The Mi'kmaq Anthology

by Lesley Choyce

  Ku’kukwes (the owl) was the one who came up with his wise observation, that, maybe if Ka’quwej had waited till evening time to do his foraging for food, instead of the blazing heat of the afternoon sun, he may still be alive to this day. They all agreed with this sage bit of advice, and it was decided that from now on, feeding times would be just soon after sunrise until the heat of the noon day sun, and just before the sunset in the evening.

  Kloqnbq (the seagull) attributed his departure to a severe case of overeating and greed. He explained that seagulls cannot eat too much, because they have to sleep on the water and if they get gluttonous, they tend to sink and have to wait till they have digested some of their food. Again, the group agreed that this was a sound piece of advice. They agreed that from now on, you could only eat enough just to fill you up. And the idea that you could take a nap while the sun was too hot seemed to favour well with everyone.

  Ki’kwaju (the badger), being the slow and lazy creature that he was, said that Ka’quwej died from all that running around all day long. His tired, old body could not put up with all that exertion and stress that he put it through in the pursuit for a livelihood. Everyone agreed with this opinion, and they decided that the young ones and the elders would not have to contribute to the foraging for food, but that the younger and the more vigorous members of the society would have to be the hunters and gatherers for everyone.

  Marie Battiste

  Structural Unemployment: The Mi’kmaq Experience

  The Mi’kmaq people who live in reserve communities in Nova Scotia — and elsewhere in the Maritimes — experience far more unemployment than other Maritimers. A snapshot view of a reserve community today would provide the statistics about this unemployment. The numbers would show how many people are unemployed, how old they are, what skills they have and what work experience they have, but it would not offer an explanation of why so many are unemployed. To understand the causes of this situation it is necessary to know about the history of the economic life of the Mi’kmaq community. In the changes which have occurred in the resource base available to the Mi’kmaq lie the keys to understanding why unemployment is so high on reserves.

  The hunting, fishing and gathering resource base

  The original peoples of the Maritimes used the fish and wildlife resources of the region as the basis of their economy prior to the arrival of Europeans.

  Like other peoples who lived by hunting, fishing and gathering, the Mi’kmaqs had an intimate knowledge of the natural world. This close relationship was part of a balance, a harmony with nature which had developed over thousands of years and allowed the Mi’kmaq economy to rely on the natural abundance of the surroundings. Although there were occasional lean years when game was scarce or its migratory patterns changed, in most years the available resources provided the Mi’kmaqs with an ample supply of food.

  Mi’kmaq economic life focused on hunting and fishing; on gathering from the forest and the shores the other food and raw materials their economy required; on the manufacture of tools, weapons, clothing, canoes and the other practical and decorative objects they found useful or necessary; and on trade within the tribe and with other tribes. This economy was geared to the maintenance of family and tribal life, but not to the acquisition of individual wealth.

  Hospitality and generosity were important underlying principles in Mi’kmaq family and tribal life, affecting how goods were distributed among community members. No one was left unattended or without basic foods and provisions. When the Grand Council, the traditional Mi’kmaq government, met annually to discuss important tribal affairs, one of its duties was the distribution of trading and hunting territories among families and bands, based on their needs.

  After European fishing boats began to arrive off the coasts in the early sixteenth century, the Mi’kmaq economy began slowly to change. Initially some of these changes were beneficial to the Mi’kmaq: the sporadic European contact during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries led to trade. By trading furs and other produce of their land the Mi’kmaqs gained European goods — particularly metal tools and cooking utensils — that made some of their jobs less time-consuming.

  Furs found a ready market in Europe and demand for them increased. To meet this demand, some Mi’kmaqs modified their economic life and began to concentrate on trading furs with the Europeans. Most, however, continued their traditional economy with little change.

  Sharing the regional resource base

  Beginning in the mid-1600s, direct European trade with the Mi’kmaqs increased substantially. Obtaining and preparing furs for this trade began both to require more Mi’kmaq time and to shift the balance with nature that had previously existed.

  During the 1700s that balance shifted even further as European settlers began directly to exploit the natural resources which had previously been used only by the Mi’kmaqs themselves.

  Conflicting demands for resources were addressed by formal treaties between the Mi’kmaq Grand Council and the representatives of Great Britain.

  The treaties between the Mi’kmaq Grand Council and Britain were formal agreements between the two parties, with obligations for both. The first major treaty was signed in 1752. In it the Grand Council agreed to share the natural resources of the area, but did not sell the land to Britain. The council promised to protect the existing British settlements in their land and to trade exclusively with British subjects. In return the Crown promised to protect the Mi’kmaq way of life, promising them the liberty to hunt and fish, and also promising to supply them with basic provisions and gifts.

