The following interview is with Vivian Basque of Eskasoni (Eskissoqnik) First Nation in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.  It was conducted by Dr. Trudy Sable on August 2, 1990 at the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre in Halifax, N.S. as part of her independent research and interest in Mi’kmaw dance as a form of communication that mirrored the landscape of Mi’kma’ki. The research became part of Sable’s M.A. (1996) thesis about creating a cross-cultural science curriculum for Mi’kmaw students that integrated Mi’kmaw knowledge of the environment as well as teaching through the arts.

The archiving of this and other interviews was sponsored by the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre with funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage, Aboriginal Language Initiatives Program (2018-2021).

This interview conforms to the Smith Francis Orthography, the official orthography of the Nova Scotia Mi’kmaq except where spelling is from the speaker or specific source.

TS:        Is that the St. Anne’s celebration that you’re talking about?

VB:      Chapel Island mission.

TS:        Is that still done, what you’re saying, the all-night chanting?

VB:      No, not anymore. I guess everybody’s shy and they don’t want to get involved anymore with culture. People are going through ethno-stress, I call it ethno-stress.

TS:        Now, they are?

VB:      Yeah. They don’t necessarily want to be Mi’kmaq and they’re being pulled in all kinds of directions. And they don’t want to do things that are Mi’kmaw anymore.

TS:        I thought it was the opposite. It seemed more and more groups were pulling together.

VB:      We started Mi’kmaw dancing in Eskasoni (Eskissoqnik), and over here now we have a Mi’kmaw dance troupe.

TS:        Yeah, I saw you at Naropa one night. I came and saw you and your mother chanting.

VB:      We danced last Thursday here and we’re going to be dancing a few more times. I can give you a schedule.

TS:        I would very much like to see that. So, you were taught by your mother, right, just by doing it? I’m curious, how traditionally, was dance just so much part of the culture, or were people actually taught to dance specially, or did everybody learn how to dance?

VB:      A long time ago, they said that everybody danced, because it was so part of nature. You have to do it because it was to keep in balance with nature, and this is what’s supposed to be happening. It’s an expression of self, like you dance when you’re happy, you dance when you’re sad. You sing when you’re happy, you sing when you’re sad. That’s the kind of thing, you connect the two, eh? And they do dancing for war. They do dancing for spirits, to call out spirits. They used to, not anymore. Like, you know, the people, the Indian people, they get really scared now when things happen, when supernatural things happen. It really scares them, you know. That’s what scares them, when something happens beyond what they really can understand. And if they do any kind of rituals and something happens out of the ordinary, extraordinary, it scares them. They think it’s the devil’s work or you know. But a long time ago, it didn’t scare the people and what they found it  in rituals. The Roman Catholic, not the Roman Catholic, the Jesuit priests said they had seen people being scratched by somebody that was unexplainable, nobody was there, nobody was doing anything to this person that was dancing. We don’t do those anymore. And if they do any kind of ritual, like if they see a ghost, they get really scared.

TS:        So now they sort of separate from that. There is no dance for it, there’s no connection with it?

VB:      No. But there used to be dance for births; there used to be dance for wars. They used to have dance for death. There was dance for Wi’kupaltimk, That means celebration of, it’s sort of like a bar mitzvah, or something

TS:        Like a feast, or a rite?

VB:      Yeah, where a boy gets his first hunt. They had celebration for that, and dances. They had dances for marriages, they had dances for divorce. Like if you can’t produce a child with this person, you are allowed to divorce. But they never called it divorce. They have all kinds of chants and dances.

TS:        Who would dance the divorce dance, the woman or the man, or both? Was it sort of a formal thing?

VB:      I think it was something that was sad, eh? That people cannot produce a child and realizing that they can’t, then they go their separate ways. It wasn’t something that just happened. You have to really feel for it. Like my Mom sings a song that says how bad a person felt. Like, it’s something that you can’t even explain. It comes from deep in your heart. She says that, “You’ve broken my heart. My whole body aches. My whole spirit, wi’kupaltimk (inaudible)” or something like that, I forget what she…But the sounds, you know? You have the tape, don’t you have the tape that was over at Naropa? You can get a tape from them 

TS:        Yeah. Was chanting or singing always done with dancing? Was there ever a silent dance with no drum, ji’kmaqn?

