Project:  Native Dance Project, Carleton University’s  Circle Institute

This is an interview with Grand Council Keptin (Captain) Frank Nevin, of the Sɨkɨpne’katik (Shubenacadie) First Nation, Nova Scotia. It was conducted on December 20, 2005 by Gary Joseph for Trudy Sable as part of the Native Dance Project led and funded by Carleton University’s CIRCLE Institute on which Dr. Sable was a partner. The Native Dance Project Website can be visited at native-dance.ca.

Sponsorship for the archiving of this interview was by the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre, Halifax, Nova Scotia with funding through the Department of Canadian Heritage, Aboriginal Language Initiatives Program, 2018-2021

GJ:        First, we’re going to want you to say your name, and tell how long you’ve been living on reserve, and a little bit about yourself.

FN:       Well, good morning. Today is the twelfth month, the 20th day of December, 2005. My name is Frank Nevin; I am 62 years old, I’ll be 63 in April. I was born in 1943, and I’m a member of the Mi’kmaw Grand Council. I’m quite honored that you’d come to me this morning to ask me about other issues of our First Nations, like the Ko”jua and other things that went on in our First Nations. First of all, I was born in Saint John New Brunswick; my Dad comes from Whycocomagh (We’koqma’q), Cape Breton, and my mother comes from Indian Island, New Brunswick. So, as I was growing up, I was brought up in Saint John, New Brunswick with my mother and father, and grandmother—my grandmother lived in Saint John.

In 1947 we moved to Indian Brook, Shubenacadie. And then (indistinct: we turn around), my grandmother came later on.  As being a ten, eleven, year-old boy, she taught me how to dance. And the first thing, she said—she would put on all kinds of music— I want to show you how to dance, so we’d dance. And after a while she goes, “Why don’t you learn to do the Ko”jua?” and I went, “The Ko’jua, what’s that?”  So, she showed me about the Ko’jua and of our people, who used to dance this dance. It was quite a dance, so I learned that. And meanwhile, the CBC had a show on in Halifax, (inaudible) and they invited us into Halifax, a group of Mi’kmaw people, so I went into Halifax being a young person that could do the dance. So, my uncle Richard, he also went in and he danced, and we danced as Ben Brooks and Old Big Louie Paul sang and Martin Sack.  And, I didn’t realize that later on, that, we did the dance, but I have to laugh today when I look at my uncle, when he danced because you could see the hole in his sock, and people laugh about the sock. And what they did, they did the rabbit dance, and I was quite surprised, I heard of the rabbit dance, but the Ko’jua…(inaudible)

Meanwhile, as I was growing up, I arrived in Cape Breton on Saint Anne’s Day in  Chapel Island.  Now, I was right about 15 or 16 years of age at that time, and I recall, a group of Mi’kmaw people all in a great big, huge circle—a  lot of people—must’ve been about 100 or maybe 120 people sitting around in the circle— and, Chief Ben Christmas got up and said in Mi’kmaw, “I’ll sing the Ko’jua if a person from Shubenacadie would dance.”   And I understood Mi’kmaw quite fluently.  So, apparently there was only 2 or 3 of us from Shubenacadie there, so I decided out of the crowd and I’ll do the Ko’jua. So, I got up and said, “We’re all dancing, Cape Breton, Mi’kmaw people, and people from all over doing the Ko’jua.” Me being a young fella myself, not as big as I am today—I was a little, skinny runt—so I did the Ko’jua, where my grandmother, who taught me how to Ko’jua and guess what?   I beat them all from Cape Breton.  They were quite surprised that this young lad would come out of nowhere and do the Ko’jua.  Then, Ben Christmas of Membertou had to sing the song. 

And I recall, at that time, watching the people do the Ko’jua.  I was very impressed with the Gould family from Whycocomagh—they were all small; they were maybe two years old and up to about eight or nine years old.  They were all little brothers and one little sister they had. And their father would get out in the middle of the circle and sing the Ko’jua, and he would use a little stick, a little stick.  There was no drum, it was a little stick that hit on another little stick. And, I can see the man still yet today; he’s dead and gone but his descendants are still around, his sons, and some of them have passed on. But Rickey Gould is the very good Ko’jua dancer, and I recall Rickey, when he was young, didn’t know that later on in life— you know I’m talking now that I’m 62 years old, almost 63, this was about maybe about 20 years ago, when I went to Merigomish, and they had a dance and it wasn’t the Ko’jua—it was a step dance they had. All of my kids, Franky, Sherry, Patrick, they’re all dancers because we like dancing, especially here particularly in Indian Brook, a lot of people love to dance.

