The following is an interview with Dr. Donald M. Julien, Executive Director of the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq at his CMM office in the Millbrook First Nation, Truro, Nova Scotia on November 12, 1991. The interview was conducted by Dr. Trudy Sable as part of a Canadian Parks Service, Atlantic Region Traditional Sources Study to document and develop themes relating to Mi’kmaw historical presence in federal parks throughout the Maritimes. This research was written up in a report entitled Traditional Sources Study and submitted to Canadian Parks Service, Atlantic Region, February 28, 1992.

The archiving of this and other interviews was sponsored by the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Center with funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage, Aboriginal Language Initiatives Program, awarded in 2018. 

TS:     (A train is sounding its whistle mid-way through this introduction making it hard to hear.) This is for Canada Parks. Let me tell you, actually, what I’m doing. I’m not employed by Parks—I’m on contract with Parks to do this three-month preliminary study, which is geared toward looking at… it’s different levels; one is from the Parks Canada system to see how they are representing Native American concerns, history etc., or how they are not, and secondly to look at specific sites and how they might view that particular park, broaden their interpretation from a more Native American perspective. So what they are asking me to do in this preliminary study, is to talk with various people in the Mi’kmaq, the Maliseet communities— and see, to ask you, what you think is missing in the Park’s system and what you think should be represented that is not, particular themes that you think are important, both at a national level and also at a particular site. They are particularly interested in land use, traditional land-use practices of the Mi’kmaq and how (inaudible: that possibly can be included?) in interpretation. That’s what I’m doing, I’m talking to as many people as I can (laughs). So, we can start at any point you would like to….I know you’re on the (inaudible) board for Debert. Is that correct? 

DJ:     Yes, I am!

TS:     Yeah, so I’ve been talking to a bunch of people about Debert, so I’d like to hear from your view about the Debert (inaudible) but also in general.

DJ:     So your department…. did they have anything involved in respect to the fortresses?

TS:     Yes.  Any national…anything under Parks service in the Atlantic Provinces, which would include Louisbourg….  

DJ:     Louisbourg and Annapolis Royal? 

TS:     Annapolis royal, Port Royal, all those, plus Fort Anne, Cape Breton Highlands Park, Kejimkujik, the Citadel…places going up into New Brunswick as well.  Melanson is a new site but…

DJ:     Fort Beausejour? Is that another one? 

TS:     No. I had to sort tell you, I want to find out about all of them, there are certain ones I am targeting just to do more in-depth study. But really the meat of it is they want me to find out who should we talk to? You know? About these programs…Who knows? Who is the spokesman for? How do we… Who do we work with? And what’s your perspective?

DJ:     Well, there is quite a few different perspectives! I was down talking with Kejimkujik people about six months ago. They had a little monument meeting, and what they were particularly interested in was the petroglyphs. How best to secure them from the public. The public should view them, but they are also been destroyed by vandals, but they don’t know who; they couldn’t find anybody. And what they wanted to know was what I would recommend in ways of protecting them. You know? The weather is going to take them away anyway, you know, gradually by erosion or whatever happens to the rock by the weather, that is going to take them away eventually. I recommended to them that they should be more security, especially when the tourist season is open, but even when the tourist season is not open, there’s probably hunters that go through there, if they are permitted. I don’t know…Kejimkujik is… There was an old Indian reserve in Kejimkujik, as a matter of fact, all Kejimkujik was licensed as a reserve.

TS:     Was it? You mean a reserve in terms the Mi’kmaw reserve?

DJ:     It was until the 1920s I think it was that it was surrendered. There is a question about the surrender of Kejimkujik. There are two land claims that are being developed, one for the land, and one for timber that was sold, they’re (inaudible)  as illegal activities, or fraudulent activities that happened. And we’re in the process and developing those claims for the bands down on the south shore— Acadia, Bear River, Horton, and Annapolis Valley, are hopefully going in as a joint claim. Now the federal government is saying that nobody is going to be dislodged, so the Park will probably remain. But there’s also three existing Indian reserves within the park, that they forgot surrendered. Several years back there was an occupation of those reserves so Parks Canada couldn’t really do very much about it because they were legally on the reserve!

TS:     Which reserves are those?

DJ:     I’d have to look into my files. There are three small reserves within the Park.

TS:     Right now, there’s people living in there?

DJ:     Nobody’s living on it, there unoccupied.

TS:     Oh?

DJ:     But before the 1920s there were people living in the Kejimkujik area.

TS:     That’s amazing!

DJ:     There’s quite a history that goes back in the Kejimkujik area. We’re looking into the possibilities of, like I say, land claims for those, specific claims so it’s after 1867. I don’t know exactly what the Bands are going to require with respect to that, because they’re going to negotiate with the Federal government on it, so they… We’re just doing the preliminaries.

TS:     Did they know that you’re making these plans?

DJ:     They should be aware, the Department of Indian affairs is aware of it. I don’t know if the Parks Canada is aware of it or not. But I figure that the Department of Indian affairs will make them aware once they’re validated and come to negotiate.

TS:     Is that something that I should not talk about? [Laughing]

DJ:     Oh no it doesn’t matter!  It doesn’t really matter. The more people that are aware, the better it is. You know? Then they can probably pressure the federal government to look at these claims and laying them to rest once and for all. Several years back there was a chief from the Acadia band who wanted more interpreters of Native origin, like Mi’kmaw interpreters in the parks, especially Keji. Them that understood the folklore, and history of it. I suggested at our meeting that there should be native interpreters, going in there and interpreting the petroglyphs. I don’t know if they followed through or not. I mentioned also that they should be talking to two chiefs—Frank Meuse who’s at Bear River….

TS:     Oh, is he?  I have to talk to him too.

DJ:     And uh, the chief of the Acadia Band, Debbie Robinson. These two chiefs have close proximity of their reserves there, Bear River is not too far away, it’s near Annapolis. Acadia Band has got Wildcat, also they got Ponhook (Panuk) Indian Reserve, which is on the…What’s the name of the waterway there? The big manmade lake?

TS:     Where is it?

DJ:     In Keji.  I’m just trying to think of what it’s called, I should know it…. Rossignol is it? Is it Lake Rossignol or something?

TS:     I don’t know.

DJ:     Lake Rossignol that’s what it is! Lake Rossignol. That’s a man-made lake. That also flooded part of our cemetery in Ponhook. Its going down to the Mersey River, Mersey River system? The Ponhook Indian Reserve is near there and it flooded part of the old cemetery. But at some point in time, some of the artifacts from there have washed up on the shore, especially  bones and so on.

TS:     Is that, you mean the man-made lake from Keji done by the Parks service, or was that something that was done by the Reserve?

DJ:     Yeah! That big lake system, that big man-made lake was done by the Parks.

TS:     Okay, so that flooded into the Reserve?

DJ:     Yeah. It’s a man-made…. I don’t know if it was done by Parks Canada or it might have been done by the Nova Scotia Power too, I don’t know. I’d have to look through my papers and see. But, it’s been awhile since I looked through…

TS:     So was that a source of contention or…?

DJ:     Well, that Ponhook (Panuk) Indian Reserve, there’s 200 acres of land there that has been validated with respect to specific claims, and part of that compensation was would be that burial ground being under water.  You know, I’d have to look through my files; it’s been awhile since I’ve been dealing with that. See, I did some research and once it goes into the band and goes to the Federal government, federal government reviews it, and if they think it’s a good claim, then they validate it. And it’s up to the Bands to negotiate. So, the band hasn’t really negotiated on that. The timber claim for Kejimkujik has also been validated, but it’s up to the Bands to pursue negotiations.

TS:     So when they’re validated that means they’re saying okay let’s…

DJ:     Legal grounds. 

TS:     Okay. We recognize these are some legal grounds, and we’re willing to negotiate, then you go through the process of negotiations and hopefully you settle it. Is that right?

DJ:     Yeah. But the surrender part of it, we’re still looking into it. But that’s as far as Keji’s concerned. Annapolis Royal, it’s been several years since I’ve been there, and I walked behind the interpreter. And, I figure that there should be Native interpreters there also ‘cause I really didn’t agree with a lot of things that they were saying about the Native input.