VB:      I don’t really know. But I know they had dances to imitate animals and there was a snake dance. We don’t have that anymore. They had play dances – children that dance to occupy themselves.  Like they do all kinds of little things to each other or tease each other, we do that. Eskasoni (Eskissoqnik) dancers do that but the ones here in Halifax, we haven’t got to that yet.

TS:        What happened to the snake dance? Was that just lost? Was there any record of that?

VB:      There’s some records of it, but there is no record of how it was done. But you know they say they go around hissing, [makes hissing sound], like that. I don’t know what the sounds the snakes made at the time, but that’s what they used to do.

TS:        They’re supposed to be rattlesnakes, right?

VB:      Not rattlesnakes here. There’s no rattlesnakes

TS:        That’s funny, because I’ve read two accounts where it said rattlesnake. Ruth and I were talking about where rattelsnakes would have come from. There aren’t any.  So, you just called it a snake dance then?

VB:      Well, that’s what it says in the history books, it says the snake dance. But I was watching the other day, snakes mate and the way the snakes mate is that they do this dance. They look at each other, and you know. And then there’s a legend in our, in (Silas) Rand. Like there’s a legend that says that there is this vain woman that married a man, and they had a child. And she wouldn’t give the time of day to any other person in the village or, like, you know, she was really a vain woman. Anyway, then they got married and when they were leaving the village, they were going to go visit his parents, they disappeared as snakes, three snakes. Like, you know, that’s in the legends. I don’t know if there is a relationship between that and a snake mating, or the snake just coiling around. The other people dancing in the west and all that – they have a snake that goes all the way up to heaven, like up into the heavens. They have this dance that separates the snake, it goes into parts. One part goes up and it goes into the sky and the second part goes, and later on jumps over this barrier and goes up into the sky. They have all different… So, it’s really hard to pinpoint or even to find out what is that snake dance.

TS:        What do you think the symbolism of snake would be, yourself? What’s your intuition? Why would they make the snake into such a symbol or mimic it in the dance?

VB:      I don’t know really, I’d have to think about that more. I think that there’s something about Jipijka’m in our culture. In the books they call it Jipijka’m and it’s spelled Cherpaaalm (Note: this is Silas Rand’s spelling) or something like that. Indian people have always thought that when a person, even today that still happens, like people will tell you, “Jipijka’m!”, something like that. You ask them, what is a Jipijka’m?, and they won’t know. It’s been passed down for a long long time so it might have been something negative, and in the books that I have read, Jipijka’m means a horned serpent. So, I don’t know what that is. There’s a lot of missing things, like you know, that you don’t really realize. Sometimes it has to happen in a dream. Like you have to really find out what it means. Like, somebody else will tell you, because you have to go into that other world and somebody will tell you, “This is what it means, this is why that happened.”

TS:        Do you still do that? Do you feel as though you yourself do that, have a dream, do you feel like you do that, too?

VB:      Yeah, I go into dreams and find out information that way. But my mother is really good for that, like she goes into dreams and she can go to a place and find what she had dreamed. So, like it’s interesting to find out all this other stuff. Like, Indian people long time ago had I think what they call today telekinetic power. Telekinesis. My family can still do that. They can talk to each other, and telepathic and…

TS:        Yeah, I think I do that with my family too, you know. It’s happened a lot. I think sometimes it’s just a matter of how much that you can just let that happen

VB:       Like, it’s so hard to understand. Things happen in this world, and you go into different states of mind. Nobody can explain it. A long time ago, when people were trained to be medicine men, like they would have better control over their powers and what they can do and all that.

TS:        I think that’s true, because they understood more, you know, just because they were able to experience different things. Is that what you’re saying?

VB:      Yeah

TS:        Yeah, I think that’s true

VB:      Now there’s no medicine men, there’s no people that… There are some people who are interested in medicine and then there are some people that are interested in…. The medicine man that should be is not here. Like there is no medicine man that can perform rituals, that can talk about medicine, that can go into different spirit worlds, that can go into dream worlds, that can do all the things that a medicine man should do.

