The following interview is with Dr. Bernie Francis, an Elder and linguist from the Maupeltu (Membertou) First Nation in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. It was conducted on January 16, 1999, with Dr. Trudy Sable at her home in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This interview/discussion was part of Dr. Sable’s research for her PhD thesis, Emerging Identities: A proposed model for an interactive science curriculum for First Nations students, and later integrated into the book they co-authored entitled, The Language of this Land, Mi’kmaki published in 2012 by Cape Breton University Press, and now published by Nimbus Publishing.

Sponsorship for the archiving of this interview and other interviews is from the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Center in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with funding through the Department of Canadian Heritage, Aboriginal Language Initiatives Program.

This interview conforms to the Smith Francis Orthography, the official orthography of the Nova Scotia.

Sable, Trudy (1999) Dr. Bernie Francis Interview with Dr. Trudy Sable, January 16, 1999. Mi’kmaw Friendship Centre Archives, Halifax, Nova Scotia

BF       The missionaries, when they arrived in North America, in approximately the 17^th century, they had sort of preconceived notions about what the Mi’kmaw people were and were not. Upon arriving of course, I suppose for many reasons…one reason is that because we didn’t speak the Indo-European language, that made us…and perhaps the fact that we didn’t have any books, that made us somewhat backward, less intelligent, less contemplative and so on. And, as I say, my feeling is based on the fact that they didn’t see any books, such as you might have seen in Europe.

The second thing, of course, is that the missionaries along with the explorers, also felt that, that to them it was obvious that we didn’t have justice, we didn’t have any laws. And that was probably based on the fact that we didn’t have any jails, once again, like they did in Europe. The second thing was, as far as they were concerned, things were in disarray or not in order, whichever way you want to put it, because we didn’t have any one person sort of cracking the whip, once again, as you had in Europe. And by that of course I’m referring to the monarchies, and kings, queens who write down the law so to speak. We didn’t have that either. So, of course, then, that would mean that our society was not ordered. And,it made it difficult for them to see how things could go on the way that they have gone on without someone sort of standing aside, sort of in riches and castles, giving orders to people.

And of course, the third thing, and probably a very important and very serious mistake that they made was the fact that— their suspicion, once again, was that we didn’t have a religion, or the fact that we didn’t know anything about God, Creator, whatever name you wish to use, because we didn’t have any churches. That’s another…that was quite a symbol for them when they arrived, and of course, when they didn’t see any of these things such as temples, churches, and so on, they concluded from that that we really didn’t have a way of honouring the Creator. While some people would like to call it ‘worshipping’ the Creator, to this day I don’t know why the Creator would want to be worshipped! It’s not the sort of the ways of the Mi’kmaw people to worship anybody, the Creator or anyone. You know, it’s the feeling that it’s not necessary.

So, based on those things, I suspect that, you know, they immediately made several wrong assumptions about us, in that we were so far behind in those three areas, that is justice, spirituality/religion, and you know those two…. let’s say in particular, that we needed to be educated. That’s another thing of course that they didn’t see, of course, were schools. So once again they assumed that we didn’t have an education system.

So, based on those things I suspect that they moved ahead and began to make us like they were, you know, in all aspects—educate us like they were educated, or at least to attempt to educate us as they were educated, to impose Jesus on us as it was imposed on them. And to impose their kind of…to impose their way of dispensing with justice, and so on and so forth. And of course, in order to, let’s say, impose Jesus on us, and the way that they understood the Creator, they had to work very hard, first of all, to destroy a lot of the words and personas that were held in reverence by Mi’kmaw people. And of course, they set out to do that.

First of all, they had to learn the language, which was a task in itself, I’m sure. But being French as they were, pronunciation wouldn’t have been too difficult, and I don’t think that was a big problem. I think the grammatical structure may have been a little more challenging but, once again, French is a highly inflective language and so is Mi’kmaw, so they sort of would have understood how it worked. And so, from that point on, once the language was learned, they began to impose Christianity. And, at the same time, worked hard to do away with the people who are actually in the community, to do-away with their importance that is, and to do away with many of the spiritual ceremonies that Mi’kmaw people had, and to discredit some of the legends, and even words that Mi’kmaw people thought were spiritual and precious. They did a good job—it took a long time, I think, probably the better part of I’d say 100 years—but they did quite a job.

For instance, one of the words that was held in reverence by the Mi’kmaw people was the word, Mntu, spelt M-N-T-U, and that’s because the Mi’kmaw people used this word often….and they understood Mntu to be “the Creator”, much like…it’s of course it comes from, or it’s an Algonquian word, which Mi’kmaq would say, Mntu. In Cree they say Kji Manitou or Manitou. So, the missionaries had to work pretty hard to do away with this character named Mntu, and they did. It took, as I say, a long time, perhaps a hundred years, but if you were to ask most Mi’kmaw people, let’s say at least before 1978, they would tell you that the word Mntu was a devil. Now, which was often kind of strange to me, particularly after I began to study the language.

I realized that…of course I grew up with these legends, I grew up with these teaching tools that people call legends. And I heard many an elderly woman and elderly man talk in a way in which I’ve never heard anyone talk since I was a boy, about spirituality, about the Creator and so on. And of course, the one thing that I didn’t hear over the years in any legend was this character that the Europeans call ‘devil’. And of course, I began a systematic search once I began to study language back in 1974 of this character, and, of course, the character ‘devil’ didn’t exist. So, it was always my feeling that he had been a stowaway on one of those ships coming across from Europe (laughing) because he sure wasn’t here prior to the arrival of the Europeans.

So, the missionaries worked very hard and within 100 years, as I say, ‘Devil’ became, or the word, Mntu became ‘Devil’; the missionaries turned it around from God to Devil, and even when I was a boy, I could hear elderly women talk about the… talk about Mntu as being a devil. To this day many people have…still believe that Mntu is the Devil. Now, I’ve written about that beginning in 1978 in the Native newsletters, basically pointing out how this came to be, and now many more people are aware of the fact that Mntu is the old word for God or Creator. And it’s starting to come around but it still, it’s still slow. You know, people are still kind of trapped with Christian dogma, and that would make it difficult for them to, you know, look at things slightly differently.

Puoin was another word. Puoin, this person, puoin, usually a man, was a medicine man slash psychotherapist in the community, who was well trained in medicines over the years. Of course, that puoin had to work with a medicine man, as sort of like an understudy, and as time went on, he became very adept at making medicines and knowing medicines and picking medicines at the right times, even poultices, you know. Also, ways of setting broken bones and so on…. It takes a long time, much like a doctor has to go to university today to study to become a doctor, you study from other doctors. Well, Mi’kmaw people were that way as well. They studied a long, long time before they were recognized as a puoin.

But this person was so relied upon by the Mi’kmaw people in the community that it was distracting to the missionaries. So, once again, they had to destroy this power of the puoin by making the puoin—not the fact that’s he’s a medicine man/psychotherapist, but someone who is ‘evil’, who has evil powers, and who will easily cast a spell on you. And once again, about the same amount of time as mntu, this puoin became an evil entity and not to be relied on for medicine, for advice or anything else for that matter.

Mi’kmuesu is a forest dweller, or a forest spirit, also who was someone that the missionaries never actually saw, but the Mi’kmaq talked about greatly, simply because  this was someone who…this spirit, this Mi’kmuesu, was someone who regulated the forest with all its animals and with all the under-moss, underground things that happened, you know, to keep the forest healthy and to provide enough food for the animals. And also to keep balance, I guess that’s probably the most important thing, to make sure that there’s a good balance there. And this Mi’kmuesu will always be watching to see if anything was violating this harmony, namely the Mi’kmaw people.Were they over killing for instance? Or were they disrespecting a kill and so on and so forth? This was very important, once again, with the Mi’kmaw people and, if you look at it, things did work quite well for them. Of course, there were difficult times, you know? There were difficult times but, you know they…there wasn’t anything really that would destroy the people, the culture because the resources were so great.

Preparation, for instance, there was this tremendous amount of time gone into for preparing let’s say (for) a long winter. So, because of the way that they prepared food it would last even though that it may not be the freshest food, let’s say in long winter months, but certainly it would be enough to keep everyone, you know, alive. And of course, after the…after the long winter months, of course the diet would change, and they would rely more on the sea and the rivers, and once again, it’s back to feast, feast time again.

