We Are Where Infinity Begins. 2026

 

I’m a Sang-Mêlés, mixed blood Acadien, a Section 35 (Canada Constitution 1982) aboriginal person. I have French-Mi'kmaw ancestry. The Sang-Mêlés Acadien of western Nova Scotia are the oldest mixed blood people in Canada established in the 18^th Century. We have persisted as an aboriginal people because our territory is small, a thin band of communities along the western Nova Scotia shore. My people come from the territory known to our Mi'kmaw ancestors as Ke’pek. My mother called this place Cha’bake. The word is the same Algonquin root as Québec, the narrowing of waters. This area is an open arm of the sea first explored by Samuel de Champlain in 1604, which narrows to the Tus'ket River with Pomem’kook (Pubnico) on the eastern shore and my family home Tus'ket Wedge (Wedgeport) on the western side. The area is the traditional territory of the  Mi'kmaw, people now known as the Mi’kmaw Acadia First Nation. Three peoples lived on this land, first the Mi'kmaw, then the confederated French-Mi'kmaw of the fur trade who became the first Sang-Mêlés, then after the Expulsion the returned Sang-Mêlés, often referred to in historical records as the Acadian Militia. A group composed of the extended families of French soldiers and adventurers who married indigenous women before, during and immediately after the French and Indian wars. Particularly the conflict called Pére Le Loutre’s war. Our families didn’t begin to marry outside of L’acadie Ke’pek until after the Second World War, so the ancestral bloodlines are still strong and clearly defined. We are the first mixed blood people in Canada. The Métis flag used in Canada depicts a white infinity symbol on a blue background. The image is symbolic of the idea Métis or historic mixed blood status cannot be extinguished. The Sang-Mêlés of L’acadie is where infinity begins.

 

The history we embody is profound. As well as being Sang-Mêlés our people are all directly descended from three barons of New France, Claude Saint- Étienne de la tour, fur trader, Cap de Sable, Charles Saint- Étienne de la tour, fur trader Castine, Saint John, Governor of Acadia and Jacques Muise d’Entremont lord of Pubnico. Both Claude and Charles de la tour were also knight baronets of Nova Scotia confirmed by King Charles l of England and his successor Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. We diverge from the stereotypical Acadian/Land of Evangeline people’s narrative, because we never left. Unlike the pacifist Acadians who were deported to the British American colonies and beyond during the Expulsion (1755), my people and our Mi'kmaw cousins escaped from L’acadie to Canada, which at that time was just across the border at the Tantramar, (New Brunswick.) The Sang-Mêlés were a warrior class, we waged armed struggle against Edward Cornwallis at Halifax; we were not passive sheep gathered together in a church and lead onboard ships to exile. The Sang-Mêlés fought when they could, then after the fall of Canada in 1759, gradually returned to their territory around Ke’pek after enduring the relocation camps at Halifax. This is an easily verifiable historical statement because the preponderance of Acadien surnames of our people don’t appear in the lists of the deported at Grand Pré and elsewhere. As well, the returned Pothier, Muise, Budreau and Duon all have historically acknowledged indigenous grandméres.

 

In 1847 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published his epic fictional poem, Evangeline. This literary construction written in English posited the Acadians as a pure blood, French speaking white race. It’s a paradigm that persists to this day. Longfellow’s poem gradually began to be taught in schools and embraced by the racist, colonial government of Nova Scotia, who enforced this artificial cultural straight jacket on the returned Acadien. In two generations, with insidious help from the Roman Catholic church and priests who falsified our genealogies, the Sang-Mêlés Acadien began to picture themselves as a lesser kind of racially pure Québecoise. This absurd racist construction precipitated the final split between the Sang-Mêlés and their Mi’kmaw cousins, who were even more stigmatized and reduced to virtually non-human status compared to the Land of Evangeline Acadians. Growing up in Halifax in the 1960’s I was aware French speaking Acadians were a second-class people, socially above the Mi'kmaw and indigenous blacks only by virtue of our white skin. From this perspective it’s easy to see why the Sang-Mêlés assimilated.

 

Sang-Mêlés consciousness is a relatively new thing. Until our period of reconciliation Acadians were content to view themselves as a lesser kind of Québécois, tucked away in their little corners of the Maritimes, the living embodiment of Longfellow’s people of the Expulsion. This attitude was underlined by both the Roman Catholic Church and an evolving Acadian cultural elite centered on College Sainte-Anne, a French language undergraduate school founded in 1890 at Church Point, Nova Scotia. Gradually histories of the Acadians were written, mostly by Acadian scholars in Québec, often funded by separatist governments and predictably the Acadian historians erased the Sang-Mêlés from their white supremacist histories.

