The following interview is with Mi’kmaw Saqmawiey (Eldering) Dr. Daniel N. Paul, then 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 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.

NOTE: Due to the poor quality of the audio, Dr. Paul kindly worked with Dr. Sable to reconstruct the transcript as best we could to convey the richness of the conversation.

Additional links

http://www.danielnpaul.com

http://www.danielnpaul.com/DanielNPaul-Resume.html

DP:       What I would like to see you people do is project an image of Native people in this country as very intelligent people who are looking for better things in life and are striving to be accepted in this country as equals and partners, not as what we have been in the past and what we still are to a large extent today, considered to be second-class or third-class citizens in their own land. This is something, I think, that if Federal Government departments are going to become involved in this type of thing, it should be to try and make it as positive as possible; quit honing in so much on the basket-making, the carving and all the arts and crafts business, and start honing in on the fact that we have aspirations in life for modern progress too. We want to see our kids educated. We’d like to be able to find the job-market open to us, which it has never been. We would like to see a positive picture projected of a progressive-minded people in motion, it’s not to see people solely marching along in headdresses. When you look at promotions for other races of people, for instance the Scots, you don’t see them all singled out as a people all walking around in kilts, or the Irish in traditional dress, or the Scandinavians all walking around with their big balloon pants on, or something like that (laughing). It’s stereotyping, really, and that’s what it’s all about. We’ve been stereotyped into poverty, and if we’re going to break that mode, what’s going to have to happen is that Parks Canada go out and find some Mi’kmaq business people who are dressed in ties, or ladies in suits, and begin to put some of that picture across, instead of the picture of traditional attire.

TS:       How could they do that in terms of the Parks system interpreting Mi’kmaw culture? How do you see that unfolding?

DP:       You must have some employees at Parks Canada, Native people that you could show dressed in ranger uniforms or every day common attire.

TS:      You mean just physically have people on the spot working at Parks? You’re talking about visibility?

DP:     Visibility, and the rest of it, yeah. To me, it’s all one thing. I think Parks Canada is, frankly speaking on the right path if it shows our people working at their jobs the same as other employees What’s your job again, what are you trying to accomplish?

TS:      I am an independent person who has been hired for a few months. So, they are asking me to talk with members of the Mi’kmaw community about how you would like to be perceived and how you would like to interpret your history in the Parks and how they could represent your history better. So, they want to find out the community perspective.  (difficult to hear but his is the gist of it.)

DP:     Like I say, if they’re going to try to project a picture of Native people, they should be doing is trying to project a picture of modern people on the move, who are trying to catch up, and even making some progress in the effort, which we haven’t been making. It’s nice for them to have pictures of some of our history, you know, and have you out on the road, doing what you’re doing, and everything else, but really, all that’s been done in the past has been virtually non-productive; we really haven’t seen any results. 

TS:        What sort of things?

DP:       Not only programs by Parks Canada, but, I’m talking about the Federal Government across the board. For instance, people supposedly pay a lot of lip-service to affirmative action programs and similar efforts, but really time has stood still, it really has. I shouldn’t say it stood still, actually people have become very sophisticated in finding ways in how to circumvent the policies and programs that promote more involvement with Native people and Blacks in particular in this country. You know, you pick up a brochure where it shows Native people, and 9 times out of 10, you’re going to find them showing somebody with their hand stuck up in the air and dressed up with a full head of feathers and traditional dress. For instance, on this reserve (Millbrook) that you’re sitting on now, on a few occasions when walking around the it you might see a few individuals on rare occasions putting on some ceremonial clothes, but not on a daily basis. I would like to see Parks Canada having brochures that also depict a modern people striving for better things.

TS:       You know when you go to parks (indistinct: view from European perspective.)  Now if you took, like Port Royal, and looked at it from a different perspective, it’d be a whole different story

DP:       Like re-writing history?

TS:        That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m asking, how would you do that?

