Many events are being prepared for this 350th anniversary.

On the 28th, we will have the Great Entrance with the chiefs and the clan mothers of the Huron-Wendat villages. During the day, there will be drummers and contemporary Wendat artists. Each Wendat group will display their local history and life style.

On the 29th, another important historical event will be held. We will bring home our grandparents! About 500 skeletal remains of the Wendat people that were buried in Ossossane, in 1636, and subsequently dug up by archaeologists in 1948, will be re-buried in their original cemetery of Ossossane. On the same occasion, this cemetery will be declared as a protected cemetery by the Ontario Government. Thanks are due to the Royal Ontario Museum for their agreement to return the skeletal remains of our ancestors to us.

By 1639, The Jesuits arrived in Wendake and brought with them the small pox. During the following ten years the Wendats tried to expel the Jesuits from their lands, but the Jesuits succeeded to get accepted by some Wendats chiefs. Those pro-french chiefs wanted to keep a link with the Jesuits in order to be in better position to trade with the French. Between 1639 and 1649, epidemics of small pox and other Europeans diseases killed more that half of the Wendat population. A lot of Wendats accused the Europeans to be reponsible for this epidemic, but the Jesuits resisted this accusation and stayed in Wendake with the help of pro-french Wendats. For instance, the Bear Nation, one of the four Wendat Nations, even adopted a Jesuit to be a clan chief for them.

During that period, a deep division developed among the Wendats. The traditionalists wanted to expel all the French out of their country in order to save themself from the disease.

The Jesuits had brought also a new religion that played a big role in the destabilisation of the Wendats life by dividing the community between the traditionalists and the Wendat followers of this new religion. Finally , in 1649, the Wendat Confederacy collapsed due to a deep division among themself and this division ended by a war between 1648 and 1649 .

In the old literatures, the historians have accused the Iroquois Confederacy to be responsible for the destruction of the Huronia and its people in 1649. But today this theory is contested by the Wendats and by more and more new generation of historians. For instance, George Sioui, Ph. D. in history, proved , in his thesis, that the epidemic brought on by the Europeans was the main cause of most of the death, of the Wendat people, not the Iroquois

The attack of the Iroquois against the Wendats was nothing compared with the epidemic that killed entire villages of the Wendat population in Wendake. We have to consider also that the custom of the Iroquois was not to kill people. The main reason of the native wars was to adopt people into their Nations to increase their number. This custom was also used by the Wendat in those years.
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The historians and the Jesuits writtings also did not consider that more than half of the Iroquois who attacked the Wendats in 1649, were Wendat traditionalists or Wendats adopted by the Iroquois clans. It seems that the Wendat traditionalists and Iroquois had in fact combined forces to expel the Europeans from Wendake and to save the Wendats whose population had already been decimated by the European diseases

However in the process, lot of Wendats themself got hurt and killed resulting in the beginning of the great dispersal of Wendats people in 1649. In 1649, the Wendats were forced to move their villages and the rest of their Nations, far away from Wendake to the border of their land in the East, near Quebec, and in the west by Lake Michigan But, not all the Wendats left completly their land, for instance in the winter time the Wendats were using some part of their former territory as a hunting ground.

After this historical date of 1649, the situation was forever changed. It was the beginning of a long , hard journey for the future generation of the Wendats. A few years later, in 1701, the Wendats succeeded to re-organize themself in the Detroit region. This new peace time was brought by Kondiaronk! this Wendat head chief succeeded to bring the great peace between all the native nations in Northest America. This peace is called " the Great Peace of Montreal ".

In the Detroit Wendats reestablished the relationship with the Wendat of Quebec, the Wendats who went to the East in 1649. The Wendats of the East became the keeper of the Eastern Door for their brothers of the West (Detroit) and for the Great Lake Native Nations. All the political matters from the Europeans living in the Eastern part of America had to pass by the Wendats of the East ( new Wendake) and the Seven Council Fire before going to the Great Lake area.

Between 1760 and 1812, the Wendats were associated with Pontiac and Tecumshe to defend the Native Territory of Ontario, Ohio, Michigan and the Great Lake Region against the European armies and settlers.

Between, 1780 and 1843, the migrating Europeans and the European wars forced the Wendat of Detroit to move to Ohio, then from Ohio to Kansas and finally one group ended up in Oklahoma. In Ohio, during those years, about 7,800 native people ( men, women, children ) died from wars with the European armies in order to protect their land. This number represents more than half of the entire population of the native people ( wyandotte, Ottawa, Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, Seneca-Cayuga, Mingo ) in this area at the beginning of the 19th century.

Without any land to live on and always on the move, a large part of the the Wendats population became refugee among many nations during the last 350 years. Today, there are descendants of the Wendats among more than 50 different native nations, such as : the Mohawk, the Seneca, the Shawnee, the Delaware, the Montagnais, the Abenaki, the Ottawa, the Navajo etc... Those Wendats descendants still remember their wendat ancestors

Four groups of Wendat still exist today. These are the Huron-wyandotte of Oklahoma, Kansas, Anderdon (Ontario) and the Huron-Wendat (wyandotte) of Wendake, Quebec.

Just Wendake and Oklahoma have Indian land reserve for them, the two other ones have no land to call their own. The land for the Wendake group in Quebec is one square mile and the Oklahoma land reservation is about half of square mile. The population of Wendake is about 3,600 and Oklahoma is about the same number. We do not know the exact number for Kansas and Anderdon.