How Many Micmacs are on Tribe?'s topics - tribe.net

The Eagle Spirit

Three Feathers — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 22:41:00 GMT

Eagle says, "Eagle fly high, touch the Great Spirit, share your medicine, touch me, honor me, so that I may know you too." Eagle medicine is the power of the Great Spirit, the connection to the Divine. It is the ability to live in the realm of the spirit, and yet remain connected and balanced within the realm of the Earth. Eagle soars, and is quick to observe within the overall pattern of life. From the heights of the clouds, Eagle is close to the heavens where the Great Spirit dwells.

The feathers of an Eagle are considered to be the most sacred of healing tools. They have been used for centuries by shamans to cleanse the auras of patients coming to them for healing. Within the belief system of Native American tribes, Eagle represents a state of grace achieved through hard work, understanding, and a completion of the tests of initiation which result in the taking of one's personal power. It is only through the trial of experiencing the lows in life as well as the highs, and through the trial of trusting one's connection to the Great Spirit, that the right to use the essence of Eagle medicine is earned.

Eagle is reminding you to take heart and gather your courage, for the universe is presenting you with an opportunity to soar above the dull routine worldly level of your life. Eagle teaches you to broaden your sense of self beyond the horizon of what is presently visible.

In learning to fiercely attack your personal fear of the unknown, the wings of your soul will be supported by the ever-present breezes which are the breath of the Great Spirit.

Feed your body, but more importantly, feed your soul. Within the realm of Mother Earth and Father Sky, the dance that leads to flight involves the conquering of fear and the willingness to join in the adventure that you are co-creating with the Divine.

If Eagle has majestically soared into your life, you are being put on notice to reconnect with the element of air. Air is of the mental plane, and in this instance it is of the higher mind. Wisdom comes in many strange and curious forms and is always related to the creative force of the Great Spirit.

If you have been walking in the shadows of former realities, Eagle brings illumination. Eagle teaches you to look higher and to touch Grandfather Sun with your heart, to love the shadow as well as the light. See the beauty in both, and you will take flight like the Eagle.

Eagle medicine is the gift we give ourselves to remind us of the freedom of the skies. Eagle asks you to give yourself permission to legalize freedom and to follow the joy your heart desires.

posted in How Many Micmacs are on Tribe? - 0 replies

Becoming Older

Three Feathers — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 22:38:46 GMT

The other day a young person asked me how I felt about being older. I was taken aback, for I do not think of myself as being older. Upon seeing my reaction, she was immediately embarrassed, but I explained that it was an interesting question, and I would ponder it, and let her know.

Becoming older, I decided, is a gift. I am now, probably for the first time in my life, the person I have always wanted to be. Oh, maybe not my body! I sometime despair over my body, the wrinkles, the baggy eyes, and the sagging butt. And often I am taken aback by that older person that lives in my mirror, who looks like my mother or my father, but I don't agonize over those things for long.

I would never trade my amazing friends, my wonderful life, my loving family for less gray hair or a flatter belly. As I've aged, I've become more kind to myself, and less critical of myself and of others. I've become my own best friend. I don't chide myself for eating that extra cookie, or for not making my bed, or for buying that silly cement gecko that I didn't need, but looks so avante garde on my patio. I am entitled to a treat, to be messy, to be extravagant.

I have seen too many dear friends leave this world too soon; before they understood the great freedom that comes with aging. Whose business is it if I choose to read or play on the computer until 4-am and sleep until noon? I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes of the 60's and 70's, and even of the 80's and 90's. And if I, at the same time, wish to weep over a lost love, I will.

I will walk the beach in a swim suit that is stretched over a bulging body, and will dive into the waves with abandon if I choose to, despite the pitying glances from the jet set. They, too, will get old.

I know I am sometimes forgetful. But there again, some of life is just as well forgotten. And I eventually remember the important things. Sure, over the years my heart has been broken. How can your heart not break when you lose a loved one, or when a child suffers, or even when somebody's beloved pet gets hit by a car? But broken hearts are what give us strength and understanding and compassion. A heart never broken is pristine and sterile and will never know the joy of being imperfect.

I am so blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turning gray, and to have my youthful laughs be forever etched into deep grooves on my face. So many have never laughed, and so many have died before their hair could turn silver. As you get older, it is easier to be positive. You care less about what other people think. I don't question myself anymore. I've even earned the right to be wrong.

So, to answer your question, I like being older. It has set me free. I like the person I have become. I am not going to live forever, but while I am still here, I will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying about what will be. And if I feel like it, I shall eat dessert every single day.

May our friendship never come apart especially when it's straight from the heart. May you always have rainbows of smiles on your face and in your heart forever and ever. Friends forever.

posted in How Many Micmacs are on Tribe? - 0 replies

Tickling the Earth

Three Feathers — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 22:31:37 GMT

We are a matriarchal society. Let us honor our clan mothers. Even our language honors the women. It is a female language. When we dance, the men dance on the outside of the circle. The inside of the circle is to honor the women. When you dance to the ceremonial sounds of the earth you are tickling earth mother, giving her joy for all the things she gives us to stay alive...!!!

In our way of life... with every decision we make, we always keep in mind the seventh generation of children to come. When we walk upon earth mother, we always plant our feet carefully, because we know that the faces of future generations are looking up at us from beneath the ground. We never forget them. May we always remember them...!!!

If you talk to the animals they will talk with you, and you will know each other. If you do not talk to them you will not know them, and what you do not know you will fear. What one fears... one destroys...!!! In that destruction there can be no peace... there can be no harmony... there can be no balance...!!!

To be a medicine man you have to experience everything, live life to the fullest. If you don't experience the human side of everything, how can you help teach or heal...??? To be a good medicine man, you've got to be humble. You've got to be lower than a worm and higher than an eagle...!!! To be a medicine man you have to walk where others dare to go...!!! Let us walk together in harmony with earth mother...!!!

It was our belief that the love of possessions is a weakness to be overcome. We could not take our possessions with us to the other world. Its appeal is to the material part, and if allowed its way, it will in time disturb one's spiritual balance. We want peace and love. Therefore, children must learn early the beauty of generosity. They are taught to give what they prize most, that they may taste the happiness of giving...!!! Let us give and do our best in all that we do and give...!!!

The most important thing to remember about ceremony is that it is a way for humans to give back to the Creator some of the energy that they are always receiving. The earth mother constantly gives us two-legged human beings a surface on which to place our two feet... father sun warms us... and grandmother moon brings dreams. The element of earth gives us a place to grow food, and the ability to make homes and tools. The water keeps us alive. The fire warms our homes and cook our food. The air gives us the sacred breath of life. Through ceremony... we learn how to give back...!!! Through ceremony we make our connection stronger...!!!

We are all flowers in the Great Spirit's garden. We share a common root, and the root is our earth mother. The garden is beautiful because it has different colors in it... and those colors represent different traditions and cultural backgrounds...!!! Let us respect the difference in others...!!!

After all the great religions have been preached and expounded, or have been revealed by brilliant scholars, or have been written in fine books and embellished in fine language with finer covers of leather and silk... man... all man... is till confronted with the Great Mystery...!!! It is this Great Mystery that will lead us to total fulfillment...!!!

The Great Spirit based us here to take care of this land and live for Him through prayer, meditation, ceremonies, and rituals, and to lead a simple life close to earth mother. That's what many have been doing. Governments talk all the time about human rights, equality, justice, and all those things, but they have never done anything for the native people, and for people who are trying so hard to live a good life. Never... So it's time that they do that... live up to their talk... otherwise... nature is going to take over... these are my words...!!! Earthquakes, flooding, destruction by volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, things like that...!!! It's already happening, and it takes that kind of thing to wake up many people who are controlling this land by money and power, and just ripping everything from the earth. They are doing something that is not right in the law of the Great Spirit, and in the law of nature...!!! These laws of nature will one day ring in the ears and hearts of every human being who have chosen to ignore them...!!!

The people who are living on this planet need to break with the narrow concept of human liberation, and began to see liberation as something that needs to be extended to the whole of the natural world. What is needed is the liberation of all things that support life... the air, the waters, the trees... all the things which support the sacred web of life...!!! Let us live a good life close to earth mother...!!!

The Giver of life... the Creator... did not intend that people abuse one another. Therefore, human societies must form governments that prevent the abuse of human beings by other human beings and ensure peace among nations and peoples. Peace is the product of a society that strives to establish reason and righteousness. Righteousness refers to the shared ideology of the people using their purest and most unselfish minds. All people have a right to the things they need to survive... even those who do not or cannot work. No people or person has a right to deprive others of those things... food, clothing, shelter, and protection. Human beings should use every effort to sit in council about... mediate... and negotiate their differences. Force should be resorted to only as a defense against the certain use of force...!!! Let us walk together helping each other live a good life...!!!

To honor and respect means to think of the land and the water and plants and animals who live there as having a right equal to our own to be here. We are not the supreme and all-knowing beings, living at the top of the food-chain of life as the inventors of all time... but in fact we are members of the sacred hoop of life... along with the trees and rocks, the coyotes and the eagles and fish and toads... that each fulfills its purpose. They each perform their given task in the sacred hoop, and we have one... too...!!! Let us respect each other in this sacred hoop of life...!!!

Wisdom does not belong to one person. We need to act in harmony with wisdom... but it does not belong to anyone. It is the lighted path of old and proven ideas through generation after generation of discovering natural law. May we seek paths to finding natural law...!!!

In the beginning we were told that the human beings who walk about the earth have been provided with all the things necessary for life. We were instructed to carry love for one another, and to show a great respect for all the beings of this earth. We were shown that our well-being depends on the well-being of the vegetable and fruit life, and that we are close relatives of the four-legged beings...!!! We are relatives of all living things, we are relatives of all life...!!!