So, you know, it was very nicely…the society was quite harmonized with nature, and once again it took time; it took time even for Mi’kmaw people to study all of this.They were very observant, and this is something that I call education. It’s not something for instance…it’s true that there were no schools. I mean it’s true that there were no churches, it’s true that there were no jails, but who needed them at that point? As many, many a child will tell you to this day, school is a very boring place! (laughs) and…but the children were…the Mi’kmaw children spent a lot of time with their grandparents, and they were taught over the years by grandparents as to how to survive, how to hunt, and ways in which to make tools, canoe building, constructing a wikuom,things like that, you know, all of the things which were necessary to make their lives as meaningful and comfortable. And also, in matters of spirituality, once again, it was the Elders that did most of the teaching, and then in addition to that, they were also taught by way of legends that would help them in their behaviour, or what behaviour was expected of them in the community and what was considered to be offensive to the community. And nobody was ever sort of punished for these behaviours, but rather it was pointed out to them by way of legends about the consequences of what would happen if you behaved badly or if you behaved in a way that was not acceptable to the community. So, these are… of course, this took a lot of time, this (here?)  you’re talking about….That’s that section.

TS        Okay, A question I have, is was or is there a word for ‘spirituality’ in the Mi’kmaw language? What is that?

BF       No, there really isn’t! It’s not necessary, you know. The word spirituality for instance is, once again, it’s, I suppose, a concept that’s sort of inextricably intertwined with the philosophy and the lives of the Mi’kmaw people. But there is really no such word as ‘spirituality’ in the Mi’kmaw language, that is.

TS        Okay. Is there a word for ‘sacred’?

BF       Ah, yes there is, of course. And something for instance, I use the word…something that is holy, I guess sacred, would be sape’wik…sorry (laughs) let me spell that again: sape’wik.  Sape’wik is ‘sacred’ or ‘holy’.  There’s also the word, kepme’k, which is something which is held in high esteem. Yes, those words of course exist.

TS        Do you know what…. would that mean that you would be a certain way? You said that Mi’kmaw people did not worship things, any particular thing, person and so forth, yet you have this sense of holiness, sacred, what would that… (inaudible) usually, you would have some extraordinary strengths or special behaviors. (BF: Right, exactly) I guess I’m asking is to define the difference between worshipping and versus (inaudible)

BF       I think… I never really did like the word ‘worship’ personally because I think that… I just don’t believe that a wise creator, would care less about being worshipped; I don’t think that that’s the design. I just think that you can sort of worship in a different kind of way, such as living your life in a certain way is kind of worship, without actually worshipping anybody. For instance, when…let me just say that many people that pray generally ask for things. I find that the older Mi’kmaw people, when they pray, they don’t pray so much to ask for things but to give thanks. I find that to be the way; they generally give thanks—I know that that’s what I do.

When I, you know, sit in contemplation, it’s not really to ask for anything because in the Mi’kmaw world, it would be making the assumption that I know what’s good for me better than the Creator does.  So, I don’t make the assumption that I…I don’t like to do that, I don’t like to say that I know better than the Creator. I’d rather just give thanks and let be what’s going to be. And many Mi’kmaw people are that way. I think much of that changed when the missionaries arrived, whereby the Mi’kmaw people were somewhat trained to begin to ask for things. And I don’t like—I personally don’t like that, and I think that most Mi’kmaw people were not that way—they gave thanks for all that they had, and they had much! They had much of everything, you know. 

So, you know, when you talk about… when people talk about worship now-a-days, it means that you know, going to church and praying to God, and things like that and saying how lovely God is and that. I just don’t find that way in the Native community. I find that the worship comes in a form of their relationship, let’s say, to the land, to animals, to one another, to their community, and to themselves in the way of behaviour. That to me is worship.

It takes time to understand this way of looking at it, but the fact that you are alive in itself, you know, is worship enough providing you are aware of the fact that you are alive.  If you’re aware that you are alive, if you’re cognizant of that fact, that to me is worship. Whereas, if you act mechanically, whereby you’re doing this, or going here, or, you know, sort of more by instinct, I find that not to be…for instance I wouldn’t consider that to be worship so much. But if you’re aware that you’re alive, you have people around you, and you have animals, you have the forest and you’re aware of all these things, I think it’s great worship.

TS        Would you say that awareness is also—this is a subject I was thinking of getting into a little bit later— but it has to do with that fact that you’re aware that you’re not separate from it all.  Like it seems to me as though a lot of depression is based on this notion that you’re all alone, you’ve got no connection, nobody cares, you’re not related, as it seems to me….

BF       Yes, yes, it is true that you know, there’s say, a disconnection with many people, and that’s terrible, I think we tend to do that to ourselves, we tend to isolate. This is not to say that all depression comes from that, I don’t believe that at all. I really do pay attention to what science, for instance, and medical science particularly, says about depression in that sometimes there’s a chemical imbalance. Okay, I understand that, and I believe that, and drugs have served a great purpose in alleviating a lot of the suffering that people go through when they are depressed.  But the other kind of depression whereby you feel that you’re alone, and that you’re not part of it all, and so on, is really something that could be controlled by yourself with a new way of looking at things, a new way of making connections.

Much like, you know, the brain sometimes gets damaged, you know, it gets sort of disoriented and so on. But when it begins to heal, it begins to make new connections and it begins to feel healthy and good again. I find the same way that to be with human beings who feel disconnected for whatever reason, it could be, you know, their family could have died, or their wife could have died or whatever, they feel very alone, very disconnected, and so on.  It’s just time to…it’s time to whirl around and start, you know…you’re given an opportunity to mend again, and that process in my opinion begins immediately, and I like that idea.

I’m of the opinion that everything that happens on this planet is really working towards your well-being or benefit.  And I believe this to be true, because if the planet didn’t position itself in the way that it has, you and I wouldn’t be sitting here talking today; there would be no human beings per se.  So, I really believe that [break in tape]… move and things happen. Ultimately these things are for your benefit, and I’m a very strong believer of that now, although I must say that it took me a long time to get to that point but now I realize that it’s awesome-land. (laughs)

TS        Following on this conversation, this notion of balance we’re talking about, is, you know, how one views the world seems very important to this, and that it’s a very important thing, your sense of your relationship too. Do you want to say anything about that?  It seems as though balance, maintaining balance is a very important thing.

BF       Yes, it’s very important, yes. Ah, because you see…one thing I like about the Native cultures in North America is that they’re not stuck to the word, that is, the Bible for instance, or any other sacred text. Once again, it’s my opinion, and perhaps the opinion of many others, that the Bible really needs to be updated and amended. I say this respectfully. The Mi’kmaw people, I found, adjust very quickly to their surroundings; they don’t sort of look back a couple thousand years into the past and say, “Look, this is the way we should be”—it wouldn’t make any sense. So, because there’s nothing holding them back, such as the Bible holds many people back in my opinion, they’re able to make adjustments very quickly. In other words, they jostle themselves according to the way the world is at the moment and they do it fairly quickly. Whereas I find too many people to be kind of stuck with the word and not willing to move with reality when things change. And I find that to be very sad because I think it kind of stunts the growth, and I think that’s what causes depression, you know? Not looking at things as they really are.

So, once again, I’m often of the opinion that if Jesus were around, he would make some great changes to that Bible, on this thing they call a holy book. He would, for instance, the business about divorce is kind of a nice example because you know, many people are…have gone through a divorce; many Christians have gone through a divorce. Well, Jesus said no divorce—very clear. But there was a reason for him saying that at that time. In his time, the women would be thrown out and basically no better than an animal, and nobody wanted this woman any longer, and there was no social programs to assist this woman when they were thrown out on the street.

Well, it’s not like that anymore. So, what I’m saying is Jesus’ statement made sense in his day, but nowadays, Jesus would say, probably to a woman who was being mistreated by a man, to get rid of him, get rid of him, or just get away from him, and go at it on your own, and live your life according to the way you want to live it, be free, be creative, this kind of thing. You can’t be creative with someone who is mistreating you and who is beating you, and who is mistreating your children and won’t allow you to sleep at night, and who is drinking and so on and so forth.  So, I think Jesus would very quickly say today, “Look, there are social programs and welfare programs that will help you out. Get away from that guy.”  And that’s just one example of many that could be looked at again. 

