Tag Archives: Mi'kmaq

Grabbing

Land use and foreign ownership has been much discussed on PEI recently, but this is certainly not a new preoccupation in this province. When my ancestors arrived from England and Scotland in the 18th and 19th centuries, they would have paid rent to landowners back in Britain, people who probably never set foot on PEI. That system ended in the 1870s, allowing people to buy the land where they lived, but Islanders seem to have been touchy about who can own land here ever since.

Someone showed me a post from a Facebook group that referred to certain recent land purchases as “land grabbing.” It’s the perfect phrase to stir people up on social media, but those of us who are not Indigenous Canadians need to be mindful of the history of land grabbing on this continent.

There is plenty of talk about who should own land on PEI, who should be allowed to build structures and where they can be situated, but very little, if any, discussion about how we recognize and reconcile the fact that every inch of this island is unceded Mi’kmaq territory. How must the “land grabbing” discussion sound to Mi’kmaq people?

The sounds of the land

The upcoming merger of four PEI credit unions means the new entity will need a new name. I just completed a member survey where I was asked to rate and give my response to six possible new names…or, rather, five new names and the name of one of the existing credit unions.

The first two sounded like the names of cars, the next one reminded me of John A. MacDonald and colonialism (not a favourable association), the fourth was surprisingly light and fun, the fifth just didn’t sound good to me, and the last one was that existing credit union name. Choosing the existing name would make some members angry that they lost their local credit union name in the merger while other members got to keep theirs, confirming earlier concerns raised at public meetings that the whole process felt like a centralised takeover which would weaken rural voices. I found it an odd choice after all the acrimony.

Although there wasn’t a place to offer other suggestions, I wrote into one of the response boxes that I wanted them to pick a Mi’kmaw word. It is the language of the first people of this island, the real language of this land. It is a rich, living language, unlike the Latin and Latin-derived words the (probable) branding consultants chose. I don’t have a suggestion for what the new credit union could be called, because that should be up to the Mi’kmaq.

I have just started reading Isabelle Knockwood’s 1992 book Out of the Depths about the experiences of Mi’kmaw children who were sent to the Indian Residential School in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia. Just an hour before the survey landed in my inbox, I had read this sentence about Knockwood’s memories of listening to elders telling stories:

The stories were ancient, and the language in which they were told was even older. According to my mother, Deodis, the Mi’kmaw language evolved from the sounds of the land, the winds and the waterfalls. As far as we know, there is no other language like it spoken anywhere else in the world.

What an opportunity to have the Mi’kmaw language more visible across this island, on the side of many branches of a new credit union, something unique, truly from and of Epekwitk.

[I’ve read many explanations of the difference between Mi’kmaq and Mi’kmaw, and am struggling to use the words correctly, so I welcome corrections; I would rather try and fail than not try at all!]