Well, we had a dancer, (Inaudible first name) Knockwood dance from Indian Brook and he won—it was a step dancing going on.  So, what had happened, Rickey Gould was dancing and he was a damn good dancer, but guess what?  I got up with Charley Francis—Charley William Francis played the violin— and Raymond Francis from Pictou Landing was playing the guitar, and we had a dance, and guess what?  My kids all won, plus I won the step dancing, beating them all including Rickey, including the old Mr. Knockwood. The thing I realized, that you know, dancing is very good for our Mi’kmaw people.

But, getting back to my grandmother, who was quite old, I always think about her when I hear the fiddle music, of my grandmother saying, “Frank, let’s have a dance,” you know Grammy was 107 when she passed away. So, dancing in the Mi’kmaw world is something really great, that we all can get together and dance.  It’s so nice, that I go places and see people doing the Ko’jua. And I am never afraid when I’m here in Halifax, or in Truro, or wherever I’m at, when they start playing the Ko’jua, I will step out of the crowd.

 I remember one day in Halifax, at the Treaty Day, they were putting in the audience, my wife and I walked in, and being on the Mi’kmaw Grand Council, they put you right up front in the front seats. So, they started to play the Ko’jua and I jumped right up from my seat and I started to dance.  My daughter’s sitting down with us—she’s just a young girl, about sixteen at that time—she jumped up and she danced right along. It’s great that families can carry on with the Ko’jua. And, I know for a fact that—where did the Ko’jua come from our people?  You know if I went back to Cape Breton, and look at the grounds of Chapel Island, there’s a huge circle there where you can see our forefathers and our history danced there at one time, and the ground, you can see the ground where they danced; it’s worn out.

GJ:       How deep does it go?

FN:       Eight or nine inches down, or maybe a foot where they went around this huge circle where people danced. Well I have seen those before at a place in New Brunswick called Indian Island.  There’s an island there on the reserve where Indian, our Mi’kmaw people, used to go and dance. So, dance was not only this (inaudible) in our history, there’s apparently…but I wonder why they always danced in a circle. That really gets me. I must ask an Elder sometime but uh, who else, you know? I’m 63 pretty soon, who am I going to ask, “Why did we dance in circles?”  That’s one thing I would like to know why, you know, and curiosity, look, has to be answered.  I know Gary Joseph is doing this interview with me but maybe he would ask some of the people as he goes around…

GJ:        Ha-ha

FN:       How come people dance in circles?  I know for a fact when I went up to Maine, and I saw the Maliseet, and I was disturbed…the phone just rang, but I answered it and I’m back… Getting back to seeing other tribes dancing, and I was quite surprised when I went to Maine, to see the Maliseet, the Penobscot in Maine dance. They were dancing in sort of a line up and the chiefs, they would meet, and they would greet each other from one community to another community. And they had their particular way of dancing. And, quite surprising how the Mi’kmaq and Maliseet are almost similarly the same. There was one time, there was only one tribe, the Mi’kmaw people, and they were sort of away from us, or a branch of our tribe eh, so that’s another story to tell sometime that was told by my Elders.

But also going up to Massachusetts to the Wampanoags down in Cape Cod, to see the Wampanoags dance; the Wampanoags, they did their dance also, and it was quite surprising how they do dancing. And they would dance in a line up and they would sort of meet each other. But where they are inter-married with the Portuguese, and the features of the Wampanoag, it’s not really the same features we have here in Canada, or our Mi’kmaw people. When you see a Mi’kmaw person, you see a Mi’kmaw person with the dark skin, the black hair, with the blue… not with the blue eyes, but black or brown eyes, and so (? Inaudible) those Native color. But then in all the years that have gone by, our Native people integrated with the whites, and so you have all those Indian people today that are very white complected, and if you speak Mi’kmaw, but they’re descendants of inter-marriages was really (inaudible). Same with the Wampanoag in Massachusetts, because when I went there, I couldn’t believe that I saw more Black features than I saw Native features. So, when I spoke what has happened, they told me in the 1930’s they inter-married with the Portuguese, but I was surprised at how they danced, how they danced.

