Before
their were maps there were people living in Maritime Canada. In spite
of an extensive history of Indian habitation, Canadian law, from the
period of colonization , to the present, has developed as if there
were no inhabitants when the Europeans arrived.
The new arrivals were not at first resident but transient visitors to
local fishing banks; summer resident "come-from-aways." The two
major local people, the Micmacs and the Maliseets,
had societies, culture government and law but these differed
significantly from the newcomers in having an oral rather than a
documented paper base. Unfortunately the Native and European views of
their own ways of life were mutually ethnocentric. The First People
understood land use and believed in sharing resources but
understood treaties and contracts as a matter of spoken exchange. They
did not comprehend or appreciate the value of written agreements
especially since it became apparent that these documents might be
narrowly interpreted or even ignored by Europeans. And that was how the
east was lost to them!
The Canadian government, organized a long time after first contact,
took the position that aboriginal people once held rights to tenure and
self government , but decided that most of these had been
"extinguished" through treaty or gentleman's agreement. It felt that
those that remained copuld also be changed by legislation at the will
of tThe Crown. Native peoples have thus had, a long and continuing
court battle within the white society in an effort to re-establish
their interest in the Land.
|
|
 - Micmac delegation presented to the Goovernor General of Canada at Halifax, 1878
During 1700s, the local colonial government of
Nova Scotia signed a series of treaties with the Micmacs and Maliseets.
This was a move on the part of the English bureaucracy to end
hostilities with the Indians who had been allied with the French in
earlier times.In the 1725, the first of these treaties was signed at
Boston by these and other tribesmen. When hostilities continued there
were renewed meetings and re-ratification of these "submission"
treaties in 1726 and 1761.
It was at this time that Lieutenant-Governor Sir John Belcher cautioned
citizens from "all molestation of the ...Indians in their...claims,
till his Majesty's pleasure in this half shall be signified." But, the
white population had already vastly exceeded that of the natives and
the newcomers were getting pushy. Belcher's map shows that he
recognized land rights, but a close look at the map show that the major
English habitations were already marked as exempt from Indian claims.
The
proclamation which he issued was ignored because governmnet officials
in London said
that it went against the best interests of the new settlers who
arrived in 1749 after deportation of the Acadians.
The came the American Revolutionary War. Following that, the flood of
Loyalist refugees from the United States created overwhelming demands for land.
In 1872, the population of the Province tripled. In Nova Scotia many
bureaucrats seem well-intentioned, and they did reserve lands for
Indian use, but they neglected to emplace boundaries and did not keep out white squatters.
|
|
"The Woman Who Embraced The Serpent. Engraving on birch
bark by Tomah Josephs of Point Dana, Maine, ca 1882."
This drawing reminds us that even the resident Indians recognized
prior inhabitants of their land, who they called the "el-people"
(elder-people) or "serpent -folk." These, were supposedly shape-changers who
might resemble men or take the snake form to "swim"
beneath water or within the earth. A tale collected by Victorian folklorist
Charles Leland bears the above title, and suggests cohabitation
between the "snake-people" and the People
"in old times."
Paleo-Indian artifacts
dating as far back asr 10,600 years have been recovered at both Debert,
N.S. and in the Passamaquoddy region of New Brunswick.
These folk are not considered directly related to the Micmacs and
Maliseets who belong to the Woodland or ceramic tradition and appeared
regionally about 3000 years ago.
|
|