TS:     What were they saying? [Voices intermingled] Oh yes! I’m sorry. 

DJ:     Well it’s been 5 years since I’ve been there. I kept on trying…. I shouldn’t have maybe interrupted them, but I was trying to make them realize that some of the things were inadequate.  You don’t want to do that with a large group of people. The guy’s job is on the line, you don’t want to question them for a lot of things ‘cause they won’t know anyway! Louisbourg… I guess there was some Indian involvement with Louisbourg. In the last several years there haven’t been any Indian people working in Louisbourg for the summer. But you know, that’s not really our contention, that’s Cape Breton Island. Our Confederacy is only concerned with mainland Nova Scotia.

TS:     Okay, so what is it, the Cape Breton Indian……

DJ:     The Union of Nova Scotia Indians.     

TS:     It’s only those two in Nova Scotia?

DJ:     Well no, you’ve got the Native Council of Nova Scotia also which is supposedly representing Indians off-reserve. [Break in tape] So, you know. I haven’t really read too much in respect to the Parks publications, but if they’re talking about Nova Scotia there should be a little more content of Mi’kmaw history.

TS:     Can you…it would be really helpful if you knew, for instance, like Keji or Debert, if you could speak….if you have any ideas specifically, what particular themes you see that would be most important for the Park to interpret. How would you want it to be perceived through the Park’s system in their interpretation? You know what I mean? That’s important because you know, you could go….and it might not be appropriate, or it might not be very important.

DJ:     Well, I think Parks should be, especially in Nova Scotia, they should identify that the Mi’kmaw people were the first ones here.

TS:     Right, for sure.

DJ:     Now, if you’re talking about….if you’re talking about archaeologists, and they’re talking about the first Debert site, 10,6 00 years ago, they call it the Paleo site—Paleo, which only means prehistoric. But to a laymen, it means another tribe of Indians, right? The other sites that have been found are anywhere between 5,000 years ago to the present day. Archaeologists are saying that they’ve got no definite link between 5000 and 10,600. But, as Mi’kmaw people. we say there is a link. That was our ancestors. If you look at the artifacts, they’re similar. Maybe not the same, but of course you develop those stages. Unfortunately, Nova Scotia’s colonies, settlements and so on started arriving around the 1700s, or maybe even earlier. And suddenly the old Indian sites had been disturbed, especially the ones that could have been tied it, nobody really cared until the 1800s about archaeological evidence. There’s too many treasure seekers here too.  If somebody found artifacts, they took them away from the province. So you may have lost an awful lot of evidence to substantiate the link.

TS:     Plus all the areas that aren’t found.

DJ:     Yeah! There’s probably, we’re probably sitting on something. Millbrook, Millbrook was only here about 1886. It was because of a hunter-one of our chiefs hunted here and he shot a bear and asked the Department of Indian Affairs if he could purchase a piece of land in Millbrook. Fifty acres was purchased. Now we got something like 1200 acres here. So, you know, the land was gradually put onto the reserve as it grew. But I think a more true reflection of Indian history should be put into, like maybe in the publications of Parks Canada when they’re interpreting the Atlantics or even Nova Scotia in particular.

TS:     [Difficult to hear TS] Steve Davis, do you know him? He said, even if there isn’t a connection between Mi’kmaq (Inaudible) with the Debert site, that doesn’t matter, as long as you are talking about Native American (inaudible) That’s what we’re talking about… (inaudible) their role, their place, their history so there’s that broader issue, whether it’s working or not.

DJ:     We argued several times about that, but I have also argued with Dr. George MacDonald, who was the first archaeologist to develop Debert, and he says, All (unclear)  this is is a theory,” and he said theories can be disproved. But he said you can have evidence. So, I said well, it doesn’t matter what evidence you have, it’s just we’re saying we were the first here. Whether you can tie us in 10,600, we know we’ve been here 5,000 years anyway. But whether that’s our ancestors or not. Other people believe there was some kind of a disruption of the Earth’s environment between that period of time. Well, they can’t prove that; it’s only a theory. You know, everyone’s got a theory. Unfortunately, our people didn’t have anything. That’s why nobody’s been really interested in pursuing the Mi’kmaw history. We rely on Jesuits; we rely on the early explorers like Lescarbot, Nicholas Denys, Chrestien Le Clerq, Maillard, and so on. But you see, these people are very biased also, especially the Jesuits.

The best writing I’ve found, was Lescarbot even though he was here for only less than a year. But what he was doing was comparing the Europeans with the Mi’kmaw Indians and saying that people think that we are savages, they’re not Christianized. But he said we have their own beliefs, and there a lot better than European beliefs, because we were governed by the people, for the people, where the Europeans were governed by the elite for the longest time. So, democracy really started in North America with the Indian people.

TS:     What’s interesting to me is when you think about the language, I’m trying  to think that that’s a really important point (unclear) the Park’s system…….(Inaudible) ownership versus the colonial…

DJ:     Well I think what the Mi’kmaw concepts of ownership, was more like a communal type of thing. And Dr. Frank Speck has done some archaeological evidence, anthropological, I guess you’d call it…this was in the mid 1800s, early 1900s, and he studied the idea of ownership. But see, it was more communal, and we had our own systems put in place because we had seven Mi’kmaw districts before European contact. And each district was autonomous. So, if one district went to war with another tribe for territory, they at times went to war by themselves, but they would call in the other districts to see if they would also intervene. And if they didn’t, then it was alright. But there were seven Mi’kmaw districts in Nova Scotia—Prince Edward Island, and parts of New Brunswick. And they formed what they call a Grand Council, which only met in time of war and peace or any other type of (?ceremony?), which was only about once a year. They were centered in Cumberland county, but after the Treaty of Utrecht, they moved to Cape Breton Island, around St Peter’s, because the French supposedly ceded over all the territory except for Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton to the English.

TS:     Did they move to St Peter’s? The Mi’kmaw people?

DJ:      Not all of them. Just the Grand Council, the Grand Chief moved there. Several other districts in Nova Scotia stayed put, they didn’t want to move. Some Indian people moved up there, but not very many.

TS:     What year was that? I’m asking because…

DJ:     We’re talking around 1713

TS:     I’m asking because I wanted to look at St. Peter’s.  I was interested in that site and I’m going up to Cape Breton and wanted to stop there because the Nicholas Denys museum is there and there is a lot of history, Mi’kmaw history there.

DJ:     I haven’t had a chance to go into the Alexander Graham Bell Museum, but someone had told me there’s an awful lot of his writings that are held there.

TS:     Who?

DJ:     Nicholas Denys. His journals I think are held there. Someone told me, I haven’t really tried to look at them.

TS:     I’ll ask my husband because he worked at that museum

DJ:     And I don’t know if they’re in English or in French.

TS:     I’ve got the book…

DJ:     I was told this by someone, but I don’t….

TS:     Have you read his book…

DJ:     He’s got three different volumes.

TS:     Yeah, right.

DJ:     I’ve got copies of them

TS:     That would be really interesting, because I know there is the museum, but I was just reading in a brochure on St Peter’s, that this used to be a portage place between the Bras D’or Lakes and the ocean, right?  (inaudible)

DJ:     Atlantic, yeah.  Well, a lot of the waterways probably had significant importance to the Mi’kmaw way of life. Because that’s the only way we travelled in the distance anyway, by the canals and waterways.

TS:     Do you know who the Grand Chief was who moved up there?

DJ:     No, I don’t, I’d only be guessing.

TS:     Okay. When was that?

DJ:     I’d only be guessing.  1717.

TS:     See, because the Parks can take…. I actually last night wrote out all those questions, because I was thinking that Parks can commemorate a person, a place, or an event. So, something like that, you know, you can build something around …if that’s something the Mi’kmaq themselves thought would be important and interesting.