Of course, it’s ridiculous when you see that the Catholic church is still trying to follow this law of no divorce because of what Jesus supposedly had said, while at the same time giving out annulments left and right. Annulment of course, is better known as the Catholic divorce. (laughs) So, I think that when you talk about balance, I don’t think you could maintain your balance if you’re applying yesterday’s rules to today’s reality. And that’s what I find the Mi’kmaw people to, at least used to do, is to apply today’s rules to today’s life. And it makes it much easier, it’s much more freeing.

TS        When we talked a lot about the language being verb based, being very much describing things as fluid, ongoing, as a process.  Does that tie into what you are saying?

BF       Yeah very much so. Once again, what I’m about to say may not have been in the past, or it may not be in Latin, but I can tell you that the word “god” is obviously is a noun. That doesn’t happen so much in the Mi’kmaw language. In fact, we have so many words for the word ‘Creator’, and every single one of them are verbs. For example, we have Kisu’lkw or, ‘he or she created us’, we have Ankweyulkw, we have Tekweyulkw, we have Jikeyulkw, and we have many more. And every single one of these are verbs. And they conjugate like any other verb, which means you’re going to get anywhere from 300 to 400 different variations of that verb. In addition to this, any one of these words for Creator doesn’t specify that this creator is male; none of them do. That’s why we kind of fit in, in fact that’s we’re ahead in many ways of common thinking by many of the Christian churches in that God is a male. We’re not of that opinion. In fact, our language dictates that it could either be male or female.

Once again when the missionaries arrived here, they…that particular aspect of understanding God was very bothersome to them. So once again they got rid of most of the old words, and came up with this word for god, namely, Niskam, which is just a shortened form for ‘grandfather’.  And, in other words they wanted to ensure that ‘God’ was male, and that we understood, we as Mi’kmaw people understood that ‘God’ was male as well. So, we…that’s not the way it is in the language itself; it’s clearly indicated that we never specified as to whether it’s male or female, and I like that part of it.

It also means that women would not be placed in the background, you know, that had anything to do with spirituality, much like I find this to be the way in Christian churches. I still find the notion of not being able to have women priests is a ridiculous notion. I still feel that things have changed so much since the time of Mesopotamia, let’s say, it’s gone so far the other way whereby women are, are very caged now. Whether they’re only able, they’re only allowed to move a certain distance and then, of course, something in society puts a stop to them that they’re not allowed to be any more creative than that. That happens in business, that happens in politics, that happens in churches, so, I think that in that respect, I think that we’re very far behind. I mean society is very far behind, where I think that the North American culture is very much advanced in that way.

TS        This whole notion of…well first of all you also said that these words for Creator could also be an “it”?  That seems important.

BF       Yes. Absolutely right, it could be ‘he’, ‘she’, or ‘it’, that’s absolutely correct. That’s the way, once again, the language dictates.  

TS        O.k., which would make it [Inaudible]

BF       Well, it could make it an entity of some sort you know? It’s hard to….

TS        [Trudy is asking if this is something androgynous, joint male/female.]

BF       Hermaphrodite? No, it’s not that, it’s not that notion. No, it’s…I guess it’s the indescribable, that’s probably more of what that one means. Something which cannot be caught in by way of language or by way of description of any kind.

TS        Inexpressible.

BF       Yeah. Inexpressible.

TS        Well this whole thing with the male and female, see to me…one of the problems you run into today is more associated with male and female embodied, physical gender. This notion of Creator being male or female seems to me (that) what you are talking about is this recognition of two forms of male/female energy, going on all the time in that balance, as you see in many cultures, is very important in many cultures. To me, what you’re describing…is to make male/female complementary, would you say?

BF       Yes, exactly, that’s right. That’s why, in the Mi’kmaw community…. there wasn’t such an uproar with homosexuality. You know, many cultures would say, would describe it as twin-rooted, for instance you know? Which is good, they never had any real big problem. What would happen then if there was a homosexual man in the community? Nothing serious other than the fact that men might tease one another about this homosexual.That’s about it, you know, it wasn’t any…there was no sin in it, let’s say. For instance, some of the churches want to sort of brand the homosexual person is that there’s something wrong with this individual. Well, it doesn’t come across that way in the Native community.

TS        I was told, I think it was Tuma, said to somebody that he was taught very young by his mother or grandmother, I can’t remember which, to dance differently as a gay Native person, and he would dance in a different direction. Have you heard anything?

BF       No, never heard anything like that, at all!

TS        I mean in other words acknowledging his different feminine energy. I don’t know it’s something I just…but is there a word for homosexuality in Mi’kmaw, I mean traditionally?

BF       No, not really.

TS        Is there a word for two-rootedness? Or…

BF       No, no there isn’t. This is a concept that really didn’t exist in Mi’kmaw either.

TS        So what did…So, there isn’t a third gender or category? You know what I mean?

BF       No, what they would use is ‘acts like a woman’ – e’pitewe’k.  [In and October 9, 2019 email, Bernie Francis said this doesn’t have be just a gay man.]

TS        Could it go the other way, women act like a man?

BF       Yes, ji’nmuk ta’n ji’nmui-ksataqatijik, “men who like men.” (Note: This is a translation by Bernie Francis, Jan.7, 2021, which included a lengthier explanation of various relationships in Mi’kmaw.) 

TS        Is that today or is that something (ancient)?

BF       No, that’s pretty old; that existed for a long, long time.

TS        So is there a word, was there ever a word for sin?

BF       No, not really, not originally. Nope, the missionaries though, they picked up this word, l’ue’uti , really means… it comes from the word l’ue’ which means “anger” So, l’ue’uti is the word that they chose to describe sin in the Mi’kmaw language, culture. But really, sin is, again, a foreign concept.

TS        So what is this word?

BF       L’ue’uti is anger. That’s it. And of course, they equated that with sin.

TS        So, if someone were to become angry, that would take on negative connotations?

BF       Yes, exactly

TS       Would it, within the community, would it take on a negative connotation?

BF       Ah, not so much, not so much. But you’ll see even in the so-called Native texts as dictated, let’s say, by the missionaries that the word l’ue’uti is used to mean ‘sin’, that’s all.  And that’s really about the only form that it’s used that way.

TS        How do you spell that?

BF       L’ue’lu. I’m sorry: l’ue’ti

TS        So, I mean, you have a concept of sin…I don’t mean ‘you’ but coming in with the missionaries…

BF       Coming in with the missionaries yes, yes, exactly.  I mean, ‘sin’, you know is kind of a strange concept, but when someone does something wrong in the Native community, it needs to be corrected of course, but no one has to die on the cross for it! (laughing) You know?

TS        What did they do that for? (Laughing)

BF       I often, you know, looked at…sometimes I….it makes me angry to see that that whole notion of someone dying over and over again on a cross, the symbolic aspect of it of course. And, like Kluskap, for instance, in many ways, was similar to Jesus. Kluskap obviously was here to teach the Mi’kmaw people, and he’s respected for that. Second, thing was that he was there to not only to teach but to protect the Mi’kmaw people, and of course Jesus kind of did the same things—he protected his people, he taught them and so on. But I’m sure that if you were to ask Kluskap, “Would you die for my sins?”, I’m sure Kluskap would say, “Die for your own damn sins!” Or make the correction so that no one has to die for your sins, you know, basically? Why should anyone suffer for your transgressions so to speak?  I just…It’s a ridiculous notion to me, and I think, you know, it would have been a ridiculous notion to the first Mi’kmaw people that met with the missionaries.

TS        Are you saying that Kluskap was regarded as a human being in the sense that he manifested physically appearing on earth as opposed to sort of what you might call a deity?

