The Dominion - Mi'kmaq

Rebuilding the Wabanaki Confederacy

Miles — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 10:52:09 +0000

Non-Indigenous participate in Confederacy Gathering for first time in centuries

ST MARY'S FIRST NATION, UNCEDED WABANAKI TERRITORY (NB)—For the first time in several hundred years, non-Indigenous peoples were invited to participate in the last two days of the week-long Wabanaki Confederacy Gathering this September 1 and 2.

The Wabanaki (translated roughly as "People of the First Light") Confederacy's current incarnation comprises five principal nations—the Mik'maq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Abenaki and Penobscot—and stretches from the colonial borders of Newfoundland in the North, mid-Maine in the South, and parts of Quebec in the West.

At its zenith, the Confederacy consisted of close to 50 nations, went South to the mid-Carolinas, included most of the interior of the United States, and reached into Ontario.

Approximately 150 people attended the final two days of the almost week-long meeting, held on the shores of the Wulustuk (Staint John) river.

The open portion of the gathering, from the perspective of a non-Indigenous participant, can perhaps be described as a meeting between Indigenous and non-Indigenous environmental activists, placed into a paradigm in which environmental activism is no longer a lifestyle choice, or "something one does."

Invitation to participate in ceremony, and patient explanation on the part of the Indigenous hosts, brought about the notion of inter-connection between self and the natural world—so that the notion of 'activism' was simply replaced by the reality of "being."

"When we talk about Wabanaki people, we're also talking about Wabanaki people being the land, being the trees, being the animals, because in that cultural perspective, we're all related," says gkisedtanamoogk, the Gathering's fire keeper. "We're everything. We're not just a species standing apart from everything else."

The notion of special inter-dependence was also co-joined with the necessity of placing oneself into an historical narrative that is not static, but developing.

Portions of sacred bundles, which included ancient Wampum belts—themselves a recorded, as well as symbolic, history in bead work—and the box gifted from the French to the original Wabanaki Confederacy in 1701 upon their acceptance to participate in the Confederacy were brought out and explained, and allowed those in attendance to see themselves as part of something continuous, historic and challenging.

"Within the Wabanaki territory we're looking for allies that are going to stand against the total annihilation of our land and water and air," says jeaba-weay-quay (roughly translated from Obijway to 'The woman whose voice pierces'). "We're looking for allies who will help us to put our nation back together and put it back in order. And we're asking our allies to help us empower that. And in the process of doing that, they will be decolonizing us and they will be decolonizing themselves."

The notion of a fluid historical narrative also extends to the treaties that exist between the Wabanaki and those who have subsequently colonized their territories. The treaties that do exist are of peace and friendship, not of subservience of self and ceding of land.

The Wabanaki thus provide not only a paradigm alternative on the metaphysical sphere, but also a legal umbrella under which the real concerns to the natural environment, and thus all of us, can find sanctuary and process.

Many in attendance over the two-day period spoke of the environmental perils that are now at the doorsteps of their respective Maritime-area backyards.

To observe effort and concern on any number of particular environmental issues come together and begin to form a cohesive whole, under the watch and fostering of the Wabanaki, was as if watching pieces of a puzzle come together in an already-existent frame.

To be invited into this process, as partners with equal concern, has the potential to be extremely empowering on many fronts.

"The Wabanaki are in a far better position to defend the land," says gkisedtanamoogk. "No land was ever ceded, and that's acknowledged by both the province and the federal government. So on the basis of the treaties, what we're suggesting is that you and I have a common responsibility to the land under those treaties.

"You and I, we also have a common responsibility to each other, as holder and keepers of those treaties. Those treaties are as important to Wabanaki people as they ought to be important to you. Those are your treaties too. And under those treaties we are also invoking on international protocol, so we have a social potential of being responsible to each other's needs, but in an entirely different context. And that presents immense implications, both legal implications as well as social implications and economic implications that are more just."

Harry LaPorte, grand chief of the Maliseet First Nation, agrees.

"We're going to rebuild the Wabanaki Confederacy," says LaPorte. "We also invited some non-Natives...to come and be with us and to help us build an alliance, so that when we...come into conflict with the government and some of their decisions and policies...to have them stand beside us and to let their government know that it's not only Native people who are worried about the water, the land, the air. But it's also people from their nation that are concerned."

While some at the Gathering were eager for quick pacts and commitments, due in no small part to the urgency of the environmental issues—such as 'fracking'—that are affecting the area, this was to be sure among the first steps.