TS:        I thought there was one, Noel Knockwood, no?

VB:      No. He doesn’t even do medicine.

TS:        Ok, so you’re talking about someone who really knows how to do it, go into some kind of spiritual world and tap into something, whatever we call it

VB:      People go out, they go into the West and they bring back all these rituals that are not Mi’kmaw, and like you know, I find that that’s what ethno-stress means. Like people trying to find themselves but not being, like you know, grabbing onto something, and they don’t realize. Like this weekend when I did that performance, when we did our performance, people admitted to us that they have lost their dance, that they have gone into the United States and gotten a dance like fancy dancing and traditional dance, and what else, they have done what do they call it?  Jingle dancing. They do all these dances that I thought were all Western and they have gotten from somewhere else. They’re not part of their tribe. There’s no tribal dances anymore. It’s like a national dance. What we want to keep here is our dances. Even though people go out and they come back, and they do all these dances. And we look at them and we say, “Gee, that’s not our dance. It’s something else.” And I tell people, if we dance and we do Intertribal dance, somebody else’s dance, I say, this is an Intertribal dance. When we do a Mi’kmaw dance, we do it, and I say this is a Mi’kmaw dance.

TS:        Your mother, she’s the main person for preserving the dances?

VB:      And the culture.

TS:        Is that something that was given to her or was that just something she did. You said before that everybody used to dance, but then I know from your performance at Naropa, you said something about, it was forbidden. You weren’t allowed to…

VB:      In 1645, like, they gave a circular that  to the Catholic people, and the Mi’kmaw people were Catholic, most of them were all Catholic, that it was forbidden to dance, that it was greatest probability of dancing with the devil, that’s what it says here. And so, people got scared. This devil business really scared a lot of people. Even the other people, like Scottish people and Irish people, they don’t dance anymore like they used to. Some people would dance for two days, like (unclear) and… They don’t do that anymore because of being scared to dance with the devil.

TS:        That’s an interesting point, isn’t it?

VB:      That’s what it says in here. The Catholic church didn’t want people, like you know, when they were dancing, to get all kinds of things, different things in their minds.

TS:        They’re so afraid of their bodies, aren’t they? That’s still true. You see it a lot in our culture. People are very afraid of expressing themselves in their bodies.

VB:      I like dancing.

TS:        I love it

VB:      My family, the only reason why we started really dancing, is that we were a performing family. My family went around and did guitar playing, drums, and fiddle music, and singing. My sisters were dancers, like they can do Irish dances. They can do flame swallowing, they can do that. My brothers can, one of my brothers who’s dead now, he was a real good singer. And as we went along, we would do a two-hour performance, just our family, and as we went along, people would tell us, “Do you know how to Indian dance?” And we’d say no, eh? We can, but there was no chanters, and there was no dancers. Like there were best dancers in the community and there was best chanters, and people wouldn’t move, eh? Like the ethic of non-interference. Nobody would go and take the place of someone else. Nobody would go and make a fool out of themselves and go dance. Because there was no best dancers and there was no best chanters. And you don’t move until those people go and chant and go and dance. You dance around them.

            I was little, I was really little when I started dancing. I remember 4 o’clock in the morning my mom would come looking for us. Nobody would bother us. Nobody would like, you know, if a child is out at 4 o’clock in the morning now, you really worry, eh? At the time, you could hear the music still going on, it’s so small an area. We’d go and dance and dance. And you’re tired but you still keep on dancing because it’s so fun, and you go on and on. And my mom, she’d know that when the dancing is over, we’d come home. There would be nothing else to it. Like we wouldn’t go anywhere else. There was no drinking, there was no dope at the time or anything like that. I don’t what happened. People are telling other people to quiet down at 11 o’clock. I don’t know what happened, really.

TS:        This is just in your lifetime, you’re talking about

VB:      I’m not old, like I’m only 35 years old. But I remember that I was about 5 years old and I was allowed stay out till 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning. Sometimes it was sunrise when we went home because we were too tired, but then we would go on and on and on.

TS:        Was that the same dance that you were talking about before?

VB:      Yeah. One dance. We would do only one dance

TS:        Why was that? Why one dance?

VB:      Because that’s the only dance we remembered.

