The story of the Mi’kmaq is one of the most fascinating studies that a person can take up. His legends carry you back from the first sight of the big canoe, as they called the white man’s ship, to the dawn of Creation when Glooscap, the master, lay prone on his back, head to the rising Sun, feet to the setting of the Sun, left hand to the South, and the right hand to the North. This wonder worker was not Niskam, “Father to us all,” nor Gisolg, “Our Maker,” nor the “Great Chief,” but he was par excellence, the Mi’kmaq. He was coexistent with Creation.
There is little doubt that the Mi’kmaq carry a long tradition of stories going back to the dawn of creation. That a European priest caught a small glimmer of the importance of the figure Glooscap within the culture and mysticism of the Mi’kmaq People, can only be testament to the strength of values, beliefs, ethics and morality conveyed by these sacred stories.
Sieur de Diereville wrote about leadership within Mi’kmaq society:
The cherished hope of leadership inspires resolve to be adept in the chase. For it is by such aptitude a man obtains the highest place; here there is no inherited position due to birth or lineage, merit alone uplifts. He who has won exalted rank, which each himself hopes to attain, will never be deposed, except for some abhorrent crime.
Here we see something central to Mi’kmaq culture and beliefs — that respect is earned through actions. The European writer sees rank and position, which come forward as dominant within their analysis. But the Mi’kmaq sees each person from the heart — how do you live? How do you treat your family? How do you function when you work each day? What is your disposition and character? These are the defining characteristics of leadership. These are what nurture respect between people.
Bernard Gilbert Hoffman relates this description of Mi’kmaq leadership that he had formed from researching colonial records:
For a young man to rise in the esteem of his people, it apparently was necessary for him to be superior in hunting, to be among the bravest in warfare, to be generous and hospitable to all the people in his camp and to visitors, stripping himself of all his wealth, and seeking only the affections of his people.
Again, the European into the young man’s conduct as rising to and seeking esteem, when the Native person acknowledges that each person warrants respect for who they are. What they do is a small but important manifestation of their spiritual being. For the European, A plus B equals C. But for the Mi’kmaq, a deeper philosophy and spirituality is at play that is, for the most part, hidden from the superficial European gaze.
Calvin Martin found, when discussing the Amerindian attitude towards religious conversion, that it was sometimes difficult to distinguish between genuine conversion and a tolerant assent to strange views:
Such generosity even extended to the abstract realm of ideas, theories, stories, news, and teachings. The Native host prided himself on his ability to entertain and give assent to a variety of views, even if they were contrary to his better judgment. In this institutionalized hospitality lies the key to understanding the frustration of the Priest, whose sweet converts one day were the relapsed heathens of the next. Conversion was often more a superficial courtesy, rather than an eternal commitment, something the Jesuits could not fathom.
These comments ignore and are completely ignorant of the depth of Mi’kmaq cosmology and spiritual beliefs that govern rules of hospitality. Therefore, how can the author(s) ever provide a quality description of what they fail to understand — and that which is essential to comprehending the First Nation perspective on inter-cultural relations? The very notion of conversion must also be decoded and set within a Mi’kmaq philosophy of science and the cosmology arising from eons of relationship with the land, the sea and the stars that made up the universe of the People.
Chrétien Le Clercq, a Recollect Franciscan missionary to the Mi’kmaq on the Gaspé Peninsula in the 1670s and 80s, describes how a Chief would conduct himself at a funeral oration, correctly conveying the civil values of respect, honour and humility that is deeply woven within Mi’kmaq values:
The good qualities and the most notable deeds of the deceased. He even impresses upon all the assembly, by words as touching as they are forceful, the uncertainty of human life, and the necessity they are under of dying, in order to join in the Land of Souls with their friends and relatives, whom they are now recalling to memory.
Nicholas Denys relates how others spoke after the Chief, “each one spoke, one after another, for they never spoke two at a time, neither men or women. In this respect these barbarians give a fine lesson to those people who consider themselves more polished and wiser than they.”
It is fascinating how the civil democracy of the Mi’kmaq was labelled barbarian. But in essence, anything that was not European was barbaric, regardless of the illogic that formed the basis of racism. Regardless, the essence of the comments point to the democratic equality supported and protected by Mi’kmaw cultural ways. These laws within the culture were and continue to be sacred. They prescribe ways of communicating with one another that provide mutual safety and security, means toward increasing mutual understanding, respect and tolerance of differences. Included in these ways are processes of conflict resolution, mediation, reconciliation and peacemaking. That Europeans who viewed the Mi’kmaq as barbarians and savages, still highlighted in their accounts the civil democratic strengths of the People, is quite a strong and robust acknowledgment from external sources. This acknowledgement helps to verify the true nature of the cultural heritage of the First Nation.