Words that are said above have been said many times before. How many times do words have to be said before we give an ear to words...!!! Over the week-end a good friend came by and left his t-shirt on my chair with words written on the t-shirt. I will share these words with you. These words comes from The Tree of Peace Learning Center... everything in nature has its instructions... just as geese have been instructed by the Creator to fly in a particular pattern every year... our instructions as humans is simply to give thanks to the natural world... and by doing do... protect it...!!! Let us help each other find the common good in all things...!!!

posted in How Many Micmacs are on Tribe? - 0 replies

Aboriginal News in Canada

Three Feathers — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:50:07 GMT

A new business, economy and employment section is on line on our website. Aboriginal News is the only Canadian Aboriginal website presenting news, current events, issues and information and now business information in French and English.

Aboriginal News in Canada
http://www.aborinews.com

posted in How Many Micmacs are on Tribe? - 0 replies

French and Micmac Stuff

Three Feathers — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:47:31 GMT

French and Micmac stuff
by Jean Claude Sa'n Beliveau.
http://www.ovieuxbouquins.com/cat213/cat213prnations.htm

posted in How Many Micmacs are on Tribe? - 0 replies

Elder's Meditation of the Day

Three Feathers — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:43:49 GMT

Elder's Meditation of the Day
http://whitebison.org/meditation/index.php

posted in How Many Micmacs are on Tribe? - 0 replies

Micmac Tribe

Three Feathers — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:40:39 GMT

Index of People & Tribes. Check-out (Micmac
Tribe) when you are inside the Web-Site. Gwe
http://www.avcnet.org/ne-do-ba/jj_inx_1.html

posted in How Many Micmacs are on Tribe? - 0 replies

Indian Craftsmen of Quebec

Three Feathers — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:38:31 GMT

The Indian Craftsmen of Quebec
http://www.nativecraftmen.com

posted in How Many Micmacs are on Tribe? - 0 replies

Bald Eagles

Three Feathers — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:37:19 GMT

Information About Bald Eagles
http://www.baldeagleinfo.com

posted in How Many Micmacs are on Tribe? - 0 replies

First Nation Information

Three Feathers — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:34:51 GMT

Here is a Web-Site on... First Nation Home-Page-Links, First Nation
Organizations, Government, Treaties, Law and Land Claims, Royal
Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Education and Culture, Training,
Publications and Newspapers, Economic Development and Tourism,
Location of Reservations, Directory, Native Links, And Much More.
http://www.johnco.com/nativel/
http://www.johnco.com/firstnat/

posted in How Many Micmacs are on Tribe? - 0 replies

The Pow Wow Trail

Three Feathers — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:33:29 GMT

I Would Like To Thank Christa At New Brunswick Environ-
mental Network For Her Efforts Into Creating This Article.
What Is Pow-Wow By Dennis (Three Feathers) Gedeon
http://www.elements.nb.ca/theme/ethics/pow/wow.htm

posted in How Many Micmacs are on Tribe? - 0 replies

Micmac Information Links

Three Feathers — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:31:53 GMT

Mi'kmaq Resource Centre, The Mi'kmaq People,
About the Mi'kmaq Resource Centre, Other
Topical Sites, Mi'kmaq College Institute.
http://mrc.uccb.ns.ca/default.htm
The Micmac of Megumaagee
http://www.blupete.com/Hist/Gloss/Indians.htm

Big Cove Community Web-Site
http://www.bigcoveband.com/index.htm

Membertou Community Web-Site
http://www.membertou.ca/home.html

Fort Folly First Nation Web-Site
http://www.fortfolly.nb.ca/firstpg.html

Gespeg First Nation Web-Site
http://www.gaspesie.com/gespeg/english.html

Eskasoni First Nation Web-Site
http://www.eskasonibc.ns.ca/index.htm

Conne River First Nation Web-Site
http://www.miawpukek.nf.ca/index2.htm

The Mi'kmaq (Micmac)
http://www.heritage.nf.ca/aboriginal/micmac.html

Micmac History Web-Site
http://www.dickshovel.com/mic.html

Religious Traditions Web-Site
http://www.mun.ca/rels/native/micmac/micmac1.html

Muins' Mi'kmaq Links Web-Site
http://home.istar.ca/~muin/index.htm

Mi'kmaq News Web-Site
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mikmaqnews/

Wabanaki News Web-Site
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wabanakinews/

Maritimes Treaties Web-Site
http://www.kstrom.net/isk/maps/novascotiatreaties.html

Atlantic Policy Congress of First Nations Chiefs
Amherst, Nova Scotia, Canada
http://www.apcfnc.ca
info@apcfnc.ca

We Were Not the Savages: A Micmac Perspective on
the Collision of European and Aboriginal Civilizations.
By Author Daniel N. Paul (Daniel's Web-Site)
http://www.danielnpaul.com

Traditional Mi'kmaq (Micmac) Culture...
http://www.heritage.nf.ca/aboriginal/micmac_culture.html

Micmac Information Web-Site
http://museum.gov.ns.ca/mikmaq/content2.htm

The Marshall Decision and the Maritime Canadian Fishery.
Esgenoôpetitj (Burnt Church), New Brunswick, Canada.
Treaties, Royal Proclamation, Court Cases (Sparrow/
Marshall), Map of First Nations in New Brunswick,
Indian Act, Constitution Act, Court of Canada.
The Marshall Decision and Beyond Issues.
http://www.rism.org/isg/dlp/bc/index.htm

The Confederacy of Mainland Ki'kmaq
http://www.cmmns.com/welcome.html

posted in How Many Micmacs are on Tribe? - 0 replies

Aboriginal Links: Canada/USA

Three Feathers — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:29:38 GMT

Aboriginal Links: Canada and the USA
http://www.bloorstreet.com/300block/aborl.htm
http://www.bloorstreet.com/300block/aborcan.htm

posted in How Many Micmacs are on Tribe? - 0 replies

Micmac Information Site

Three Feathers — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:28:19 GMT

Micmac Information Site
Micmac Indian Fact Sheet
http://www.native-languages.org/mikmaq.htm

Micmac History
http://www.dickshovel.com/mic.html

posted in How Many Micmacs are on Tribe? - 0 replies

Pabineau First Nation

Three Feathers — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:21:25 GMT

Pabineau First Nation
http://www.pabineaufirstnation.ca

posted in How Many Micmacs are on Tribe? - 0 replies

Alliance and Renewal

Three Feathers — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:19:50 GMT

Alliance and Renewal
The Treaty of Watertown 1776
http://www.watertowntreaty.org/alliance.htm

posted in How Many Micmacs are on Tribe? - 0 replies

Micmac Maliseet History and Language

Three Feathers — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:23:39 GMT

Micmac History and Language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micmac

Maliseet History and Language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maliseet

posted in How Many Micmacs are on Tribe? - 0 replies

Prime Minister Harper's Apology Not-Accepted

Three Feathers — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 12:39:13 GMT

An Historic Non-Apology, Completely and Utterly Not Accepted

The Maze of Rhetoric

We hope our title is sufficiently unequivocal to convey our reaction to the events of Wednesday June 11, 2008. Maybe by example we can show how one must approach issues which require the utmost clarity. On the other hand, this probably won’t work, especially when it’s clear the predominant intention behind a communication is to obscure. Whatever… in any event, for us, sitting on a spiky metal fence is uncomfortable posture.

We listened with attention to what Stephen Harper had to say yesterday, and we did not hear what we needed to hear. Instead, again we watched and heard one more opportunity being thrown away, this one with more ceremony than those preceding it. We watched and heard the studious avoidance of truth, in what we can only regard as the hope that the repetition of a lie will somehow substitute for reality, a concept now reduced to another mantra (as is nowadays the case for, for example, “truth” or “reconciliation”).

To those surprised or appalled by our reaction, or to people who simply have no idea that there’s an issue here at all, let us begin by pointing to at least a few of the facts we had to keep in mind when listening to the statement of the current head of a political process that has, since it origin (Confederation in 1867), had the elimination of aboriginal peoples as its consistent policy:

(1) the “settler” population of Canada has had, from the point of its inception, a qualitatively different relation with indigenous peoples than the remote colonial bureaucracy that preceded it: for England, the Indian Nations were allies (who, arguably, saved Canada on more than one occasion); for the newly-formed Dominion of Canada, they were impediments to expansion, like swamps and vermin. However, in the transfer of authority, the Dominion was honor-bound to respect them, their rights, and their historical status.

(2) with legal and ethical limits placed upon their treatment of indigenous nations (so that, for example, the Dominion couldn’t just set out to slaughter them all, as became the policy in the United States), tactics had to be adopted that had the effect of extermination without giving its appearance (and the British empire had many models to emulate, particularly Tasmania). A simple but accurate characterization of the array of government programs, policies, and laws aimed at indigenous peoples and nations, then, is that they were a range of “carrots” and “sticks” deployed to turn those of us (if any) who survived these artifices from “Indians” into “Canadians” (or, after the era of multiculturalism began, “Indian-Canadians”). Residential school was only one of those programs, one that was heavy on the “stick” and light on the “carrot.”

(3) church officials and government officials have, from time to time since the mid-1980’s, offered what they (and others) have characterized as “apologies.” These have not been apologies. An apology is not made an apology by the person offering it saying it is an apology; it is only an apology when those who have been offered it accept it as an apology. The fact that the rhetoric of pseudo-apologies has become more twisted as time has gone on should make all of us vigilant against immediately accepting what sounds like an apology without careful examination of exactly what was said, how it was said, and what was not said. And repetition is not an argument.

So, what happened Wednesday afternoon? Stephen Harper described the history of actions undertaken by the government of Canada against the children of indigenous peoples, specifically, their forcible removal from their families and communities and their placement under the unsupervised control of four major Canadian churches. Various aspects of these actions, characterized as “abuse” (including physical, mental, and sexual abuse), were enumerated, followed by variations on the refrain of “for this, we apologize” (or “we are sorry”) and “we were wrong” (or “this should never have happened”). That it happened was attributed to bad, arrogant attitudes of superiority. Finally, when mention was made concerning where “we” go from here, the upcoming work of the so-called “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” was proffered as the most appropriate forum. Afterwards, this performance was, by-and-large, repeated by the leaders of the other political parties.

