The following is a transcript of a speech given to the Indigenous Bar Association (IBA) by Dr. Bernie Francis on September 30, 1995 at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The IBA was awarding an honorary membership to Dr. Francis and presenting him with a special plaque for his long service to the Mi’kmaw people and his contributions to the Nova Scotia justice system on their behalf.  The plaque was read and presented to Dr. Francis by Mohawk lawyer, Dr. Patricia Monture-Angus. The speech was recorded by Dr. Trudy Sable and is part of her personal archives that were digitized, transcribed, and donated to the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre, Halifax, Nova Scotia. The archival project was sponsored by the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre, Pamela Glode-Derochers, Exectutive Director, with funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage, Aboriginal Languages Initiatives Program (2018-2021)

[Note: The quality of this recording is very poor due to being in a large auditorium with a hand-held tape recorder 25 years ago. Dr. Francis and Dr. Sable have carefully reviewed the recording and done their best to transcribe the speech. Words or phrases followed by a (?) indicate our uncertainty about the transcription.]

Dr. Bernie Francis

The Algonquian languages were essentially the same for the most part. It is the fault of the Mi’kmaw language. That’s why I would add that cautionMi’kmaw works differently enough from the others to have caused many an Algonquian linguist to say

“f-it” before they actually began their research for their dissertation for their PhD and for their post-doctoral work.  Allow me now to pass onto you a statement not thought up by me, “Language is the mirror of the soul.” This is absolutely true. In fact, because of our language, not only do we see the world differently, but we live our lives according to those linguistic dictates. Because our languages are comprised mostly of verbs, we naturally would see and act upon the world differently than, let’s say speakers of English and French, both who are speaking languages from the Indo-European stock.

Without sounding biased and hopefully more a scientist, I recognize how languages can reflect reality better, and in a more fundamental way because of their very structure. The Mi’kmaw language and all its cousins and, very probably all other Native languages on this continent, do not, in fact, cannot attempt to stop reality.  How, you may ask, could I know that about other Native languages outside the Algonquian stock?  I looked at one language that is not related to the Algonquian languages. It’s the Hopi language. Hopi is so verb-oriented that even the noun ‘table’ is a verb in that language.  English and our language would say, “It’s a table.”  In the Hopi language, they would say,

“It’s table-ing.”

The language, like the second law of thermodynamics, reflects reality correctly in that the world is in constant flux. True, I’m guessing about the other Native languages, but I’d bet my farm on it that they were similar in that respect. So, what does this all mean? Let me clarify by first giving you the next statement followed by a couple of examples. The English language, because of its structure, is more like a still camera, attempting to look at the world frame-by-frame. The Algonquian language, because of its structure, is like a video camera describing walking and acting on the world as it moves, never stopping. Two very telling examples are ‘colour’ and ‘god’.  ‘Colour’ in the English language, is an adjective modifying a noun. Not so in our languages. ‘Colour’ is a verb, which conjugates like any other verb; that is, the car is not black as it is understood in English, but rather it is a process of being black as it is understood in our language. Again, ‘god’ is a noun in English, whereas it is a verb, *or* to use a superlative phrase, ‘god’ is a process in our language, always moving, always changing, which in my opinion is a correct perception of reality.

Asking a philosopher what they saw, but better still, asking physicists who have dabbled in particle physics. If I may add, Einstein was wrong when he declared that “God doesn’t play dice with the universe.” That statement has been refuted both by Danish and English physicists through the Uncertainty Principle. Today, September 30th, 1995—and I want you to remember this day—Bernie Francis is refuting it [laughter] using his language as a basis for an argument. 

So, I think you understand not to adopt the impression that I’m attacking the English language because, without it, I may not be here speaking to you today.  I do, however, experience our language to be fluid, and the English language to be robotic because of the above reasons. Still more robotic, is the legal language, and the following comments I’ve touched on, asking why that has been problematic for us.  To the Algonquian or hunter and gatherer mind, it doesn’t make sense to always document everything in stone, like government papers, for instance, or even the bible.  It takes years, sometimes thousands of years, to try and do something, if, in fact, we can do something, because of this. 

The classic example, of course, is the bible. In North America, there has never been a bible written by our people, and yet, there has never been a single religious war.  In Europe, however, that one bible, written in stone, has caused many wars and much suffering.  Granite rock documentation flies in the face of a moving, progressive mind.  Record it, yes, but not in stone. Reality changes second-by-second as our languages aptly reflect. And, therefore, we must be ready to change according to the dictates of a changing reality.  For Native speakers, this is not so difficult; for non-native politicians, well, I’ll leave you to fill in the blanks. [laughter]

I have felt in the past, and still do, that at least in part, the reason for the mistrust during land claims talks is due to a stagnant mindset by English or Indo-European speaking politicians, versus a fluid and open mind set of the North American Native people that two mindsets [inaudible: possibly screening?] from language. A meeting between Mi’kmaq and federal politicians of years ago alerted me to this. The Feds opened the meeting by methodically enumerating all the land that my people were not entitled (to). They went on and on without regard that my people just may have had new and innovative ideas, as the following language [inaudible word] resolves.  Finally, one chief—in fact, it was former Chief John Basque of the Chapel Island First Nations Band, a chief with limited English— rose in anger and frustration and said to them, “When you people came over on your goddamn ships how much land did you bring with you, anyway?” [laughter; applause]