DP:       Well, the way I picture Port Royal itself, it was our people helping some French colonists by teaching them how to survive, And what the Mi’kmaq were doing at the same time was building their own gallows. Because by helping them it made it easier for the British, when they took over the area, in to kill off most of the Mi’kmaq in this province. The Mi’kmaw tradition of welcoming strangers with open arms would lead to welcoming strangers that would eventually be their executioners. There are a lot of historical happenings in Nova Scotia that people do not know about, and the province has never been interested in teaching that history, nor  has Canada, for that matter, been interested in teaching the true history of this Country. And I can assure you, it’s bloody, even germ warfare. I think Nova Scotia is the first place that ever tried out smallpox use to kill off Indians and use proclamations for Indian scalps. Nova Scotia is the only province that used them. It’s ironic that in 1756, Governor Charles Lawrence put out a scalp proclamation to 30 pounds per scalp, like 30 pieces of silver for Jesus’ betrayal. From a Mi’kmaw perspective, I think such places as Port Royal, after the British took control of it, would be viewed more as a place of extermination, similar in some respects to Nazi Germany when they used gas chambers to murder Jews. It’s really hard to say anything positive about these places. What did it bring the Mi’kmaq? It brought the Mi’kmaq absolutely nothing; it brought the Mi’kmaq disaster.

TS:        Given that Port Royal is probably going to continue to as it is today, do you think the Mi’kmaq people could make use of it to put some of their viewpoints into the programming and interpretation?

DP:       I think this whole country could make use of it in order to begin to project a true picture of its past relationship with Mi’kmaq in this province and across the country and other tribes. It’s hard for me to sit here and find anything positive to say about those places that you mentioned. In 1843, Joe Howe goes to the colonial government and says, “Either provide some assistance to these people that are starving to death, there’s entire families in various stages of starvation”, gone from over 200,000 people down to 1,350 in 1843. Eventually the Mi’kmaw population in Nova Scotia would go down to close to 1,000 before it started turning around.

It was so bad that in 1843 Joe Howe would tell the Governor, “Provide some assistance or they’ll all be extinct in 40 years.” If it wasn’t for him, I suspect that you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation this afternoon; there wouldn’t be any more Mi’kmaq left. He was influential enough that he was able to shame them into, at least taking some minor actions. And I re-emphasize, it causes me some pain saying this, Nova Scotia society is so insensitive; you walk into the Red Room in Province House, the legislature, you’ll find the table brought over by Governor Edward Cornwallis, the man who in 1749 issued a proclamation for Mi’kmaw scalps, men, women and children; and to see that setting there, and it proves that systemic racism is live and well in the Province.

TS:       Is that in the Province House and the actual Proclamation?

DP:       Yes, the table is in the House and the original proclamation is kept at the Nova Scotia Archives. We have copies of the Cornwallis proclamation here at the Confederacy, which was used by him to conduct his scalp harvesting business, and the table is the piece of furniture on which he signed the proclamation for the scalps of Mi’kmaq men, women and children, even babies. And I’ve seen, from time to time, setting behind that table, the Regional Director for the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the Director of Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, and the Minister responsible for the Nova Scotia Human Rights Act, and Chairman of the Human Rights Commission, and none are  aware of what the table was used for. Next month, actually, what we are going to do with our newspaper, is feature that on the front page and call it the butcher’s table.

The British, Lords of Trade in London, at the time were becoming upset with some of the atrocities that were going on in the Americas, cautioned him, when they found out about it, that he should hold a sword over their head but not to use the sword. He is now honoured by a monument erected by Caucasians. They have a naval base named Cornwallis. Having such is like doing something like going to for Israel and going to Tel Aviv and naming a main street Adolf Hitler Boulevard. People can’t seem to appreciate that the Mi’kmaq are offended by having a person of that murderous caliber still honoured by this Province and Country. No country should honour a murderer of babies, but Canada does.

            I think it’s good for Canada to have these parks. But it would be good to begin to say that it is one of the first steps by the British in their taking possession by brutal force of a continent. From the Mi’kmaq point of view, it is the first step in Nova Scotia where Mi’kmaw land was taken without compensation. In the process the Mi’kmaq were subjected to various incidents of what is today called genocide and were brought almost to the edge of extinction. At first welcoming these people with open arms and teaching them how to survive in a different climate and how to deal with it displayed the humanitarian side of the Mi’kmaq which should be in history books, rather than pick up a history book now and reading that we make good baskets or something like that. I think it’s going to take a lot of courage to display the truth and for the people that run these kinds of places to begin to deal constructively with Nova Scotia’s history, and at the same time begin to project a positive image of the Mi’kmaq.  

