The land on which Brubacher House sits has been the home of many peoples over thousands of years.
Brubacher House is situated on the traditional territory of Indigenous peoples–the Attawandaron, Huron-Wendat, Anishinaabeg, and Haudenosaunee (Six Nations). According to the Dish With One Spoon Wampum agreement, the land and its resources were to be shared among peoples and nations.
Brubacher House is on the Haldimand Tract, so named for the proclamation issued in 1784 by Governor Frederick Haldimand, securing a safe territory for the Six Nations following the American Revolution. The Tract includes 10 kilometres on each side of the Grand River from its source in Dundalk Township to its mouth at Lake Erie. The land had been granted to the Six Nations, and proceeds from the sale of the land were supposed to support Six Nations peoples in perpetuity, but terms of the agreement were not honoured. In 1805, Mennonite settlers from Pennsylvania purchased 60,000 acres of land–Block 2 of the Haldimand Tract–in present-day Kitchener, Waterloo, and parts of Cambridge and Woolwich Township.