In Mi’kmaw, we do the Ko’jua Jukwa’luk kwe’ji’juowin Mi’kmaw. Over there at the Wampanoags, surprising how I could see them, and yet I could vision them as they were dancing, [Frank chants something like ‘a winchwa -wa, wa, wa, wa…”] I don’t know what that means. I hope to see a Wampanoag some day and ask that person, “What were you guys singing?” and what’s a very surprising vision of myself as I go on in my life to see this happen.

So anyway, getting back to the Ko’jua and getting back to our people, there are quite a few people in the Gaspé who are Mi’kmaq and also Restigouche, all the way down to Eel River Bar. We have Mi’kmaw people right across Mi’kma’ki. Mi’kma’ki is a big place, and when I say Mi’kma’ki, we talk about Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, New England, right down to Massachusetts right up to the Gaspé. So, there’s Mi’kma’ki. So when I sit on the Grand Council, I sit down as a Grand Council member of Mi’kma’ki Nation, not putting one place aside because, where our great Grand Chief Membertou was Christianized in 1610, June 24, at that time there were 65,000 Mi’kmaw people in Mi’kma’ki, and so now that we have, you know with a lot of them dying out, a lot of them given blankets of that of small pox, and a lot of our First Nation people. And the great survivors that are here today, we have 6,500 out of 65,000 so that shows how genocide has taken care of our people and the changes.

Well, getting back to Mi’kma’ki is great that when we all can stick together and gather together, no matter if it’s in Moncton, New Brunswick, Amherst, Nova Scotia, or Sydney, Nova Scotia, or wherever we meet on the island, where we meet on certain days, honoured days of the Roman Catholic church, you know, it has got the Native people to Saint Anne’s Day. You know I am Captain; I am not only a Captain on one day, I am a Captain on all days, the whole 365 days of the year. And I am religious, certainly I am on Sunday, and also on holy days, but, on the other days, I am religious always too, but I am a traditional leader and I conduct myself as a leader. And of our people in our Mi’kmaw Nation, I’m addressing our people, that they should, your know,our chiefs that are elected, their government chiefs, and they are making a lot of these decisions yet our Mi’kmaw Grand Council members are here, and we have a lot to say about what goes on in our nation. Completely ignore us, but yet we are still here. Yet the dance is still here. Yet Ko’jua is still here. Yet we can do a lot of things. Yet our language is here. And the thing is, that I am honored that today I could speak to you in the tongue of another country, but then you would say to me, “How come you do not speak Mi’kmaw?”  Well who do I talk to, there’s not that many people in this community that speaks Mi’kmaw. (FN speaks in Mi’maw) And so, the thing is I could tell you in Indian language and speak to you, if there was quite a number of people here that did speak it, it’s sad that a lot of people lost their language.

And they’ve been to residential school. I think that is wrong. I think if a person wants to learn how to speak Mi’kmaw, they should be able to speak Mi’kmaw and the thing is, if you can learn to speak French, you can learn to speak Mi’kmaw. That’s just like right now, our children are learning the language and our children are learning how to sing the Honour Song and it’s great that we have all these things, our teachers today, and it’s great that we can put everything down on tape. That’s where we are going to learn.  We’re going to learn from our Elders what little is left. But getting back, you know, I don’t care where we are but I know for a fact, if all the communities I have seen and I am that community (?) like Indian Brook, we have a lot of good dancers, and boy can they dance. They can do the jig, they can do the Ko’jua, no matter where we are. As for the language, we will learn the language, because some people like us, we know the language will teach the children, and our Elders that are left in Cape Breton, they know the language quite well. It’s great that some reserves pick it up, it’s sad that some reserves lost it, and to blame something like the residential schools, I don’t think that’s right…, because you do not forget your language, because I know for a fact like Kathy Brown, Kathy Sorbey, she went to residential school and yet today, she rattles everything off in Mi’kmaw. My wife, for instance, also knows the language quite well.

