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Class notes SUST1000 (sust1400) - week 10 part 1 Being cluster (whales)
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Sherry Pictou, Mi'kmaw Lifeways and Fisheries part 1 and 2
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Sherry Pictou, Mi'kmaw Lifeways and FisheriesI want to talk to you a little bit about Mi'kmaq Life Ways, Fisheries, and just take it from there.
But who here, are from Nova Scotia. Oh, quite a few. Maritimes?I'm going to take you to the
land of Mi'kma'ki, the get the old. And basically what you're seeing there is our ancestral hunting
and fishing districts. And I'm from down this further end [inaudible] where it says land ends. But
the elder has corrected that it means the end of the flow.And just to give you an idea, there are
over 800 sites of early Mi'kmaq occupation scattered across Nova Scotia. These are archaelogical
sites. Bloomington, Debert, Kejimikouchec, Mersey River. Just to mentioned a few. There are
stories about this mythical character, Glooscap. For me, my grandmother brought me up this
Glooscap exists that provides us with a series of messages and lessons given glimpses into the
the geological features. Some say it's goes back 13000 years, others 14000 years. But you get the
gist here that Mi'kmaq have existed here for thousands of years. Some of the I don't know if you
have a you have a link to that.
I know they're having problems with this site, but there's a there's a interactive site that I think
the Confederacy of Mainland Mi'kmaq are trying to get up. But this is a really excellent book. If
you would like to learn more about the MI'kmaq names of the landscape. And a lot of them are
very descriptive of large areas. This is the place that we would dig clams. This was the place of
this and that.And of course, this site here, I think it goes back 2500 years or Sixteen hundred and
twenty five years. This has just been recent. This is what you see here is archeologists. This is a
clam. These are clam middens. And of course," "e'se'get" I'm probably not saying it quite right.
vI'm not a fluent speaker. Means to dig for clams. Just to give you an idea of how This is my
home. That that green the green map.This is right off the Bay of Fundy, near Digby Annapolis.
And what you're looking at there is a traditional use study and all those little dark stars represent
where we would access food, fish, food and so forth. And why the big dark dot there in the
middle is because that's the reservation. One whole southwest Nova Scotia, whole district and
shrunk down to a reservation,vand I should say there's other little reservations throughout that
Acadia and so forth. And this is former chief Frank Muise another clam midden, where not too
far from there, there was the body of a woman. That's a story I have to be very careful because I
could tell stories within stories. There's always like a million stories behind one story. And this is
most recent. The ancient hunting camp found on the proposed Fundy Trail Parkway. And as you
can see from the red dot, it's just across from Nova Scotia and it's in New Brunswick. And we'll
see if this plays. Oh, did you? Yes. From video: "We found hers featured. So that's the firepit,
which most of the there are some artifacts that are right here. It comes all the way around
through here. The province puts a lot of time and effort into trying to model where these sites are
so we can
Video: Brent Suitte chief archelogist
So throughout time, I'm going to do a little history, then try to bring it up fairly quickly. We have
a lot of stories about whales and so whales was very much alive and for those of, you know, the
orcas and and we've been having we've been having whales washing up on beaches. It's very sad.
, Some of it's with fishing gear, some of it's pollution, some of it they don't know. And what you're
seeing there on the left hand side is petroglyphs that date way back. These probably in
Kejimkujik and we have artist, who also, him and his son played the music in that little short film
you saw.He does a lot of artwork and drawing of the whales and I think. Of course, Glooscap,
there's a story about Glooscap and about the whale and the whale is it human or animal? And this
is one of the things about Mi'kmaq world views.Within the language there's a very close
integration of the human and natural ecologies, and it's very difficult to separate them.
Unfortunately, development and particularly unsustainable development or large industrial
development tends to separate those and land becomes commodity as opposed to the
interrelationship that we should have with the land, and that sense of responsibility. But to get
back to this whale, this was the great whale and a little bit of story out of this old book that
recorded some of these legends. The great whale swam and swam and swam each day. The water
grew warmer and the air blown off sunny shores smelled of spice and flowers. Soon the water
became shallow and in the sand below, the clams called out a warning. Oh, whale, keep out to
the sea for the water here is shallow, and you will go go around. But Bootup, the name for the
whale, did not understand the language of the clams and when he asked Glooscap what they said.
The Chief answered with the song: "They tell you hurry to hurry. Hurry along over the water as
fast as you can. I can never leave the land. I shall swim in the sea no more." And big tears
streamed down his face,
the whale, "Have no fear, my friend," saying Glooscap cheerfully, he placed his bow against the
whale's side, and with a tremendous push sent old Boot-up off again into deep water. Then he
tossed the happy whale, his second best pipe and a bag of Indian tobacco as a reward. Boot-up
very pleased, lighted the pipe and smoking it swam away to sea. And that is why, to this day,
when you see the whales spout, you may say there, see, Bootup is smoking his pipe. And I'd love
to share in that because it's such a beautiful because what they're talking about is the tides there
and how the whale had come in, because we have strong tides in the Bay of Fundy and so forth
and this and how this story plays out.and there's all kinds of other lessons in there. And that came
from this old book in 1913. And also in its historical ethnography of the Mi'kmaq in the 16th and
17th century by Hoffmann. He notes, besides fish, mollusks, seabirds, the sea also provided the
Mi'kmaq with sea mammals such as whales, dolphins, porpoises and so forth. Spend a lot of time
another petroglyph. Going back 1877 about our porpoise hunt. And I won't read this word for
word. But basically we used to hunt porpoises and take the oil and we made a little bit of a living
off the margins until kerosene came and there's a big court case about it and so forth, but that's
what we did. And this is a film as well, I don't know if you want to post that, this is what was
made 1936 and it's a bit of stage. And again, this is of my descendants in Bear River or my
ancestors, I would say. Goind back couple of generations and an anthropologist, Dr. Leighton,
the late Dr. Leighton put that together. And it's really interesting to see that. And I won't play this
for you, but if you want to hear the language and at the very beginning, you see there's a little
clip in it was the poet Rita Joe and she talks about how she lost her talk to the residential school,
but some songs have survived.
[singing in Mi'kmaq]
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