“Taking Wendake Beyond Wendake”: Economic Development and Legal Tenacity in the Wendat Community

The economic self-sufficiency of Indigenous communities has become a widely recognized debate in Canada. This article analyzes how the Indigenous community of Wendake, located in Québec, is working toward the cultural resurgence and recognition of its identity—in order to combat the negative consequences ensuing from the Indian Act of 1876. The latter resulted in Indigenous populations declared legally irresponsible to own their land. Drawing on Axel Honneth’s concept of the struggle for recognition, we show how the Wendat community relied on what we call its inherited capital of recognition (notably its ancestral political and economic dispositions) to peacefully assert itself in two key areas. First, the legal right to have treaties signed with colonial powers from past centuries recognized; and second, economic development through the creation of a financial system adapted to Indigenous specificities. Our analysis points to a process of peaceful struggle for the resurgence and recognition of Indigenous identity in what at first glance appears to be a process of neocolonial subjugation to the market economy.