But getting back, the Ko’jua, I know for a fact that Kathy Sorbey is a real good dancer. I seen her doing the Ko’jua. I’ve seen my wife doing the Ko’jua. I’ve seen other people doing the Ko’jua. And it’s really, really, really nice that they could do that. You know, ah, I don’t know what I could also say and add to the story as I go along. You know, I am very pleased that my son, my daughter, who is living in Boston now, and my son is off fishing, he knows the dance, the Ko’jua. We all know the Ko’jua. Because when you see your parents do it or you see your uncle, or your aunt, you got to jump right in there and do the same thing. But I am honored today to talk of our ways and…

GJ:        I have a question for you. In regards to the song, do you have a song or do you have a drum?  Can you tell me a little about the instruments associated with dancing, the traditional dances, Mi’kmaw dances.

FN:       Like I said earlier, when I saw the people doing the Ko’jua in Cape Breton when I was 16 years of age, 16,17, I remember there was no drum, there was no drum. They used a little stick and banged it on a… I think there was an old pot that guy would bang it on. It would make the noise, tank-tank-tank-tank (Frank mimics the sound). And they would be singing. They would sing Jukwa’luk kwe’ji’juow [Frank sings Jukwa’luk kwe’ji’juow] And then at the very end they would say Ta Ho! and everybody would say Ta Ho.  But I could vision people like my Aunt Sarah Denny, whose gone, she was a good Ko’jua singer. Her husband Noel R.  was a good Ko’jua singer, and today I think her son, Beej, is a good singer and he knows all of the Ko’jua. We have people, you know we have Elders that are alive today like Dr. Granny, and also Dr. Granny’s sister, and I’ve gone to conferences, and saw our Elders, try to learn as much as I can, from our Elders. We should learn from our Elders. because little did I did not know, that way back in 47, (inaudible) I’d be down the brook fishing. Not a worry in the world, sitting down at the waters. And, then today I look at myself in the mirror, I see grey haired, old man looking back.

You know years go fast and then you turn around and wonder. You wish that your knowledge that you have…you have to talk to somebody else, tell the story, like the story that has been to be told to me by other Elders. And I used to ask the Elders, “Where’s you?”  “Because my grandfather told me”, and I said, “Where did he learn from?”  “His grandfather told him.” So, we can go back of our ways of our Mi’kmaw people, you know, and it’s good.  You know, I have a drum. It was given to me. It came from Fort Francis (?), and it was an honour. And it’s great that you have people like George Paul, you have people that continue the Mi’kmaw songs also…not just the Ko’jua but we do our own Honour and singing our Mi’kmaw songs. And the Honour Song is about the eagle flying into the heavens and flying back. You know we have the songs where the Creator has put us on the earth, that we should all work together; we should all help each other.

But today, we’re not working together and we’re not helping each other because government (inaudible) has brought money (inaudible) and certainly, when we get money, the greed of all (inaudible) …it’s good to have, eh?  And particularly when you’re a person, and this is what I have to say to the chiefs, “You know, it’s great that you get paid that amount of money.  Then you say you work for our people, but you forget our people.” And the councils, they forget our people. Once they get in that position, the poor people are very poor, the grassroot people…it particularly bothers me when I see our people, you know the money that they got for our people, everybody got their hands in that pot , and by the time it dwindles down to the First Nation, there’s nothing there other than welfare. It’s sad that our people have to live like that, on that little bit of money they get every two weeks. It’s great that I can see them on the waters fishing. It’s great that I can see our people that are well educated to go out and try to get a job.

I know for a fact, myself, I have created my own job in Indian Brook of driving people to doctors. Before that I had a real good job. I worked in the United States. I worked for an import export business for five and a half years down in London, England. And then, from there, I went to General Motors. I worked at General Motors, I had a real good job. I was president of an organization, forty people under me, working for the VIP. Coming back to Canada and then turning around and seeing what’s going on here.

Our First Nations people should have real nice jobs. They should be working in the banks, they should be working in the drug store, the funeral home.  Everything in Shubenacadie, there are no Native people. If not maybe one or two. What occurs with our First Nation people is that they get well educated, and who snaps them up? Department of Indian Affairs or Health Services. Tokenizing our people and say, “Hey, we got Native people working here.” It’s a token position. But you turn around and look around you, how many people do you see working at Walmart? How many people do you see at Canadian Tire Store? How many people do you see working, you know, and you don’t see it other than people that have started business on-reserve—service stations and a little restaurant.  They’re s on their feet. But sadly, what I particularly worry about, is our people who are well educated could help our people. And I hope to God that in the near future that it will happen because we are the teachers of our people, and we are the teachers of the dance.  So, getting back to the all Native First Nations dance, we should be proud because there is someone there to teach. You want to ask a question?