Louisburg is another case in hand, where archives there point out the fact that during the bounty hunts, one of the main prizes for the bounty hunters was full-term pregnant women, them being disemboweled, the foetus was scalped and they got two for one. This stuff is written down, believe it or not, and it’s revolting; you read it and you wonder, how could these people be so callous?

And you go back to Europe, and you go to Switzerland, and you’ll find that these were touted to be some of the most civilized people in the world. Switzerland was a democracy even back then, as least as far as the male part of its population was concerned, let’s put it this way, women are not really afforded that much rights in Switzerland even today, not much human rights and democracy in that.

In the history that I’m writing, which is to be entitled, ‘We Were Not the Savages’, I’m pointing out that I don’t hold the European people in particular from Italy, Spain, Portugal, Great Britain and France, responsible for the atrocities committed in the Americas because it was the European ruling class that authorized the plundering and rape of the two continents. It was done with utmost brutality and sadism that was really horrible, and the same would befall another continent, Africa. When you wipe out 90% of the human stock that you use for slavery, to work your mines and what have you, because you killed them off, you have to go elsewhere, and that’s how why they went into Africa and began to bring Blacks over to sell in slave markets, because they had wiped out 90% of Native populations. And when look at figures like 50-150 million people dying in the colonization exercise here in the Americas, and to me, I truly believe that is a very conservative figure, I think it might be several hundred million people died, because the Continents were populated from the Arctic Circle down to the end of South America, when you get a population spread over that much territory, it must mean it must’ve been an awful lot of people… It would be interesting to see what kind of things exhibits that you could work out to put in the Parks like that and begin to tell the true story.

TS:        That’s what I’m asking you. (inaudible) if they were truly willing to do this…

DP:       If they were really willing to begin to look at putting out the truth and not trying to create an illusion for everybody, then it would have to show that the Mi’kmaq had a beautiful civilization, not anything like dictatorial European civilizations, which it wasn’t.

It seems countries like Canada and the United States, which are quick to criticize countries like the Soviet Union for not coming forward and being candid about the barbarism used against their own citizens, or the Japanese, who even today teach what you would call manufactured histories about the Second World War, when they don’t teach their own people the true histories are as bad as the countries they criticize.

Places like England, it is a terrible thing when you really stop and think about it, how the lack of being truthful when relaying history comes back to haunt you. For instance, Lord Nelson; a few years ago, they were planning a big celebration in England in regards to his victory at Waterloo. Then some upstart did some research and discovered that after he’d won the victory, he brought his fleet back to England and left them out in the English Channel until over half of the crews starved to death, so he wouldn’t have to pay them. An admiral of a fleet in those days was given a contract for participating in wars and if he could save half the money that’s money saved. As a result of that bit of research, they toned down that celebration to practically nothing. The same could be said about a lot of things celebrated in Nova Scotia.

I think of all the colonizers the French probably would’ve been more positive for the Native people if they had prevailed. They were less inclined to indulge in cruelties to the same extent that the English, Spanish and Portuguese did, the Italians maybe, these four races seem to have taken some undue great pleasure in some of the horrific things that they perpetuated upon Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

I’m willing to get involved in this kind of thing, yeah, but with the provision that it’s not gonna be a fairy tale saying that all these white settlers that came to Annapolis Royal were the saviours of the Mi’kmaq, because, in fact, they weren’t. The Mi’kmaq had a very decent civilization that was functioning quite well and was a very stable civilization. One of the best things to say about this contention, that after all these years of European colonial propaganda that contended that white captives that were taken by the various tribes in the Americas were held in slavery and abused. That’s quite wrong, and as a matter of fact, it was rather embarrassing for the powers-that-be to admit that most of the captives did not want to return home when able, that they in fact enjoyed the freedom that they were introduced to by becoming part of these tribes. For many to return to what was waiting for them in so-called white civilization at that time was totally unacceptable. You know, even yourself, if you look back 3-400 years ago in English society and take into consideration that people were burned at the stake, drawn and quartered, etc., would you willingly go back there and be a worker in that kind of society because the only ones that had sort of a fairy-tale existence was the ruling elite, wealthy families. The ordinary citizen was nothing but a chattel that was used to profit the upper class. It would be interesting to see Parks Canada move in that direction, if in fact they will…