  Most Mi’kmaqs chose to remain physically apart from the new European settlements, continuing their seasonal migrations and maintaining their traditional economy under the protection of these treaties. King George III ordered his colonial governors to “keep a just and faithful Observance” of the treaties with the Mi’kmaqs, and forbade English settlers from settling on Mi’kmaq hunting grounds. The colonial authorities, however, did not respect the promises made in the treaties. Without any authority to do so, Nova Scotia officials, for example, issued settlers with “tickets of location” giving them permission to settle on Mi’kmaq hunting grounds. Then the colony’s Executive Council passed trading regulations which restricted the ability of the Mi’kmaqs to trade, and ended the competitiveness of their goods on the important Boston market. Both measures damaged the Mi’kmaq economy.

  As lumbering expeditions made inroads on the forests, as professional hunters, trappers and fishermen competed with the Mi’kmaqs for game and fish, and as settlers cleared land and established farms on Mi’kmaq hunting grounds, further pressure built up on the traditional Mi’kmaq economy. The Mi’kmaqs were losing the resources which had been the cornerstone of their livelihood.

  After conflict, a new agricultural resource base

  In the 1780s, with the arrival of the Loyalists, these connecting pressures on the resource base increased. Control of the land passed to the colonial governments and settlers. Their economy was based on agriculture, lumbering and comparatively large-scale fishing. This economy also depended on the natural resource base, but used it in ways very different from the requirements of the traditional Mi’kmaq economy. The two patterns of economic activity could not be carried on successfully at the same time. As more and more land became settled, the Mi’kmaqs’ accustomed freedom of movement, their seasonal migrations, became impossible to maintain. Without access to their different seasonal hunting and gathering territories, their traditional economy collapsed.

  In Nova Scotia the collapse was sudden. Within a single generation the traditional Mi’kmaq lifestyle had become impossible. Recognizing the seriousness of this situation, the colonial government tried to provide annual grants of food and clothing to compensate for the treaty violations. However, the colonial government had no consistent policy, and by the early nineteenth century the help was normally only forthcoming in cases of extreme emergency or — as during the war of 1812-14 — when the
government wanted to make sure the Mi’kmaqs remained loyal.

  How did the Mi’kmaqs cope with this drastic change to their accustomed way of life? This situation marked the beginning of a new era for Mi’kmaqs, a period during which their population declined and a new economy slowly developed to replace the old. The new economy was a modification of the old, changed to suit the new circumstances. They sold food — particularly fish — to the settlements, as well as other products — axe handles, basketry and decorative work. Some found seasonal or temporary jobs on farms or in lumbering.

  During the same period, the Mi’kmaq tried to develop small farms of their own. The land available to them was limited because Loyalist and immigrant settlers had taken possession of the best farmland. The Mi’kmaq often had difficulty in securing legal title to their lands and in acquiring farm equipment.

  Gradually some of the traditional Mi’kmaq settlements became the basis for “reserved” lands, tracts of land set aside by the colonial government and acknowledged as exclusively for the use of the Indians.

  About the time that the Maritime economy had developed to the point that the traditional Mi’kmaq way of life was no longer possible at all, the Mi’kmaqs, along with other Maritimers, found themselves part of a new country. For the Mi’kmaqs, Confederation meant that they became the official responsibility of the new federal government of Canada. Under its Department of Indian Affairs, the federal government took over and administered the system of Indian reserves which had been devised by earlier colonial governments.

  At first the change made little difference to most Mi’kmaqs. By Confederation many Mi’kmaqs had accepted farming as an alternative to their traditional economy and had developed extended family farms on the reserves. Like many of the farms of the European population at the time, these farms were not oriented to the production of food principally for sale, but were self-sufficient, providing enough food for the farm families themselves and for trade within their small Mi’kmaq villages. Milk and other dairy products, potatoes and vegetables went to Mi’kmaq fishermen and trappers in return for meat and fish. Members of the farm families often continued to work in the traditional crafts areas, producing axe handles, baskets, paddles and canoes as long as the demand for them continued.

  Through the turn of the twentieth century and on into the 1930s most Mi’kmaqs continued this form of economic life. Their farms provided food, and some family members also got income from the manufacture and sale of traditional crafts, from fishing and trapping, and from seasonal labour outside the reserve. Men worked in the forests, cutting pulp or getting wood for baskets and axe handles. Women worked in the towns near the reserves, either cleaning non-Indian homes or selling their handcrafts. A new Mi’kmaq economy had become established.

  Centralization, and the loss of the resource base

  In the 1930s the Department of Indian Affairs began to make efforts to better integrate the Mi’kmaqs into the Maritime economy and also to simplify the administration of the reserve system. It began to put into effect a plan to move all Mi’kmaqs living on Nova Scotia reserves to only two reserves in the province — Shubenacadie on the mainland and Eskasoni in Cape Breton.

  In the course of encouraging this new settlement pattern, another major change was made in the resource base available to Mi’kmaq communities.

  What happened at the Eskasoni reserve is a typical example of the process initiated by the Department of Indian Affairs. The reserve consisted of self-reliant farms supporting twenty Mi’kmaq families. The farms stretched to the shores of the Bras d’Or Lake, where there was an abundant inshore fishery. Forty square miles of wooded uplands provided sufficient hunting and trapping, firewood, lumber, herbs and berries.