 

The first authoritative history of the Acadien was published by James Hannay, a New Brunswick historian in 1879, Hannay who's principal source is Beamish Murdoch frankly states the first Acadien were a mixed race people and details the split between the pacifist pure blood Acadians, established by Charles d'Aulnay at Port Royal and Grand Pré and the activist old stock Sang-Mêlés Acadien. Hannay’s history is now smiled on by Acadian scholars as the product of an aggressive, racist Anglophone. Ironically the main criticism of Hannay’s history is his supposed negative depiction of the Mi'kmaw and his conventional (for the 19^th century) use of the word savage. I can’t agree with this analysis particularly where Hannay quotes Samuel de Champlain’s history of his visits to Canada and Acadia in the early 17^th century. Hannay obviously quotes Champlain extensively and uses the word savage as Champlain did, sauvage to infer a person or people who live in the wilds. Hannay does later use savage in the conventional construction meaning (vicious), but only in the context of the French and Indian War (1754-63,) where my Mi'kmaw ancestors were indeed vicious and savage and waged a war of extermination on neighbouring tribes aligned with the British. Otherwise, Hannay, with a few exceptions is very respectful of the Mi'kmaw and describes them as having a highly ordered society and presents our great ancestor Membertou as a thoughtful statesman.

 

The secret of our mixed blood was so profoundly hidden that I had no idea I and we had native heritage until I was in my thirties, then the dam broke with the publication of Roland Surrete’s Métis/Acadian Heritage 1604-2004 and the formation of the Eastern Woodland Métis Nation. More recently, Sébastien Malette, et all’s, An Ethnographic Report on the Acadian-Métis (Sang-Mêlés) People of Southwest Nova Scotia, has created a bedrock for the Sang-Mêlés Acadien to reclaim an almost vanished nation.

 Louis Riel acknowledged the Sang-Mêlés of L’acadie, writing:

 “Quant aux provinces Canadiennes de l’Est, beaucoup de Métis y vivent méprisés sous le Costume indienne. Leurs villages sont des villages d’indigence. Leur titre indien au sol est pourtant aussi bon que le titre indien des Métis du Manitoba.”

Translated, this reads:

 “When it comes to the Eastern provinces of Canada, many Métis live there persecuted in the attire of the Indian costume. Their villages are villages of indigence. Their Indian title to the land is, however, as good as the Indian title of the Métis of Manitoba.”

 extract from Sébastien Malette, et all’s, An Ethnographic Report on the Acadian-Métis (Sang-Mêlés) People of Southwest Nova Scotia, 2018.

The Sang-Mêlés Acadien of Western Nova Scotia are a small nation, but we are also undoubtedly the first mixed blood aboriginal people of Canada. We have lived in our territory since the beginning of time.
 

I offer my best wishes and respect.

 

Eric Walker - Pothier a’ Mathurin a’ Anselme de Pierre

Cornwallis The Violent Birth of Halifax, Jon Tattrie, 2013

One of the problems of evaluating the history of the mixed-blood Acadien is the contradiction between the colonial, Land of Evangeline myth and the conventionalized history of Mi’kmaw interaction with the colonizing whites in the 18^th century. Today the dominant Mi’kmaw ideology is the non-traditional Turtle Island perspective which holds all white people are bad and carry historic guilt, in contrast to indigenous peoples who are good, blameless and bearers of historic grievances. This paradigm is remarkably like the a-historical colonized Acadian picture of good, passive Acadians being subjugated by evil designing, British.

In popular white middle class media like the CBC, white and racially diverse commentators present themselves as allies to indigenous speakers who in turn exploit middle class sentiment to assert their moral authority to seek various remedies and compensations. Seeking compensation for historic wrongs like the residential schools and Indian Act abuse is very appropriate. The moral prefiguring is wrong, not helpful and usually historically inaccurate.

The general discourse around Edward Cornwallis and the scalping bounty is presented in white middle class media entirely out of context with the struggles of the French and Indian Wars and reduced to a good guy/bad guy dichotomy, which, through the magic of adherence to an abstract moral polemic, if you are prefigured as a white oppressor, you have only to shed a few tears and call for the removal of a statue or change a street name to absolve your historic crimes. This attitude is so general among the middle class, that even Acadians pay lip service to the idea, but history shows our mixed blood Acadien people were victims of Cornwallis’ bounty and nothing is said, particularly in concerned white media, No one dares to challenge the indigenous moral paradigm.