TS:        I believe in … I have been told (inaudible) that there are under-represented issues they would like to address (inaudible)…that’s why I’m here, that’s what I’m told I’m here for…(inaudible)

DP:       Well, it would’ve been fine dandy if white supremacist racism had to came to a halt after the British established themselves, but it went on right up to recent times, it still goes on and on and on. Even when I was small, even though I was born in this country and my parents and grandparents and everybody down the line, I wasn’t a citizen until 1950’s when this country finally decided our people could become citizens. We were under apartheid laws for quite some time, not even allowed to vote in elections until 1961. It was 1985 before a Registered Indian could legally go into a liquor store or a tavern. We could patronize them in Halifax, because we were often mistaken for Orientals but not in the rest of the Province. I’m working on a history giving an Indian perspective, doing a lot of research. Ten chapters completed so far and doing my damndest to make it an interesting enough book so that people want to read it.

TS:        When will it be published? Do you have a publisher?

DP:       I have one lined up, publication probably next spring. It’s a very trying exercise for me, when I read some historical material that I find to be very offensive I have to back off a bit and get the right perspective. The proof of the barbarities committed against our people is well recorded by British colonial officials; if you use such material in the right way and have references of sources no one convincingly dispute what you’re saying.

In 1756 Governor Lawrence issued another saclp proclamation. It was caused by the  Mi’kmaq retaliating for the slaughter of several Mi’kmaw families by the British by attacking and overcoming a British ship at Canso. Several English sailors were killed during the battle and some were taken prisoner, however, the prisoners that were taken, were returned in due time to the British and were none the worse for wear. Although the 1756 proclamation was just for Mi’kmaq males over the age of 16 years many of the bounty hunters believed that Cornwallis’s 1749 proclamation for all Mi’kmaq was still in effect and slaughtered Mi’kmaq where ever they were found. This was done in spite of the fact that two different Mi’kmaw districts had signed peace treaties with them. But, as would be the case in the future, when one Mi’kmaw committed a crime or outrage all Mi’kmaq were held guilty by Caucasian authorities. British records are good material to work with when you’re writing the real history about the British-Mi’kmaq confrontation, it makes for quite a story of David (Mi’kmaw) vs. Goliath (British). A lot of people have written a lot about the encounter before, but they have ignored the unacceptable barbaric implications of what the British did.   I am very enthusiastic, and I’m not going to stop until it is finished, I think my product is going to be widely accepted. At present I can give you a Mi’kmaw history, but it’s just a short presentation entitled the ‘Confrontation between Mi’kmaq and European Civilizations’.

TS:        I think it would be interesting  if you give me a history of for training purposes…in the Parks system…  

DP:       Sure, confrontation is something I did a couple years ago to use as instruction material for lectures I was giving in schools and at other functions such as business meetings. It’s not that great, it was done in a rush. Out of the blue, I was drafted to address the gathering of all the Atlantic Chiefs, I decided it’s time to begin to teach them some of their own history. I’ll give you a copy before you leave. But, like I say, I’m interested in revealing the truth in a verifiable manner so that people can begin to know what went on during colonial days. I’m not doing it to create bitterness but to create an understanding of the Mi’kmaq perspective. People have to look at this in a positive way, why did they brand the Mi’kmaq and other Tribes savages when European society in 1752, or for that matter from 1492 onward and before, was predicated on greed; the churches were involved acquisitions, and most everyone else. It even gives me the shivers when I think about them participating in such things as burning people at the stake, drawing and quartering, pressing people to death, and other barbarous methods and then calling themselves civilized. Then branding other people who didn’t do such horrific things savages and calling them heathen savages because they didn’t practice the same religion as you did.

