LONGLAC — A ceremony this week in Longlac to observe the renaming of a local road is another step forward, Greenstone’s mayor says.
The municipality says about 25 people gathered on Tuesday to mark the name change of the thoroughfare formerly known as Indian Road. It has been renamed Nishnabe Miikena after municipal council voted last August to approve a bylaw authorizing the new designation.
The new name officially came into effect in October 2025, Mayor Jamie McPherson said.
“It’s important for us to recognize the Indigenous territory, the lands that the communities we’re at in Greenstone,” he said. “We have six Indigenous communities that we are neighbours to, and to recognize that we are sharing the land with our Indigenous neighbours is significant for the municipality.”
The chiefs of Ginoogaming and Long Lake 58 — Sheri Taylor and Judy Desmoulin, respectively — participated, as did Elder Victor Chapais.
Choosing a new name for the street has been part of the current Greenstone council’s reconciliation action plan.
“A small step you might say but an important step for the municipality,” McPherson said. “It’s a tangible step that we can measure.”
The mayor said municipal street signs in Longlac were changed over last year to reflect the new name, however those at the road’s termination at Highway 11 — which he said are provincial signs — still bear the old moniker.
“That process is still ongoing,” McPherson said. “The (new) signs have been ordered.”
Overall, he said, it was time to make the switch.
“It’s been a while coming and change doesn’t happen easy and change doesn’t happen quickly,” McPherson said. “People may say (it’s) a small change — for (others) this was a major change.”
“We had to work through the process of change, explain why the change was needed and why the change is the right thing to do — and this is the right time to do it.”