TS:        Oh, I see, ok. I thought there was a reason. And that was a Mi’kmaw dance, is that what you were saying?

VB:      That’s the only Mi’kmaw dance that we really remembered. But the people like, you know, they really got into it. Nobody ever dances like that anymore. Like, there’s a guy in the Wagmatcook Reserve, he’s the only one who can do that dance well. And there’s another guy, Joey Gould from Whycocomagh, he now lives in Afton. He’s the second one that can do that dance.

TS:        Why is that? Why don’t you know it, for instance

VB:      I can do it, I can do that dance. But I’m not like one of the, I wouldn’t consider myself the top. Like you have to have respect for all these other people that can do the dance better than you. And in Eskasoni (Eskissoqnik), you know this is what happened. There was a guy training the girls how to Indian dance, and the girls danced like the guys. But that’s the wrong way to dance. You have to dance what a girl has to dance, and the boy has to dance what the boy dances.

TS:        How much difference was there in different dances? Were there male dancers and female dancers and then, sometimes mixed together?

VB:      What we did – like Mi’kmaw dance that we – Ko’jua, we call them Ko’jua– there’s all different types of Ko’jua. And they sing them differently. They have different versions and they have different songs and all that. And we danced that basic one dance, Ko’jua. The girls, I don’t know, are supposed to dance more respectfully, and the boys, they just go wild. Like my father would jump around if he were… he would bounce around everywhere. Nobody, I have never seen anyone dance like that anymore. If I can take my dancers to this guy in Wagmatcook Reserve, like he’s really good, he’s really neat, the way he moves his feet. It seems as if he’s gliding across and gliding this way and gliding that way as if he’s dragging something out of the earth, you know. He’s really neat. These days, they can’t do that, because there is nobody there to train them. There’s only women there to train them but now it’s only my mom and over here, I try my best, but you know that’s only the level I can take them, up to the level that I can get to.

TS:        But that’s better than nothing! I’m sure it’s quite a bit better. There are some accounts where you read of people actually starting to tremble, their bodies trembling from whatever particular dance it was. Did you see that, ever?

VB:      I have never seen that happen. But I’ve read that too. Like, where people tremble and they pretend they take something, they dig a hole into the ground and something comes out. I don’t know what it is truly, because I’ve never seen it. But, Indian people, like I tell you now, they have done rituals that scared them and they were able to, like what really surprises me is that they were able to go into this other world; there’s one unit here, and then the next world or whatever, they can go into this other world so fast and it scares them. Like they went somewhere, and they were saying, this man, they were yelling, they were doing all kinds of things with their bodies, and you know, they were yelling to this man (John Edge?). His name was (John Edge?), and he was murdered in Eskasoni (Eskissoqnik). And, I don’t know if they were doing a dance, or if they… I know they were fooling around and yelling out. And what scared them, it took them into that world, and there was this man, and they saw him for a fact. It scared them off.

TS:        So, it scared them.

VB:      Yeah

TS:        Into another world? Is that what you’re saying?

VB:      It scares them so much. But things have happened, so extraordinary, things that never can explain. At a grave site, there was this eagle that flew over the people and hovered around them. And he was 4 feet, 5 feet above them. You know, things happen like that. And instead of people responding the way they should, they get scared and they run away.

TS:        Because they think it’s evil.

VB:      Yeah

TS:        I think that’s true

VB:      That’s so awful. I don’t know, it’s like taking people, they can only reach one level. They can’t go beyond the other level because they can’t. They’re scared, it’s because of the Catholic religion has made them believe that these things are terrible, eh?

TS:        I grew up Catholic. I’m not a Catholic. Your mother is, are you?

VB:      Yeah

TS:        So now how do you, knowing all this about how the missionaries, you know?

VB:      Have done?

TS:        Yeah. And all of the fear

VB:      Well, there’s a lot of things I can’t explain, you know.