It’s very interesting to note that the Chinese looked at the English as heathen and barbaric. Most civilizations were not as warlike as the Europeans. For instance, the making of war in the Americas would be considered quite civilized in comparison to the European practice. Too many people didn’t get killed in Indigenous warfare, before the first blows were struck there was great feasting for a couple days between the opposing parties, and I would suppose they would get together and maybe settle their differences during this period. And if war did occur, and if it went on long enough, the leaders of both got together, one on one, and whoever walked away was the winner, the victor. It  put a great personal responsibility on the leaders to make sure that wars were only declared on a very, very rare basis. Because of the negative implications it held for them they would use everything within their power to try to use diplomacy to find the solution.

I found it very interesting to find that consensus is a very important thing within all Aboriginal civilizations. There were some of course that were very barbaric. I can’t remember what the hell the name Emperor was of the South American Indigenous was, but he and his followers believed in human sacrifice and stuff like that, participating in barbaric activities, but these were exceptions, not the rule. Democracy was widely practiced by most of the Civilizations of the Americas and created role models for Europeans. For instance, the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights is almost taken word for word from the Iroquois Constitution. In the states I find they are making more and more progress in combating systemic racism. For instance at one time General Custer  was considered a hero from American settlement days, nowadays he’s not a hero anymore. He’s recognized for what he was; a killer, a murderer, a blood-thirsty tyrant. But it takes time to get the truth accepted by Caucasians.

TS:        (TS showing some articles) …it’s about different museums working with different Native communities …it’s called Museum News… it’s just different ways that the museums are working with Native groups, in sharing and cooperation.

DP:       I think two countries, Canada and the United States, reveal thier hypocrisy by condemning South Africa for its apartheid practices and both have practiced the same against their Indigenous populations. To the best of my knowledge I believe there are seven countries in the Americas that have majority Indigenous populations, to name a few Peru, Guatemala, Bolivia, and Mexico. Native people in these countries have absolutely no power whatsoever. Bolivia, I think, is 80%. Where is the United States and Canada in denunciations of the right wing regimes in these countries for excluding their Indigenous peoples? Why isn’t the United Nations demanding majority rule? All are silent, not saying anything.

During the fall I had a discussion with a group of students at Dalhousie University on the subject of Canadian and American silence about the Indigenous exclusion in these countries and I stated the fact that leadership in these two countries found the right wing exclusion not to be counterproductive to their best interests. As both countries have atrocious records when it comes to the mistreatment of their Indigenous populations it would be counterproductive to maintaining the image both were cultivating on the world stage. Having an Indigenous person, a leader of one of these countries traveling around the world, enlightening the world on how horribly their people were treated in the past and at present, was very damaging to the image they were trying to present. In this Country, we are working at having our inherent right to self-government fully recognized. Regrettably at this point in time many Caucasian leaders almost immediately say, “No”.  We will eventually overcome unreasonable opposition and see this come to pass fruition.

Both Canada and the USA, in the case of Israel, recognized the inherent right of the Jewish people to go back to Palestine, after many years of exile, and supported the partition of Palestine to provide a home country for them. That’s the kind of thing that we’re looking for; not necessarily a country in our case, but we’re looking for a partnership with this country and we’re trying to put it across as being non-threatening to the present status of Canada. It’s hard to explain, you have a power leadership elite that are very comfortable with the status quo, they really don’t want to share it, not even with the general citizens, notice the lack of Civic education in schools now, and especially with Native people. My understanding is that Ovide Mercredi went to the National War Memorial to try to place a wreath and he was told not to bother until after the official ceremonies were over and then he could put a wreath on, but he had to wait. Rather than saying to him as the National Leader of Native people in this country, “Yes, by all means, lay your wreath and welcoming him,” they shoved him aside and insulted him.

When you look at the overall spirit of pushing for Indigenous inclusion in this country it hasn’t improved all that much from colonial times. It’s not as open and shut as it used to be in the past, but the racist exclusion has become very sophisticated. It’s nice for a Prime Minister to get up on stage or sit before a television camera and make pie in the sky statements of working for our inclusion, but when it comes to implementation of positive programs and stuff like that there’s really not that much interest in pursuing it. In actual fact what is slowly happening in this country the powers that be are trying to shift the blame for our present plight and exclusion on us.

TS:        How is that happening? What ways do you see it happening?