So, the rest of our group roared with laughter. [laughter] One can easily observe the stagnant mind I referred to earlier digging its bureaucratic heals in. The Feds were not there to negotiate; they arrived at our meeting with constipated minds [laughter] that further served them to use their language to turn against us. We experience analogous difficulties in a court room, when our people are being tried. The court can’t conceive of a possibility that there might be a better, and might I add a superior way of handling Aboriginal human beings. The non-Native courtroom, in my opinion, is too sterile, and as a result so removed from reality that our people to this day do not know how to behave towards it, even after many years of exposure to it.  To bring these translators, is of course a help, but let us not forget our quote, “the language is the mirror of the soul.”  Can a translator translate the soul of an Indian adequately enough so that he or she may be treated appropriately? And suppose our translator could, that is, is this lawyer or prosecutor in the courtroom sensitive or even perceptive enough to recognize the Native soul?  If the answer is negative, how, then, can our people be treated in accordance to our laws born of our custom, which, in turn are mirrored by our languages, which, again, in turn, mirror our soul. I’ve just given you another reason to conserve it, haven’t I?

So, let’s, first of all, consider ourselves lucky in that we have the correct mindset to set things straight, perhaps a little faster than we’re doing.  So, what’s the holdup?  Their mindset, and our frustration, which obviously leads to anger.  How do we combat these two problems?  Initially, we must work at understanding the differences between one another’s linguistic foundations. This is extremely important. Our own awareness of our progressive mind will force us to educate the Euro-Canadian mind more and [Inaudible words] the frustration left. Secondly, because of this understanding, we will be superior political and legal fighters as we continue to be forced to fight. Why? Let me tell you a story I read some time ago.

A student of Buddhism asked the following question of his teacher monk: “But Master, how do I fight?  Is it not true that fighting of any kind is countering the scripture?”  The monk-teacher simply replied: “Jump into the heat of battle but keep your heart at the lotus feet of the Creator.”  In other words, keep your stupid anger, and frustration, and your prejudiced ideas out of the fray; they only worsen an already bad situation.  However, we can jump into the heat of battle with a clear mind, because we are not only aware of our mindsets, also, less importantly, we are aware of their mindset.  So, without this personal jargon weighing you down you’re a good fighter, you’re in there with a clear mind, and a clean heart, you think better, you act quicker, and you endure much longer.

My final words to you, my brothers and sisters, is to urge you to keep the sharp plot(?) on your mirror called languages.  It will constantly remind you of who you are, and you will never need a briefcase to carry it. You will learn to react much less, and act much more. Many of you will be forced into a situation whereby you may be required to act as mediators when our people resort to guns.  Guns are usually— not always, but usually— a clear indication that the mind is too crowded, and the heart too heavy to enable one to think, and act appropriately to a given situation. I liked Mahatma Gandhi’s statement when he said to his people during the summer of independence, “There is a cause for which I am willing to die for, but there is no cause for which I am willing to kill for.” Don’t carry that statement to its logical absurdity.  I am of the opinion that though Gandhi may have achieved some goals speedily, achievement acquired this way would not have endurance.  It will always be unstable foundation.

In concluding then, I’d like to say that even just looking back over the past twenty years, times have been tough, and critical for us, and my feeling is that things are not going to get easier for a good while yet. I’m going to emphasize to you all then to draw from your culture, through your language for strength. Those of you who do not speak your Native language, not to worry. You do not have to speak your language to know about your language.  In fact, in some ways people conceptualize an appreciation of it better than a fluent speaker who takes it for granted. For you fluent speakers, study your language as if you were hearing it for the first time, but beware because you just might arrive at a real education.  Depending on how intensely you look, you may very well expose your soul to yourself, and seeing your soul for the first time may be extremely unsettling for many of us. As soon as you you’ve gained your composure, take control of your new vision immediately because this new vision will be coupled with new power. Then move forward and utilize this new power wisely. And, remember, the good spirits will assist us all; they will not simply come to us because we call them. Know where to look for them, and I believe I’ve given a good indication as to where we find them. Next, after you’ve located them, we then must clear the way for them.

Wela’lin, thank you very much, people.   [Applause]

Dr. Patricia Monture-Angus

I have to start by telling a story; this is still when I was a law student. When I was a law student at Queens University (coughing) I can assure you that there weren’t very many Aboriginal people around (inaudible). So, I spent half my time in law school and half my time in the federal penitentiary during my five years at Queens.  Except for one brief, wonderful period of time where Queens University had the wisdom to ask Bernie, I believe to come and be a visiting scholar there for a while.  And I remember sitting in the faculty club with him and talking. And, you know, faculty clubs to this day are not places where people are comfortable (inaudible) and Queens in particular is that way(?) But I felt so warm and so happy and so nurtured and so comforted to be sitting with this man as such a great inspiration.  So, I guess it’s probably appropriate (?) that a few years later (inaudible: that here we are?) and that I am standing here and I am truly honoured and elated for him to be in this Bar Association to honour Bernie Francis and to welcome him formally to our legal family. We have all be [inaudible: studying, quoting (?)] Uncle Alex. Well now, I think we have an Uncle Bernie here. [laughter] So, before I give Bernie his plaque—I’ll start wandering back this way—because the inscription on the plaque is awesome, so I am just going to read it to you. It says:

Indigenous Bar Association Honorary Member presented to Bernie Francis.  In recognition of serving the Mi’kmaw people of Nova Scotia, his years of faithful service has been invaluable it is true, but his contributions are recognized, appreciated too.

You have served this community in more ways than one and have been a valuable contribution to the Nova Scotia justice system.  This tribute to you is most deserved.  September 30, 1995. [Applause. The speech and presentation were followed by a number of musical performances and drumming