The presentation was offered with every indication of honesty and sincerity. We do not doubt the honesty of what was said, for reasons we will give below. But for those who take honesty as evidence of truth, it would be good to remember what Marx once said: “The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” Groucho Marx, that is.

So what’s our problem? Actually, we have several: we did not hear an apology, we dispute characterizations that were made, and we do not believe the putative mechanism of resolution (the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission”) will resolve anything useful.

An apology has at least three characteristics (some people will say there are more, some will list more specific traits… this doesn’t matter for present purposes). The absence of any of these three characteristics immediately disqualifies a statement as an apology: a sincere expression of remorse for the behavior, the promise never to repeat the behavior, and the undertaking to undo, as far as possible, the damage done by the behavior.

“Well,” we hear some say, “the first conditions was obviously met… we all heard Mr. Harper recount a comprehensive list of offenses, halting at each one and saying ‘Canada apologizes’ and ‘it was wrong,’ didn’t we?”

Suppose, after beating his wife to the point of hospitalizing her, a man attempted to make amends in the following manner: “I’m sorry I gave you a black eye… it was wrong; I’m sorry I chipped your teeth… it never should have happened; I apologize for breaking your arm… it never should have happened; I apologize for bruising your ribs… it was wrong;” and so on.

Does this sound odd to you? It does to us. Why would anyone choose to express his remorse in such a fashion? In “apologizing” to his wife, has the man adopted this manner of speaking, perhaps, to be more thorough (the list could go on and on…)? We think not. In this instance, the specificity of the list helps him avoid saying something, something more comprehensive, something more general, but in this case, something much more accurate: “I’m sorry I physically assaulted you. It was a criminal action on my part.”

We don’t believe Prime Minister Harper adopted this obscurantist form of address to be more comprehensive; we believe he did so to avoid saying I’m sorry the Canadian government committed genocide against you. It was a criminal action on our part.

(Of course, Mr. Harper was unauthorized to avoid saying something similar on behalf of the churches; they’ve been doing their own artful dodging for years.)

Consequently, if we’re right the sincerity of what was said evaporates as an apology for residential schooling. Thus it was no apology at all, but bluff and continued evasion. We believe he said what he said honestly; that is, that he sincerely believed in what he was saying, but only because, for the governments and individuals he was representing (past and present), he had to craft an evasive statement that he could, in all sincerity, endorse. Did Mr. Harper, all on his own, come up with this muddied, tortured declaration right off the cuff, or perhaps just a few minutes before he came down the stairs with his escorts in tow? Well, since Indian Affairs Minister Strahl has been telling us for weeks now what Harper was going to say, we doubt it. We also doubt that the Conservative party didn’t have a team of lawyers, rhetoricians, and spin doctors, if not writing the statement, at least agonizing over every phrase, every word, every revelation in the evolving document, considering in detail every implication and weighing each possible consequence. Someone was even counting the number of words. No, what we saw was carefully considered, and when such a carefully prepared and comprehensively vetted document does some things (and not others) it is no accident.

So then, is our “belief” about what Mr. Harper was evading correct? We had no trouble seeing through the Prime Minister’s tortured prose because we’re well aware of related issues (such as the ones we began this essay with) that are no part of what the average Canadian is supposed to know and what government and church officials know all too well: the United Nations Genocide Convention and Canada’s role in it.

Take a moment and judge for yourself: go online (if you’re not online already) and find the text of the UN Genocide Convention. If you know anything about the internet you’ll have no trouble finding it; we give the text of Article II below:
Art. 2. In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
( Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
© Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Many of you will be reading this for the first time. You aren’t supposed to be reading it at all. We call attention to sections ( and, especially, (e), which we call the “Slam Dunk.” If pressed we’d be willing to argue the entire list, but we don’t have to: the Article says any, not all. Even Mr. Harper in his statement comes perilously close to the Slam Dunk a couple of times:

“…very young children were often forcibly removed from their homes…”

and

“…it was wrong to forcibly remove children from their homes and we apologize for having done this.”

Was he, in subconscious guilt, aping a phrase he had read a million times before with the understanding he must avoid it at all costs? … or, perhaps, intentionally teetering along the edge of a precipice, in order to mock the dozen or so of us who were waiting to see if he used the correct word? We don’t know. He creeps into another neighborhood ( once again when he mentions:

“…emotional, physical and sexual abuse and neglect of helpless children…”

but that’s as close as he gets to any of the other categories of acts constituting genocide in international law. It isn’t crucial, however; we already have the Slam Dunk.

Well, isn’t there some way around this… this… embarrassing fact? No. One of the contributors to the current document wrote a book 14 years ago that established the genocide that was Indian residential schooling, and the absence of ways around it was thoroughly dealt with there. However, no one read it then and no one is going to read it now (although it’s still available in print form, and free on the internet at www.nativestudies.org), particularly when we’ve gone and spoiled the ending for everyone.

But then, is there no “responsible” authority (not just a dozen or so Indians, and worse, Indian-lovers, who can read and add and reason) who can tell you, our present readership, whether our “interpretation” is right or wrong? (Over the years, time and again, work on this issue has been slighted by phrases like “X believes that the residential schools were genocide,” or “In X’s opinion, Canada and the churches are guilty of genocide,” like it was some disputable quirk on X’s part that is at issue. Well, it’s the United Nations “opinion,” as expressed in the black-and-white of the Convention, that Canada and the churches committed genocide, and the UN is the body that in 1948 got to say what genocide was.) Okay. In support of our “interpretation,” we call what all must agree is a “responsible” authority… the government of Canada.

Also available on the above web site is a paper that provides more detail and references concerning Canada’s disreputable collusion with the United States in gutting a form of the genocide convention that would have been much more explicit with respect to the point we’re making. The current convention is a watered-down version of the proposals of Raphael Lemkin (the man who coined the term “genocide” in 1944), but even watered down it is sufficient. So sufficient that, when it came time to implement the Genocide Convention in Canada’s criminal code (which was what each nation of the United Nations was supposed to do), Canada omitted entire subsections of the UN Convention (by 1970, (, (d), and (e) were gone, Canada telling anyone who asked that the laws against murder and manslaughter already banned genocide – reducing genocide, as they discussed in the early 50’s, to outright killing). No less an authority than eventual Prime Minister Lester Pearson had suggested that surgery had to be performed on the UN Genocide Convention, or otherwise Canada and its churches would be in violation of it… and, for heavens’ sake, Indians might someday learn to read!

It’s true that even the Convention as articulated provided sufficient wiggle room to allow countries to adopt modified versions of it. But, as remarked by a commentator who first encountered the Convention last Wednesday, Canada’s excisions and elisions betoken a guilty conscious about what it had been up to. After all, this is what the US, with Canada’s aid, had forced through the conference dealing with this particular issue, and if it was good enough in principle for everyone else in the world, why was it inappropriate for Canada?

Finally, sometime in the late 1990’s, Canada quietly, surreptitiously, and without ceremony removed genocide as a chargeable offense from its criminal code, leaving mention of it now solely in the provisions against hate crimes.

We find it interesting how closely the vaporization of genocide in Canadian law coincided with rising consciousness in Native America on the distance between what international law said and what governments had done, and with a government-commissioned secret study that warned the Chrétien government that Canada was liable with respect to the “genocide issue” and recommended it bite the bullet and ‘fess up. As always, Canada provided itself with some explanatory “wiggle room” about why they did what they did, but we would certainly like to ask some direct questions of the officials involved, as well as examine documents and internal correspondence on these subjects (but see below). But, to summarize in a fashion both short and blunt, the history of Canada’s involvement in the creation and implementation of genocide law, nationally and internationally, betokens an overriding concern with its culpability and liability with respect to its treatment of indigenous peoples in general, and its operation of Indian residential schools in particular.

So, Canada itself agrees that our reading of the UN Genocide Convention is correct, and that it accurately characterizes its behavior towards Native Peoples.

Okay, you might say, Canada’s behavior is at variance with international genocide law… but didn’t implementing what they did, however maimed and deformed, into Canadian law remove all future problems? After all, aren’t their actions simply a version of what the United States, also worried about the possibility of being charged with genocide, undertook… adopting a limited version of the Convention, finally, at the end of the Regan administration, and then subjecting it to interpretation by American courts?

It’s true it was pure evasion, but it isn’t true that it lets Canada off any hook. Apart from the “guilty conscious” their behavior evidences, putting aside any question of legal liability that might or might not be attached, and forgoing any discussion of what jurists have long ago established concerning the priority of international law (e.g., that countries and government officials can’t exempt themselves from accountability to international law); instead of all that, just ask yourself: was it merely the failure of the corrupt powers of Rwanda (or Slobodan Milosevic) to exempt themselves (or himself) from the Genocide Convention that got them (or him) into trouble? Suppose the Genocide Convention was in force during the Holocaust… would Hitler’s declaring himself and his chums “immune” have rendered it inoperative? Is that the length the average Canadian is willing to have her or his government go to avoid having to deal with its genocide of indigenous peoples?

It has taken us some time, but Mr. Harper’s statement:

“…it was wrong to forcibly remove children from their homes and we apologize for having done this.”

…must be amended to say:

“…it was wrong for the government of Canada to forcibly remove children from their homes and we apologize for having done this. And it was a crime.”

Bank robbers, thieves, drunk drivers… all criminals, in fact… don’t get to erase their crimes by saying “I’m sorry,” regardless of how sincerely they might say it.

Genocide on the Table

A television snippet from country-wide reaction on Wednesday featured Diane Blair crying out “It was genocide! Why not just admit it?!”