Gaps in culture, in no way limited to the most obvious identifiers of language and religion, are real, and will require concerted effort and patience to overcome. Judging by those in attendance however, the willingness to make this alliance work is both urgent and real, not only in terms of ideas shared, but also willingness to participate in ceremonies not necessarily completely understood, but partaken of in a spirit of peace and friendship.

As for the next steps of this alliance, that will be up to the grandmothers.

"The grandmothers are going to be meeting in the meantime to make sure that we keep cohesion of this alliance together and to provide that communication, and to put that wise, white hair together to sit down and talk about what needs to be done," says jeaba-weay-quay. "That's who's going to point the way...the women. The grandmothers. And then we're going to turn around and tell the men 'This is what we need to do. This is what we want. So we need you to help us.'"

"This is a preliminary investigation of what that relationship looks like," says gkisedtanamoogk. "What are the expectations? What are the long-term implications? What are some of the things we can do in the immediate? I'm really excited about this. I sense that something of this magnitude is a paradigm shift of global proportions."

This article was originally published on the Halifax Media Co-op. Miles Howe is the Halifax-based editor of The Dominion and is a contributing member of the Halifax Media Co-op.

gkisedtanamoogk

The Ground Beneath Our Feet

Miles — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 14:24:14 +0000

Despite missing grave markers, lack of map, Dartmouth cemetery is not for the dogs

DARTMOUTH, NS—A small party stands at the northwest corner of St. Paul's cemetery, staring pensively at what appears to be nothing but a grassy knoll.

We are hemmed in by the thick foliage of Giant Knotweed (polygonum sacchalinese) that surrounds the burial ground on three sides. Behind us lean a smattering of aging tombstones from Catholic families.

Here though, 100 feet away in the field next to the grave markers, there is only the whisper-silent undulation of clean-cropped, rolling grass.

A casual observer would likely not conclude that this field is part of the cemetery. But this is what Don Awalt has come today to explain.

“Lewis Benjamin Paul, Mi'kmaw Grand Chief, was buried almost right here,” says Awalt, an environmental planner with a grandfather buried somewhere in St. Paul's cemetery. “In the late 1970s, there used to be a tripod of stones here, marking his grave,” he says.

Bonnie Murphy, cemetery administrator for the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM), looks on, clutching a rolled-up surveyor's map of St. Paul's. We spread the map, but it gives no hint of Paul's final resting place. Paul, the great leader, upon seeing his people driven to starvation by British colonization, famously wrote to Queen Victoria in 1841:

“I have seen upwards of a thousand Moons. When I was young I had plenty, now I am old, poor and sickly too. My people are poor. No Hunting Grounds, No Beaver, No Otter, No Nothing. Indians poor, poor forever, No Store, No Chest, No Clothes. All these woods once ours. Our Fathers possessed them all. Now we cannot cut a Tree to warm our Wigwam in Winter unless the White Man please.”

Indeed, most of Murphy's map is nothing but blank, white space hemmed in by surveyors’ lines. There are several rows of numbered plots outlined on the map, but no more than two dozen are even named.

Murphy can't even be sure whether the nameless plots contain bodies or not.

“We've only taken it over since amalgamation [of Halifax and surrounding areas to create the HRM], and our records are very scarce,” says Murphy. “We're digging [for information] ourselves. We've contacted St. Paul's to see what we can get. We're trying to talk to people who've maintained it prior and everything's scarce.”

The wind picks up, and the map begins to buckle and crease. The group cannot determine which way is north on the map, and it is decided that an HRM survey team will be contacted to re-determine the boundaries of the cemetery.

Awalt leads the group over to a willow tree.

“This is where Napwisin We'jitu is buried, and there used to be a marker somewhere in the grass,” says Awalt. The group peers amidst the overgrowth.

“He was among the top Mik'maq warriors of all time.”

Despite HRM Parks and Open Spaces’ lack of knowledge, there is no question that this site has been a Mi’kmaq burial ground, as well as a Catholic cemetery, for a long time. It has also changed hands, and fallen into states of neglect, several times in recent history.

John Martin's The Story of Dartmouth notes that the cemetery first opened in 1835, and consecrated in 1845. Awalt says that Mi'kmaq were using the land as a burial ground long before that, and notes that the oral tradition suggests Father Thury, one of the famous French “Warrior Priests,” consecrated the land in the late seventeenth century.

A marble tablet, which still stands at St. Paul’s, was erected in Dartmouth in 1962. The tablet notes that “Hundreds of Indians and Two of Their Chiefs” are buried there—though it also says that, despite an ever-increasing number of Catholic dead in the 1800s, the cemetery was only used until 1865. (Awalt says this applies to “white” burials only, and that Mi'kmaq continued to use the area after this.)

