It's all ridiculously mucky.
The GTA area was very sparsely populated by the Huron-Wendat (about 20,000-25,000 people) until the mid-1600s. They primarily lived between Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay (hence the name Huron). Toronto itself was used as hinterland hunting grounds or for transportation and had practically no permanent settlements.
In the mid-1600s, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy invaded southern Ontario from New York and killed, assimilated, or displaced most of the Huron-Wendat people. The Haudenosaunee established a couple of settlements near Toronto, but they were abandoned by 1687 when the Ojibwe Anishinaabe, who later became known as the Mississaugas, invaded and drove them out. This is about the time when European "settlers" began arriving. Today, only about 29,000 people of indigenous identity live in the City of Toronto--or about 0.8% of the population--which is fewer than the number of people of Korean background, nevermind many others. This is not because they were driven out or killed by "settlers", but because there were essentially no permanent Indigenous settlements in the area.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Toronto#Early_history
In terms of land claims, most of what is now Toronto, Vaughan, and King was purchased from the Mississaugas in 1787 and 1805, although the terms of the agreements were disputed until 2010, when the Mississaugas reached a $145 million settlement (representing the ancient value of the land) with the Federal Government. The majority of the GTA is covered by undisputed treaties or purchases, with the exception of the ongoing Rouge Tract Claim by the Mississaugas, which covers Scarborough, some of North York, and most of Markham. This is in the claims process and will likely result in some form of settlement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_Purchase
https://mncfn.ca/the-rouge-tract-claim-submitted-in-2015/
I am very interested in understanding history, but I find the quasi-mandatory, rote nature of GTA "Land Acknowledgements" and the breathless reverence they are given in certain circles irksome. It is ironic that they typically list all the Indigenous groups that have even briefly crossed the GTA, but neglect to mention that they repeatedly invaded and displaced each other from that same land in quite recent history. Most statements also mention the lands being subject to Treaty, but omit that almost all claims have been peacefully resolved. The unstated suggestion is that displacement was caused by white "settlers" (an "us-versus-them", fruitless, and clearly pejorative-academic term) or that there are ongoing disputes regarding title to "stolen" land in Toronto, where neither are fundamentally true.
For these reasons, I think the conversations in this thread will tend to be inflammatory and misleading.
None of this is to say that there aren't places where land acknowledgements make perfect sense, where there aren't active title disputes, where settlement of the land didn't displace indigenous people, or that other actions of the pre-Canadian / Canadian government didn't negatively affect indigenous people. But the situation in the GTA happens to be different than in many other places. Rather than discussing "Land Acknowledgements" or "Reconciling Our Settler History", I think a far more more useful exercise would be to highlight where there are ongoing title claims or negotiations in Ontario (
https://www.ontario.ca/page/current-land-claims) or to discuss how to resolve the socio-economic issues that face Indigenous people today.
Just my two cents and what I hope is some useful information. Now I hope that this thread just disappears.