BF       Well let’s put it this way…. I think we all have enlightened instructors, you know?  I think we all do. I don’t care whether…I mean, Jesus—I never regarded Jesus as God, I never regarded Jesus as Catholic—in fact he was Jewish if I remember correctly. I’ve often said that the day Jesus becomes Catholic, then I would also become Catholic, but can’t do it now and I don’t want to become Jewish; I’m perfectly fine the way I am as a Mi’kmaw person. (laughs) But I think that Jesus was an excellent teacher, and he was a very courageous teacher, but so were many others. I thought the Buddha was that way, he was saying something that many other people…I mean, he was saying something different than everyone else was saying. Jesus was saying things that were very different than everyone else was saying at the time. Kluskap said things which were very different, you know? And I think that he was every bit as good a teacher as Jesus was.

TS        So you’re…the reason why I’m asking this is sort of off the record actually, but then, I don’t usually hear about Kluskap as being someone like Jesus who was an historical, physical body…. [break in tape]

BF       I am saying that his presence on this earth, in whatever form that he was in, you know, he was here as a teacher, as a guide.

TS       But it was only…this is fascinating.  Does not the word Kluskap mean ‘liar’ or ‘trickster’ or something…what does it actually mean? 

BF       That’s what it seems to come across as.  But it’s easy to be deceived that he was…that the Mi’kmaw people, the fact that the Mi’kmaw people teach by way of stories and legends, that Kluskap also taught in similar ways. For instance, it’s no truth, there is no truth to the story when you teach a child not to go near fire, because if you do, you are going to pee your pants. There is no truth to that whatsoever. The Mi’kmaw people know there is no truth to that whatsoever, so basically, they’re lying to the children. And why do they do that? They do it because it’s one way a child can understand not to go near fire. Because, why would a Mi’kmaw person say, “Don’t go near the fire because you’re going to get burnt?” The child has never been burnt before so they don’t know. But, if humiliated, if he peed his pants and everyone else would know about it, because he would be teased to death, you know what I mean? This kind of thing. So, that’s why it’s important to say to a child, in order to protect the child, “Don’t go near the fire because you’re going to pee your pants.”

TS:      So, you’re saying lying is a protective mechanism? 

BF       Yes, of course. I mean really. Kluskap taught pretty much the same way. There is many many things the Mi’kmaw people initially didn’t understand. I mean, you know, we grow, we learn things, we understand more. And, Kluskap pretty much taught the same way, and if you want to call him trickster for that reason, then fine, that’s good, but it was a way of teaching.

TS        I am asking too because it seems as though the trickster quality of life, in other words, when you talk about how you are behaving, it seems that things can flip very quickly if you don’t behave properly, right?

BF       Absolutely.   

 TS      So, when I thought…I mean this is just me thinking, but when I think about Kluskap, it seems as though no energy (? inaudible)…but the moral of it has to be the trickster quality. That’s just what I’ve been thinking all this time.  [difficult to hear]

BF       Well, I suspect that, you know, you could look at it that way; there’d be nothing wrong with it.  It’s not set in stone. I just think that he had a way of educating people, which was perhaps more, had more of a—how would you say it? More of a punch to it. It would be something that would stick in your mind for a long, long time, is this particular teaching, and, then of course, you’d mull over it. Why should he…if he were to, let’s say, spread out the truth in front of you right at that point, it’s likely that you wouldn’t understand it anyway. But, if he gave you a guide, then you will come upon the truth by yourself. I think that makes a tremendous amount of sense even to this day.

I think many people taught that way. Jesus taught about all kinds of seeds, for instance. Would you call him a liar?  I don’t think so. I mean he talked about metaphor, he used metaphors, he used symbolism and so on.  Kluskap was the same way, you know, in that respect. So, he came to teach, much like Jesus did; he came to protect his people, much like Jesus did. At the end of it, he went into a cave, much like Jesus did, you know (laughs). So, I feel like there are all sorts of similarities there. 

TS        [This section is hard to hear and transcribe accurately.] But there are people who say, first of all, why would Kluskap have a human form given what you said about male/female quality, given what we’re talking about different forms for Creator. [BF: Right] Question 2, was that one scholar, in tracing Kluskap through history, said he feels as though from what’s written down, that Kluskap was later, so either a creation of white people coming in and looking for something, or taking one of many of whatever pantheon or [inaudible] deities and making that be the luminary (?)—sort of popularizing it.  So that is why I am asking all these things about Kluskap because it sounds as though what you are saying is that he is a Jesus figure of some sort.

BF       Yeah, see, in a sense, there is not a whole lot of change between what I said before and what I am saying now. All I am saying is that trying to…because Kluskap has been somewhat dismissed as a myth, you know. I mean, most of what has been said about Jesus is a myth as well and I am trying, you know, and I am trying to balance that off. For instance, this statement, attributed to Jesus, and I quote, “I am the way to the light. No one gets to the Father but by me.” I think that is a ridiculous statement. I don’t think Jesus made that statement at all. I think that the 1990 or 91, there was a Jesus seminar in California where there 75 or so of the world’s most renowned theologians, unanimously agreed that Jesus never said anything of the sort, and it’s common knowledge that John, one of the gospel writers, had Jesus making extraordinary claims about himself. So, in many, many respects, the way we understand Jesus today is mostly myth. 

Well, but let’s take some of things that make sense to us, such as the fact that he was an enlightened individual who was here to teach and to guide. Well, I think that the equation there is that Kluskap, in whatever form he, or whatever he was, was also here to teach and to guide. I mean that’s just a very simple and logical comparison. So, that’s all I am doing here. The other thing is, you asked why was he a male? Well, why shouldn’t he have been?  First of all, men were hunters, and in many ways…and of course being a hunter is being quite a provider, and men were the hunters of this community, and it just so happened that Kluskap was a hunter. Any legend that you hear, Kluskap was always brining something, bringing food, you know. So, he was a hunter. That’s the only explanation that I have for you on that. But definitely, morphologically, I would say thatKluskap was male for only that reason.

TS        What always intrigues me about Kluskap was he never married, which seems really uncommon (?). I always found that interesting. [He has?] his Grandmother and his nephew, and that makes sense, family. But you never see him mated, it seems. (NOTE: At a later date, Margaret Johnson did tell TS one story of a woman going to stay with Kluskap. Her hair became sweet grass when she ordered Kluskap to butcher her when a man (her husband) was coming to look for her.)

BF       Yeah, it’s interesting but also nothing to be too marveled at. I see many ordinary people today who decide not to marry, you know, it’s their choice. I think there is something wrong with being forced not to marry, such as what the Catholic church does to priests, but I don’t think there is anything wrong with making the decision.

TS:      No, it’s not that I think there is a moral issue, it’s just looking at how important family and relations, the community and (? in general, and then someone like Kluskap be a model of all those values, it seems [inherently part of?] the culture, that’s all.

BF       Well, the thing is, you can’t really…I don’t know how you come up with the assumption exactly that he wasn’t married, maybe because you did not hear about his wife. But didn’t he call the Mi’kmaw people his children? Yeah, in most legends… “my children”.  So, he might have very well been, you know? I don’t know.

TS        Would they call him their ‘father’?

BF       I never heard it that way. No, never, it’s just Kluskap. (chuckles)

TS        I know that there are other figures (inaudible) but Kluskap seems to be kind of the main creator or whatever figure.  We don’t have to go down this that far. The trickster has always…I love that.

BF       We can think about it more. But I think he easily could originate from that, you know? Someone who is a sort of like a storyteller, meaning that the stories may not have been necessarily true but many of the stories that Jesus told were not necessarily true, for instance. They were just teaching tools, that’s all.

TS        I have this particular fascination with this because I have this theory, not theory—a thought. This is a little far afield but since you are here, I’m going to ask you. I’m thinking because of the work I am doing on legends associated with land(scape), Kluskap predominantly in many legends is associated with rock (and) formation of islands. I know there are other ones where he goes north but I am wondering about the whole creation (of) rocks, quarry sites, (inaudible). I was wondering if he was that energy. Do you know what I am sayng? (BF: Yes) So, that is why I found it curious because it is his work that creates the islands you and I have talked about and all…Cape Blomidon, he’s got his Grandmother and all these formations. Beavers, chasing beavers. So it seems to me he is very associated with land formation. That’s why I am always thinking about…all the legends, putting all those things Margaret told me about sweetgrass along the Bay of Funday…Anyway, we can drop it but I just think about it. 