A fair question, and one well-put. As we have seen, Mr. Harper could have used the term, and it was a deliberate act not to. What motivated him? Without too much thought we can see several reasons, grounds sufficient for us to have anticipated long before Wednesday’s circus that what we weren’t going to hear would be a genuine apology. To answer the woman’s question, first, keep on reading the Convention; immediately you will find:
Art. 3. The following acts shall be punishable:
(a) Genocide;
( Conspiracy to commit genocide;
© Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.
Art. 4. Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article 3 shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.
So we have Reason 1: rulers, public officials, and private individuals, criminals all, prefer to avoid being punished for their actions. It is very common, we think, for criminal to not want to be punished. In most cases, however, and unlike the case under consideration (i.e., the Indian residential schools), criminals are not in charge of the political, economic, legal, and journalistic controls of a nation. Journalistic control, of course, particularly necessary if one is going to maintain the manufactured ignorance of multiple millions of Canadians.
Reason 2: Canada has held other nations accountable to a standard of international law that it has itself evaded. That is hypocrisy. Canada wants to complain to China about its human rights abuses; it does not want its own abuses thrown back into its face.
Reason 3: Assaults, rapes, and every other form of abuse expire in national law, perhaps even in international law, according to their Statute of Limitation. Genocide has no Statute of Limitation.

Reason 4: Canada presents itself as a good world citizen, a paragon of virtue. However, a country that bears comparison with Nazi Germany is a paragon of virtue like Charles Manson is a boy scout leader.

Reason 5: Speaking like a psychologist for a moment, abusers frequently tell themselves they have good grounds for the abuses they perpetrate. Often they repeat the lie to themselves with such regularity that they come to believe it.

Reason 6: This is a reason the head of the United Church gave us in a public meeting in 2002: “genocide” is such a harsh word that the membership of his church would be upset by its use, however appropriate. Thus, it’s better to perform genocide than give it its proper name. So perhaps Canada is similarly just thinking about the tender sensibilities of its real citizens, and not those of its pseudo-citizens against whom the genocide was implemented.

Reason 7: The lengths Canada has gone (first, to limit the definition of genocide, and second, to obstruct every way there might have been for indigenous peoples to even raise it as an issue) shows the fear that, if the governments and churches show “weakness,” Indians will treat them with the same rapacity Westerners show weaknesses detected in one another. That is, that Indians will behave like Westerners (the irony that this transformation is what the residential school were trying to institute has not escaped our notice). It is to our credit that there is no evidence at all that we would behave in such an inhuman manner. More than for any other reason, the moves that have been made toward litigation have been motivated by the government and churches closing off any other ways of seeking redress. From the beginning, all the survivors wanted was a genuine apology, along the criteria we’ve mentioned at the beginning of this commentary.

Reason 8: For us, Reason 1 and its first cousin, Reason 7 are is the overriding motivations behind avoiding the word “genocide.” But it takes not a moments reflection to appreciate that, once “genocide” is on the table, its application across the entire range of policies and programs affecting Native Peoples, historically and contemporaneously, must be considered.

Let’s briefly look at some specific cases in light of Reason 8. So; how well does “genocide” fit the various incentives manufactured over the years for Indians to enfranchise themselves or to be enfranchised? Perfectly, we think. So; how descriptive is “genocide” concerning the 60’s and 70’s Scoops, where uncounted numbers of indigenous children were adopted out, some overseas, to non-Native foster parents? Flawlessly, in our opinion. (Sterilization? Who said that?) Or, can “genocide” accurately characterize the current status of suicide in aboriginal communities? It can and it does, we would argue.

And on and on. Maybe some of you would prefer to argue the point, but that’s our point: the Indian residential schools were not isolated idiosyncrasies of a few members of a governmental department or two. Genocides involve a host of interrelated and interwoven policies and programs, the understanding of which requires sustained effort and the application of all 5 of the specific headings given under Article II. The Nazis, for goodness’ sake, made it illegal for Jews to own parrots!

Bringing genocide to the table would take the churches, but more centrally the government of Canada, into the exhaustive examination of additional regions of its policies and programs with respect to indigenous peoples, regions that, up until now, it has successfully avoided (or at least, as it is now trying to do with residential school, managed to isolate from other policies). And, what is perhaps even more important, establishing that Canada’s policies toward indigenous peoples constitute an historic and ongoing genocide rules out Mr. Harper’s statement as an apology, since such would violate the second feature of a genuine apology; someone who is still doing it can’t be promising not to do it again.

If Genocide, Why?

So far we have only dealt with why what Mr. Harper said on Wednesday was not an apology (to summarize, he meticulously avoided using the proper term “genocide” to characterize Canada’s actions, thereby impugning the sincerity with which he had worked so hard to infuse his words). But at the outset we objected to more than the non-apologetic nature of his statement; we took exception with characterizations he made of the actions of the churches and governments.

We don’t dispute his repeated assertions that “it was wrong.” For us, this was a no-brainer: genocide is wrong. Mr. Harper’s pathetic attempt to insinuate mitigating circumstances (“While some former students have spoken positively about their experiences at residential schools…”), another evasion which disqualifies his statement as an apology (just try to apologize for killing someone while driving under the influence of alcohol by saying “I always do silly things when I’m drunk”), also boomerangs when we consider the irrelevance of the specifics of a genocide to decide upon its “wrongness.” After all, some Jews learned a useful trade working as slave labor in concentration camps; some made new friends; many lost weight; and some even had their metabolisms re-set, so that they were able to maintain a healthy weight for the rest of their lives! But when you make the moral decision that genocide is wrong, you don’t have to listen to sophistry that tries to turn the task of making moral judgments into an accounting of the “goods” and “bads” of a particular program.

There are numerous other places we could be picayune. Calling residential schools “educational institutions” grated on us, for example. But in at least one more point the presentation descended much too far into pure fiction for us to leave it uncommented. With genocide now revealed as the accurate term to characterize the governments’ and the churches’ actions, the question of why arises. Even Mr. Harper, in evading the issue of genocide, still felt compelled to provide his listeners with an historical vignette of the underlying cause of creation and operation of the schools:

“Two primary objectives of the residential schools system were to remove and isolate children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures, and to assimilate them into the dominant culture. These objectives were based on the assumption that aboriginal cultures and spiritual beliefs were inferior and unequal.”

There you have it; the objective was to assimilate Indians, because we were believed to have inferior cultures (spiritual beliefs are an expression of culture, and thus redundantly included in Mr. Harper’s statement). This was “wrong,” “caused great harm,” and has “no place in our country.”

We have no doubt about the “great harm” part of his statement; however, you should notice how it leaves the agents of all this misery unnamed. It was “the residential school system” that had objectives (and not people working for the churches and governments), and the “inferiority assumption” apparently just hung in mid-air during the years of operation of residential schools, unattached to anything identifiable as a human being wearing a frock or business suit.

Are things any better when we supply warm bodies to this dodge? Well, inserting human beings into all this would at least make explicit that it was people who had the objectives of (1) removing Indian children from their forms of life and (2) insinuating them into mainstream culture, and that people had the (now more obviously racist) assumption that Indians were inferior. So now, our agreeing that this was “wrong” allows us to encapsulate and restate this part of Mr. Harper’s little history lesson into “people did harmful things to Indians because those people were racists.”

But anyone who thinks we are satisfied with this rendering is much too used to bad movie scripts, where bad people do bad things because they are bad. As if the clergy and governmental officials responsible were all wearing black hats. Life is not so simple.

First, the image that in Indian residential schools an “inferior” culture was being replaced with a “superior” culture (which thinking, thanks to the P. M., we now know has “no place” in Canada) is simply wrong. Indian children were not being taught to drink tea with their pinkies extended, speak with an affected English accent, or appreciate poetry and opera; they were being taught to perform as menials (domestics, farm hands, cooks, etc.) for members of the superior culture (and even the not-so-elevated members of that culture). If they were expected to learn anything in residential schools, it was to learn their place; to perform, without question and with dispatch, the commands of their betters. If this was assimilation into “dominant culture” it was into its lowest, most wretched, most disposable stratum, where the inhabitants moiled to eke out a marginal existence. It was alright that these serfs would be Indians; after all, our “betters” have never really concerned themselves with the color of their peons.

Second, attributing this all to “the racists” (who, thank heaven, no longer have a place in Canada) erects a faceless, nameless straw man we’re all supposed to take a turn at pummeling. But this piece of misdirection insinuates that ideology determines actions, rather than actions determining ideology. This is too big a subject to go into here, but ideologies of race, race inferiority, and sub-humanity arise from the material needs to dispossess and expropriate, and not vice versa. Canada’s wealth has arisen from the willingness of the settler society to simply take what they want from indigenous populations (just ask the Lubicon, the Cree of Northern Quebec, and the Labrador Innu, for recent examples). It’s in casting about for some excuse to justify satisfying a material agenda that Canadians have had to create and then invoked the non-humanity of the real owners of Canada.

Consequently, holding anonymous racists responsible for the woes of Indians and assuring us they no longer abide here is nothing but additional falsification on a heroic level. For banishing faceless and nameless spirits to some vasty deep does no such thing as long as the material need to do away with Indian rights and claims continues to abide here. Thus Mr. Harper’s history lesson is nothing more than another kind of bribe… like the forthcoming Truth and Reconciliation Commission. “Just let us insinuate a comic-book version of Canada,” it says. “We don’t have to name the ghosts in the story; we all know who they were anyway. We’ll just pretend they’re all gone now, so you can sleep better at nights. And we get to pretend there’s a clean and complete split with this admittedly reprehensible past.” But the past is present, and it seems, the future.

Resolving Anything Useful?

For a “clean break” the events of Wednesday leave an enormous number of loose ends (some thicker than the Atlantic Cable) flailing around, at least for us. Even several of the leaders of the other political parties, in their responses to Mr. Harper’s statement, noted on Wednesday that it was short on detail. But, by Mr. Harper’s words and by implication the upcoming Truth and Reconciliation Commission is left to sort out the remaining specifics.

Is it up to the task? Not even in the cartoon world Mr. Harper has created, much less in the real world.

