The Language Of This Land Mi Kma Ki

The ancient landscapes of Eastern North America are reflected in the language and cultural expressions of its Indigenous peoples, the Mi'kmaq. The rhythms, sounds and patterns of their language are inextricably bound with the seasonal cycles of the animals, plants, winds, skies, waterways and trade routes. The Language of this Land, Mi'kma'ki is an exploration of Mi'kmaw world view as expressed in language, legends, song and dance. Using imagery as codes, these include not only place names and geologic history, but act as maps of the landscape. Sable and Francis illustrate the fluid nature of reality inherent in its expression - its embodiment in networks of relationships with the landscape integral to the cultural psyche and spirituality of the Mi'kmaq. Language has sustained the Mi'kmaq to the present day, a product of a lineage of Elders who spoke it, who danced the dances and walked this land, Mi'kma'ki, carrying its traditions forward despite centuries of cultural disruption, discrimination and degradation.

In L'nu'k: The People, First Nations educator Theresa Meuse traces the incredible lineage of today's Mi'kmaq people, sharing the fascinating details behind their customs, traditions and history. Discover the proper way to make Luski (Mi'kmaq bread), the technique required for intricate quillwork and canoe building, what happens at a powwow and how North America earned its Aboriginal name, Turtle Island.

Since the Renaissance, liberal education has as its core tradition a Eurocentric multidisciplinary humanism--the study of literature, art, philosophy and history--grounded in ancient Greek and Latin texts. In what may be termed cognitive imperialism, the academy has largely ignored Aboriginal perspectives of humanity. In this volume, Mi'kmaw and non-Mi'kmaw scholars, teachers and educators posit an interdisciplinary approach to explicate and animate a Mi'kmaw Humanities. Drawing on the metaphor of a basket as a multilayered metaphor for engaging postsecondary institutions, these essays reveal historical, educational, legal, philosophical, visual and economic frameworks to develop a knowledge protocol that can direct, transform and enrich conventional Humanities within the complex dynamics of territory, energy, stewardship, alterity and consciousness.

The Mi’kmaq of eastern Canada were among the first indigenous North Americans to encounter colonial Europeans. As early as the mid-sixteenth century, they were trading with French fishers, and by the mid-seventeenth century, large numbers of Mi’kmaq had converted to Catholicism. Mi’kmaw Catholicism is perhaps best exemplified by the community’s regard for the figure of Saint Anne, the grandmother of Jesus. Every year for a week, coinciding with the saint’s feast day of July 26, Mi’kmaw peoples from communities throughout Quebec and eastern Canada gather on the small island of Potlotek, off the coast of Nova Scotia. It is, however, far from a conventional Catholic celebration. In fact, it expresses a complex relationship between the Mi’kmaq, Saint Anne, a series of eighteenth-century treaties, and a cultural hero named Kluskap. Finding Kluskap brings together years of historical research and learning among Mi’kmaw peoples on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. The author’s long-term relationship with Mi’kmaw friends and colleagues provides a unique vantage point for scholarship, one shaped not only by personal relationships but also by the cultural, intellectual, and historical situations that inform postcolonial peoples. The picture that emerges when Saint Anne, Kluskap, and the mission are considered in concert with one another is one of the sacred life as a site of adjudication for both the meaning and efficacy of religion—and the impact of modern history on contemporary indigenous religion.

First published (1939), as Leçons grammaticales théoriques et pratiques de la langue micmaque of Rev. Father Pacifique Buisson, The Mi'kmaw Grammar of Father Pacifique is a vast and important collection of information on the Mi'kmaw language. It represents a tradition of Mi'kmaw grammatical studies by missionary priests that spans more than 200 years, from the days of abbé Pierre Maillard (ca. 1710-1762), to Father Pacifique, who, although he intended his grammar to be a guide to other priests who wanted to learn Mi'kmaw, seems to have been the last priest to speak the language fluently. The purpose of updating the orthography is, of course, to give the reader who does not know the language exact information on the pronunciation of each Mi'kmaw word. This was not an important goal for Pacifique, since he recommends, in the original, that the pronunciation should be obtained from a native speaker. Now that the language has been lost from many communities so that native speakers are not as available as they once were, it has become crucially important to use the new, exact, orthography, so that the written word can be used to convey as much information as possible on the accepted pronunciations.