BF       Yes, o.k. It’s good things to think about.

TS        Yeah, we don’t have to solve (inaudible). But, do you mind getting back to this notion of sacredness?

BF       Not at all.

TS        The word? To me, it is so important to understand from the linguistic point of view and also the cultural point of view what that word entails. Given what we were talking about before, having a sense of sacredness, what that entails. You know, sacred sites, you know all these terms get thrown around really easily.

BF       Yeah, they become more confusing when you begin to use the English language to attempt to describe some of these phrases. Like when you say the word sape’wik,you could translate that to mean ‘holy’, but you could also translate it to mean ‘sort of pure’. That’s important to understand, that particular added dimension to the word ‘holy’. When you describe something such as a mountain, sape’wite’tasik. same word, just a different form of the word, it means that it is thought of as ‘pure’ or ‘holy’. For instance, Kelly’s Mountain in Cape Breton would be described as sape’wite’tasik. The same word, I think is used for anything that has a close connection, a close significant connection to the Creator, you know? Places where legendarily we’re told was where Kluskap, for instance, did something or made something, or whatever might be considered sape’wite’tasik. There’s not a whole lot of confusion in my mind about (that). 

TS        It would come up with a question I had in my mind. It has to do with behaviour, how you relate to something…

BF       That’s sape’wik?

TS        Yeah.

BF       Once again, if the community, of course, that you grow up in, educates you on areas that are sape’wite’tasikl or thought of as sacred or pure, and of course these areas are kepme’k which means are held in respect by the community members. And these are the areas sometimes when they go to for solace, you know? And if you have perhaps an unresolved problem within yourself, these are the places that you would rely on for inspiration and enlightenment. And, you know, they’re very comforting places, very comforting. Much like the park that you have here next to where you live is a very sort of comforting place, very…something about the park that is very, very comforting. 

But it’s nice to be able to…see you could say this, I suppose to most people and many people would not understand what you are talking about. It’s more of a…these places that are sape’wite’tasikl are areas such as…this is what I would refer to this park. These places are…it’s not just a place to get away from it all so much, it’s a place to go to something and it’s a place whereby you become less distracted by all that happens and but that’s not where it ends. It sort of invigorates you, it kind of helps you look a little more clearly at yourself and your place in this planet and this universe, you know. And it can happen so simply; it doesn’t have to be any great manifestation. I think that that’s…when people want miracles, they expect to see things popping out of the air. Well, fortunately, there are miracles happening all of the time and it’s a matter of opening your eyes and it’s a matter of becoming…just sandpapering your body a little bit and becoming sensitive to these things and I feel very bad for people who feel that they have to go so far away to feel this way or to search for something. You don’t have to go far at all. Sensitizing yourself is probably the root to waking up and to seeing things clearly. That experience, for instance, that I had this morning in a simple little park like that, was nothing short of a miracle, and I feel that way a lot. Sometimes it happens in the city. It could happen simply by my walking where I don’t see anything specific, it’s a feeling more than anything, you know. Now that to me is sacredness or the feeling is sort of related to the sacred.

Break in tape.

TS        So in the same context that you were talking about Creator, the words being verbs describing processes of creation, I was curious about the notion of ‘Mother Earth’ as it is spoken of today as ‘Mother Earth’ as a solid mother figure. Wouldn’t that also have this notion of being a verb or in a process versus this mother figure.  Does that make sense to you? 

BF       No, in this case we have…yes, the notion of ‘Mother Earth’ definitely exists in our culture. It’s one of those things whereby you don’t have to have any words for it because it’s a given, you know, it’s understood. But the word wskitqamu is the word for ‘earth’. Now, let me, first of all, say that many a biologist, I guess you can say, nowadays refer to the earth as a super-organism. Everything seems to be an organism from a single-cell organism to a more complex organism such as the human being, who started off as a single organism. And then you have a more complex organism even, more complex than the human being, namely the earth whereby the earth contains and sustains all the organisms within its organism. And therefore, the term super-organism. I think that people are looking at it not just as an object that happens to circle around the sun but that there’s so much more to it than that. That they think of it in terms of you can’t separate human life from earth life. That is, you can’t expect human life to go on if there is no life within this super-organism. If the earth dies, that is, if the waters are all contaminated, and the forests, and the land, then there are no human beings to speak of. The earth really doesn’t depend on us human beings at all. It could do fine without us, but we can’t do fine without it. We really do need to be on this planet in order to stay alive and to be feel free to feel comfortable, and to enjoy, I guess is the word. So, the word, wskitqamu, the morphological boundary is after the ‘t’ wskit, w-s-k-i-t, and then the next morpheme is q-a-m-u, qamu, [1] and it really means ‘surface’ here. That’s the word Mi’kmaw people use for earth. It has the real notion of a ball or something circular, and it really does create some kind of an eerie concept for me.  (TS: Eerie?) Eerie, yah, a very eerie concept. It seems to take in, takes in so much in that when you say the word…the last part of the word, qamu, it’s incredible in the notion that it raises in my mind and it gives the notion of bigness, of roundness (?) of mysticism. It’s absolutely incredible. I can’t come up with the words to adequately describe the feelings that arise in me when I look at that word carefully.

TS        Qamu, technically you would say sphere (but) what you are talking about is a larger sphere.

BF       Wskitqamu. Yah, a larger big round ball, you know kind of thing. It’s amazing. So, the business about respect for ‘it’ is very innate, not only so much in the language but also in the feeling, in the instinct of the Mi’kmaw people. That is why we had a real problem with the way the lumber companies, or the forest industry, talked about reforestation. It’s unfortunate that they think of reforestation as simply replanting trees. In other words, they feel that they can go in with these huge, heavy, destructive machines, take out the lumber, take out the trees, and bulldoze everything in its way and trample everything in its way, come back out and then simply, to restore the damages to plant new trees. That to them, is reforestation. In other words, they re-forest to make more money in the future and that’s not reforestation in the mind of the Mi’kmaw people. The forest, in order to sustain life, the forest has to be not only healthy, but it has to be huge for the, once again, the earth to sustain us.

We think that the oceans have to be also equally as big in order to support human life. We think that all of these water masses or land masses are extremely important in as big as they are, and the notion of simply cutting down several trees and bulldozing a path, and then taking trees out and then planting new ones, that’s not reforestation to us. We feel very differently about the forest in that way. We feel that it does have a spirit and it has a spirit independent of us, you know? It’s there for our wellbeing and we’re very thankful for that. The animals are protected by the forest, the medicines that Native people pick are protected by the forest in many ways. One way, for instance is that large trees sometimes help irrigate those large plants, whereby they might release water during the night so that these plants are watered, these medicine plants are watered. So, there’s a balance going on underneath the forest floor much like there’s a balance going on under water. So, there is more to it. If you simply go in with a huge machine and clear everything in its wake, we have all kind of difficulties with that. We don’t look at the forest just in terms of trees; we look at it in terms of life. And we also think of it in terms of our relationship to the animals that sustained us. Without those animals, without the fish and so on, we would not have come, we Mi’kmaw people would not have come this far. We would have suffered, died of starvation and so on. The forest is largely responsible for keeping us alive and well and happy, you know, because there is a certain amount of…it’s not just the food that the animals have brought us, it’s not only their fur that we used, or their bones for tools, it’s the enjoyment of simply knowing that there are these other beings that inhabit the planet and have every right to as we do. Those are the beings that come to Mi’kmaw people who understand their relationship to the forest. We, together with the animals, we enjoy so it’s not just trees.

And, of course, the scent of flowers is important to Mi’kmaw people. It’s very nice to see Mi’kmaw people…they used to regularly, they used to go out in May and pick Mayflowers. There is nothing that smells better than a Mayflower; it smells absolutely beautiful. I still remember picking bunches with my father and then binding them with a twine and then selling them. They were beautiful; people bought them very quickly and we made a little bit of money that way. Much like the forest also provided for us ways which we could make money differently than, let’s say, than just picking Mayflowers and selling them such as blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries. Those are the four that I remember well where we used to go out and pick them because they grew every year. It was, I guess you could call it a renewable resource to us. And this was a way of making money to buy things with. Not only using blueberries for making jams and pies and so on, but to actually to make money. And we were not harmful to the forest; we just picked them and next year they grow again. And it was great; it was a constant supply of all that we needed.