DP:       Quite often you’ll hear people like Mulroney saying we spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on Indigenous assistance and such statements leaves the impression in the minds of Canadians that the money is passed out to us to do what we want with it. In fact, we have absolutely no control whatsoever of how its allocated. They manufacture programs for us without consultation. If we want to take part in a program, we have to apply for the money and accept their terms and conditions. To date most of these programs have been very unsuccessful.

[Break in tape]

I think what Parks Canada is working is quite a project, if it can get it off the ground, it would be one of the most positive things that could happen.

There was a song, I can’t remember who sang it, but I remember it related that General Custer was advised that the Sioux was a great nation and they should be treated with respect, which he didn’t, and for that mistake he died at the Little Big Horn. I think he is held by military historians to be one of the third best generals the world has ever known.  Much of it is related to the fact that he went across the continent with his army and fought tribes of Indigenous people who had to fight off, with mostly secondary weapons, fully equipped army.

It’s hard for people to change their erroneous perceptions of our people, to change negative attitudes takes quite some time. To get people to begin to look at new perspectives, contrary to what they were told all their lives, is very difficult. To erase the stereotyped image that Indians drinking booze, begging, selling baskets and arts and crafts wil take a big education effort. It’s hard to change that negative picture.

If they are going to try to portray something positive about us at Port Royal, it has to show that our people were a dignified and proud people, who were real humanitarians, and displayed it by helping the first French settlers survive in what was to them an alien environment. They were starving and dying from the cold and diseases such as scurvy.  Assistance was provided to help them cure themselves and survive and in fact become established. But when it comes to the British it is pretty hard them, even an individual to accept the fact that their ancestors were in many cases very treacherous and barbaric people, it’s a barrier that somehow we have to work toward overcoming. 

TS:        And, finding a meeting ground too.

DP:       I don’t really think that’s going to be very easy, because a lot of people don’t want to. There is an inbred superiority complex in the English people, they will even perceive a Spaniard or a Portuguese, or a person from Poland, and see them as being a little inferior to them. I hate to tell you this, I don’t even think it’s recognized in these people. I worked with an English guy in Halifax who was very adamant that he wasn’t a racist. My perception of him was that he was a person who felt subconsciously very comfortable being a member of the superior race of people. He adopted a couple of black children who I actually felt very sorry for. He treated them well, kept them well-dressed…, but I could imagine that in the overall scheme of things, that they were always made to feel like they would not quite make it up to snuff, and could not be expected of them.

TS:        I said to one of my professors, who was saying he thought racism had come a long way, and I said, “Well, outwardly, but on a subtle level that people still have a lot of very subtle biases that they don’t recognize, and that’s the danger, I think. I see it all the time.

DP:       You know, if in fact it were so, I would be the first to tell you that the negative stereotype and lies were true, not only for the Mi’kmaq but also for the other tribes across the continents. But the overwhelming majority of these were and are absolutely unfounded. I believe that the denial that we are proving wrong and unacceptable has been used as a way to ease Caucasian conscience about the horrific wrongs visited upon Indigenous peoples by their ancestors. It eases one’s conscience when they can picture a human being from another race as being sub-human, it makes the mistreatment more acceptable.  Even the Christian churches got involved in the mistreatment. Some of them are now making amends. For instance, the Canadian Council of Churches has passed a resolution that 1992 will not be celebrated by the Canadian Council of Churches; it will be de-celebrated if anything and used as a year of remembrance of the Aboriginal people in Canada. The Catholic Church has not been that forthcoming. (This is understandable when one takes into consideration that the Popes of the Church were the authors of the Doctrine of Discovery.)

I’d be very surprised if you would get a positive reception from all to what I told you. I’ll relate a short story for you. A university professor once asked me “What do your people want?” I told him, “Well, you just asked me a question, but before I answer, I want to ask  you, “What do you want for your life?” He says, ‘Well, I want a good home, a good car, a nice marriage, a good education, a good income, and good prospects for my children,” and so forth and so on.  I said, “Well, need I say more, do I really have to answer that question? You answered it.” And he says, “I beg to differ with you. That’s not what my understanding of what you people need and want.”  I burst out laughing, and said, “My good man, can’t you hear yourself? You’re telling me that I don’t know what I want. Well, I want to ask you a question: ‘What do you think we want?”  He goes, “You wanna go home, back to your reserves and you wanna be left alone,” and so forth and so on “practice your culture, your chants.”  It was total racist bullshit and he didn’t even recognize it for what it was.