  When the Department of Indian Affairs chose Eskasoni as one of the Nova Scotia reserves into which the Mi’kmaq would be centralized, conditions began to change rapidly. Within a few years the department had removed more than a thousand Mi’kmaqs from homes and farms elsewhere in the province and relocated them in tents and other temporary housing on the former cleared agricultural fields at Eskasoni.

  Most Mi’kmaqs were reluctant to leave homes on other reserves and relocate to Eskasoni. As encouragement, the department promised a better quality of life on the centralized reserves: new houses, medical services, schools, grants to purchase seeds and farm equipment, as well as jobs in a lumber mill, in housing construction and opportunities for other employment.

  Not all the department’s inducements were positive. Local schools and farms on some reserves were destroyed; threats were made to burn churches; and the department offered some Mi’kmaqs the alternative of moving to Eskasoni or losing all government assistance.

  Upon their arrival at Eskasoni, Mi’kmaq families, expecting a home and immediate employment in the promised lumber mill, in clearing land, or in construction, found they had to wait in a long line for everything. Federal money for housing was only enough to build the shells of houses, without insulation and inner walls. Many families lived in tents through the winter. When it became clear that federal money to finish the houses was not forthcoming, families moved in anyway, for they reasoned it was better than living in the tents.

  While farming was encouraged, most of the land available was not particularly suitable for agriculture. The clearings and pastures which were promised were not provided — housing came first; when the houses were done then the fields and pastures would be cleared. When the housing construction ended, so did the jobs. Eskasoni was left with fifteen hundred people without incomes or jobs, little farmland, no mill, and as the result of new federal regulations, restricted hunting and fishing.

  The department’s vision of centralized reserve life was a failure, destroying the Mi’kmaqs’ small farm, trade and craft economy, but not providing any replacement. After centralization, in the 1940s and 1950s at least thirty percent of male Nova Scotia Mi’kmaqs left Canada to seek employment in New England. Other Mi’kmaqs returned to their original reserves and attempted to restart their small farms.

  Replacing resources with welfare

  The effects of centralization were catastrophic, and the government authorities who had initiated this measure responded to the resulting crisis by providing welfare assistance to people whose economic base had been so severely upset.

  Welfare payments brought a kind of prosperity to the reserves in the 1960s. For the first time, families entered the cash economy. They had access to automobiles, televisions and store-bought groceries and clothes.

  Their entry into the new cash economy did not provide many jobs for the Mi’kmaqs; in fact, the federal money made it seem less necessary or worthwhile for families to maintain the small farms, fisheries and craft work which still provided some food and income and these forms of economic activity began to die down.

  On the other hand, the increase in federal money brought needed improvements to many reserves. Homes were provided with electricity and insulation and some new homes were constructed. This construction work created some jobs. Others were created in local administration: the department authorized the formation of reserve Band Councils with some administrative power over the spending of the new federal funds.

  While most Mi’kmaqs welcomed this new supply of money, it also created dependence on government. A new generation of Mi’kmaq has since been raised to adulthood without learning to fish, hunt, trap or farm and support themselves by their own efforts. No longer able to rely on their old skills for employment, Mi’kmaqs for the first time have had no alternative but to compete with non-Indians for the limited number of jobs in the Nova Scotia economy.

  During the 1960s and 1970s programs were started to stimulate direct economic development. Grants were made available for job creation projects on reserves; new economic enterprises were funded on the isolated reserves; and special programs were initiated to support reserve planning.

  The short-term job training programs sponsored by the department had some disadvantages: income from
them was very low, reinforcing the income differences between the reserve and the surrounding community. Sometimes the income provided was so low as to be a discouragement from participating in the program: in many instances, it was more economically beneficial for a Mi’kmaq family to collect welfare than to go to work in a training program with low wages. Often, too, the programs provided training for jobs which did not exist on or near the reserve.

  As a result, most of the ten thousand Nova Scotia Mi’kmaqs remain unemployed. Since less than half the housing on the reserves was properly built in the first place, construction of adequate housing has been and continues to be a major activity on the reserves and the main source of employment. Public administration and band government jobs are also important. About ten percent of the population continue to work in forestry, fishing, trapping and hunting.

  In 1976, when the Maritime unemployment rate was about nine percent, between 55 and 70 percent of adult Mi’kmaqs were without jobs. For those younger than twenty-five, the jobless rate was estimated at 85 percent. In 1980 some 30 percent of the Mi’kmaq labour force living on reserves was unemployed for the whole year. Another 39 percent experienced some seasonal unemployment during the year.

  Although the federal government has full responsibility for Indians and their reserve lands, many Mi’kmaqs feel that Ottawa has been more responsive to the economic needs of non-Indians than it has to the tribal reserve Indians. They contrast the billions of dollars spent by the federal government on general economic development schemes in the region and elsewhere with what they see as the government’s reluctance to invest in economic development for the reserves.