So, to just go in and just simply (?) with a machine and just tear up everything in its path, we realize the great damage that this way of harvesting the forest is doing. And this is not to say that trees should not be cut down for lumber, not at all. I think that they should be. There’s growth there that needs to be trimmed. We can help along the forest if we’re conscientious about helping along, but we have to be much more careful in how we do it, we have to be much for careful in what we cut, and we have to really pay attention to what we’re doing and not just simply clear cut.

TS        Didn’t you say wskitqamu was the surface of the earth?

BF       Yeah, ‘surface sphere’.

TS        Why…you know there is all this undergrowth. Why is it surface is what I am trying to say.

BF       Oh no, there is another word for underground. Yeah. It’s like the ‘under sphere’ I guess you could call it- lamqamu

TS.      That means what—underground? 

BF       Underground, yeah.

TS        Oh, isn’t that interesting because I would not have been able to think of a (word?). All that… the differentiation. Well, I suppose we have above ground and underground.

BF       Yeah, And the other thing that just seems to take…it also seems to…at first I never would have thought it but the word wskitqamu takes in a little bit more than just the tangible ground, than the tangible earth. It takes in the atmosphere, the qamu part. It’s like a nice sort of protective layer of something or other that I never really heard. I never heard concepts or words in the Mi’kmaw language to describe this any further but it seems to take in that entire atmosphere, you know, whereas, along with the surface.

TS        So, the earth’s surface plus the atmosphere, maybe what we are now calling under the ozone layer.

BF       Yes, exactly. I am familiar with non-Native terms now, scientific terms. But, I mean, I am not familiar with them in Mi’kmaw if they exist at all. Also, but the word lamqamudefinitely means ‘underground’.

TS       Is that the same ending as wskitqamu? That qamu?

BF       Exactly the same ending.

TS        If qamu takes in that ‘atmosphere’ what would that do if it’s underground?

BF       It just seems to…lamqamu talks about…I just you are talking about (TS: under the surface)…under the surface basically. That’s it. That’s all.

TS        Why is the word (used?) ‘atmosphere’ for the underground?

BF       Because it, because when you use the word qamu for wskitqamu, it seems to take in the earth, the atmosphere and all that it contains. That’s the wskitqamu. Whereas the lamqamu, it’s simply talking about below the surface, that’s all.

TS        The whole thing with jipijka’m is really interesting to me. And also, while I was doing this science program for Energy Mines and Resources, not every single one but most people said that, “We don’t dig under the ground.”

BF       Who said this?

TS        A number of people when I was asking them their feelings about mining and all this stuff to develop this earth science program and their relationship to the earth.  So, because of the jipijka’m, which is associated always in legends that I see with the puoin, is something very, very powerful. That is why I was asking you about the word for underground, because it is such a symbolic power there. I am just going from what I am listening and putting together legends and all this, that there is some relationship with under the earth that is different from you are saying (about?) the relationship ‘on the earth’, the surface.

BF       Yeah that’s right.

TS        I don’t know what to say about it except the jipijka’m tunnel under the earth, and root under the earth and when you read about the puoin, about them dancing into the earth…it’s always the puoinaq, in the legends and they dance and they go down into the earth. And it seems as though there is something very powerful under that people have to relate to properly. So, I am going off the deep end again, but I was thinking about that. That is why I was wondering about the word itself. I know often that I will often ask you a question and there is a very literal translation, where you say it just means this. But then if you start to say, “Well, it just means this but implied in that…” I guess that’s the question I’m asking now. Is there an implied something with lamqamu?

BF       That is something I suppose that we could discuss a little bit later. We’ll discuss that because I think it does, and I think definitely, it definitely has…the business about subsurface power, let’s say, definitely exists in the mind.  You talk about ‘underground people’ and ‘underground this’ and underground that’. It’s not really that difficult to understand because as we know many animals live underground, you know? I mean you have your gophers, so many wildlife live underground. It’s not so difficult for us to understand that many of our souls, many of our ancestors, have gone below the surface, so to speak. It may be said in Christian communities that it’s the opposite whereby they go above somewhere. Mi’kmaw people look at that too nowadays because of Christian influence and so on. But there is also this business about people who inhabit the lamqamu.

TS        Who?

BF       Ancestors.

TS        That’s interesting, because there is also (?) about the Milky Way and the stars, people becoming stars, right?

BF       Yeah, that’s called the ‘Ghost Road’.  Skɨte’kmujuawti

TS        So, that would be different than people who are underground?

BF       Very, that’s something different. So, it’s not really, if you have one notion, in that our ancestors have gone on in the distance, it’s not a good idea. It’s not a sane idea because many of the tribes, including the Mi’kmaw people always feel close to their ancestors when they’re in certain areas, certain pieces of land. How else could they feel that way?

TS        Would that be considered a sacred site in the sense of connectedness (BF: Yeah, that’s right) in relating to who you are, where you are.

BF       Yeah, so the ancestors are, once again, held a tremendous amount of respect to this day much like the Maori people of New Zealand. They’ve passed on much to us, the Native people who are alive today. Much has been passed on to us from ancestors. They passed on to us many of the genetic characteristics, of course, through DNA, and of course because of that we may be particularly good with something or other. Like we may be…that’s why you get people who are different. Some people are good hunters, some people are good fishermen, some people are good something else. So, we have all of these varied talents which help to keep the community strong and vibrant. Much like the body is specialized; the body has its own specialties. Like we do better with walking with our feet than we do with our hands although I know that I can walk maybe ten feet with my hands, upside down but it’s not practical. So, my feet are specialized in that way. I can walk distances, I can run distances, so community is similar to the body in that way—everybody seems to have a talent.

TS        Well, there’s a whole bunch, maybe…you wanted to talk about the modern (missionaries?) Why don’t you do that now because there is a lot that is starting to merge into the relationship with the land. 

BF       Yeah, the modern day, so-called modern-day missionaries or clergy, it really…the way in which they present themselves in their beliefs, they’ve made it so irrelevant to many young Mi’kmaw people. They keep talking about the same old stuff for so long. It’s time that they either changed in the way they present themselves or spirituality, or it’s time that they began rather than to dictate to us as to what we should believe and how we should believe it, it’s time that they studied the culture and the language of the Mi’kmaw people, which usually they never do. They might learn a few phrases.  Or, it’s time for them to leave us alone altogether so we could re-develop again spiritually. They stand in the way of true spiritual enlightenment because they feel they have the answers to what God is and the greatest obstacle to God we feel, is your notions of God. That’s the greatest obstacle. If they could get away from making us feel, making the Mi’kmaw people feel that they have, they’re closer to God because perhaps they are wearing a white collar or went to seminary. If they could get rid of that notion, if they could impress upon the Mi’kmaw people it’s that nobody needs an intermediary least of all a priest, that Jesus is not the only way. They have to acknowledge that, that alienates many Mi’kmaw people, it alienates at least a million Muslims, a billion Muslims…

TS        And the Jews and the Buddhists, and all the world religions basically.

BF       Yeah, that’s a terrible thing. I want for that Catholic church, and many other Christian churches of other denominations to wake up and say “Perhaps we were wrong is saying that Jesus is the only way.” My feeling is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the way that Mi’kmaw people understood

[ Change of tape]

BF       There is nothing wrong, was I was saying, in the way the Mi’kmaw people understand the Creator and the way that they relate to the creator, and it’s a terrible disservice to our culture and our language and our beliefs whereby someone could come in and say, “What you are doing and what you have done in the past to honour the creator is wrong.” It’s time for the churches to either recognize that that there’s nothing wrong with being a Native person and believing what you want to believe.