TS:        How do you view yourself now as Mi’kmaw, with knowing your history with the missionaries? How much of your…

VB:      I really believe that I’m Indian first, I’m Mi’kmaw first, and then Catholic. When I was a girl, I was one of the most strongest Catholics in the reserve. Like I was the one that started the Eskasoni (Eskissoqnik) choir. I was the one that sang every Sunday at church. And when I started reading about the Indians and their plight with the missionaries, and all that would happen… People that were kept… The flag, it means a lot more to me than it would mean to another person. Like I would understand that this flag that we have is a symbol of illiteracy, illiteracy on our reserves because of this flag.

TS:        What was the flag?

VB:      The Mi’kmaw flag. The Mi’kmaq were given the patron Saint Anne and they started their own mission at Chapel island because they started hanging around with the other people, the French people, and they were given flags and national anthem, and you know, just so they can boost themselves up. So that they can’t start to read other books, they won’t start to read and write English, you know. They were illiterate, they were kept illiterate. That’s what these things mean to me. A lot of things mean different to other people, but now since I really became interested in my culture, like I’ve always been interested in my culture. As a matter of fact, I was surprised that most of the things that were inside my basement for all my life are now being taught in Mi’kmaw classes. They are being taught to people that don’t know anything about their culture. It helped me a lot to understand. Because when I was growing up, if somebody called me a squaw, I didn’t care, but some people, they get offended, they fight over something like that. If somebody called them savage, I wouldn’t care. I would think, I can go back to history (in my mind?) really quickly and I can find something that would settle me, like really fast. But other people, they were never able to do that, and they reinforced other people’s beliefs on them. Like, if somebody calls you savage and you beat them up, that reinforces their belief that you are a savage. A lot of things, like right now here at the school, this is what I’ve been telling people a lot. I’m involved in this course, I’m building up a course that builds up Indian peoples’ values, ideas, esteem, self, this concept of self that has everything included, like dancing and chanting and flags, national anthem and …   And you tell about gifts that you can get from each direction, the medicine wheel, and what psychology and philosophy and sociology of legends, while people interact. A lot of things that people are doing, that we are doing here at the school, so people can understand themselves better and realize you know, I’m a good person and I want to be Mi’kmaw. I don’t want to be anyone else but Mi’kmaw. I don’t want to be white, I don’t want to be Gaelic or French or any other values that people instill on us. That’s the way I believe, anyway

TS:        What would you say your values are?

VB:      Values?

TS:        Yeah

VB:      There are so many values. You have to have a lot of values. You have to have values in regards to nature. You have to have values in regards to the supernatural world. You have to have values in regards to your family, your life, yourself. You have to have values in regards to neighbors. And then, beyond that, your values in regards to community, outside everything else.

TS:        But in your dance, do you feel as though each dance has a different value, or a different symbolism?  This is sort of a vague             question. I guess I’m trying to understand the different textures of each of the…

VB:      Every time that I feel that we dance, we dance for a certain purpose. And it’s so ironic that it’s happening like that because I feel that a long time ago, that’s exactly what happened. Every dance that we ever danced was for a certain purpose. And the irony is it’s happening now. Every time we get invited to a children’s festival or a multicultural festival, or support for Oka, or support for something else, taxation that we lost, and you know, that kind of thing. I feel that it’s irony because that’s exactly what was happening a long time ago. They were dancing for those purposes.

TS:        Does it feel that way when you’re dancing too, that that dance has a particular whatever, rhythm or?   

VB:      Yeah. You feel it. You feel, like when you dance you go into this feeling that part of you is here, and part of you is way back there. And I feel like the petroglyphs that we have put on our clothes and all that, I want the people to realize, the children especially, to realize that we had so much more than people even know about. They have to go into that tribal consciousness, they have to go into that universal consciousness. Or if you go into that travel consciousness, then you’re able to go into that universal consciousness and that’s what’s going to save this world, eh? Going into that consciousness.   

TS:        I see dance as a really powerful way to do that.

VB:      It settles you and makes you really feel good. Like, you know, if you are nervous and you had bad experiences, then it settles you. It makes you feel really good.

TS:        What about sort of inviting, as well? I mean, aren’t there certain dances that invoke, you know, like in some legends they are sort of invoking powers, other powers.  