As already mentioned the statement not only said things we dispute, it left unmentioned a host of issues we needed to see addressed. Let’s run through a few of the omissions:

(1) Genocide. Is the commission going to bring this up? And so what if it does? Canada has already demonstrated it will simply ignore the charge if it’s made, and has been careful to eliminate any possibility of treating the matter in a serious way. Minister Strahl, for example, stated repeatedly in the run-up to Wednesday that nothing Mr. Harper would say would prohibit an ongoing, aggressive investigation into crimes associated with the residential school. But he knew, as we did, that the central crime had already been removed from consideration. Even if Indian after Indian stands before the commission and charges genocide, nothing will happen about it. Most of all, such repetition will only dispose the “average” Canadian, who is supposed to be getting an education on these things, into the familiar stupor of “there go those damned Indians again, always complaining about something.”

(2) The Cover-Ups. Once “wrongs” are correctly identified as “crimes,” can anyone else see that Canada and its churches have been covering up the crimes of the residential schools for quite some time now? The pattern of responding to charges made by former prisoners of Indian residential schools was predictable and familiar: stonewall, then impugn the testimony and motives of the victims (“those troublemakers just like to make noise, or they’re looking for another handout”), then admit that maybe, just maybe there was a “bad apple” here and there in a gigantic barrel of nice apples (“some bad things may have happened, but it was all done with the best of intentions”), then throw a sacrifice (preferably one already dead) to a dissatisfied and growing crowd of lawyers, and then go back to stonewalling (“Hey, enough already! The issue has been settled!”).

Canada and the churches have worked long and hard to avoid admitting anything (in 1998 it was estimated that the Anglican Church, for one, had spent the overwhelming bulk of their budget for dealing with residential schooling on advice from publicity agencies), much less general and specific criminal acts. As anyone paying attention could probably guess, here the government has long ago moved to limit its own possible damages from colluding in knowingly hiding crimes and hindering investigations, so that, for example, while it’s illegal in Canada to destroy documents needed for criminal investigations the people who do the destroying can’t be charged with anything (the “Naughty-Naughty” Principle).

But the churches have long looked out for their own, with known pedophiles in their ranks given a “time out” and then transferred to a new assignment without the inconvenience of having to face a criminal charge. By the way, isn’t this what Becket and King Henry were arguing about back in the 13th century? Eventually, didn’t English law come down on Henry’s side? We have to agree with Henry on this one.

The victims of abuse at residential schools have had to endure not only the original abuse, but the vituperation and calumny of criminals and those assisting criminals in evading disclosure and prosecution. And, for parliamentarians and bureaucrats, even if they’ve removed themselves from the possibility of formal criminal charges under the existing criminal code, justice demands an accounting and acknowledgement of the cover-up as much as it demands them of the original crimes.

(3) The Secret Histories. Attention has been focused so much on church and governmental abuses that there is a clear and present danger that an additional unknown number of malefactors will slip through the cracks. It has already been acknowledged that, for example, in the 50’s the Canadian Medical Association asked for, and received, permission to study the distribution and growth of tuberculosis in “human” populations by giving unpasteurized milk to the children in residential schools. Around the same time, the Canadian Dental Association asked for, and received, permission to study the lifelong development and growth of caries (tooth decay) in “human” populations by giving “sham treatments” to Indian children in residential schools. Here, not only are the people who “authorized” these child abuses culpable, so are the people who ask for them. Both these cases, of course, took place long after the Nuremburg Protocols for ethical research with human beings had been articulated and accepted.

Nor does it end here. The notorious Dr. Cameron, who, while in the pay of the Central Intelligence Agency, used electroshock and mind-altering drugs to experiment on innocent Canadians (a chapter in Canadian history immortalized, so to speak, in a CBC movie), also had some kind of involvement with Indian residential schools, mainly in the Prairie provinces. Rumors abound (since at least the early 90’s), but there has never been enough hard evidence to sustain charges. Doesn’t this bear investigation?

In fact, with a captive population and a supervening authority at best indifferent to their well-being and without any mechanism of complaint or due process available to the victims, what could not have happened? On this subject our imaginations have already been far outstripped by what everyone admits actually did happen; what a broadly-thrown finely-gauged net might dredge up is, in our opinion, anybody’s guess. The (now, finally, at last) movement to start digging in church graveyards and remote, unmarked locations is merely the tip of an iceberg, one that could well nail, even for those Canadians at the utmost levels of denial, the concept of genocide to Canada’s treatment of indigenous peoples.

There’s more (Sterilization? Who said that?), but this is enough for now. These three loose ends, rather than “details” that can be dealt with summarily, are, we predict, Hydra’s Heads that will sprout hundreds or even thousands of additional inquiries if pursued with due diligence. We have a number of problems with the upstart commission, but our question here is: Is the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” equal to this task?

This commission can (1) subpoena no witnesses, (2) compel no testimony, (3) requisition no document. It cannot find, charge, fine, or imprison. Thus far, the only ones lining up to testify are members of groups who have already testified (the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples generated thousands of pages of testimony from school survivors, a corpus, we must add, that has not in the slightest way entered into the consciousness of the average Canadian in the 12 years since its publication) and those who still maintain sufficient plausible deniability to publicly defend its inactions (the RCMP, for example). Those most obviously culpable have already stated their intentions not to bother showing up.

Will, somehow, the victims of residential schooling show up dragging bales of documents proving abusive actions, abusive policies, collusion, cover-ups, etc. on the part of ministers, bureaucrats, clergy, professors, bag-men, pedophiles, and the full host of assorted miscreants? They’d better, for the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” won’t have them.

Or maybe we just need to pray for our own version of a governmental or ecclesiastical “Valachi,” who will show up and rat out the Dons, all the way up to and including the Capo de Tutti Capi. However, not only is this an extremely thin thread upon which to hang our hopes for truth (and more importantly, JUSTICE); what “witness protection program” is going to protect him or her?

“Truth” is an odd name for a body that can trade not at all in that particular commodity. “Reconciliation,” too, is an odd word for five years of allegations that can be either scorned or ignored, according to the tastes of those who are its subject. It invokes the same fantasy world Mr. Harper constructed, where Canadian and indigenous peoples are returned to that happy state of mutual respect and cooperation that existed before the bad old residential schools came along and ruined everything. In “truth,” however, there never has been any “conciliation” to “re.”

Conclusions

We don’t know about you, but we’ve been unable to swing a dead cat since Wednesday without whacking someone telling up about how the “apology” has “closed a painful chapter” and signals “a new beginning in relations” between “Canadians and Indian-Canadians” (sic). Like someone tearing apart a picture of a former boyfriend or girlfriend, spitting on it, and walking away from the pieces tossed over the shoulder, however, we’ve been witnessing a made-up ceremony, one where the participants, for various reasons, are trying more to convince themselves they’ve dealt with all the serious issues rather than actually putting an end to them.

Canada has, once again, missed a truly historic opportunity, putting paste on display rather than an authentic diamond, because the diamond, in someone’s estimation, would have been far too expensive. Already, after the patina of ceremony has worn off, there have been some rumblings, primarily around the fact the Mr. Harper’s statement was long on being sorry and short on being active. And as we pointed out at the start, a real apology promises to undo, as far as possible, the damage done. But now that the statement is revealed as just another evasion, we must caution against whatever action the governments of Canada would propose; as we’ve tried to make clear, the “action” Mr. Harper’s statement endorses, the “Truth” and “Reconciliation” Commission, is no action at all. And someone who steals your car, wrecks it, and is unrepentant about his/her actions is most definitely not the person you’d choose to repair it or replace it.

But that person most certainly at the very least would be responsible to pay the costs of repair or replacement. If this be genocide, the role of Canada’s government (and churches) is to make it possible for us to once again make ourselves whole, nothing more and nothing less. How should we do this, how long it will take us, where do we start… these questions and more crowd in on us all. But they are question we must identify, discuss, and answer ourselves.

Those of you who saw clearly and immediately the farce that was being played out; those of you who felt in your heart of hearts that the whole orchestration was out of tune but couldn’t identify the offending instruments until now; and those of you who were misled until you brought the powers of your own intellect to the examination of this exercise in rhetorical excess; whatever your history is that led you to the complete this overlong of our commentary; we invite you to join in the task of building what ultimately must replace this charade, some kind of response authentically committed to truth in this history and justice in its resolution.

Roland Chrisjohn
Andrea Bear Nicholas
Karen Stote
James Craven (Omahkohkiaayo i'poyi)
Tanya Wasacase
Pierre Loiselle
Andrea O. Smith

posted in How Many Micmacs are on Tribe? - 0 replies

Micmac Homeland

Three Feathers — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:18:01 GMT

MICMAC HOMELAND
Shared by White Owl (Gu'gu'Gwes)

The name Micmac or Mi'kmaq (singular: Mi'kmaw) means "my kin; my friends," and has various spellings: Mikmaq , Micmac , Mikmak, Lnu'k and Miqmak.

The Micmac live in the Maritime Provinces of Canada, including Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Gaspè Peninsula of Qùebec. They are also found in Maine and Massachusetts in the United States.

The Canadian Maritimes are located in the Northeastern corner of North America. The combination of rugged Atlantic coastline and the lush green forests is magnificent. The contrast breathtaking.

The Mi'kmaq eat a large variety of seafood found in the ocean and forest animals such as moose, elk and deer. The first rays of sunrise to touch North America in Micmac country.

The Micmac are an Algonquian speaking people. Before the 16th and 17th centuries, the Micmac were semi-nomadic as they followed the seasonal food supplies.

Due to the area in which they lived the Micmacs applied few, if any, sedentary agricultural practices into their daily lives. The Atlantic seaboard, so far up the northern end of the continent, has long cold winters; this translates into short growing seasons.

Some archeologists believe the Micmacs grew maize and tobacco. The maize was probably grown for nourishment, and harvested green. The tobacco was considered a precious commodity, so if grown was probably done so for aesthetic reasons.

While not being entirely sedentary, they were not entirely nomadic people either; they did have their base camps. These camps were found in two different environments, depending upon the season. During the spring, summer, and fall months they could be found closer to the coastline than during the winter months.

