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 18th 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 19th 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 17th 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