VB:      Maybe that might be happening, we don’t even know. How can anyone know what kind of things that you can get with dance? Eh? Over here, like that Cape Breton magazine, they say maybe you can dance with the devil. I don’t know, how can you know what you experience? How can you know what kind of emission you’re putting out to the people? Maybe this person thinks negative of you? Maybe after you finish dance and he won’t, you know? What kind of emission do we have? What kind of, like I feel that everybody has energy and they take it out. And I feel that when you’re being in a circle, like that, you will need a lot of power, and if it goes into other people’s minds, that’s wonderful. And the more you do it the more people you can, I don’t know, help going to some kind of consciousness, realize there’s a lot of good out there, eh? You can be happy, and you can do all kinds of, be happy with your family and friends. That’s the way I feel, anyway. My mom, she’s really, really, really, into what she feels. My sisters are, but they’re just starting to understand why everything happens in this world, you know, why everything. We took things differently than other people. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m here at the centre, because I just want to change the attitudes of the Indian people first before anyone else. And if I can do that, I feel like I’ve accomplished life. My life, anyway.

TS:        Well, it’s also just recognizing that it’s not lost. Those basic values … twentieth century and you know, blah, blah, blah

VB:      And there’s a lot of hypocrites, like you know, saying, “I’m Indian, and I’m proud to be Indian,” and all this stuff. There’s a lot of hypocrites and they turn around and walk around the streets drunk, and you know, make our image look bad. I don’t like that, eh? I’ve been asked to go with this certain person to meetings and all that, like to speak publicly, and I say No, because unless he has reached some kind of consciousness, I’m not going anywhere with him. And I give him all kinds of material, like you know, secretly. I want him to read and understand why he’s feeling like the way he’s feeling and go talk to his Elders because that’s really important. You have to go talk to Elders and realize who you are and then they realize, Gee, and then you start taking them down, eh? So many hypocrites that go around saying, “I’m Indian” and like you know, “This is what Indians should be doing.” And they go around being drunk. Indians were never drunk. It was just only recently that people started drinking. They have low tolerance now.

TS:        Do you train boys and girls in your dance troupe?

VB:      Yeah, we do. But I train the boys only to the level I can train them.

TS:        Even though they’re boys? Because you said before, boys have to learn boy parts, and girls, girl (parts)

VB:      They can’t get good, or better than what I have brought them to because I’m only me. And my mother is only her.

TS:        And, who are the men that you were talking about? 

VB:      Joey Gould, I called him. I wanted him to come teach the boys. Like he’s one of the best male dancers. Joey Gould has been dancing since he was about 4 years old. I remember people used to talk about him, “Oh, isn’t that kid good?” And I used to say, “I want to be better than Joey Gould, you know?” Their family was a really good dancing group.

TS:        So someone like him could teach the boys much more because he’s male?   

VB:      Yeah. And there’s another guy, he’s from Wagmatcook. He’s an older man, he’s about 70, no he’s about 60. Like he’s really good. He looks as if he’s gliding on air. Gliding on air while he actually really dancing on the ground. It’s really strange when you look at him. Like maybe that’s what they saw, maybe that’s what they wrote about, you know? Geez, it was nice, it was really neat. My father was a good dancer. He used to always danced because they came from the Grand Chief family where there was all kinds of things happening, people coming in. You would travel all the way to see Grand Chief, and that’s the kind of clan they were in, the Denny clan.     

TS:        Do you teach chanting to the children too, or just the dance?

VB:      They pick it up.

TS:        Do you chant as you dance? Well, I’ll see that on here. And the instruments?

VB:      No. No, I won’t chant. I can chant, but I really respect my mom and whenever she’s around, I let her.  And if my brother is here, even though he’s only been doing it for about 2 months, no not 2 months, a year or so, something like that, I let him because I want him to have pride in himself and I want him to stand up there and do it himself. I can do it. I did it here before, like you know, I really swallow my pride to go up there because I’m not the best kind of singer and I really have a hard time trying to do it.

TS:        Watching your mother and listening to one other tape I was thinking about me, from my culture, how we are taught to sing, you know.  I have an English-German background, and it seems like there is a whole different way. A lot of the texts talk about coming from the stomach, you know, sort of way down.

VB:      Diaphragm

TS:        Yeah. And we often come from way above, you know. So I’ve often wondered if someone you know, from my background could ever learn that kind of chanting. It almost seems hereditary. Do you know what I mean?