DJ:     But see, the thing is, we were never consulted, we weren’t involved in the Treaty of Utrecht, and when the Chiefs went to visit the Lieutenant Governor in Quebec, Bonneville, he told them, “No, there’s no way that we gave up your territory.” So that’s where the hostilities started. Also, with the influence of missionaries. Missionaries weren’t only here to save our souls, but to also keep the idea and interest alive of the French. And the biggest thing that I’ve read in some of the books is that they kept them in ignorance about what was going on in daily activities with respect to land. The biggest thing that they were doing was push the Roman Catholic religion down their throats and make sure that’s all they think about. And at times of hostilities, at times of war, they would tell them, “Look, the English are heathens, they don’t believe in their own Roman Catholic god like you do. And the Lord will forgive you if we send you out on a mission to destroy.” So!   Because in 1761 on June 25, at the Burying of the Hatchet ceremony, the Grand Chief who was Denny mentioned to the Lieutenant Governor that, “We didn’t know that you were civilized, the English are civilized or Christians”. This is right in their minutes.

TS:     Where is this?

DJ:     In Halifax, June 25, 1761, this was the Burying of the Hatchet Ceremony.

TS:     And, that was Chief Denny?

DJ:     Grand Chief.

TS:     Was that the one at Annapolis Royal?

DJ:     No. The first signing of a treaty with the Mi’kmaw Indians was in Massachusetts, the Cape Sable Indians sort of represented the Mi’kmaw Indians, or our interest. They ratified the treaty in 1726 at Annapolis Royal, and other tribes came in, while other Mi’kmaw bands came in 1728. But see, Nova Scotia almost missed the gun in that 1725 treaty. There’s only a certain section of it that pertains to Nova Scotia. So, when you’re reading the 1725 treaty, you’ve got two different versions of it. You’ve got the one that’s signed in Casco Bay, and you’ve got the other one that’s treaty 289, I think it’s called, …238. I should have my notes, but there’s portions of it just for Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia was sort of dependent on the Massachusetts government as a stronghold, and these were just colonies.

 But if you go back, there’s an awful lot of different things that happened. In 1696, the Massachusetts Government proclaimed a bounty on Indian scalps. And a lot of people think, well why does it apply to Nova Scotia, but they also screwed the Eastern seaboard, up to 1710 (inaudible) This was the purpose for settling Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and so on. After the treaty of 1728 was signed, it was relatively calm, although there was about 35 different ships that were captured by the Mi’kmaq for trade. They’d capture them, sail them around for awhile and then trade them back to the English for provisions. And there was probably some lives lost on both sides. In the 1740s there was an attack on Annapolis Royal, and even war was declared by the Mi’kmaq against the English, still with the belief that we still owned the land, and that was sort of influenced by the Roman Catholic religion or the Jesuits, or even may not have been Jesuits but just the missionary priests. And then in 1744, they brought the Rangers down from Boston, Gorman’s Rangers, to hunt the Indian people in Nova Scotia. That’s just before the fall of Louisbourg. Louisbourg fell, what, in 1745, for the first time? Then you know, you’ve got the founding of Halifax in 1749. They signed a treaty with St John River Indians, but the other Mik’maw tribes didn’t want to sign the treaty, because they figured there’s a land question to be answered, and nobody wanted to answer it. As a result, Cornwallis didn’t want to declare war on the Mi’kmaq because he’d be citing them as an independent nation. So instead he wanted to put them as rogues and ruffians and so on, so he put a proclamation on our scalps in 1749. And it almost reached an international incident before it was cancelled in 1751. And he was called (hauled?) back to England because the Lords of Trade told him to hold the sword over the Indian people, they said not to jab it in them. And this is all in your colonial documents!

TS:     Right, right. Isn’t it something!

DJ:     In 1752, Jean Baptiste Cope came forward with a proposition that land should be set aside for the Indian people, before any other land or settlement should be taking place, that they should be paid compensation. But that was totally ignored by the colonial government. This was the idea that the Treaty of Utrecht, France ceded over all the territory to England except Ile Saint-Jean and Cape Breton. But the Indian people didn’t believe that they had the power to do that. And he signed the treaty, November 22, 1752. A lot of provisions in the treaty. Then there was some incidents that happened between 1752 and 53 that Nova Scotian government is trying to say invalidated the treaty. But really the Indian people didn’t cause the hostilities at that time. Somebody stole provisions in Jeddore, went around the coast, ship went aground in Tatamagouche. There’s a deposition by Connors and Gray saying that the Indians attacked the vessel. But there’s a further deposition by Anthony Castile saying, from a French settler, that it was a stormy night and the Indian people saved the lives of these two sailors. That’s part of the treaty. And they scalped six people. And the 1749 scalping was already taken away, by a proclamation. But these guys delivered the scalps on the Legislative Assembly (inaudible), which is in your Executive Council notes in Nova Scotia.

TS:     Yeah, I’ve heard that story.

DJ:     Then, it seemed like all hell broke loose after that. It was Jean-Baptiste Cope’s son, Joseph Cope requested the ship to be going down to Jeddore to pick up what they needed of provisions. They went down with Castile aboard, then came ashore, took the provisions, but they were warned not to come back, not to come back to shore because it would provoke them. But the captain, thinking it was very wise, he went back to get a barrel and a half of corn for his pigs. They were captured, the English were killed, there were 4 or maybe 6 people that were killed. Castile said he was French, and he was saved. And that’s why he was shipped to Tatamagouche to talk to the Frenchmen in that area, to find out what really happened. And he was taken to Louisbourg and then traded back to Halifax. (Laughs).

In 1754, when the missionary priest Le Loutre came in and propositioned the Colonial government for a large tract of land, from Musquodoboit as far as Halifax to as far as Canso, all the way up to New Brunswick for the Mi’kmaw people’s territory, Indian Territory he called it. He was denied, they said, “How do we know that you’re not looking at the vested interest of the French, instead of the Mi’kmaq?” So, he sent in, in 1755 Chief Paul Laurent came in with the same proposition, but the Colonial government said, Well, they own the land because of the Treaty of Utrecht.

[Interruption]

DJ:     I’m the holder of the seal, and all the other stuff. I’m wearing too many hats! [Trudy laughing]. But you know, like all these other things happened, and in 1756 Lawrence proclaimed another bounty on the Mi’kmaw people’s scalps. And that’s never been taken off the books!

TS:     Is that right?

DJ:     I have found nothing, revoking it!

TS:     Huh! I thought it had been?

DJ:     The 1749 had been taken off. The1756, that’s Governor Lawrence’s proclamation. I haven’t seen it being taken off, but the1749 one was repealed in 1751 because it warned people not to annoy, distress or destroy anybody called an Indian. It was a significant treaty that the bounty was taken off the books. But I’ve never seen anything with respect to 1756. It may have, but I haven’t found it yet.

TS:     Do you find also that, I mean, at this point the Mi’kmaq still had seven autonomous bands, right? …(inaudible)

DJ:     Yeah, that’s right.

TS:     … I thought that didn’t work?

DJ:     Because in 1753 there were several bands that came in… You see, when Jean Baptiste Cope signed a treaty, he also promised to bring in other bands. Three other bands on the western shore came in and signed the treaty. And that was at the influence of Jean Baptiste Cope. But if you look at some of the Louisbourg correspondence of 1752, fifteen Indian Chiefs were summoned to Louisbourg by the Lt. Governor.…

TS:     In 1752?

DJ:     Yeah, and they were told, “Don’t be a traitor like Jean Baptiste Cope, signing with the English”. And then when you’re looking at Castile’s deposition, if you can sort of read between the lines, Castile was talking to Jean Baptiste Cope on the shore after these other Englishmen were killed. Jean Baptiste Cope basically told him that he was being chastised by the other Indian Chiefs for signing the treaty with the British Crown. But you know, it was out of his hands, that the younger people were starting to take over. So, you know, that’s…

TS:     Well, let me ask you this, what do you think… Do you think this would have taken place without missionary influence? You know what I mean?