The 1962 monument unveiling also saw an extensive clean-up of the property. A Dartmouth Free Press article notes that “20 truck loads of rubbish were carted away” before Father Michael Laba, of St. Paul's Parish, had the area fenced in.

According to Kenneth Redmond, boyscout leader at St. Paul's parish at the time, Father Laba also undertook an extensive mapping of the area to determine exactly where the “Hundreds of Indians and Two of Their Chiefs” were buried.

“Father Laba asked me to...survey St. Paul's cemetery, like record where the stones were; show where Mi'kmaw people were,” says Redmond. “And so I did that and gave him a plan. Since that time Father Laba has died, and I lost all my belongings, including [the cemetery map] in a house fire.”

That map, of which there is perhaps one surviving copy, is currently in absentia.

“We stood [the grave markers] where they were laying,” says Redmond. “They were a little bit scattered but you could see a pattern to it.”

In 1967, a re-development plan was undertaken to see St. Paul's become an active burial ground once again. But by the late 1970s, the place had become a “jungle.” Cora Greenway, writing in the summer 1980 edition of Canadian Collector, notes that when she walked the area in 1978 she found “no trace” of the shale slabs.

“The place was in a mess,” writes Greenway. “The grass was knee-high, half the stones toppled over and the walking most treacherous due to the rocky terrain.”

In 1979, as part of a neighbourhood improvement program, the City of Dartmouth remodelled the cemetery into its current incarnation. Benches were added, stones were again righted, and a paved walk was laid that connected urban development above the cemetery to Alderney Drive. It became something of a park, with a cemetery in the middle.

In 1994, with space for the deceased again at a premium in Dartmouth, the city cast an eye towards re-developing St. Paul's and expanding the cemetery onto the grassy field next to the tombstones. But a strong campaign, led by then Mi'kmaw Grand Chief Ben Syliboy, halted the expansion plans. A 1994 Daily News article notes that estimates as to the number of Mi'kmaq buried there ranged “into the thousands.”

There are now clear signs that people have been sleeping, drinking and defecating in the thick recesses of the knotweed. The shale markers are long gone, and the paved path between the tombstones and the grass, the same area where Redmond remembers righting the fallen grave markers, has become a popular dog-walking thoroughfare.

Mi'kmaw tradition speaks to allowing a burial site to reconstitute itself with native species, but the knotweed is an introduced, invasive species, and Awalt wants it removed. He also wants the HRM to ensure cemetery bylaws, which include letting no dog walk on grave sites, are enforced over the entire area. (Domestic animals defecating on graves is one of those taboos that transcends cultural boundaries.)

As we stand, a member of [the] Mi'kmaw Warriors Society, one of whose mandates includes protecting the burial places of Mi'kmaq, approaches the group. In a clear voice he promises to return to the cemetery with his Warriors, armed if need be, if the entire area is not given the same jurisdiction as any cemetery in the HRM; meaning no dogs, and no sleeping, partying, or defecating on graves, marked or not.

In 1990, a significant percentage of Warriors at Kanesatake were Mi'kmaq, and the man's words bring a stunned hush to the group.

Two weeks later, St. Paul's cemetery is undergoing another facelift.

Bonnie Murphy's survey team has put down preliminary markers. Rebar stakes, driven into the ground and spray-painted neon orange, indicate that Lewis Paul's grassy knoll, and more, is indeed now considered part of the cemetery. Knotweed is being attacked by a crew of city workers with a small backhoe.

“Since our meeting, we have had the surveyors…lay out the boundaries on the site,” says Brian Phalen, of HRM Parks and Open Spaces. “The preliminary work does show that that area that we were in, up by the steps, is certainly included in the cemetery site...We'll be posting the 'No Dogs Permitted Under The Cemetery Bylaws' signs in that section of the property.

“Certainly there are portions of that property that aren't laid out as grave sites, per se...But certainly we do know and recognize that being a traditional burial site, there were many Mi'kmaw burial sites that wouldn't be marked.”

As for the shale slab grave markers and Father Laba's corresponding map, it remains to be seen if they will ever be found. It may well be a return to tradition—in which Mi'kmaw graves went unmarked—by necessity.

"The important thing here is that a pre-contact burial ground is recognized for what it is," says Awalt. "That the grandfathers and grandmothers buried there finally receive the dignity and respect deserved...and this applies to non-natives buried there as well."

Miles Howe is an editor with The Dominion and is a contributing member of the Halifax Media Co-op

Marker at St. Paul's Cemetery