Pageant 2024 video recording: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CCbfFeLYeQSoXPhqjYUy0UxjcXOshBM2/view?usp=sharing 

        In English, I go by Mae. I am an Anishinaabe woman from the Waganakising Odawa nation (Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa) and I am working to organize my community in hopes that we can remove the Michilimackinac Pageant & Reenactment from a historic site. There is a reconstructed fort in Mackinaw City, MI known as Colonial Michilimackinac where a pageant/reenactment takes place every summer. And that performance has no place at this historic site which claims to be an educational resource. Anishinaabe peoples as well as those who live in Anishinaabe territory all have a stake in this. If you are invested in the future generations of our community, Indigenous education, and or historic preservation, I encourage you to keep reading.

        To commemorate the taking of the British fort by Ojibwe forces in the summer of 1763, something that was a part of the larger "Pontiac's Rebellion" campaign, there is a pageant. This production has been a Memorial Day weekend tradition since 1963. And ever since then, little has changed. The pageant still comes with both a parade and fashion show where the crowd can watch as Indigenous culture is used for set decoration and costume. The performance comes with bleachers, speakers, and aluminum framed wigwams. The speakers play Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” as the bleachers fill with onlookers ready to be entertained by a one hour show attempting to tell the story of Indians taking a fort from the British who took it from the French who built it on an Indian village. The audience will watch as people dressed as Indians attack people dressed as soldiers and at the end of it all the attendees will be told that we should all just get along. And then they’re gone. After a three day run of the production the pageant team packs up the bleachers and speakers and they hibernate until next summer when they’ll do it all again. 

        This is a spectacle masquerading as public history. A detriment to the community that robs Indigenous peoples of our dignity. It does nothing to honor the Anishinaabe peoples at the center of the story. It is meant to gather a crowd and encourage business and honor the pageant group's own tradition of generations that have participated in the performance. And this performance needs to stop. Discontinuing this performance at Colonial Michilimackinac would not be erasing history. The story of Ojibwe peoples taking the fort is discussed in multiple exhibits within the museum. So, not only is this pageant performance harmful, it is redundant. 

        I have been working since the spring of 2024 to gather letters from native and non-native community members (tribal elders, historians, students, educators, etc.) to bring to the Mackinac Island State Park Commissioners who are responsible for the Colonial Michilimackinac historic site. This petition is meant as a way for people to have their voice heard without the labor of writing their own individual letter.

       By signing this petition, you are asking that the Mackinac Island State Park Commissioners stop allowing the pageant to be performed at the Colonial Michilimackinac historic site.

        Discontinuing this performance means we could open up the fort to a whole new realm of possibilities for engaging with the Anishinaabe community. We can encourage the Mackinac parks to strengthen their relationship with Anishinaabe tribes, especially those within the 1836 treaty territory that the Mackinac parks reside in. If the Mackinac Island State Park Commissioners want so badly to show Anishinaabe peoples taking the fort then they should let us do just that. Allow Anishinaabe peoples to organize an event in which we are in control of our own narrative. Allow us to educate the public about our own history and culture through a community gathering that is based in education, not sensationalism and stereotypes.