To illustrate our invisibility in the face of recorded history we can look to a popular historical work, Cornwallis The Violent Birth of Halifax, by Jon Tattrie, 2016. Seemingly as a side note, Tattrie plainly with archival documents proves mixed blood Acadien were victims of Cornwallis’ scalping bounty and yet in all the editorial reportage I’ve heard or read on the subject in the white middle-class media particularly the CBC, I’ve never heard this truth spoken.

From Cornwallis The Violent Birth of Halifax, pg. 99

…Throughout the winter, the rangers, volunteers and adventurers combed the woods of Nova Scotia in hopes of finding small groups of undefended Mi’kmaq. While no accurate records were kept for how many bounties where paid, some individual accounts give a sense of the scale of the raids. In one incident, a party of Gorham’s Rangers brought in twenty-five scalps, claiming a bounty of 250 pounds. The paymaster protested some of the scalps were likely Acadian, but he was ordered to pay the full amount…This was a recurring problem, what constituted a Mi’kmaq person? What if someone was mixed race, with Mi’kmaq mother and an Acadian father? What if the Mi’kmaq blood was a grandparent? Cornwallis did not spell it out in his bounty. Previous bounties from Massachusetts government had decided that if someone was of a mixed race and living in an Acadian village, they were exempt from the bounty, but that was not addressed in Nova Scotia.…The scalping bounty effectively removed all people classified as Mi’kmaq from the law…Countless Acadians died and in some cases it is reported rangers turned on each other, or made most of Mi’kmaq attacks, and sold the scalps of dead rangers (some being mix blood American’s, my note)… to the British government.

How does it forward Truth and Reconciliation to deliberately ignore our mixed blood history as an inconvenient contradiction to the indigenous victim paradigm?

 

Who Are the Métis?

 

Who Are the Métis?

We are not Métis, we are the Sang-Mêlés Acadien of Western Nova Scotia, a distinct indigenous people as defined by Article 33 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution. The 1982 Canadian constitution uses the word Métis to mean any mixed blood, non-status Indian person with that identity. Not only the Métis people of the west. Successive rulings at the supreme court have upheld this. 

Here in Ke’pek (Chabake) we have two so-called indigenous Métis organizations, the Eastern Woodland Métis Nation of Nova Scotia and the Association Acadien Métis-Souriquois, both organizations are in error to use the word Métis in their names, but so is the Métis Nation of Ontario who persists in using that word to self identify non-status indigenous people in their territory. This is a historic mistake. Up until 2019 when the Manitoba Métis Federation banned non-Métis people from using the word Métis, the word Métis was commonly used by non-status peoples east of Manitoba to self identify. However the Sang-Mêlés Acadien of Western Nova Scotia have been singled out for special abuse by the Ontario Métis Nation through its proxy the Métis National Council, an NGO funded by the federal government and a certain college professor from Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, named Darryl Leroux, who advances the preposterous idea there are no non-status indigenous peoples east of Ontario. In the aftermath of the Manitoba Métis Federation’s declaration to deprive Ontario and British Columbia of the right to use the word Métis the perspectives of the Ontario Métis Nation, the Métis National Council and Mr. Leroux have become irrelevant.

Our struggle as an indigenous people is to reject the idea we are Métis and move forward from the a-historical, racist and colonial “Land of Evangeline” myth as outlined in my “We are Where Infinity Begins" essay and restore our own indigenous history and culture in a respectful way.

 

 

 

The Chebake

 

Because of family breakdown I spent the first year of my life living in Lower Wedgeport on the Nicholas Road in a little house facing Baie la Chebec, near the south wharf. After my family situation in Halifax normalized, I spent a week every summer at my grand père Mathurine’s house in Wedgeport across from the old lobster cannery, just down from Eglise Saint Michael, usually coinciding with the tuna fishing championship. As a kid I heard of the Chebake, but it was only mentioned as a very dangerous beach up north. There was no awareness among the people of Wedgeport of my mother and grand mere’s generation of the meaning of the name Chebake, an Acadien Chiac word, whose meaning has resolved into a simple place name, a beach across the creek from present day la Shoppe a Carl.

Wedgeport, or Tusket Wedge the 19^th century name place name was called by the Mi’kmaw, Kepe’k. Kepe’k is an Algonquin descriptive name meaning the narrowing of waters, just like Quebec. As the mixed blood Acadien moved into the area they adapted the place name from:

Kepe’k (like Quebec) to Cha’beck to Cha’ bake.

