four other leaders spoke of their gladness at receiving "the money you sent us" for clearing the road, asking however "when you can pay us the remainder".

[4] Just six years later, Lieutenant Governor Francis Bond Head persuaded the Chippewas to give up this country "[rather] than to continue [living] on it, surrounded as it was by the White Population, and consequently deprived as it was of its Game".

In 1839, Musquakie/Yellowhead and two of his chiefs wrote to the Indian Department, that, as soon as Rama was up and running, they intended "to go and hunt in order to pay our debts to those we have been so long owing".

The current elected leadership (2014-2016) is Chief Rodney Noganosh and Councillors Ronald Douglas, Ted Williams, Tracey Snache, Nemke Quarrington, and Gina Genno.