TS:     This was a professor?

DP: Yeah, and I told him “What we want from life is what we’ve been denied since the coming of the first European to this country.”  And I said, “we’ve been denied the right to make a living, we’ve been denied the right to prosperity, to self-government and to independence. We’ve been denied freedom. We’ve been denied, period. “And I said, “What we want is a piece of the cake, After all, it is our cake, and we should be able to take our fair share out of it.” The look came on his face, was as much as to say, “I don’t agree with you, because I know what you really want”. It was mind boggling to know that that kind of attitude is so prevalent yet, which is “the white man knows best for the Indian.” When talking about people who are willing to make changes in that perception you’re talking about the minority, especially as far as the power brokers in this country are concerned.  A lot of people think it’s now fashionable to support positive change; they pay lip service to it as long as they don’t have to pay anything positive. But, slowly but surely attitudes change, as children … begin to grow up and talk, learn, I think we’re gonna see a big change. Matter of fact I think it’s happening now and it’s gonna take at least couple more decades, 20 years or so before it gets to the point where we are beginning to see a brighter future for our children.

TS:        Your children will benefit from the change too.

DP:       I have a positive attitude toward it, I look at no reasonable person being opposed. I’m a human rights activist to the core. I’ve been one since I was very young. What instilled it in my mind was an incident when I was about seven years old. I went with my mother to the Indian agent’s office, and we hadn’t had anything to eat Friday, Saturday, or Sunday,  it was early Monday morning when we arrived at Agency. He played cat and mouse with her from 9:00 to 12:00 and had her crying, and more or less begging for food for her kids. At about ten to twelve, he finally decided it was getting close to lunchtime for him, and so he wrote her an order for two dollars and gave it to her. As I was sitting there that day  watching my mother being humiliated, I said to myself, “When I grow up, no bastard like you will ever do this to me.” I guess that more or less set me on the road that I’m on, and have been on ever since. I rebelled, and said, “No.” I think it’s happening right across the country now. Within Aboriginal communities, you’re seeing a big resistance building up right across the land to maintaining the status quo. They’re saying, “No more. I want my rights, I want my civil rights, I want my human rights.” It’s always been my conviction that you can’t have Aboriginal rights until you have the first two, not one in isolation, and I think it’s coming; it’s coming reluctantly, but slowly but surely it is coming. And the strange thing is that I think already we have a large minority of the Canadian population behind us. It’s not easy to get Canadian governments onside, which is understandable, because governments run about six years behind what the people want anyway. Some have said sixty years. (laughs).

TS:        In terms of the Parks again, they’ve asked about who would be interested in traditional land use practices in terms of interpreting Park land (inaudible)

DP:       Land use?

TS:        Well, they want me to look at how Parks is managing it now… (inaudible) but the same land might have been (put to?) a different use. (difficult to hear)

DP:       You see, that’s something that probably could never be answered. I’ve heard statements made in the past that if European invasion and colonization could’ve been staved off for 200 years, it would’ve never happened because the tribes would’ve evolved to the extent that they could’ve put up a defence that would’ve been adequate to prevent it. And, I also like to point out to people that if in fact the Europeans had never showed up, what’s to say that we wouldn’t be flying jet planes and driving cars and moving on, evolution goes on for all. You hear some of our people, and I think it’s sort of defensive, actually, talking about retreating to the past. The truth is that we can’t run the same kind of government that our ancestors lived under in this day and age, it wouldn’t work. People are more modern; they don’t just listen just because the Chief tells them to. We can’t impose that in the midst of 27 million white people and other non-Indians. I can’t conceive of our people shunning a person and telling him/her “We’ll never speak to you again if you don’t follow the tribal law”, they would simply say, “Up yours, I’m moving to Halifax, there’s all kinds of people there willing to speak to me”. So it’d be pretty hard to make that applicable in this day and age. I did point out one day to a group of people, what I think should be happening eventually, and I hope, and I think that it is starting to happen right now, that we’ll expand in the future, besides we’ll see more and more well-educated, intelligent Native people getting involved, and as time progresses, we’ll see a more humane type of civilization evolve in this country. For instance today we have what they call ‘creative sentencing’ which is starting to used quite often. I think that would be more along the Indigenous philosophy of using positive methods to correct somebody’s errors in life rather than trying to use punitive measures, which has proven to be an abysmal failure, it’s never been successful. And in just the area of justice, you look at family courts now and they’re becoming more of a—how would be a good way to put it?—a tribunal that’s more closely associated with the people that they’re judging, not something far removed as in the past. In family court, they don’t dress up in robes and everything else like they used to in the past. It’s a guy in a business suit, or a lady in a lady’s suit, they come in, they sit down, and there’s a casual atmosphere, more or less and there’s a real genuine effort to deal with family problems in a more humane fashion. I think It’s working to have a society that will be more responsive to the needs of everybody, not like they’ve been in the past. I think the biggest resistance as always gonna be governments, the people themselves have to somehow or other begin to gain control demands positive changes. If you don’t have control, you don’t get anywhere…