DJ:     The 1752 treaty was signed with Le Loutre gone back; he wasn’t here. And I think it was made basically at the necessity of the Indian people that they signed the treaty. They mentioned that there was only about 90 to 95 people in the Shubenacadie District at the time. There could have been more but that’s what’s mentioned in the Executive Council minutes. It’s interesting, but it’s very frustrating, the history of our people. Because we didn’t write anything, it was all oral tradition. Even up to that point we were still oral. And we have to sort of depend on the missionaries and the early explorers and the early colonial writers to …

TS:     To re-create it. But you said, of the various sources, you feel is the best about is Lescarbot?

DJ:     Well, I find Lescarbot good.

TS:     Okay. Yeah, that’s important …

DJ:     But that’s because he’s reflecting us as human beings, and not as animals as the rest of them did. Not as savages and barbaric and stuff… We were no more barbaric than the Europeans were. You know? With their civil wars. (Laughing)

TS:     I know. There are some great books! I have a separate project as a grad student.  I’ve been tracing Mi’kmaw dance through history.  I just wanted to see what dances were done, what got lost and why certain things remain. So, I’ve been filming a lot of the dances

DJ:     Is that right? That’s interesting.

TS:     It is! I’ll give you everything I have, a lot of people have my video information… (laughing), Joey Gould, you know?

DJ:     I might… There was a Mi’kmaw dance that took place in the Citadel Hill in 1959 or 60, that I just viewed the tapes at the archives, and I’m on one!

TS:     Where are they?

DJ:     The Nova Scotia archives, CBC, CBC film.

TS:     You know what the call number is?

DJ:     Oh! Not off hand, I got it written down somewhere.

TS:     I’d love to find that out, because (laughing, inaudible)

DJ:     But they have… They’re talking to some of our Elders, my grandmother was alive at that time, Louise Julian

TS:     Louise Julian?

DJ:     And, there was Mrs. Madeleine Knockwood.

TS:     Oh.

DJ:     Irving Knockwood was the Chief of Shubenacadie Band at the time. What they did is take them on a… Some dance troupe from Millbrook here, and some dance troupe from Shubenacadie and we danced around the bonfire. I must’ve been about 9 or 10 at the time.

TS:     So you danced? Could you, dance for me? (Laughing)

DJ:     It’s been a while! (Laughing) It’s been a while!!

TS:     This is my personal project. The first person I filmed was Joey Gould at Afton. He put it on the Eskasoni Community channe. So, I went up to Eskasoni [inaudible] and I was just talking to a bunch of people, and she goes, “I know you!” I was on the film dancing. (laughing).  And then Peggy Thayer [inaudible] I’m just making a document of everything, all these journals, missionary sources, all the  historical ethnographies…

DJ:     Are you doing also the songs, and the chants?

TS:     As best that I can.

DJ:     There’s, I think that there’s also a collection of Helen Creighton?

TS:     Yes! But I haven’t gotten to those yet…

DJ:     That’s in the museum, at the archives, right?

TS:     Right, right I’ve got…

DJ:     She records an awful lot of the old chants.

          [TS talks about a 3-D computer program to recreate dances.]

TS:     Yeah, well I’m just that I am just at the tip.

DJ:     Well, I’m doing Land Claims research, that’s my job. But with Land Claims research, you almost have to get into the historical aspects too. I’m forever talking to high schools, universities, and different places in… Fifty per cent of my time is talking in lecture, which takes away from my research. You know it’s… You wouldn’t believe the amount of information we have in the back room there, where my office is. It’s a mess!  But I mean, I know where everything is. And I’ve got a truckload of stuff at home that I’m developing slowly. I’m hoping… My boss is also developing a book, but I’m also wanting to develop a book…

TS:     Is that Danny Paul?

DJ:     Dan Paul, yeah. He’s doing a 10-year, like every decade what happened to the Indian people (inaudible) which is interesting, but I’d like to go a little bit more in depth. Because I’d like to re-create what happened to… What Mi’kmaw way of life was before contact. Archaeological evidence just shows you where they were. You know, I read some article saying, “How can we re-create Indian way of life, digging through the garbage piles?” Because the shell (unclear) are our garbage piles, you know? And that’s where they’re finding a lot of the arrowheads, in the garbage piles. (Laughing) So they’re re-creating our history through garbage! And that’s not fair to say, but that’s not the only thing… Because like our ground here is so acidy, that nothing really keeps very long except for stone.

          [Break in tape]

DJ:     Most of our kids are interpreting other Indian histories! One girl asked me, “Do you know about the West Coast Indians, the Haida”? I said, “What are you doing about the Haida?” And she said, “I’m doing a paper for my professor.” And I said, “Well, don’t you think you should talk to your professor and tell him, ‘Look, I’d like to do a paper on my own people in Nova Scotia or…’ ”

TS:     This was a Mi’kmaw person?

DJ:     Yeah, never thought of it. I said, “We existed; we are important in this history of Nova Scotia. Maybe people want to shunt us aside and make us think that we are nobodies. But for the first settlers to arrive here, if it wasn’t for the Indian people helping them, they wouldn’t have survived. The Scottish settlers that came here, if it wasn’t for Indian people helping them they wouldn’t have survived. But the thanks we got is they alienated our lands.”

TS:     Hold on there for a second because I was thinking about that, and say, back to Parks, that could be an important theme. They’re interested in that first contact, the interaction, what Native people gave to the Europeans, what happened. How would you interpret that, how would you see Parks presenting that?

DJ:     That’s very important in Annapolis Royal. Grand Chief Membertou, he welcomed them ashore, and allowed them to live beside us. The only thing is, those poor guys were dying of scurvy the year before in St. Croix, because of the vitamin deficiencies in their diet. But with the Indian people providing fresh venison, fresh fish and so on, they brought these guys back to health. I mean there was a few of them that died of scurvy in Annapolis Royal. But after them understanding how to live on this country… You see the first winter was severe, according to what I’ve read, and they weren’t used to it. The second winter, when they went to Annapolis Royal, was not so severe. And of course, the Order of Good Cheer was developed, and people were also participating in different festivities each day, daily festivities I guess, they had fresh food and so on. But I figured the Indian people had showed them the way of life. They showed them how to use our snowshoe, use the canoe that travelled some of the smaller river ways instead of the big boats that they had, you know? The Indian people sort of shared their way of life with the French. That’s probably why we were sort of allies, because they shared. And the Indian people thought…But, I don’t think the Indian people ever thought that the French considered ownership of the land.

TS:     That’s, that’s important.

DJ:     Because like every other Indian at that time, they had a communal way of life, that no one really owned it. Their belief, their religious belief was the Lord put us here, provided the animals for our subsistence. That was their belief, that no one could really own it, we were here to do the best we can with the land that we had received. They weren’t used to the idea of what they call ownership of land, they didn’t have the same concepts. Unfortunately, that’s where we started losing out. Because once the English came here in 1620…well, King James I gave a patent to William Alexander in 1621, for all the same area that Du Monts received. But see, this wasn’t reflected to the Indian people, that there was a patent, or a grant of land given to these people to trade with the Indian people, or even a sense of ownership to the land. It was never explained to them. You know, that wasn’t done until about 1713. All of a sudden you have missionary priests coming in, teaching the Roman Catholic religion, and not once has there been any mention of land. It was sort of kept away from them, to keep them ignorant of what was going on with the colonial government, keep them in line and keep them fighting with our people. I don’t think the Mi’kmaw people really fought the English until the mid-1600s, even though there was rivalry between France and England. So, you know, when you read some of the other Jesuit books, or you read Christien Le Clerq, Nicholas Denys and so on, they are not really reflecting much Mi’kmaw involvement with respect to fights. But the Mi’kmaq were also helping their Abenaki friends, because they had an Abenaki Confederacy, which was made of Abenaki, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, and Mi’kmaq and maybe another tribe or so in there, but that was a Wabenaki Confederacy. So, one nation, or one tribe went against another nation, that these people would also help. So, they did fight alongside the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot in the late 1600s, but see, it was relatively calm here in Nova Scotia; there was really not much going on until the 1700s when they first tried to occupy Annapolis Royal— think it was 1710, wasn’t it something like that? I forget, there is so many dates and things in my head. But that’s when the English really tried to occupy Annapolis Royal around 17… between 1700s and 1710, when they first try to get their little stronghold in this country.