VB:      Yeah. I don’t even know something like that. It happens so fast, the kids pick it up, really fast.

TS:        Children are wonderful that way

VB:      Yeah. Like, I listen to people all the time. Like kids, they go around singing it in the streets, even if they are not Mi’kmaw. They sing it in the streets, and they sing it anywhere they want to.

TS:        I know. My daughter sings a lot too. Well, I should watch this video. And I have one more question, and I don’t know if this would ever be possible. I really want to learn different dances, and I don’t know if you open it up, or have classes. I mean, I would never think in terms of being a public dancer, but just to feel the rhythm, to feel the gestures of the dance. Do you ever do that for other people?

VB:      Well, we’re gonna have a practice on 1:30 Friday, for the kids. So, like you know, if you want to come along and dance with them.

TS:        Do you mind?

VB:      No, I don’t mind… You know what I do? Like, like I tell, when we go perform anywhere, like sometimes, there was an international waterfront convention in Sydney. It was international. All kinds of people came from many areas, from Japan and China, all these areas. They came and they were in Sydney. I feel that people should dance together. Never mind this business about that’s a Gaelic dance, that’s a Scottish dance, you know? I think that people should be dancing all dances together, you know? When we dance, we invite the people, like you know, come up with us. We know they’re not going to come up. We know. So, we go over there and we hold out both our hands and we say, “Would you like to come and dance with me?” And then they go up. It’s very rare that you’ll get some person that you have asked so close to you, say no. That’s what we do in Eskasoni (Eskissoqnik). Like the Eskasoni (Eskissoqnik) dancers, these ones here, we just started, eh? And I’m not really sure if I want to confuse them all that much until they’re really good into their routine. So, they’ll know where to go and they’ll know what they’re doing and right away when they’re young, they’re really young.

TS:        Are they all Mi’kmaq?

VB:      No, they’re mixed people. Like, there’s two Vietnamese children.

TS:        So you’d take any child that wants to learn?

VB:      Yeah. Well, the reason why I took these children is because they’re really good and my mother, when I showed her the video of them, another video at Halifax Cable-vision, maybe you can get that one too.  

[Break in tape]

Like I went to the school over there and I was teaching children, and they’d gotten really close to me and so I said, “They’ re really good dancers.” And I just let them go on. Whenever they want to come with us, they come. There is no sense in telling children, “No, you can’t dance …”

T:S        Do the children also learn instruments, … drums, you know

VB:      No. I haven’t taught these kids. In Eskasoni (Eskissoqnik), they do it really. You know, they do anything. The Eskasoni (Eskissoqnik) kids, they use Ji’kmaqn (unclear) all the time and then they dance around with it, so they know how to use rhythm and…

TS:        I have one more question for you. Were the shamans considered, or the medicine men considered specialists? Did they learn dances that no one else learned? Or did everybody know all the dances but they just were more…?

VB:      I think everybody knew all the dances.

TS:        Yeah. So it was never like audience and observers? I mean, it’s not like performances, and you perform for an audience…

VB:      Right now we’re performers, that’s what I

TS:        Yeah, but I meant traditionally, did you feel like

VB:      No. I remember that when I was a young girl everybody danced, but it was the same dance. One dance, Ko’jua. They called it Ko’jua

TS:        Well, are you sure you wouldn’t mind if I came and tried to …?

VB:      Tomorrow at 1:30

TS:       Are there other grownups, or will I be the solw…?

VB:      Well, like the other day, there was a lot of, I’m really glad when there’s Indian dancing. The other day we were practicing over here, and all these people joined in, and I was really happy. I was thinking, isn’t that neat? And I didn’t want to interfere. Like they were playing, like it’s a tape. So, I just sat in the background and pretended I even wasn’t watching.

TS:        Where was this, up here?

VB:      Upstairs, yeah. And I saw all these people dancing and having fun, and you know. It was really neat, something that we never do anymore.

TS:        That’s true. And actually most of the time you see people dancing, it’s either they’re a performer or when they’re drunk at a party. And it’s never just to dance, that I see. Well, boy! Thank you. I feel I should stop now. I’ve used up so much of your time.