Gradually in the time of assimilation into the racist Land of Evangeline paradigm the old usage was abandoned and the place name transformed into Tusket Wedge/Wedgeport.  

It is very likely the Chebake or Kepe’k was a stopping point for the Mi’kmaw on their way from the coast, through Poqomkek (Pubnico,) then across the bay on their way to Aklasie’we’katik (Tusket.)

 EW

Map from Tan Wegi-squalia’tiek, Mi’kmaw Place Names

The Mixed Blood Acadien in Bemish Murdoch

Beamish Murdoch, 1800-1876, a Halifax lawyer and member of the Nova Scotia legislative assembly wrote the definitive 19^th century history of Acadia and Nova Scotia in three volumes from 1865 to 1867. He provided extensive notes and relied heavily on records from British and French colonial offices and New England historians who wrote extensively on the history of Acadia. Though today we think of Acadia as the present-day Maritime Provinces, Acadia historically takes in most of Maine as well. Much of what we know about Acadia comes from late 18^th century New England historians.

 

It's a commonplace today to present all white 19^th century historians as racist and colonial in their period representations of the Mi’kmaw and to a lesser extent the Acadien, who come down from colonized history as the oppressed, racially pure, morally superior white Catholic people of Longfellow’s, Land of Evangeline myth. Murdoch however is a thorough historian and not inclined to racist exaggeration, nor does he engage with the noble savage paradigm as sometimes James Hanay does. Like James Fennimore Cooper, Murdoch views the period he describes as an age of adventure where ancient and modern civilizations clash for good or for evil. There is no doubt however Murdoch believes in the justness of British imperialism.

 

“There can be no doubt that if the Acadians had not been constantly stimulated by French agents, clerical and lay, to a disaffected and hostile feeling against the British rule, they might have become the happiest and most prosperous people in the world.”  Vol. 1, pg. 447

 

Murdoch’s history of Nova Scotia and Acadia contains many interesting insights into the mixed blood Acadien. First, he frankly acknowledges that they do exist as people unto themselves sperate from the Mi’kmaw and the Acadians and had in the 18^th century a unique political perspective. Murdoch gives several historical citations which speak to the organization and perspective of the mixed blood Acadien of western Nova Scotia, the people who settled the Chebake.

 

This first illustration speaks only too clearly about the profound mixing of French and Mi’kmaw blood…..

 

“ ….And you may remember that I often said that the French in time of peace were more capable of supplying the Indians with arms, ammunition, &c. , than in war, because half if not more of their ships bound to Canada were then taken, and that so long as the priests and Jesuits are amongst the Indians, they  would endeavor to set them at variance with the English,  that the French will furnish them with officers, whom to know from Indians is difficult, because several have been bred up amongst them, and are dressed and painted as they are.  I hope you will excuse the trouble given you by, sir, your most humble servant, FRANCIS NICHOLSON. London, July, 1715 . Vol 1, pg. 348

 

In the next report a mixed blood Acadien wants his status as loyal subject to the crown acknowledged. He evidently sees himself as a person dissimilar to the pure blood second wave Acadians, who were later deported….

 

…..Nov'r. , 1734, at major Henry Cope's house (Annapolis Royal) …the secretary acquainted the Board that there was one Joseph Munier, ( see Sept. 27, 1734) , an half Indian, come to make his submission , and to take the oath of allegiance to his majesty, and therefore to know whether it might not be administered to him , and he admitted the same privileges as his Majesties other French subjects. The Board agreed that, as he was an active man amongst the Indians, and as it might prove to the good of his Majesty's service to admit him, the oath was accordingly ordered to be administered, who, being sent for, he took the same before the Board. Vol 1, pg. 504

 

Here the mixed blood Acadien of the Tintamarre want to assert their loyalty to the crown in the aftermath of skirmishes in Maine that broke Governor Dummer’s treaty. Soon these same mixed blood Acadien would be caught up in Pere Le Loutre’s war and compelled to flee to Canada….

 

.…In the course of this winter some of the inhabitants of Mines, Piziquid &c. entertained or professed to entertain apprehensions for such of them as were half breeds, owing to the declaration of war against the Indians proclaimed in New England.  On this, (lieutenant governor) Mascarene wrote to the deputies of these places to reassure them, promising to protect all loyal men, no matter what colour their faces may have.  5 January 1744-45, Vol 2, pg.72

 

And in the Chebake the three brothers Muise, grandchildren of Marie Mi’kmaw assert their loyalty to the crown. As a result, they were not deported……

 

….In August Mascarene gave an official certificate to the three brothers Muise of Poubomcoup (Pubnico) of their steady loyalty since the declaration of war.  Vol 2, pg. 76.