Regardless of Canada's governmental attitude of entitlement, First Nations, Métis and Inuit lands and resources are still tied to treaties and other documents. Their relevance seems forever in dispute, so it is important to know about them, to read them, to hear them and to comprehend their constitutional significance in contemporary life. This book aims to reveal another side of the treaties and their histories, focusing on stories from contemporary perspectives, both Mi'kmaw and their non-Mi'kmaw allies, who have worked with, experienced and indeed lived with the treaties at various times over the last fifty years. These authors have had experiences contesting the Crown's version of the treaty story, or have been rebuilding the Mi'kmaq and their nation with the strength of their work from their understandings of Mi'kmaw history. They share how they came to know about treaties, about the key family members and events that shaped their thinking and their activism and life's work. Treaties were negotiated in good faith with the King or Queen with an objective of shared benefits to both parties and members. In Living Treaties, the authors offer the stories of those who have lived under the colonial regime of a not-so-ancient time. Herein are passionate activists and allies who uncover the treaties, and their contemporary meanings, to both Mi'kmaq and settler societies and who speak to their future with them. Here also are the voices of a new generation of indigenous lawyers and academics who have made their life choices with credentials solidly in hand in order to pursue social and cognitive justice for their families and their people. Their mission: to enliven the treaties out of the caverns of the public archives, to bring them back to life and to justice as part of the supreme law of Canada; and to use them to mobilize the Mi'kmaw restoration and renaissance that seeks to reaffirm, restore and rebuild Mi'kmaw identity, consciousness, knowledges and heritages, as well as our connections and rightful resources to our land and ecologies.

This is a story about two stories and their travels through the written record. The written part begins in the mid-nineteenth century, when Silas T. Rand, a Baptist clergyman from Cornwallis, Nova Scotia, took as his task the translation of the Bible into Mi'kmaq-the language of the indigenous communities in the region. In the process of developing his vocabulary, Rand transcribed narratives from Mi'kmaq storytellers, and following his death, 87 of these stories were published in a book called Legends of the Micmacs. As his understanding of the language grew, Rand began to translate the stories as he heard them, and to record them in English. Until recently, it appeared that none of the early transcriptions in the original Mi'kmaq had survived. Then, in 2003, poet and essayist Peter Sanger uncovered two manuscripts among the Rand holdings in the library at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. One of these contains the story of Little Thunder and his journey to find a wife, as told to Rand by Susan Barss in 1847. The other is the story of a woman who survives alone on an island after being abandoned by her husband. It was told by a storyteller known to us now only as Old Man Stevens and dates from 1884. Both are among the earliest examples of indigenous Canadian literature recorded in their original language; the 1847 transcript being perhaps the earliest. Their publication in The Stone Canoe makes a significant contribution to our understanding of Mi'kmaq storytelling and indigenous Canadian literature. With the same passion for research and sleuthing that characterized his two previous prose publications, Spar (GP, 2002) and White Salt Mountain (GP, 2005), Peter Sanger provides commentary that recounts the adventure of his discoveries and the paths of written correspondence, library acquisitions, name changes, transcriptions, translations and human error that separate and reconnect two stories and their tellers. He also unpacks some of the complexities of Mi'kmaq cultural motifs as they emerge in these stories. At the heart of The Stone Canoe are the two stories themselves, including Rand's published versions, along with new translations and transliterations by Elizabeth Paul, a Mi'kmaq speaker and teacher of the Eskasoni First Nation. Paul provides new English translations, and Mi'kmaq transliterations of Rand's transcripts, as well as notes detailing issues of language and culture. The Stone Canoe also features artwork by Alan Syliboy, a Millbrook First Nation artist. Syliboy's original ink drawings illustrate scenes from the two narratives, employing some of the traditional patterns in Mi'kmaq art, and work visually alongside the translations and Sanger's engagement with the patterns contained in the stories.