The other thing is its causing problems in this regard; we have a few Native people in Cape Breton for instance, and I’m sure probably in the mainland, who have left Catholicism because they have been so disillusioned by it and have moved on and adopted other religions. For instance, we have Mi’kmaw people who have left Catholicism to become Mormons, to become Bahais, to become Jehovah’s witnesses, and so on. Why should they do that? I think that they shouldn’t have to. Changing religions to me is not much more than changing your cloths. What has it done to change you? That’s the question. And if you change religion simply because you were disillusioned by the one that you were in, then changing religions is not going to do it for you. Sure, it might give you a relief, a temporary relief, but it won’t do much more for you than that. Don’t change religions; I would advise my people not to…if you want to leave the Catholic church leave it; I don’t care. But don’t go to another religion; study your own language, study your own culture, study your own spirituality. You don’t have to go anywhere else; you don’t have to go to any Christian religion, and you don’t have to go to any other…you don’t have to adopt any other Native spirituality; you don’t have to go to the Cree, or the Ojibway, or the Mohawks. It’s great that we can learn from them, yes, we can get advice from them, and then perhaps we can incorporate some of the things which are good into our spirituality because we have lost so much over time because of this domineering attitude by the Catholic church. But I think it’s really… the time has come now to move along with study and move away from our conditioning by the Catholic church and by other Christian churches. And let’s reexamine what happened to us, and let’s reexamine what our culture and what our language has to offer, which would enhance our spirituality.

TS        What is that?

BF:      What is what?

TS:       Well, when you talk about…you, yourself obviously examine you culture and your spirituality in terms of [Inaudible: your spirituality?] So, what would you say your spirituality is?

BF       Well, sure.  Native spirituality is…I notice that many of the Mi’kmaw people who have gotten degrees in some prestigious universities, shall we say, have gone out and…I’ve listened to some who have spoken to non-Native peoples at universities, at museums and so on. Suddenly, while I’m sitting there listening to them, they’re coming up with these concepts which I have never, never heard about.

TS        Can you give me an example?

BF       Sometimes they give you, for instance, rules and regulations that supposedly exist in our communities, and they come up sometimes with these certain levels of relationship, let’s say, with the Creator or creation that I’ve never ever heard about— I’ve never heard anything like this in my life, and I’ve had an opportunity to listen to elderly women and elderly men, all my life. I grew up with legends, I grew up with language and so on…never heard any of this stuff. And yet, suddenly they’re talking about things that I don’t know…know anything about or have heard about.

Of course, I examined them; I took the time and the trouble to find out, “Where did they get this?”  And my feeling is that they certainly did not get it from the Elders, from the Mi’kmaw Elders. Most of the time, they got it from either other Native cultures, or they have read about it in books that were written about other cultures, which may not be North American Aboriginal, which may have come from somewhere else. But I sit there sometimes listening to this, and they come up with these exotic and esoteric guidelines, rules, and regulations, which have absolutely no bearing on reality. So, why do they feel that they have to impress the non-Native as to the sophistication of Mi’kmaw spirituality? I don’t think that there is any sophistication to Mi’kmaw spirituality. I think it’s simple; I think it’s down to earth; I think it’s beautiful; I think it’s realistic; and I think its energizing; and I think its mind-feeding.

So, where do all these great rules and regulations come from? You know? They certainly didn’t exist in this culture, the Mi’kmaw culture. Yet we have some Mi’kmaw people, supposedly the educated ones, preaching about stuff we never heard about-never existed in our community. Even though—and I’ve looked at it historically as well—and I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve looked at what the missionaries had said, you know the mistakes that they have made, and I don’t see any of this stuff existing. So, this material is coming from elsewhere.

TS        Are you…not to mention any names of whoever it is who teaches (inaudible) as traditional values (inaudible), for instance, and written them (inaudible). The trouble with people doing with research is that they are looking for things to reference. So, if it’s written, you go, “Well so and so said it and it’s written.” Right?         

BF       Yeah, they’re certainly not my reference. And anybody who is a thinker, any Mi’kmaw person who’s a thinker would have to question all of that. Like, I’ve just finished having a conversation with a woman from Big Cove. The lady’s a teacher, she’s in her 50s, or just about to turn 50…and she was also in a similar situation in Big Cove, New Brunswick whereby she grew up with her aunts and uncles, fathers, grandfathers, grandmothers that told…that spoke of legends and told stories, you know taught her and so on and so forth. And some of this stuff she’s actually called me on, and she never heard of any, of any of this stuff and I said, “Well! You’re right! Neither have I.”  So, who makes these rules and regulations? I would like to know. I don’t want to embarrass anyone when they’re talking, but I’d like to know where do you get this stuff? And certainly not from the community, certainly not from any Elder! (laughs).

TS        I know with this particular woman…she (grew up in the community?) and her mother and father are Mi’kmaw, right? So, she would’ve grown up with that stuff…. right? so… where did she get it?

BF       I would want to know where she gets it.

TS        Okay.

BF       Sometimes there are things for instance which, people can pick up at meetings, you know, when they go through meetings out west and they discuss things… you know, to do with spirituality or education or something, then suddenly it arrives in our community, and someone claims it as being there invention, and that’s simply…that’s simply plagiarism. And it just…someone tries to pass it off as their own, either their own idea, or they got it from an Elder, or they put it together themselves, no I think that that’s…that’s just plagiarized material.

TS        Okay. Hard to know. It’s very confusing.

BF       Yeah, well then we have a lot of people who have a little bit of knowledge, a little bit of knowledge who go around masquerading as spiritual leaders or sometimes as even medicine people, you know?  And ah, or who may know a few phrases in the Mi’kmaw language, or who may know the odd Mi’kmaw chant. And suddenly they somehow jostle their way on(to) a pedestal, whereby the non-Native community looks upon them as the one and only. You know? Or the authority. So what we’d like to do…what I would suggest for non-Native people if they want to learn more about the Mi’kmaw people, how they really are, go to the community and never mind people like me, or other people

TS       (laughs. “Forget this book! That could be the subtitle…Or Forget this Book”.

BF       That’s right. You’ve got to go to people who are…. go to the community and talk to the real people.

TS        So, in the language or instance, just going along with ‘spirituality’…what is it (about) the language, [this is difficult to hear. TS is referring to the simplicity and profundity] spirituality that makes it Mi’kmaw sprituality?

BF       The question is?

TS        Well I’m just trying to bring us back onto a language basis as well, but I’m saying…you said you know, people leaving the Catholic church, and instead of moving on and jumping to another religion , (look at) their own religion, their own culture, and to see, not sophisticated necessarily, but something very simple, beautiful…So I’m saying now, Bernie, back to the language base, how does that simplicity and beauty….can you see that in the language and, if so, how does the language reflect that simplicity that you are  talking about, I would assume would be embodied in the language.

BF       Yes, it is. In fact, as I’ve stated many times before there’s no way that the Mi’kmaw people could look at reality any other way except in that it’s constantly changing and it’s constantly moving. I mean, that is reality; this is the way that the world really is. And I like the idea in that the Mi’kmaw people are not stuck so much with the way things were. What worked? What was spirituality once may not serve as spirituality today. Now, modern day Mi’kmaw people who are rediscovering their spirituality sometimes want to say, well! This is the way it used to be; this is the way it always will be. And that’s terrible, that’s false. If our culture and our language is not evolving then it will come to a standstill and it will just get stale, and it will die like anything else. It will oxidize. I think that our language still, and our culture can be still vibrant, and anyone who tries to rope it and stall it is asking for trouble. Yes, you might say things were, you know there were things that we looked upon as being very spiritual at one point, and sape’wik or ‘holy’; they’re of no value any longer. Yes, they had their uses at one time; they don’t anymore. It’s time to let go of your raft after you cross the river because to carry it on your back the rest of the way is nothing but…it’s cumbersome, it’s heavy and you have no use for it anymore. You can’t get into the door of a house with that raft on your back!

TS        So there’s…so you’re saying it’s more about the spirituality (inaudible) I mean in other words. What I see a lot of  (inaudible) because they are looking for the external manifestation.

BF       Who does?

TS        [difficult to hear] People, people who ask me questions. You know, they’re looking for the motifs or the whatever, I say “Yeah, it’s in the way (?) relate, probably not even in  a conscious way,  necessarily….how people conduct themselves or the way they give importance to a god to and it seems in the way and it seems as though, in terms of spirituality, we’re seeing some of the same thing— it’s not that spirituality goes away; it just reapplies itself.