GJ:        Yup. In terms of special clothing, is there special clothing that you might have seen historically?

FN:       Well, getting back to the special clothing of our Mi’kmaw people, you know, they used to wear furs and they used to have…(Interruption when the phone rings).  Getting back to the Mi’kmaw clothes, and the thing is that our Mi’kmaw people did not dress the way you see in the pictures. We were talking about the clothing of our Mi’kmaw people.  You know, when the people arrived on the shores of Port Royal, you know ah, they bring their chiefs, they bring their leaders. And, the thing is, the people, like uh, the Captains, took off their coats and gave it to our chiefs. That’s why today we call ourselves Keptins, because the Captains, the French people took off their jackets and put them on our people. If you notice how the French were dressed when they arrived on the shores, the Mi’kmaw people picked their dress up, like the coats.  So, when you watch a Mi’kmaw person dressed with the beads on their coat, they try to uh, do the same thing like what they see—they make jackets like that. So, they started to dress up like these people, these people, these foreign people.  But, at the time the Mi’kmaw people dressed in furs and everything else. But we’ve had to learn how other people…like, when the guy had told me one time a story about when the chief met this big French guy who took off his hat and he presented it to the chief, you know, and the chief put it on his head, and in Mi’kmaw that means welcome, I (inaudible).  So, when he said that it probably meant welcome, so that’s when they started coming to our territories. Then it wasn’t good enough, they had to own them (?) and so they married into the Mi’kmaw Nation.  And this is the Acadian, and what they call the French. 

And so, the Mi’kmaw people looked after these people and took care of these people, so when the big expulsion came you know, and they were chasing them out of Nova Scotia at that time. Cornwallis and his troops came and gutted the Acadians, you know?   And the Mi’kmaw people hid the Jesuit priest(s) in the woods and the also hid the French people in the woods. And so, it’s really good that our Mi’kmaw people, you know in history, were always a great people, they were a kind people. They were never a mean to our people. So, our history tells us that, our families tell us what went on. So today, when you meet somebody from Louisiana, or someone from down Yarmouth or Digby, they say, “Oh I am part Mi’kmaw. You know my great grandmother she was uh, or my great grandfather married a Mi’kmaw woman. You know, and we have Mi’kmaq in our history.” [Frank adopts a French/Acadian accent while saying this.]

You know, that’s really great to hear people talk like that. About 25 years ago you never heard that because people were ashamed of our First Nation people. And all of a sudden, the government starts giving money out to the First Nation people, and you can go hunting and you could do all this, and free education. Everybody starts coming out of the woodwork and saying that they’re Mi’kmaq, they’re First Nations people. So, it really bothers me. How far do we go back in our history? You know and when we, the fact that earlier, we had that Indian, and we have Indian people that don’t look like Indians— they live on reserve. And they got blue eyes, blonde hair. And the things is that their descendants, where they came from, no one’s ever proud of saying, “Oh I’m White.” No one’s ever proud to say, “Oh, I’m Black, or I’m Chinese.” No one is ever (inaudible) There are never proud of their history of genocide, but they’re always proud of their history of being Indian. Why is that? And why is it? And that really particularly bothers me as a First Nation person. I particularly wonder.

You know, I have seven brothers, six sisters. And they all degraded by marrying into different tribes across Canada, and we should have kept our blood together. but then you have some people, you know…it’s human…I think that it’s we cannot tell who to go with, but when you start thinning out our blood, it’s really something different.  The thing is it’s sad that I have to speak like that today.  And if I offend anyone, I am very, very sorry. I do apologize. You know who you are, but I do apologize, but then turn around look in the mirror and who you gonna apologize to when you look back. Do you see an Indian looking back? With that, I would like to thank you for my day. Thank you for what went on. And um, I think I did a really good story on our First Nation. Thank you have a nice day.