The following video is the first part of a workshop on Mi’kmaw Chants, Songs, and Dances with Sarah Denny and Vivian Basque hosted by Naropa East, Halifax Nova Scotia. The workshop was organized by Denny Blouin (deceased) with assistance from Trudy Sable.

The digitizing and archiving of this video was sponsored by the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre, Halifax Nova Scotia, with funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage, Aboriginal Language Initiatives Program. 

VB:     But anyways, we just want to tell you what– a little bit about how we started, how my Mom started. And I want to just take you back further to 1874 where the Antigonish Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church sent the Indian people a circular, and they said that dancing was not allowed; it was not supposed to be part of a culture, it was not…it was something that was not supposed to be done because it’s generated other feelings. [laughter] So, they said to us: “You can’t do this anymore.” So, when our chants, when our dances died, our dances, our games, our language, in essence, our culture, it just went tumbling down. And, like, you know, there’s a lot of people helping us, a lot of people trying to revive us, and some are here.

But, my family performed Irish dances, Irish songs, Gaelic songs, Gaelic dances, Scottish songs, Scottish dances, rock songs, rock dances [laughs], country songs, but never Mi’kmaw songs and never Mi’kmaw dances. What was lacking was Mi’kmaw songs and Mi’kmaw dances; we didn’t perform anything from our culture. We decided to form a Mi’kmaw dance troupe in 1966, we really debuted in 1967 at the centennial year celebrations throughout the province. Our family ranged from four years to seventeen years at the time. Our father, the late Noel R. Denny, was a chanter. Being a successful bricklayer that he was, he rarely had the chance to really come with us and like, he had a lot of business work to do, so he’d stay back, and my mother, here, would secretly [smiles] do the stuff, like, she would do chanting, and organize the troop, and take us everywhere. So, that’s like, you know, she had to do all that.

But, she really started off in 1973 seriously at an Elders conference organized by the Mi’kmaq Association of Cultural Studies in Nova Scotia. After the conference she had access to some of the best and precious chants in Mi’kmaw land. There was a competition among twelve chanters at the time. They had three chants, each. Now, in our culture women are not allow to chant. She secretly practiced these chants, and then went back to these men and asked them: “Will I be able to perform this at a celebration? Will I be able to perform this at an event?” And she sang them, she sang them back to the people, and they would say… Like, in Mi’kmaw, you have to really understand Mi’kmaw culture, because the men, they will laugh at you, they’ll laugh, and it’s not a laugh of mockery, they’re not mockery– like, mocking you, they’re laughing that you can do it, that you can actually do something like this, and that’s what they did to her. In this first chant that she’s going to do tonight was given to her by the late Charlie Marshall of Truro.  He gave her the chant because he felt that, if she could chant this well, she might as well chant the National Anthem, and this is what it is:

[Saray Denny sings and drums the National Anthem in Mi’kmaw] [applause]

VB:     The Mi’kmaq have seven districts of land and are part of the great Wabanaki Confederacy. They call this chant Neskawet.  It might mean “war”, “mourning”, or even “celebration”. This is what a Cape Breton chief will chant, Unama’ki chief– I’ko

[Sarah Denny sings I’ko [applause]

VB:     Ji’kmaqn, this is a Ji’kmaqn. [demonstrates percussion instrument, Ji’kmaqn, by hitting on wrist] It’s like ash, and you pull it all together here [points to bottom of instrument where flat sticks are tied together], and you connect it here, bind it, and then you hit this until they form itself. They form the splints. 

Okay, this is Jukwa’luk.  It means “Bring your sister.”  It’s an invitational chant. When our people celebrated, they’d celebrate birth, accomplishment, and they’d want everybody to join in. And– and the celebration would last for days, or weeks, or even, you know, a long, long time anyway. It would just go on, and on. So, this is and invitational chant telling you to bring your sister.

[VB hands Ji’kmaqn to SD]

SD: [clacks Ji’kmaqn and begins singing song telling you to bring your sister. [applause]

[camera pans to view audience applauding]

[GAP IN VIDEO]

VB:     …ji’kmaqn songs, and it’s by– it’s about a little white dog; a man made a song about his little white dog that has a white foot. He had a broken foot.

[SD drums and sings Wapikatji’j about a little white dog] [applause] 

[GAP IN VIDEO] [SD drums and sings (unidentified song #1)] [applause]

VB:     Of course, there was divorce [laughter; laughs] in the Mi’kmaw culture. So, this next song is a marriage failure song. [laughter] And it’s for when a person goes into that state where they can’t find any peace, they can’t find happiness, and they just go around– walk around and sing this song to themselves. [laughter]

[SD sings Divorce Song]

VB:     … at least 400 years old. And it’s Kwanu’te, and Ben Christmas, the late Ben Christmas; he was appointed missionary by, I don’t know, a church… some kind of church, I don’t know which one it was; I think a Protestant church …to convert Mi’kmaq into Protestant, and he couldn’t. And so, like, this is the type of song that he had, and he passed it on to his family, and it came from the Christmas family in Sydney. And this is our final song, final song

[SD sings Kwanu’te [applause]