BF       That’s right, that’s absolutely right, much like everything else…. I mean, if God is a verb, then….

TS        That’s the name of the book! (laughing)

BF       That’s right (laughing). If god is a verb, then things…. Then ‘it’, ‘he’, or ‘she’ must change and evolve. Well, if that entity could do that, then it means that everything else must be able to do that including spirituality.

TS        [Inaudible] Mi’kmaw language, or something like that. Alright. You like that?

BF       Yeah.  If God Is a Verb…, and then Bernie Francis. That would be good. So anyway, basically, to go back, I think that…I would discourage people from being stuck on what used to be. I would never discourage them from studying what used to be and taking off from what used to be. But there are times when you must let go of all of those things because really, to hold onto them is artificial and they are of no value. It’s time to make those changes. And it’s not…it won’t diminish, you know…the importance of spirituality; it will enhance it and make it more modern, more up to date and so on.

TS        A question I was asking is would you talk a bit about what you’ve termed the associative quality of the language, and the relational sense of things being defined or termed or a working….in association with something else or a father not being able to exist in and of himself without a possessive relationship to his son. Would you talk about that in terms of world view and that whole sense of connectedness with things?

BF       The notion of a concept such as the word ‘father’, it must have been very difficult, it must have been difficult for the missionaries when they arrived. See, the first thing, of course, that they wanted to do when they arrived-and you’ll see this in the old catechisms written in the Mi’kmaw language, the first question is, “How do you know if someone is a Christian?”Tali-kjiji’t wen alasutmewinuin? This is the question, “How do you know if they’re Christian?”  And, of course, the answer is, Ta’n eta tel-klujjiewto’sit. You’ll see this, again, it means…it says, “According to how s/he blesses him/herself.” (This is a slight variation from the recording in a recent translation given to me by Dr. Francis in which he says, “You’ll know him in the way he or she blesses himself.”) “And how does he bless himself?” “He touches h/her right hand to h/her forehead, then to h/her left side of the chest, then to h/her right side of the chest, and he says, Wtinaqn eta ika’toq wtukwejank, tujiw wpuskunk patatujk, tujiw wpuskunk inaqnek, aq teluet: Ta’n teluisit wekwisit Niskam, eujjit Niskam aq weji-uli-Niskam, ‘In the name of the Father, the son, and the Holy Ghost.’”

It was important that this, this idea of blessing yourself to identify yourself as being Christian was the first and foremost thing that these missionaries wanted to teach.  The problem was they must have had some great difficulty, and I’ve considered this over the years, is that there really is no word for ‘father’ as an independent noun in the Mi’kmaw language. What do I mean by this? It means that the word ‘father’ by itself doesn’t exist. In Mi’kmaw, it has to be possessed. In other words, before you can be a father, you must be someone’s father. That’s why you must…you couldn’t say ‘In the name of the father’ in the Mi’kmaw language. And that’s why you say, Ta’n teluisit wekwisit Niskam. In other words, “In the name of the father who has a son,” and eujjit Niskam aq weji-uli-Niskam, which translates to mean, “and of the son who has a father.”
So, it has to be, there has to be relationships going on there, and they’re inseparable. If you say, nujj, which is the word for my father, you can’t separate the ‘my’ from ‘father’. Same thing with kujj, which is ‘your father’, and wujil which is his or her father. They can’t be, you know…they can’t be separated. So, naturally the missionaries had to get around it somehow, and they got around it by saying, ‘In the name of the father, who has a son, and of the son who has a father’ So, that must have been kind of a strange concept for them to deal with. But that’s that way for many other, let’s say for instance body parts. Also, many of them are impossible of not being possessed; they have to be possessed.

TS        We were also talking about colours.

BF       That’s also very important. It’s strange and it’s very different in the sense that colour is an adjective in English, and they’re usually used to describe something or other. But, in the Mi’kmaw language, once again colour is a verb, which is kind of interesting because…to do with race, it’s kind of interesting. If you look at someone for instance who is discriminated against because he or she is ‘black’, it would be kind of a foreign idea in the Mi’kmaw language to discriminate against because of his colour because when you say the word ‘black’, or ‘he or she is black’, maqtewe’k  you are really saying, ‘he or she is in the process of being black’ because there is no word for black by itself, it has to be, there has to be a relational thing there as well. So, in other words you’re saying ‘he or she is in the process of being black’ but maybe he or she may be a different colour tomorrow. It’s like a car that sits in the sun, like a red car, although you might say mekwe’k or it’s in the process of being red, you know, if it sits in the sun long enough, you see that the colour would begin to change, because of the…because of the heat of the sun. So, though it may be red today, it may be off red tomorrow, you know? That kind of thing. So, colour is…they conjugate fully just like other intransitive verbs.

TS        One other thing is, in that relational, associative, was….and I don’t know how many colours there originally were…

BF       Four major ones. Yes. 

TS        Black, red, yellow, white. Now, I don’t know if this relates to other things like later colours like violet or purple, or blue, but the way they were translated…that they…were ‘like the sky’. Blue ‘like the sky’. Is that correct?

BF       Ah, yeah, there are other colours, there are other terms as well to describe the colour blue, and others, I just don’t remember them. Ah, but ‘sky’ is one word, yeah, musquanamu’k which means colour of sky; stoqnamu’k, which is green that is colour of…you know, Evergreen. That sort of thing.

TS        But I mean…. why I keep harping on that, it’s going deeper and I’m just trying to see…. You can’t say a colour without associating it with a tree, or sky. It seems to me anyway, there’s always this relationship; it can’t be separated, going back to what we were talking about.

BF       Well that’s the way it was with the original four colours that I gave you. Red, white, black, and yellow. I mean, something has to be thus coloured to be able to refer to it, you know what I mean?

TS        Yeah, which I think is very…. (Inaudible). But like, the later colours that got introduced. or that were created, (inaudible) or purple. but would they have that same quality?

BF       Yes, it’s the same kind of thing. Let me see. Yes, it’s pretty much the same thing now that I think about it. [

[Break when phone rings]

TS        I think this might have to do with the holophrastic quality of the language but I’ve always been struck in the legends, and the language, and dances that you can seem to compress a number of layers of meaning into one phrase or one word, as opposed to a lengthy explanation of many aspects that would take many words in English. Is that true in the Mi’kmaw language?

BF       Yeah, I would say that…I would be more inclined to say that the…. description of things, and movements are quite specific depending on the infix, or morphological infix that you put into a word. Infix is just something in the middle…suffix, prefix. It all depends on the, you know, it could be a small morpheme. Like the word…the morpheme tes means kind of like a bouncy kind of movement. Like Pemtesink, ‘s/he bounces along,’ you know? Whereas Pemleka’t, ‘s/he walks along,’ that kind of thing, you know? Pemu’naqiet, which is ‘s/he jumps along,’ you know what I mean?  This sort of thing. You can put into almost any infix in the middle, and it will give you a different description of how the person is.

TS        You’ve certainly said in the past how flexible the language is, which also seems very important. It’s very easy to [inaudible] I could be wrong, go along with this whole sense of  truth and the situation shifting all the time, to have a flexible language that can meet each situation. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but that’s what I thought…. But then what I see in the legends and the dances…. like when I ask you about ‘earth’, and you give me a little description, yet there’s all this meaning as well, it seems as if things (have) many layers of meaning that both place you spiritually and physically in a very practical sense, you know, give you very practical knowledge yet at the same time keeping in contact with that larger meaning of everything.  That seems to just run as a theme through everything, like bringing many layers into one moment. You have talked somewhat about that in the past as well. I call it in my thesis, that language is very literal and descriptive at the same time [inaudible] Is that true do you think?

BF       I have to think about that.

TS        You’re just going over that section, that one on there?

BF       Oh yes.

TS        Okay, slow but steady.

BF       Well ah, you’re going to Fredericton when? Monday?

TS        Monday. I’m going up to Eel Ground first actually. But you’ve got…I sent you that list of topics you and I talked about so if you want to add to them…

BF       Yeah. Oh yeah, we’ll add to them.    

(TS then shows BF some of the RayTel video Margaret Johnson loaned her of Chapel Island and Membertou.)  

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