TS:        That’s what these articles are about the Native people gaining control of their politics (inaudible)   for their dignity.

DP:       See our leadership, traditionally, and I’m going to  beg to differ with a lot of our modern day leaders that do lead this country, they don’t buy it, they don’t want to have the traditional type of leadership that they had in the past. A lot of them say that these were hereditary people that you know, led for life. I’m a history buff, and I’ve done a lot of research and a lot of reading, and from that I’ve concluded that in the case of the Mi’kmaq that leaders served at the pleasure of the people. If they wanted to serve for life, they had to be worthy of it. Anytime they were deemed not to be worthy of leadership, then they were turfed out. They did have leaders such as Membertou who led until he was over one hundred.

TS:        You just confirmed something I wrote about. I’ve been doing my graduate work tracing Mi’kmaw dance throughout history, and that was an important thing for me to try and understand. … It’s like a natural hierarchy, is what I call it.

DP:       Like they would say Danny Paul you can be our leader. But if Danny Paul fell down on the job, then Danny Paul was not worthy and somebody else would become leader. That makes a lot of sense to me, rather than having a dictator. Because if you had dictator types of leadership, then you would have had leaders who would have slowly accumulated all the powers and all the wealth and everything else, and you can’t make those types of people responsible unless you have a revolution. What I get from the readings of the Jesuits and others from the colonial era, is that in fact leaders had to be responsible and accountable. If they didn’t live up to snuff, then the people replaced them.

TS:        That was striking to me, that in one sense it was egalitarian in another sense people became still very individualist, in a sense.

DP:       It was a male-dominated society, which I don’t think is anything unusual when you look at that stage in history. But, even so, being a male-dominated society did not preclude women from participating, especially when they became Elders; they, at that point, became advisors. Chores were all laid out for the female, but it wasn’t a derogatory sort of relationship in that sense, because the same applied to men. Women were held in very high esteem for another reason, because women were viewed as being mothers of the children that were the future of the Nation.

DP: Many women who just want to be mothers and housewives have suffered terribly because of it. I find this very offensive. I told one of the leaders of the women’s movement here in Nova Scotia to not to come out and make degrading remarks about housewives, implying by their statements that these women are somehow inferior and not worthy women because they are happy to stay at home and look after kids, and look after homes. I told her that my mother was a woman who did what she wanted in life and she enjoyed doing it. Women have the right to be what they want to be even a prostitute and do what they want. I told her, “You demean motherhood, you demean womanhood by what you’re saying”. “Oh, I don’t mean it!”  Yes, you do. Well, why don’t you begin to think about it? Who’s important here? Who has the important job? Is it the housewife who stays home because financial reality permits it? Who can stay home and raise two or three children, whatever they have, and enjoy doing it, take them to school, see them grow up, go on to careers or whatever. That’s a feeling of accomplishment, a feeling that you’ve really done something. On the other hand, we poor men and women who have to work are told when we’re a certain age you have to accept that you gotta work until you’re 60-65 or you’re dead. Why be jealous, I can’t see the logic of it. It’s really great that more women are able to get involved in the workings of society, especially government, they have more positive and forward looking attitudes.