Micmacs utilized animal skins for their clothing and lodging materials. The best time of year to hunt the fur bearing animals was the winter months. It was then that the skins were thicker, as were the fur coats. The winter months were considered the lean months, due to difficulty with hunting in the snow. They looked upon the move to their summer camps as a beginning of the season of plenty. They harvested almost all of their protein from marine resources throughout the bountiful season. They hunted seal whenever possible because the oils and skins were considered invaluable to the Micmacs."

European Influences

There is documented evidence that the first European invaders were Vikings who landed on Newfoundland (where a band of Beothuk lived) as early as the 11th century. It is also believed Basque fisherman visited the Grand Banks before the infamous voyage of Columbus voyage in 1492. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries French and Scotch traders and trappers made regular seasonal trips to the Canadian Maritimes. In this same time period the British visited and set up settlements.

Before the arrival of Europeans, Micmac funerals were sometimes held before the person actually died. Travel and outdoor funeral services were difficult because of the harsh weather, so if a person was believed to have an incurable disease or was near death, the individual gave a farewell speech and then everyone feasted and danced. This person would no longer be given assistance. Often dogs were killed as a sign of grief.

The Micmac religion believed in one supreme being but included a number of lesser gods, some of whom had human form. Best known of the Micmac legends are their stories of Glooscap, a cultural hero.

Almost immediately after French Jesuits arrived in Acadia, the Micmac began to convert to the Roman Catholic faith. During the early years, the French brought relatively few of their women to North America, so intermarriage between French and Micmac became very common.

These two factors bound the Micmac so closely to the French, that they found it very difficult to accept British rule after France cession of the Maritimes to Great Britain in 1713.

Currently, most Micmac have French surnames, and they have remained among the most firmly converted of all Native American groups. At the same time, they have also retained much of their language and culture, and their practice of the Catholic religion has incorporated many of their traditional native beliefs.

The Míkmaq National Flag has three colors, white, red, and blue, signifying the three divine persons, The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit.

The cross signifies Christanity.

The letters: N,A,M,T mean:
N = Nin (I or Me)
A = Alasotmoinoi (being a Catholic)
M = Mento (gisna gil mentoin (devil))
T = Tooe ot Tooa (get out - go out)

Nin Alasotmoinoi gil Mento Tooe (I am a Catholic, you are a devil, get out)

SA = Saint Anne (Patron Saint of the Míkmaq since 1730).
MIGMAG = Míkmaq (The Allies)
LNOG = L'núk (The People)

The flag was first raised in Listukujk (now known as Listuguj), Quebec on October 4, 1900 and in Kjipuktuk, Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1901.

The Micmac language is heavily influenced by the French tongue. The 1974 Bernard Francis and Douglas Smith Orthography became the official orthography of the M'kmaq Nation in 1980.

Mi'kmaq wigwams at St. Ann's Church
Chapel Island, Nova Scotia. Courtesy
Nova Scotia Museum, Halifax.
Photo by Clara Dennis
http://www.manataka.org/page249.html

posted in How Many Micmacs are on Tribe? - 1 reply

Mi'kmaqs and vikings?

WabanakiWmn — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 04:42:46 GMT

Can you give any insight into the history or rumor, whichever about a viking settlement in NewFoundland? I have heard the vikings lived among the people long before other European settlers came to the continent. I have also heard that descendants of these vikings are called Bem Deneek? (sp) meaning Blue Eyed Wanderers?

posted in How Many Micmacs are on Tribe? - 1 reply

Sable Island History March 2006

Three Feathers — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:56:04 GMT

Sable Island: History (March 2006)
http://www.greenhorsesociety.com/History/History.htm

Historian and author Lyall Campbell has made a life-long study of Sable Island’s history. He is one of the few authorities on the history of Sable Island - and is probably the world’s expert on Sable of the 16th through 19th centuries. Lyall has prepared the following account for the Sable Island Green Horse Society.

Sable Island's First People and Livestock

By Lyall Campbell, 2006

Sable Island's history began as an offshoot of Europe's. It stemmed from the pursuit of power and profit in the so-called New World. Sable's lure was distinct from that of its embracing sea. The waters around it spawned a treasure of codfish. But the operative term in ‘Sable Island' was ‘land'. Explorers saw Sable as a place to plant their nation's flag. Discovery created a claim that settlement would confirm. Sable also embodied a safe base for exploration of the mainland.

Discovery of Sable Island

The human story of Sable begins with a mystery. Who discovered the island? First to spring to mind are inhabitants of the nearby mainland. Natives came to settle there after the last Ice Age. These discoverers of Nova Scotia were the forerunners of today's Mi'kmaq Indians. (The Mi'kmaq were called Souriquois by the early French and then generally Micmac. Mi'kmaq is the preferred form today.) Aboriginals have lived in the region for some 11,000 years. Their development rivals that of Sable Island itself. The annual round of the Mi'kmaq way of life has been traced. They spent at least part of every year on the seacoast. There they caught fish, collected shellfish, and hunted sea mammals. Their water transport was by birchbark canoe. The Mi'kmaq could travel along the coast and even make the crossing to Newfoundland. They could ply the waters of Northumberland Strait and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. There fish, seals, and walrus abounded. But the Mi'kmaq were not sea adventurers. They did not, like the Nootka of the west coast, pursue whales far offshore. They preferred to seek fish, mussels, clams, and lobsters nearer home. Put simply, the Mi'kmaq had no need to go as far to sea as Sable Island. Their culture did not demand such a trip into the unknown. A Mi'kmaq/Sable link is opposed, as well, by two basic facts. 1) No known native tradition refers to it. 2) Sable itself has yielded no long-buried native artifacts. So, Aboriginal discovery of Sable is doubtful. The island was not sighted first by men from this continent.

This brings us to transatlantic visitors. The first Europeans to reach North America were the Vikings. The big question is, How far did they get? Squatters lived at Anse Au Meadows in northern Newfoundland for some time. From there, they might have followed the coast southward and westward. Their skill and hardiness were up to any sea voyage. The same is true of their vessels. Experts have argued in favour of their reaching Cape Breton and even New England. But none has yet claimed that they chanced on Sable Island. Again, no artifact at Sable prompts such a belief.

The 1400s brought a marine renaissance in Europe. Equipment and techniques improved. Ships became larger and more seaworthy. Navigational instruments allowed clearer readings. Maps and charts recorded more extensive data. These changes formed a whole greater than the sum of the parts. Southern Europe led the way in theoretical knowledge. The Italians and Portuguese excelled, the former as chart makers, the latter as explorers. Mariners embraced the means to extend their voyages. The feedback from their ventures enlarged the known world.

The Portuguese explored down the African coast and also westward. Well out to sea, they discovered a number of islands. The Canaries, Madeira, Cape Verde, and Azores all yielded riches. And as bases, they lengthened the range of Portuguese fishermen. Meanwhile the English fished as far west-ward as Iceland and Greenland. Here Norse sagas of long ago told of the Vikings' sojourn yet farther west. And seafolk passed down legends by word of mouth. Some of this lore must have reached English ears. Men employed at Iceland by Bristol merchants would bring stories home. They spoke of far-flung lands across the North Atlantic.

The venturesome Portuguese expanded their trade. Northward it reached Bristol, which became a chief trading partner. So this port was active in both Iceland and Portuguese trades. Two traditions therefore met at Bristol. One was English skill in sailing North Atlantic waters. The other was knowledge of the new techniques from Southern Europe. Each tradition also had a mythical aspect. Both posited islands lying far to the west. (Any land there was assumed to be islands. No continent was thought to lie between Europe and Asia.

The English, it seems, began the new transatlantic quest. Bristol merchants led the way. In the early 1480s, they tried at least twice to find the (mythical) Isle of Brasil. The exact purpose of these voyages is unclear. They may have been seeking a landmark for a new fishing ground. Or they may have hoped to reprise the Portuguese success with islands. Brasil might be a source of wealth in its own right. The ultimate goal, of course, was to find a western route to the fabulous east. It is possible that one Bristol voyage sighted Newfoundland. In any case, nothing remarkable followed.

The Portuguese success had drawn budding explorers from Italy. One such was a Genovese named Christopher Columbus. Portugal, however, failed to adopt his vision. So Columbus sailed in the service of Spain. He thought he had reached Asia, but he actually did far more. Columbus opened the Americas for Europe. The Columbus discoveries, though, were too far south to have an impact on Sable Island. That role would go to another Genovese in Portugal. This explorer opted for England as a new base. At higher latitudes, the westward route to land promised to be shorter. The immigrant settled in Bristol and became known as John Cabot. Here he made contact with merchants and fishermen explorers. He also gained access to the king. Armed with royal letters patent, he made two round-trip voyages. The most successful one took place in 1497. Cabot sailed in the bark Matthew under the auspices of Bristol merchants. He made a landing in present-day Newfoundland. Cabot, too, thought he had reached the outskirts of Asia. He envisioned riches in spices and jewels spawned by trade with the east. He was right about potential wealth but wrong about the source. As his voyage reported, the waters off Newfoundland teemed with fish.

After Cabot, ships flocked across the North Atlantic. Most of them came to Newfoundland to fish. England opened the fishery. The first known cargo of fish from American waters came to Bristol, in 1502. But the English were soon superseded. Some Portuguese, yet more French, came to hook the cod. Most ships at Newfoundland were Norman or Breton; others were crewed by French or Spanish Basques. (Some writers have proposed that the Basques found the western fishery before Cabot. So far, the claim lacks proof. Basques later pursued whales and cod in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The route to their prey went around Newfoundland. It took them nowhere near Sable Island.)