TS:     (inaudible: Looking for description the signing of a peace treaty).

DJ:     Yes, there were several of them that were signed.

TS:     [inaudible. This one is interesting because it had dance. This one with John Sherbrooke]

DJ:     John Sherbrooke. He was Lieutenant Governor, wasn’t he?   But see, there was different treaties that were signed in the 1760s…

TS:     [inaudible] What fascinated me about this was the descriptions of…they were doing this particular dance

DJ:     Ceremonial dance….

TS:     … Right, they didn’t want to throw the hatchet in…

DJ:     Well, that’s the Burying of the Hatchet Ceremony on June 25.

TS:     (Inaudible) Right, and they didn’t want to throw the hatchet down because they were afraid they [ed: the English] wouldn’t keep…they wouldn’t be able to go to war if they did it…Just that different mindset, you know what I mean?  (Inaudible) …if you throw a hatchet into the earth…pick it up again. Just the symbolism…the English would be a signature on the treaty.

DJ:     Well, the Indians would lay down their hatchet. Several Indian Chiefs really didn’t want to lay the hatchet down, because basically what I guess they thought at the time was, that the English didn’t honour a lot of the treaties beforehand.

TS:     Yeah (inaudible) [laughing] It is a really interesting story to me. Just the whole…I was thinking of (inaudible) I think done at Government House in Halifax, because there was a ceremony there

DJ:     Someone told me that the Governor’s farm was located on the Commons.

TS:     Yeah, but there was a ceremony, and I’ve got it in some notes somewhere… and it took place at Government House in Halifax. And I wondered gee, I wonder if it’s still buried there! Wouldn’t that be interesting?

DJ:     Could be.  I’ve started…when I went to Saint Mary’s University I was thinking about anthropology and archaeology… one of the professors asked me… (Quality of audio in the last 4 minutes is such that words can’t be distinguished. The general conversational theme can be made out however)

End of tape one   

 DJ:    …asked, “I want to up your cemetery, to see how your people tick” (laughing) and she just laughed. And I said you know, “We need an archaeologist or an anthropologist to start…an archaeologist especially to dig up your ancestors… You’ve been digging up mine for hundreds of years, so it’s about time we dig up yours, to see what the European way of life is all about (laughing)”

TS:     Did you major in anthropology, at Saint Mary’s?

DJ:     Yes.

TS:     BA or?

DJ:     Just BA in anthropology and I took psychology. You know? It was just BA.

TS:     No, no, it’s interesting! Because one of my professors said to me, if you look around the room, in anthropology most of the people are white, there are very few minorities. Which is really an interesting statement, if you think about it, that’s why when you said that, I was interested… (Laughing)

TS:     Alright, would you read these? Last night I sat down and when I went (inaudible) , you know, “What questions would I want answered?” But I thought it would be important if Parks were really to act on this (inaudible) There are a lot of things. There’s a lot of them I have here, you don’t have to go through all of them you can see… I don’t have them organized, I just you know da da da, and thought of every angle that I could think of…(TS is showing DJ questions she had developed.)

DJ:     I think it’s very… The first one, I think is very important that you reflect that we were the first people to occupy this territory, that we had… That we weren’t just sitting around waiting to be discovered by the European settlers (Trudy laughing)

TS:     Like, “Oh boy, here we come!”

DJ:     And, we’re sitting in our teepees and saying, “Hey, hey, hey! Come take our land!”

(TS and DJ laughing)

DJ:     But, you know, even the Europeans at that time in the 1500s didn’t want to recognize us as human beings. And if it wasn’t for some papal bulls that came out stating that we were human beings, that we should be treated with respect and so on, and I don’t know if it was with great respect or not. But you get Columbus’ discovery, and he wiped out an awful lot of Indian people, and some of the more progressive Indian societies down in South America. As a matter of fact, I think they were more progressive than some of the European societies. (Laughing)

TS:     Oh, I agree! (Laughing)

 DJ:    And, all the Indians in the South, I think they were miles ahead of the European cultures, but a lot of them were just killed because they weren’t practising the true religion. Now, whose religion? Right? But I think there should be a proper perspective of Indian history in the Maritimes, or Nova Scotia even.

TS:     Who do you think has that? Who would Parks go to, for instance? You, or…

DJ:     Well, like we’re trying to develop something here, we’re trying to develop a history.

TS:     Is that something that would speak for all the Mi’kmaq or is it…

DJ:     No, just basically for Nova Scotia.

TS:     Okay, so… Would be different for the ones on the mainland or?

DJ:     Because they have a different interpretation of what they think history was all about.

TS:     In Cape Breton?  That’s important

DJ:     And it’s unfortunate because I don’t like to belittle anybody, but there seems to be a wrong interpretation about what really happened.

TS:     Why do you feel it’s wrong?

DJ:     Well, they don’t truly reflect the… Like the Grand Council and so on they don’t truly reflect what really happened. I don’t think anybody really has gone in depth into the research on all this stuff. We have attempted to do an in-depth research, we have gone through…we’ve tried to exhaust as much as possible, in the references and the material, but as I mentioned, I’d like to go to the New England area, there must be an awful lot on Mi’kmaw people that we haven’t even seen, in the Massachusetts archives.

TS:     Well, there’s a Mi’kmaw Center in Maine…I know, I was just there.

DJ:     Is that in Augusta?  

TS:     No, this one was in Bangor.

DJ:     Bangor!

TS:     Yeah, I don’t know what they have, but my sister…(Inaudible)

DJ:     We’ve got a book that was developed in that area, on the Mi’kmaq, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot.  

TS:     Oh, really? What book is that?

DJ:     Oh, it’s…. It’s in my shelf, I’ll bring it to let you look at it. But it was more or less developed for the schools. I mean this was first one that I’d ever seen, you know, developed by my own people. But see, there’s so much still to be studied and isn’t it funny, and it’s …. when I’m doing land claims research, I come across a lot of things, put them aside, thinking that I’ll read them again, interpret them in a different way. But there should be something very, very important put in, in respect to Indian history. And the only way that we’re going to do that…. we have to rely on the missionaries and the early settlers that have written about our people, even the Lt. Governors made some derogatory comments, but each one of them had presented a ledger book of what was happening in their reign, so some ideas can be sought from them. I’m going to Ottawa at the end of the month and there’s , I don’t know how many annual reports there are of the Indian agents of Nova Scotia from 1868 on to the present day. A lot of the historians out there tell me it’s very important to go through those because there’s some good comments and there’s some derogatory comments and you can almost picture what was going on because there was quite a few Indian agents in Nova Scotia, there wasn’t just one. After 1867 I think there was about 18 or 19 of them. Just about every little corner news stand, I would say, any little community had an Indian agent. And each one of them was sending in annual reports. So, you could have sort of a perspective what was going on in that important time, what they thought.

TS:     I’m just trying to think, someone is doing research on that. (Inaudible) [laughter] If I hear it….

DJ:     Well, we’re going up, and we’re going to photocopy all the Nova Scotian reports from 1868 onwards and bring them back for our own use to see what we can do with them. Because the Indian agents, or I guess the Indian government at the time…not our government, but the Indian Affairs government had an awful lot of policies in those books that they have up there, so I want to see what their policy guidelines were too, at that point in time. They were trying to amalgamate us into the white society…I guess that’s not the right word, but…

TS:     Assimilate?

DJ:     Assimilate us. It didn’t work. We didn’t have no voting until the 1960s, but they talked about giving the Indians the right to vote in the 1840s. But it was (inaudible) So, really, you know, were we Canadian citizens up until the 60s? First people in this land, and we weren’t even considered Canadian citizens! And when you talk about, I keep skirting around and around the whole thing, but even in the First, Second and Korean war, we didn’t have to fight. We didn’t even have to enlist…what is it, conscription? We didn’t even have to participate, but we volunteered.  Because we were wards of the Federal government, as wards, we didn’t have to participate. And a lot of our people died, and you know, we haven’t had no true reflection of our history. We didn’t have to fight, but we fought anyway.