Again, Chrétien Le Clercq describes the courtship and wedding process:
If the father finds that the suitor who presents himself is acceptable for his daughter… he tells him to speak to his sweetheart in order to learn her wish about an affair which concerns herself alone. For they do not wish, say these barbarians, to force the inclinations of their children in the matter of marriage, or to induce them, whether by use of force, obedience, or affection, to marry men whom they cannot bring themselves to like. Hence it is that the fathers and mothers of our Gaspesians [Mi’kmaq from Gaspé] leave to their children the entire liberty of choosing the persons whom they think most adaptable to their dispositions, and most conformable to their affections.
The oddity of these comments is that the writer viewed the Mi’kmaq practices as utter barbarity. But today many world cultures would see the ancient Mi’kmaq approach to nurturing mutual love, affection, respect and gender equality as extremely enlightened. The purpose was to engender a growth of personhood through the central relationship that produces children and family life, by encouraging communications and relational values that nurture maturity, safe self-disclosure and mutual honesty.
Long before the western nations awoke to the contemporary notions of human rights, feminism, gender equality, gay and lesbian issues and a wide range of similar movements that characterize the past century, the Mi’kmaq Nation was fully engaged with living a system of high social and moral standards that existed over hundreds of centuries — in a sustainable and enduring civil democracy.
We see then, through these quotations, several wonderful revelations about how a participatory society worked. In reality, these things worked very well — and are today aspects of Native cultures that are coming to the fore when people across the world are looking for answers to ecological and socio-political crisis.
However, in spite of the fact that these chroniclers minutely describe, in their diaries, records and manuscripts, the outstanding values of Native American civilizations, European chroniclers still most often believed European society to be superior to what they termed heathen and uncivilized American civilizations. There are many today who consciously and unconsciously carry forward these colonial values. The notion of a post-colonial approach is far from anything near to a universal application.
People hold these views because they use European societal standards as a value measurement.
These values do not have human protection enshrined and are almost exclusively based on personal enrichment and technological advancement. Role and status are assigned through birthright or material wealth or power over others. These systems are invariably related to cultures that are swamped with military influence and values, and are bolstered by ever-increasing arms production focused on maintaining or exercising power to control others.
These dominant European values are not a prescription for the development of a peaceful world society. We acknowledge that European cultures contain a wealth of cultural and spiritual teachings that go far beyond what colonial history conveys. Each tribe and nation across Europe holds a sacred tradition that can still be honoured and celebrated. However, sad as the story goes, these traditional cultural values were largely lost in the rush of colonial invasion of the Americas. Europeans who invaded and settled in the Americas and in other locations around the world, as well as their children today, must in some way grapple with the legacy of horror that was unleashed, and is still underway.
Certainly, and with a large degree of humility, surely part of this journey toward righting the wrongs of the past, and correcting the imbalances and injustice of today, will involve the European and the Native person reflecting on this history. Surely, this process will involve remembering and reconnecting with the best in each of our many traditions. By reawakening these strengths, we definitely have one of the sacred keys to unlocking the current crisis of identity.
We also must, each of us, without exception, acknowledge our role and place in taking responsibility for the past by changing our conduct today, so that our children will indeed have a better future. It is our generations now who are awakening the keys to justice-making. These stories we share are a significant part of this social and political transformation.
Of all world cultures, we ought to remember that European excellence arises across the centuries in how to kill one another most efficiently, with least regard for human dignity, and that this characteristic strength is and was pursued by European nations at a tremendous cost to humanity and has spilled an endless river of human blood around the world. The historical record is clear, going back to medieval torture methods, and including the colonial genocide enacted in the Americas over the past centuries. Up to and beyond the Second World War the European national identities are founded on and expanded by notions of war, conquest and desires for power.
At some stage, however, the European nations and their descendants scattered across the globe might indeed grow beyond these dominant and destructive values that are promoted in each generation under the status quo of the times. Unfortunately, I do not see this growth into maturity happening any time soon. But our work nurtures the path toward reconnecting with the best in our respective cultures and traditions.
Mi’kmaq society developed independently a whole system of social and political values that sustained civil democratic methods of leadership, governance, familial and community law, as well as national and international diplomacy. These approaches were completely opposite to the dominant values of the European colonial cultures.
Chief Lightning Bolt is based on how the Mi’kmaq lived and prospered in a society that was dedicated to the principle of the overall community’s welfare being the first priority. For the Mi’kmaq, making war was a last and most distasteful resort. For the Mi’kmaq, peacemaking and living in a sustainable culture of peace and beauty was of central importance.
Mi’kmaw Saqmawiey (Eldering) (Dr.) Daniel N. Paul,
C.M., O.N.S., LLD, DLIT
Halifax, Canada, 2017
Chief Lightning Bolt Page 29