A number of explorers also made voyages. (They realized that Asia was still a long way off. But far islands were sought as stepping-stones to the east. When America proved to be a continent, the goal would change. The search for a way through or around it - the Northwest Passage - began.) These adventurers sought knowledge and profits. Portuguese and Spanish efforts dominated. The records of the voyages that survive are mostly on maps. The best maps are works of art. Like art, they are subject to interpretation. They are too vague to pinpoint any landing in Nova Scotia or sighting offshore. Their endless scrutiny by experts has furnished not proof but dispute. They do not answer the question, Who discovered Sable Island?

Portuguese Discoverers of Sable

Two men claimed to have discovered Sable Island. Both were Portuguese. The first was João Alvares Fagundes. Evidence favouring him, though slight, is persuasive. Fagundes was a nobleman of Viana do Castelo, a fishing town in Northern Portugal. His family were rich landowners. They were not engaged in the fishery or commercial enterprise. Several held high office in the clergy of town and province. Fagundes himself may have served as a naval officer. At any rate, his king believed him capable at sea. Manoel I gave him a charter to make discoveries in the west. Fagundes was to pay his own expenses. The time and route of this voyage are not precisely known. Its parameters, though, are clear. It explored off Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. And it took place before 15 March 1521. On that day, the king issued letters patent to Fagundes. They granted him a hereditary captaincy over lands he said he discovered. These lands included "the island Santa Cruz, which lies at the foot of the bank." Much later, the French author Lescarbot wrote that the Grand Bank(s) "endeth (by the report of mariners) about the Isle of Sablon, or sand." Fagundes's Santa Cruz, it seems, was Sable Island.

The making of this case brings up problems. They involve the dating of maps, plus changes of name and location for the island. Santa Cruz showed up first in the work of Portuguese mapmaker Pedro Reinel. Two famous Reinel maps are extant, in Paris and Munich. The first is known as Miller No.1; the second, Kunstmann I. The great American historian Samuel E. Morison studied both. Of the Kunstmann, he said: "Although the date generally assigned to this Reinel Map is 1504/5, it cannot be earlier than 1521, as it incorporates some of the discoveries of João Alvares Fagundes." The same applied to the Miller: "It is clearly post-Fagundes.”

Reinel's Santa Cruz was placed at 44°N 51°W. This location is south by east of St. John's, Newfoundland. It is some 450 miles (720 km) east of Sable Island. Later maps placed it as close as 300 miles (480 km). Some of them showed other islands south of Newfoundland with different names. The names included João Alvares and Fagunda. These point to Fagundes as the discoverer. "On many charts of the same period also appears an island named ‘I. de Sablo.’” Eventually, this island was placed at 44°N 60°W. This reading denotes Sable's true location.

The variety of island names is confusing. The different locations are even more so. Yet one scholar argues that all refer to Sable Island. In his view, the misplacements were not mistakes. The deception stemmed from the politics of the time. The basic cause was the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494. By it, Spain and Portugal divided the new lands to the west. The line of division was set at 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. It was thought to run between Cape Breton and Newfoundland, at about 60° west. Lands found west of this line were deemed Spanish. Portugual's rights applied to lands east of it. (England's Henry VII had not signed the treaty. So he simply ignored it.) The 60° meridian passes through Sable Island. Portugal aimed to avoid legal conflict with Spain over "this prime piece of real estate.” So Portuguese maps placed the island too far east (under various names). They thus put it well within their assumed zone. Mapmakers in other countries unwittingly copied the fraud. The deceit also had another purpose. The false eastern sites for Sable were in the zone of theGrand Banks fishery. Portugal could claim Sable by right of discovery. So, "The cartographic success of Fagundes's voyage assured Portugal of the legal right to a vital source of national revenue accruing from the Newfoundland Banks." Meanwhile, Fagundes and his compatriots could ignore the maps. They had access to more accurate sailing charts. They knew that there were no islands at sea south of Newfoundland. Beyond question, the Portuguese knew where Sable Island was.

As mentioned, a second Portuguese claim to Sable discovery was lodged. It came long after the alleged fact. The claimant, in 1568, was named Manoel de Barcelos. Manoel said that he and his father Diogo had discovered the island. They named it Barcellona de Sam Bardão. And on it, "they have (or he has) been breeding herds of cows, sheep, goats and swine." The next step would be to plant settlers. Which is exactly what Manoel and one of his sons aimed to do.

Westward ventures had a long tradition in the Barcelos family. It began with Manoel's grandfather Pedro. Details of his career are elusive. "We know that Pedro de Barcelos remained until his death in 1507 actively interested in the New Lands." Pedro's son Diogo followed his lead. Between 1521 and 1531, Diogo explored to the west. His son Manoel accompanied him. They sailed under a charter from the king. It allowed them to search for lands across the Atlantic at their own expense. They made some unspecified discoveries. At Diogo's death, about 1533, Manoel became leader of the clan. He made several more transatlantic voyages. In at least one, his cousin Marcos de Barcelos went with him. The ongoing quest by the Barcelos argues some success. That they were exploiting an overseas island by the 1560s is quite likely. Equally likely is that their livestock farm was Sable Island.

Scholars have accepted Barcellona de Sam Bardão as Sable Island. This conclusion is based partly on old maps. Noteworthy written records also support it. (For instance, the writings of Hakluyt and Champlain. Both authors refer to Portuguese cattle on Sable. The herd is said to date from the 1550s.) Suggestive, too, are ties between the Barcelos and Fagundes families. The Barcelos family were natives of Terceira in the Azores. A branch of the Fagundes clan moved to Terceira. There they and the Barcelos intermarried. The Barcelos claim of Sable discovery perhaps embellished the facts. The basis for it may have been kinship with Fagundes. Another point, as well, could be relevant. At that time, ‘discover' did not mean only ‘saw first.' It might mean simply ‘explore and reveal.' The Barcelos may well have been the first explorers on foot, so to speak, at Sable. Even so, this would not prove they sighted the island before Fagundes.

A sidelight to these events is suggestive. Azoreans and mainland Portuguese may have tried to found a colony in Cape Breton. The evidence is still inconclusive. But it prompts speculation. Fagundes had explored the coast facing Sable. The king then granted him rights in the discovered lands. "He was authorized to occupy and govern these lands and to manage the soaphouses there." David Quinn, an expert on the Age of Discovery, noted two necessities for making soap. Train oil was a chief ingredient. And plenty of timber was needed to boil blubber and make soap ash. Quinn cited whales and fish as the sources of train oil. Better than fish, however, were seals and walrus. Both of these were plentiful at Sable Island. But treeless Sable, of course, was short on timber.

A possible scenario comes to mind. A party of men might settle on Sable with livestock. They could add to the food supply from sea and lake. They might even cultivate kitchen gardens. To make soap, they would slaughter seals and walrus for their blubber. Driftwood made fuel for boiling some of it down. Extra blubber could be shipped off with the oil. The Sable products would supply soap-makers in Cape Breton.

In the event, the Portuguese abandoned Sable Island. In fact, Portugal spurned all northern new lands. Its rulers pursued empire elsewhere. They looked to eastern Asia and the South Atlantic. But Portuguese efforts at Sable left a legacy. They were among the first attempts to settle the New World. And for Sable itself, their actions were seminal. Sable history began under Portuguese auspices. The Fagundes/Barcelos exploits have a valid claim to fame.

Chance Discoverers of Sable

That an explorer discovered Sable is as likely as it is apt. Still, there is another might-have-been. Some unknown ship in the fishery may have come upon the island by chance. Lack of a record does not disprove the event. Few fishermen's exploits were preserved in writing. But the pattern of their activities in the New World is known.

The western fishery, as mentioned, emerged at Newfoundland. Two types of fishing developed. They were called dry and wet (or green). In the dry fishery, boats went out from shore. They brought the catch right back to salt and dry on flakes. In the wet fishery, cod were caught from a ship's deck. They were salted and stored on board, then taken straight to Europe. (A dressed wet cod looked and felt like a fish. A split and dried cod resembled a triangle of wood.) Wet cod were preferred in the Paris market. So the French specialized in the green fishery. Their ships wandered far from shore. While explorers sought new lands, fishermen surveyed the offshore banks. They discovered the Grand Banks, where the fish were larger and sweeter than inshore.

Cod was the prize fish. Besides abundance, it had two special virtues. It was easily caught, and it preserved well. The first trait appealed to fishermen, the second to all seafarers. Dried cod was ideal food for long voyages. Salt provided a bonus: taste. Salt cod was universally preferred to fresh. Another asset of the cod for this era was its size. North American waters spawned fish larger than any yet known. A full-grown cod was 2 to 4 feet long, 20 to 100 pounds (though a limit of 60 was more common). The usual method for catching fish on the banks was handlining. From the ship's deck, an angler hooked one fish at a time. The larger the fish caught with each pull, the better.

Banks cod often shifted from place to place. Bottom dwellers most of the time, they were not easy to locate. A single-size group might bunch up in one place for a week or more. Sometimes cod would gather in one location but be widely scattered. At other times, a whole formation was on the move. All the fish kept to one course, like an underwater convoy. (Only at certain seasons, in pursuit of capelin prey, did myriad cod come to the surface.)

Little was known of the whys and wherefores of the cod's movements. (They were governed by access to food, water temperature, and the spawning instinct.) The most regular migration was in and out from shore. Winter feeding grounds were generally in deep water. In spring, cod headed toward the nearest coast. They spawned in the shoal waters on the continental shelf. Here the sea teemed with tiny creatures that nourished the newborn cod. After spawning, the adult fish moved on. They sought grounds better stocked with their kind of food. The fishermen observed the general patterns. Still, to them the cod movements were largely a mystery. One fundamental belief ruled their working lives. When cod were scarce in one spot, they were plentiful somewhere else.

The habits of the cod suggest a line of thought. Exactly when the Grand Banks fishery began is unclear. The French were among the first to exploit it. Their ships made two banks trips a season. A ship on the Grand Banks might pursue cod westward. There lay Sable Island Bank, with Sable itself atop the closest part. And just off its east end lay one of the sea's best fishing holes. Discovery of this fact attracted more vessels. The French were fishing near Sable as early as 1539. "Sable Island was known and the fishery there was carried on by hook and line." But Portugal had discovered the island well before then.