TS: (inaudible discussion of warrior society). Another person said, an,other Mi’kmaw man said it is part of us, that they’re warriors, and… he’s a young person in his forties. (inaudible) This was from Shubenacadie and he says a lot of there is some warrior tradition….and I don’t know how to take that.     

DJ:     I don’t know. I don’t know how to take it either, but I guess that a lot of our people just felt that they were part of Canada, even though we weren’t recognized as Canadians at the time. They were wards of the Federal government…there’s an awful lot of different oral interviews that I’ve done in the past with people who are dead and gone now. I’d probably have to reflect on that in the future, they made some good comments. Because of being wards of the federal government, they weren’t given jobs anywhere. This was in the 1920s and 1930s. They said, “Well why should we give you a job, we got (inaudible) looking after you.” At that point in time, the government really wasn’t looking after the best interest of the Indian people. Not like today, today I think it’s great. A lot of our people will howl and bitch about it, but I think it’s…. they’re doing a fairly good job at providing welfare, housing, and so on. A lot of our people I think want too much, but that’s just my thoughts on it. And mainly because I’ve been off the reserve for 18 years, well, let’s say 23 years. I left home when I was 17 and joined the armed forces, I seen a lot of the country, a lot of Canada, I went to Norway, I went to Cyprus. And I seen different people, different ways of life. In my country, I guess I’d be called a potato!

TS:     Why? (laughing)

DJ:     Oh! Well, I’m brown on the outside, and white on the inside.    

TS:     Oh, (Laughing).

DJ:     It used to be an ‘apple’ Indian but now it’s a potato. (Laughing). Without reading the Parks’…I haven’t really read anything that Parks have brought out. So, you know, like you said, “What particular themes do you see could be readily incorporated into the existing parks and historic sites?”, I don’t know, I can’t answer that…

TS:     You spoke a little bit about Keji, and Annapolis Royal….

DJ:     Yes, well that’s just by talking with the superintendents of the area. You say here, “Are there particular projects that Native American community is undertaking?”  We’re trying to attempt to do a history of the Mi’kmaw people.

TS:     Is there a cultural center that’s being developed in Truro? I heard somebody mentioning it (Inaudible)

DJ:     Peter Christmas had been talking about a cultural center for a long while, but I don’t know where it’s going to be developed, whether it’s going to go here or on the Island, I don’t know.

TS:     What’s the Island?    

DJ:     Cape Breton.

TS:     Oh, oh, oh, okay!

DJ:     (laughing) I’m not sure where it’s going to be developed.

TS:     Oh okay, I heard somebody mentioning it…

DJ:     I’d like to see a small museum developed in Truro, here on the Reserve. It’s like a central location, and it’s…

TS:     On which reserve, Millbrook?

DJ:     Millbrook, yeah.

TS:     These articles are interesting… Go ahead.

DJ:     They’re talking about traditional land use and land practices. We were hunting and fishing… we’re a hunting and gathering type of people, so we used all of the land that the good Lord provided us. And I guess that’s where our communal type of living came into effect. But see, when you have, when you’re talking about the government system, the Mi’kmaw government system, they had a Grand Council. They also divvied up territorial rights, but we did not have the same ideas as the Europeans. So, each different district was governed in a different way and different manner. But when they met to allocate land, they had to meet in a Grand Council setting, because you know, they had extended families. You get, one Mi’kmaw district member might come to another district member and marry, so you would have to widen your districts… and so on.

TS:     So you’re saying different districts had different ways of land use or…

DJ:     Well, we were all a hunting and gathering type of people. We were all the same that way. But we had to have a vast territory to be able to hunt and fish and trap, it wasn’t just a little 100 by 150 plot of land that we have today.

TS:     Well, that’s an interesting point, I was talking to somebody, an archaeologist… To the Parks, my mandate is that what happens is, all sites that are Mi’kmaw… In situ…in the actual site.

DJ:     Kejimkujik would be the interesting one because like that’s within an old Indian Reserve.

TS:     If you have any literature or… Did you say you had something about what reserves were there?

DJ:     On Keji? Yeah, I’ve got a map of Keji.

TS:     Well, if you wouldn’t mind showing me some of those because I’m going down there on Thursday to talk to Peter Hope. He’s in charge of interpretation.

DJ:     Well, there is an awful lot of… That whole park, I would say just about all the park, is on the old Indian reserve, Keji.

TS:     If I could sort of just get the specifics, that would be really helpful, if you have time.

DJ:     Yeah, we’ll go down to my office, after a little while. The resources, basically there was hunting and gathering, and they used some of the trees for their fuel and so on. They didn’t use much of the natural resources. Whatever was available to them, they used. Territorial…

TS:     Now, if you got into specifics, when I asked that question…I hear you were hunting and gathering…if you got into interpretation, you would have to  really developed exactly…(inaudible)

DJ:     You’d almost have to look at some of the herbs and things that they used for medicines and so on too. How the land was used, everything in the land was used for some purpose.

TS:     Who was it? Libby Meuse said all nature is medicine?

DJ:     Yeah! They used the birchbark for their canoes, they also used the birchbark for their eating utensils, and they used the birchbark for the wikuom, or teepees as you call them, so that was used that way. They also used whatever wood they had to put the poles up. So, I would say, everything was used to the best advantage. And then we started getting into the European technology, where things were a little bit easier to do. The hatchets came into effect. It must’ve been pretty hard to cut down a tree with a hatchet made out of a rock, unless it was sharpened so that it would cut. Yeah, they must’ve had really sharp instruments at that time

TS:     Yeah, I was thinking about that, somebody asked me. We were talking about timber in New Brunswick, and the settlement patterns there… You know the Mi’kmaw, where were they? … We were talking about their land was infringed on by timber people.  I was trying to figure out how they cut down trees! (laughing)

DJ:     They mention here the American Indians view their territory rights. They didn’t have the same idea and territory rights as the Europeans, although, they did, if you read some of the old historians, they mentioned that in 1610,  that grand Chief Membertou went to war with another tribe, over territorial rights.

TS:     Was it territorial? Because I keep reading it was always personal vengeance that wars were declared.

DJ:     No, you’re probably right, because there was somebody that was killed and they were avenging the death of the person.

TS:     Okay, right, I just wanted to make sure…

DJ:     But there must’ve been some territorial fights, because you know, you look at the Mohawks and the Gaspian, around Restigouche, in that area, they were supposed to have fought the Mohawks for that territory, and the Mohawks were their next-door neighbors.

          The attitude towards nature, I guess nature was held in high esteem, it was like you practising religion. If it wasn’t for the Lord’s providing the plants and animals and so on, and the water and for the air and stuff, we wouldn’t have survived. So that, nature was held in the highest esteem. And they prayed to the stars and the moon and also to the sun. They also prayed to the animals that they hunted, you know like they didn’t throw the bones to the dogs and stuff, because that was inhuman, and you would have bad lack in hunting. I think what they did was bury the bones away from the animals.

TS:     In present days, would you say the Lord, how would you say… would you say…I know most of the Mi’kmaq are Catholic…

DJ:     Yeah, we are, most of us. Some of us, some of our people are turning away from it, but to each his own, right?

TS:     Have you ever sort of… It sounds silly in a way but…

DJ:     We had a supreme being. The people believed in a supreme being. Now, some of the early historians or early explorers figured that we were worshiping the devil. But what we were worshiping was our Lord, is our God, something (inaudible) that put us here, created the environment and resources for us to live on. But you know, we called it… Oh, what’s the Mi’kmaw term?

TS:     Manitou>

DJ:     Oh, Manitou. No, I think that is almost a bastardization, you know? You’re talking about a different thing here, that’s almost like Manitou. As you’re reading through this, and you’re saying yeah, we had different devils! (laughing).  We had a devil, and we had a supreme being that created us, according to what I’ve read. And they believed that we had a different, that when we died, we were going to the happy hunting ground, where everything is going to be provided us in that time period. I don’t know what the Mi’kmaw term was, I forget what the Mi’kmaw term was…

TS:     Niskam?