 

There are too many citations to go into in this blog post, but serious work needs to be done on Bemish Murdoch and his account of the mixed blood people of Acadia. It is astonishing to me that in this age of Truth and Reconciliation, Murdoch’s scholarship is written off as colonized racism and the obvious truths he speaks about the mixed blood Acadien of Western Nova Scotia are ignored.

Daniel N. Paul We Were Not the Savages

 

Daniel N. Paul is an esteemed Mi’kmaq elder. He first came to my attention while writing the script for my video, Tintammare, 2022. From time to time I came across quotes from Paul’s, We Were Not The Savages, 1993  (4th edition, 2022)  They were used to assert the moral superiority, from the perspective of modern non-traditional indigenous commentators of indigenous peoples on Turtle Island generally, and more particularly with respect to native participation in the various conflicts of the French and Indian wars and other engagements in Acadia. This conflation of the Turtle Island/Garden of Eden narrative with our Native people‘s struggle for survival in the 18^th century seemed incongruous to me and self-serving on the part of present day non-traditional indigenous commentators who employ the trope.

Intrigued by this obviously non-historical perspective I conceived the comfortable racist idea Daniel N. Paul was a biased amateur historian. A primitive apologist for the contemporary non-traditional Turtle Island paradigm. With this in mind I requested the book at the Ottawa Library. The OPL had only one copy in its holdings,  it took four months to get hold of it.  Contrary to my initial  idea, the book was and is a revelation to me. I am lost in admiration for Daniel N. Paul and his work.  As a descendent of Philip and Marie-Anne Pinet, both Mi’kmaq persons and Marie Mi’kmaq, wife of Philip Muise and other unknown Mi’kmaq grand-mères.  I take our Mi’kmaq, Sang-Mêlés Acadien history very seriously. Like so many of my so-called Acadian peers I grew up a white racist, a victim of the colonial Land of Evangeline myth. Another similarly employed Garden of Eden trope.

After discovering my mixed blood indigenous identity in the late 1980’s I endeavored to reconcile the apparent hatred and denial that existed on one hand between the Land of Evangeline Acadians and the Mi’kmaq and the Mi’kmaq and the Sang-Mêlés Acadien of Western Nova Scotia, our clan the mixed blood people of the Chebake.

Reading into Daniel N. Paul’s amazing polemic. I was struck by both the history and perspective. I looked for evidence denied by Darryl Leroux and his non-traditional indigenous followers of the reality of the Sang-Mêlés as a mixed race people similar to the Métis of the west. Far from reading between the lines as I had to with much of Bemish Murdoch and his 18^th century sources. Daniel N. Paul right from the beginning acknowledges the profound mixing of  French and Mi’kmaq blood in the 17^th and 18^th century. I won’t give detailed excerpts. But please see:

all from the third edition

page 23, paragraph 3

page 29, paragraph 3

page 73, paragraph 2

page 106, paragraph 2

pages 120-121-122

If Daniel Paul’s polemic is correct, either all the mixed blood Mi’kmaq/French people living in western Nova Scotia were absorbed into the Sipekne’katik First Nation  in 1876 when the Indian Act was put into force, or some mixed blood Acadians continued to live as a people beyond the control of the Indian Act in the Chebake. This is a difficult question because of the philosophical mischief posed by the idea of blood quantum. Presumably if all mixed blood Acadians were absorbed into the new First Nations in the 19^th century, then possibly the First Nations of western Nova Scotia, including the recent Acadia First Nation are in fact not racially pure by blood quantum standards, but mixed blood like the Métis of the west. I believe this very real historical concern drives the unending hostile reaction between the Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia and the Sang-Mêlés Acadien of the Chebake in our present day.  

Beyond my necessary polemic I have to return to the excellence of Daniel N. Paul’s wonderful rendering of our living history. On one level Paul’s history is as biased as any other, but what sets his work apart is its larger themes. The idea that the Mi’kmaq and other indigenous peoples were as competent socially as the immoral invaders who subdued them, is really a new idea today, just as it was in 1993. This moves Daniel N. Paul’s larger polemic into the realm of moral philosophy.

As chance would have it, Paul republished a fourth edition of We Were Not The Savages in September 2022. I’ve purchased a copy and cherish the work. I send my profoundest respect to the elder Daniel N. Paul.

 

Eric's note 7/9/2023

Daniel Paul left the scene on June 27, 2023. We offer Thanks and Praise to the Creator for  sharing this spirit with us. He has influenced Generations.