The fishery near Sable prompts further surmise. On later maps, names like I. de Sablo (or Sablon), Isola della Rena, and Île de Sable came to the fore. All were intended to mean Island of Sand. The descriptive name became an international commonplace. Its most frequent usage, and likely source, was among fishermen. They knew that no name fit Sable better. For this reason, no one person need have coined the term. And that it found favour is entirely apt. The name rightly outlasted more formal ones aiming to stake a national claim. (The English chose not to translate the expression to Sandy Island. They came to use a corrupted form of the French name. They called the island Isle of Sable(s). Eventually English Canada adopted the ‘bilingual' name Sable Island.)

There is, of course, one more way for Sable to be discovered. It is a time-honoured formula. A ship is driven by stress of weather to parts unknown. Any ship that made a Newfoundland voyage might suffer this fate. Wind and currents might bring a crew to Sable Island. Such obscure Sable ‘discoverers,’ though, were not apt to live to tell the tale. They were more likely to fall victim to the deadly sandbars.

A French claim

One more early contender for Sable renown has been put forth. He embodies France's first claim to Sable. Or rather, he would do so if he existed. The French author Lescarbot introduced him to the world as "Baron de Léri and de St. Just, Viscount of Gueu." (The surname is more commonly spelled de Léry.) Lescarbot said de Léry tried to found a French colony. The passage from France, however, took too long. So de Léry was forced to put off at Sable "his livestock, cows, and pigs, for want of fresh water and pasture." (This wording implies that Sable was not the targeted site.) It follows that de Léry began the herd of Sable cattle.

A Dutch writer, de Laet, adopted, and stretched, Lescarbot's account. He said de Léry commanded a 1518 French expedition. Its purpose was to found a colony on Sable Island. De Léry was attracted "by the convenience of the spot." But after spending time on Sable, he changed his mind. De Léry abandoned his enterprise. The only effect of his visit was the cattle and swine left behind. De Laet said the Portuguese came to Sable after de Léry. Their efforts met with no better success.

Critics have noted a number of flaws in the de Léry story. The chief weakness is that Lescarbot is its sole known source. His Baron de Léry has never been traced. And the time of the alleged event is uncertain. Lescarbot gave two different dates for it. In 1609 he said that it happened "about eighty years ago." But he used the same phrase elsewhere in a 1598 context. Most later writers opted for 1518; some chose 1529. Either date would fall "in the time of King Francis I."

The most extreme claim for de Léry was made by the Québécois writer Taché. He indulged a pro-myth and pro-French bias. De Léry, he claimed, founded the race of Sable horses. To honour the baron, Taché calls the island equines "léris."

To Lescarbot may go credit for the first Sable myth. This point is worth noting. In time, the number of Sable legends would rival its mysteries. The odd historian has backed Lescarbot's version. But the scholarly consensus is clear. Portugal, not France, was the source of the first Sable livestock.

Sable Island’s First People and Livestock

© Lyall Campbell, 2006

Website of the Sable Island Green Horse Society.

All other rights reserved by the author.

Notes on the above (ZL, 2006)
http://www.greenhorsesociety.com/History/History.htm

posted in How Many Micmacs are on Tribe? - 0 replies

Mi'kmaq and French Settlements

Three Feathers — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:42:17 GMT

How French settlement affected Mi'kmaq people

Patricia Doyle-Bedwell | May 10, 2004

Samuel de Champlain arrived in Nova Scotia on May 12, 1604. The establishment of French outposts in Atlantic Canada led to the founding of Acadia.

Mi'kmaq legend had long foretold the arrival of white men from across the ocean, and the appearance of Europeans in tall ships seemed to fulfil this prophecy:

"Micmacs' first contact with Europeans did not surprise them or alter their world view. A legend in which one of their spiritual beings travelled across the Atlantic to 'discover' Europe taught that blue-eyed people would arrive from the east to disrupt their lives.

Micmac people also knew the story of a woman who had a vision of an island floating toward their lands; the island was decked out with tall trees on which were living beings. Thus the Micmacs were not startled by the appearance of early explorers in sailing ships. Instead, they greeted the newcomers, set up a brisk trade with them, and looked forward to incorporating the strangers' new technologies into their own culture.

Relations with outsiders grew more complex when the Micmacs began converting to Catholicism. This process occurred over a 70-year period, beginning with the conversion of Grand Chief Membertou in 1610."

Mi'kmaq Resource Centre

The arrival of the French, and later the British, significantly changed the Mi'kmaq way of life. When I look at my family tree I see the French influence on my own family. When I listen to the Mi'kmaq language I hear Mi'kmaq words borrowed from the French. The fact that I am Catholic stems from the time of the first contact when Chief Membertou converted to Catholicism.

Courtesy: National Archives of Canada

I am Mi'kmaq. I feel a strong connection to my ancestors and their struggles for survival. Mi'kmaq people did not passively accept the newcomers, nor did they give up their power. Instead, we survived by adapting and evolving.

According to stories passed down through Mi'kmaq oral tradition, one of our ancestors had a vision about the arrival of the white man. Perhaps this vision arose from our contact with early Viking settlers. Regardless, Mi'kmaq people have always known that more white people would arrive on their shores.

Mi'kmaq values of sharing and helping ensured that the French would be welcomed here. The French faced life-threatening conditions in the "New World." Without the assistance of the Mi'kmaq, they most certainly would have died. I believe that the Mi'kmaq treated the newcomers in accord with our principles of sharing and inclusion. The French and Mi'kmaq remained allies.

I wonder how our world would have taken shape if the French had not arrived.

Our first experience of the newcomers was based on sharing and caring, and established the parameters of the relationship. The Order of Good Cheer, created by Champlain, included Mi'kmaq people. Some consider the conversion of Chief Membertou to the Catholic faith the first treaty between the Mi'kmaq and the Holy See. Champlain mapped the area and opened the doors to further settlement. He did not do this alone but with the aid of the Mi'kmaq and other aboriginal peoples.

Mi'kmaq people traded with the French and became dependent on foreign goods. Our trade in furs for these goods caused a shift in the economic roles of men and women. The conversion to Catholicism further eroded women's roles in our community as the French missionaries felt that men did not have enough power. The Jesuits who arrived on our shores became friends and allies, but they also felt obliged to "civilize" the "sauvages."

Courtesy: National Archives of Canada

The French did not infringe upon Mi'kmaq territory but instead respected our territory. This may have been self-interest as the fur trade depended upon Mi'kmaq people hunting in their own territories. The French profited from this trade.

But all was not sweetness and light. With the goods and the newcomers, came sickness. Our people began to die from illnesses our medicine people could not cure. Our population decreased significantly during the early period of contact with first the French, and then the British.

If disease had not decimated the Mi'kmaq people, the history of Nova Scotia might have been very different. The friendship between the French and the Mi'kmaq could have changed the military outcome in Nova Scotia if we had not suffered such a population loss.

In commemorating the arrival of the French in Acadia, we cannot forget the impact of their arrival on the Mi'kmaq people and our territory, Mikamaki. Without the Mi'kmaq, the French would have not survived. At the same time, the arrival of the French wrought great change in the Mi'kmaq in terms of our religious beliefs, our trade and our health.

Our language reflects the influence of French speakers, notably the word "Magasan" for store. The Mi'kmaq people had a name for the French, "Wenuj." The influence of the French has been far-reaching. Despite the influence of the newcomers, we as a people have survived, changed but intact.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/champlainanniversary/micmac.html

posted in How Many Micmacs are on Tribe? - 0 replies

Northeast Tribes: The Micmac

Three Feathers — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:32:22 GMT

Northeast Tribes: The Micmac
This article has been archived from the now-defunct Northeast Wigwam site (http://newigwam.com) for educational purposes. Contents are the sole property of the authors. Please visit our Article Archive Index for further information. If you are the author of this article and would like to make changes to it, or if you are the author of another article you would like us to add to our archives, please contact us.
Northeast Wigwam: The Micmac

There is evidence to believe that the Micmac had contact with Europeans (Vikings) in the 11th century, centuries before Columbus arrived in the Americas, making them the first Native Americans to have contact with Europeans. There is also evidence to believe that their population was far more than the 40,000 people that have been estimated for their population in the year 1600. Their numbers, however, were greatly reduced due to diseases such as smallpox that was brought into their villages by the Europeans, and some estimates suggest that their numbers were only 4,000 by 1620.

The Micmac, who originally occupied most of southeastern Canada and northern Maine, were primarily fishermen and hunters, who were granted free border crossing rights between the U.S. and Canada by the Jay Treaty of 1794. In neighboring colonial communities they were well known for their splint-ash basket making.

Today's Canadian and U.S. combined Micmac population is over 25,000, with about 28 groups recognized in Canada and just 1 group recognized in the U.S. - the Aroostook Band of Northern Maine with more than 700 members. Today's Micmac occupy more than 60 villages or reserves in Canada, and there are probably more than 2,000 Micmac living in the Boston and New York City areas.

State recognition in Maine was received in 1973 and federal recognition came in 1991 with the Aroostook Band of Micmacs Settlement Act. With this act, the Micmacs received funds to purchase more than 5,000 acres of their previously owned land. Many members of the Micmac Nation still speak the Micmac language today.

Written by Harold and Deborah Champlain, Narragansett
http://www.bigorrin.org/archive29.htm

posted in How Many Micmacs are on Tribe? - 0 replies

Beothuk Indian Fact Sheet

Three Feathers — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:26:11 GMT

Native American Facts For Kids... was written for young people learning about the Beothuks (Red Indians) for school or home-schooling reports. We encourage students and teachers to visit our main Beothuk site for in-depth information about the tribe, but here are our answers to the questions we are most often asked by children, with Beothuk pictures and links we believe are suitable for all ages. Photographs are the property of the sources we have credited.
http://www.bigorrin.org/beothuk_kids.htm

posted in How Many Micmacs are on Tribe? - 0 replies