DJ:     Niskam means God.

TS:     Grandfather, right?

DJ:     Yeah. Niskami’j is grandmother.  And grandfather is (Mi’maw word). So, everybody talks about it in different perspectives. But they had a sense that there was somebody superior to them, a supreme being, but see, we were practising the wrong religion according to the Catholic religion.

DJ:     But that’s how easy it was for us to adapt, I think that for myself, that’s how it was easy for us to adopt the Mi’kmaw religion, because it was similar to the way that we believed.

TS:     At least the words.

DJ:     Niskam must have sent a message that we were here, that we were human, that we weren’t subhuman as the Europeans thought we were…

TS:     No, that’s an important point, the humanity and what it means.

DJ:    Because they didn’t think of us as human beings! That we were creatures of the wild I guess you could call it, savages… they called us savages. But we had our own beliefs, and I think because of the communication breakdown, that’s what I base it on,  is that the French didn’t understand Mi’kmaw, we didn’t understand French, and it was quite awhile before both of us understood what we were saying. Then our (unclear) started to be realized, that we were here, we had government systems, we had our own systems in place, and we weren’t just laying around, like I said before, and waiting to be discovered. Once the communication gap was filled, then everything started working a little bit better because like Christien Le Clerq says in his book that he developed the hieroglyphics. He seen a bunch of kids playing and they were communicating through hieroglyphics. And he started developing the use of those children’s hieroglyphics and teaching more of the Roman Catholic religion. And he became more successful with the Indian people ‘cause we had a way of…I guess we wrote through hieroglyphics, that’s how we communicated from one nation to another, or from one tribe to another, other than talking.

TS:     And wampam?

DJ:     Yeah, and wampam belts. It was a very important relationship with the natural surroundings, because we thrived on what we could get from nature. You know, the animals and the plants for medicine. We also suffered the environment, the sun, you know the summer, the heat, the spring, the fall, the winter with the cold. We adapted through nature by using the animal furs and so on, to keep warm. I don’t know how specific you can get with respect to examples, besides stating that the Mi’kmaw people used all their natural resources.

DJ:     “What is your perception of Native Americans’ early contact between two cultures?”  Basically, if it wasn’t for us they wouldn’t have survived their first winters here. What we know today, and what we knew then, if we could go back in time, what would we do different?

TS:     Maybe nothing, yeah.

DJ:     Maybe we would’ve let them starve? I don’t know! I went through a writing course, and they asked me to do a brief story. A vign… I can’t even pronounce it, vignette?

TS:     Vignette, yes.

DJ:     And I said, “Well, if I could go back in time, what would I warn Chief Membertou about? Would he understand me in the first place? My Mi’kmaw and his Mi’kmaw, would it be the same? Would I warn him about the hardships that our people would be put through in the future? Would I tell him, “If these people land, we should destroy them on sight? Or what?”

TS:     It’s an interesting thing, how would you redo history, you know?

DJ:     I’d be too biased, I think!

TS:     Well, you know, they were just doing this film on the Fort, and the way they’re doing it is they’re having an Acadian child and a Mi’kmaw child come into the Fort and see history from their eyes. It’s a film that Parks is doing…but it’s done through children’s eyes…

DJ:     Interesting. But I’ve always, a lot of these things that are portrayed, you know, if a person could go back in time, what would they say? How would they warn the Indian people of what was going to happen, of what was laying ahead? All these difficulties that we have gone through, all the different proclamations on their scalps, all the different claims for our territory, how could we have avoided? Should we have prepared for an armed conflict? These people land on our shores, should we have destroyed them right on sight? And made sure we were mobile, with respect to a war force? When the Scottish landed in Cape Breton, should we have destroyed them? When Cornwallis discovered Halifax in 1749, should we have destroyed them, you know, with the idea that we were going to be destroyed, that we were going to be hunted. Like our people, even today, some of our people are too trusting, too trusting. I don’t trust nobody, that’s my own perception; you’ve got to gain my trust before I’ll trust a person. And that’s because of living outside for so long. But a lot of our people in Elder care still trust, and sometimes they get burned on their trust, but they never learn, they trust again.  But with our new generation, our trust is starting to, they’re starting to become a little more protective. Maybe it’s because I’ve been living off the reserve, I see what’s going on… The shameful thing of Nova Scotia is that they don’t interpret very much history of the Mi’kmaw people.

I was talking to a lady here last year, she was from France, and she was studying at Acadia. First question I asked her was, “What exactly is your interpretation of the Mi’kmaw Indians? Do they have a history course in France talking about the early contact?”, and she said, “No.” “Why not?”  “I don’t know”, she said, “We don’t talk very much about it in our history.” And I said, “Yeah, but you people tried. You said you discovered Acadia, but we already discovered before you got there. You used our people, in plain English.  I said, at least there should be some kind of acknowledgment in European history as to the way the Indian people were used like a chess board. We were used first, even before the French soldiers took part, they sent the Indians in… You should be ashamed of your people not even acknowledging something about the history of this place. So, you people lost, to England… We didn’t lose to no one, I said, we still fought until the 1760s”. “Well, I’m sorry!”, she said. I said, “That’s okay, I just had to get that off my chest!” (TS and DJ laughing)

I probably made her feel very bad, and I didn’t really want to do that. But what really set me off is when she said there wasn’t mention about early contact.

TS:     No it’s true, I, I…

DJ:     Even in the history books of Europe, in the Nova Scotian history books, I think there is more derogatory comments than there are positive!

TS:     I know, even in my classes, people don’t know that much…

DJ:     In the grade 6 or 7 history books, they mention that the Mi’kmaq attacked a village in Dartmouth in the 1740s. But, can you go back a little and see that the Gorman’s Rangers and other Ranger groups in the colonial Nova Scotian government were screwing the eastern seaboard, hunting Mi’kmaq? Well? You don’t hear that. So, when they attacked that little village in Dartmouth, that was more or less in retaliation because of our people being attacked.

TS:     Somebody told me that the Germans when they moved to Lunenberg,  actually, at one point after Halifax was developed, wanted to secede, you know, separate from the English.  And the reason they wanted to was because they wanted a relationship with the Mi’kmaq and didn’t like the way the English were treating them.  I thought it was an interesting story…

DJ:     I read that somewhere too! I read that somewhere also

TS:     I’ve been curious if that was true or not, you know… It’s not always just black and white… (Laughing) I am half German.

DJ:     I don’t like to mention, I don’t like to mention Hitler, but he liked the Indian people.

TS:     Really? I didn’t know that.

DJ:     He liked the way that we had war, I guess because we practiced guerrilla warfare. We weren’t like the English or the French where they lined up their troops, 100 deep and shot, walked in and shot. We hit and we took off, we hit and took off. Somebody was telling me that.  I don’t know where we read that, that Hitler liked the Native Americans. Someone told me that, and I can’t remember who it was. If you can find it in a book, I’d like to see that. But I said it’s not a very good role model to portray!

TS:     Yeah, you don’t exactly want Hitler attached to the Mi’kmaw nation!

DJ:     No. “Are there specific sites where…(reading question).” Annapolis Royal was one of them. Pictou County. If it wasn’t for the Mi’kmaw people, the first European settlers of Pictou county wouldn’t have survived their first winter. In the 1780s, I can’t really give you the…

TS:     When was this?

DJ:     In the 1780s…. but that’s when the ship Hector arrived. And if it wasn’t for the Indian people helping them, I don’t think they would have survived. I don’t know if you have a Parks’ site in Pictou county….

TS:     I was trying…actually it’s on my list. (looking through the questions).  Some of those are repetitive.

DJ:     “How do you feel the Natives taught the Europeans in relation to land?” Well, that was basically touched on that. And there was a vast difference in their perception. One wanted to own and occupy, the other one had a communal sense of living.

TS:     This is really an important point. It’s an important concept. (DJ: Yes, it is. There’s a really good book by a man named William Cohen about New England Colonists. It took the Native view of  land and the European view of land, how they hunted, and what developments took place.  I think it’s a good book, anyway. And how land became abstract concept, commercial and merchant (mercantile? Items for) the building of fences and territories that came with (inaudible) versus the Native view of using the land.

DJ:     Well, there really wasn’t much settlement in Nova Scotia until after the American Revolutionary period, that’s when you get an awful lot of Loyalists coming in, occupying all kinds of territory. Also, the war of 1812 brought in more people.

Some of the interpretations of some of our early people in history, including Jean Baptiste Cope in the bibliographies, I forget, was it the Canadian bibliographies. Is that where a lot of these people are put in? There’s an idea that he was a drunkard, after you read it…

TS:     Yeah, I know. Actually, there’s this really (inaudible) study…You know that O’Halloran coat in the museum that was given to him by Restigouche? I was studying that to find about what happened around that event. And there was two accounts of a Chief but one account had an old (inaudible) drunkard, and 5-6 years later, another account had him as this very dignified statesman (inaudible)…It was a beautiful thing. It was like 6 years apart, (and) the second half, he is even older than the first half…really interesting  

DJ:     There should be something with respect to the Burying of the Hatchet Ceremony and who took part. If not, try with the Halifax fortress, or Government House, or wherever they met. I don’t know if anybody can really pinpoint the location where they did their actual ceremony.

TS:     You know, I was saying to my husband, “Wouldn’t it be interesting to have a Treaty Day, do something … around the treaties at Annapolis Royal?” Because there was so much dance, it was a whole ceremony. And what an interesting day that would be for them to acknowledge each-others’ presence, you know……? It was just a thought I had    

DJ:     I agree with you.

TS:     Since one of the treaties took place there, I thought (inaudible) Even if they could broaden the interpretation and do events like that but do some sort of events like that.

DJ:     I’ve read some interpretations of Indian history with respect to Health and Welfare and I didn’t like it. And the historian on staff to do this…

TS:     Where, Parks?

DJ:     No, no, this was Health and Welfare Canada, one of the ladies there gave me some examples as the way they interpreted Indian history in the Maritimes, and I said [inaudible: I thought it was improper] if he couldn’t interpret a lot more, a lot better than what he did. They don’t have to go into the specifics of it. Cause I didn’t like the way he interpreted, even though he’s an historian. I think anybody interpreting history should talk to the people that are involved. You know, like you’re doing. You’re talking to the Mi’kmaw people, instead of Parks Canada going in and interpreting history the way they see it. And when we look at it, we say that’s a European way of thinking. And you know, we weren’t all angels, that’s for sure, you know, we can’t portray the Mi’kmaw people as perfect angels, and we were just sitting around with halos around our heads, being killed off because we were little angels! We probably weren’t. Human nature, same as human nature is today. We must have had some bad apples in our cart, too. More warlike than the rest, you know.

Like with respect to Oka, I support them in the idea with having their land claims stuff, but I didn’t think that they should’ve went that far. You know, but you have to sort of push the government to realize what’s going on. And that’s to the extreme I would say. But if you can’t settle it as human beings, or as one man to another man, or as one government to another government, then we’ve lost an awful lot of our concepts. Unfortunately, the Government of Canada has no political will to settle anything. I’m going all over the place, sorry about that! (TS and DJ laughing)

TS:     But, if there are any other questions that you think I should ask, or ones that I shouldn’t ask, please tell me. This is just a rough framework that I’m developing. Because I really want to be thorough. 

DJ:     “Is there an agreement among your members?” What do you mean by that? “Who would Canada Parks Services work with in the future on interpretation plans concerning Native history?” I think they should work with the Indian people, they should work like, we have three different organizations here.

TS:     That’s what I meant, would they, should they talk with all three?

DJ:     Yes, I think you should! Because if not, you’re gonna have somebody’s nose bent out of shape.

TS:     Alright, and what about New Brunswick…

DJ:     Union of New Brunswick Indians, there’s also Tribal Councils. Like, we’re a Tribal Council here.

TS:     What do you mean by a Tribal council?

DJ:     There was funds set aside for Tribal Councils, and we have 5 bands under our Tribal Council. We broke away from the Union basically because they weren’t doing any land claims for mainland Nova Scotia, and a lot of the issues were also addressed for Cape Breton bands, more so than the smaller mainland bands. Like the Chief up here, he’s from the Horton Band, Joe Peters, he’s got a small population. Now if you have a larger population the Department of Indian Affairs and the Federal Government would do more for you; the smaller ones they seem to shunt aside. So, when we created our organization, we tried to reflect the best possible attitude with respect to the even smaller bands. We try to be as fair as possible with respect to our larger ones and our smaller ones, everybody is treated equally. But they’re just as important as anybody else.

TS:     But, what’s the difference between the Union and the Tribal council? Are they part of the Union or…?

DJ:     No, our bands are not part of the Union. We broke away from…years ago

TS:     I thought they were part of the Confederacy? I’m sorry.

DJ:     Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq, yeah, we’re a Tribal Council. We provide all kinds of services with respect to…we have an engineer on staff, a housing inspector on staff, we have educational people on staff, we have economic development people on staff, we have Indian band self-government people on staff, and band membership, and I did research for these bands.

TS:     But the Tribal Councils are part of the Confederacy of Mainland…? I’m sorry, I’m not understanding….

DJ:     No, this is the Tribal Council funding, through Department of Indian Affairs, okay? We have our own Indian organization that’s called the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaw, but we’re just funded under Tribal government. And we provide all kinds of services for the bands that beforehand were provided by the Department of Indian Affairs. I’ve mixed you up, I think.

TS:     (Inaudible) Horton’s down in the Valley? I’m going down to the Valley, Port Royal…

DJ:     He lives in Middleton, Chief Joe Peters. Chief Frank Meuse is not too far away, it’s Bear River.

TS:     Yeah, I’ve got to go down there as well. 

DJ:     You’ve got a new Chief in Cambridge, which is just outside… around Berwick area.

TS:     Do you know who that is?

DJ:     Lawrence Toney, I think it is. Chief Lawrence Toney. If I’m not mistaken, I think that’s who it is, just newly elected.

TS:     Which one was that at, Acadia?

DJ:     Cambridge. Acadia Band is Debbie Robinson. Annapolis Valley Band is what it’s called.

TS:     Oh okay! David Joseph Toney, is that wrong?

DJ:     Just David.

TS:     Is it Lawrence Toney?

DJ:     Lawrence Toney is the new chief.

TS:     Okay.

DJ:     He got killed last winter, car accident. That other question with respect…”What source of information would you suggest would be most helpful in furthering understanding of the Native perspective of history and Native relations to the land? Are there members of your community who have worked specifically with Native history, archaeological research at specific sites, and anthropological research of plants”…

TS:     Plants, in other words, medicinal uses… This is my rough draft, please don’t judge me on it!

DJ:     Well, with respect to Confederacy, I think myself or Danny Paul would be the ones you’d contact on Native history and through archaeological research, we haven’t really done a lot. We’ve read some of the reports that have been put out by the Nova Scotia Museum and Davis and so on. And I’ve sat on the Management board for the Belmont/Debert site, they keep us as well informed as they can.

TS:     Do you feel like that’s a good working relationship?

DJ:     Oh, I think so. I talk to Steve once in a while. “What is your view on the use of archaeological materials as sources of interpretation?”  That’s about the only source we have with respect to pre-contact. But then again like I mentioned, I read somewhere that, I don’t know if it’s very appropriate that we should dig into the Mi’kmaw peoples’ garbage to interpret their history, with respect to shell heaps, because that is our garbage dump (laughs).

TS:     You can find all sorts of jewels in garbage! (laughing)

DJ:     Yeah, that’s true, I never thought of it that way.

DJ:     “Were all sites and objects found in sites considered sacred, does it matter what role these sites played in our history?”  Some of our people believe that everything that is found is sacred….

END OF TAPE