People Are Places

            On Monday morning I started finishing on my essay at 6:00 right after yoga. I had breakfast and coffee while working and by 9:00 I was done with the writing. But then it took me six hours to do the citations and so I missed the Indigenous Studies lecture. I also missed the first twenty minutes of tutorial but when I got there everyone including Safia, our TA, was just sitting around complaining about the fact that our professor has not included anything about Canadian Indigenous studies in our course. Safia told me that we weren’t actually having a tutorial because she wasn’t feeling well and had only come in to pick up our essays. I gave her mine. I learned that our second essay topic had been posted and that we have to compare two treaty documents and write a paper on our reflections. I asked if they are Canadian documents and somebody said they are both from the US but when I downloaded them later I saw that they are both Canadian. Safia asked me if I’d gone to the lecture. I said that I’d just spent six hours on citations. A young woman called out, “Cite while you write!” It’s good advice but it doesn’t always work. I often write three times as much material as I use and so I would be doing mostly useless citations if I were to cite while writing. I joined in with the complaints and declared that this is the shabbiest course I’ve ever taken. The readings are not posted ahead of time. For whatever he lectured about today there were no readings. I heard that a couple of students were arguing with him during the lecture. I suggested that he doesn’t talk about Canadian Indigenous Studies because he just doesn’t know anything about them. Safia confirmed that he’s admitted that. I asked why then our textbook is specifically on the subject of Canadian Indigenous Studies. She said she’d have a talk with him about it.

            We left about fifteen minutes early.

            I stopped at Loblaws on the way home where I bought a strawberry rhubarb pie and three bags of black grapes. The escalator between the ground and second floor was only going up and so I had to go back down in the elevator. I assume there’s a stairs somewhere. I made another detour to Freshco to get a jug of vinegar but I also bought a half pint of raspberries.

            I had a late lunch of potato chips with salsa.

            It was too late to take a siesta but I didn’t feel that sleepy anyway. Maybe I was still pumped from being in essay mode. I submitted a digital copy of my essay online as that was required too.

            Here’s my essay:

People are Places

Cultures define themselves by the environments with which they interact. All ecosystems are in flux and this is especially true of rivers. Because rivers exist in motion, groups of people whose lives are interdependent with them have nomadic cultures that span the territories traversed by their flow.

Some examples are: the Wǝlastǝkwewiyik of New Brunswick who named themselves after the Wǝlastǝkw or Beautiful River; the Mississauga in Ontario who drew their title from mississakis, meaning “many river mouths” and the Onödowá’ga or Those of the Big Hill in the Great Lakes area of New York.

What these three groups had in common was harmony with the fluctuating ecosystems with which each moved in cadence. All of them planted the three sisters and travelled by way of lakes and rivers.

Halfway down the Beautiful River on its eastern shore where the Big and Little Shiktehawk streams feed it was an important place for the Wəlastəqwewiyik because it was the beginning of the shortest route from the Wǝlastǝkw to the Miramichi. They would canoe fifteen kilometres up the Shiktehawk and make a twenty-three-kilometre portage to the Miramichi, which flows to the ocean.

“Shiktehawk” means “Where he killed him”.  War parties of Kanien’kehá:ka or People of the Flint Stone Place of eastern New York  would portage from the Kaniatarowanenneh or The Big Waterway to the head of the Beautiful River and descend to attack Wəlastəqwewiyik settlements. It was on the perdue between the big and small Shiktehawks that a Wəlastəqwewiyik chief and a Kanien’kehá:ka chief fought for an afternoon until the Kanien’kehá:ka chief was defeated and buried there.

Sixty-and-a-half kilometres downstream from Shiktehawk the Eel River, “Madawamkeetook” or “Rocky at its Mouth” flows into the western side of the Beautiful River (Raymond). For its last nineteen kilometres the Eel becomes turbulent and a portage of eight kilometres was required for those trying to reach the Wǝlastǝkw. On a plateau, to guard the east end of that portage the village of Meductic or “End of the Path” was built.

When winter approached hunting parties went up the Beautiful River until it froze, stored their canoes and travelled on the ice. A group of ten would have two French guns between them. They hiked north to the St Lawrence and in the spring made moose hide canoes. In these crafts they paddled back down the Wǝlastǝkw to retrieve their birch canoes and returned to Meductic to begin the sowing season.

They downed trees with stone axes and burned stumps to plant corn. They planted three kernels and three beans under mounds a meter apart so the beans would climb the stalks. They also sowed squash, pumpkin and tobacco. After planting they dug roots, came back to weed the corn, dug more roots, returned to hill the corn and then went upriver to catch salmon. After drying the fish they went back to harvest the corn, some of which was boiled, dried and stored and the rest was left to ripen and then pounded to meal for cakes.

            After the revolution ten thousand Loyalists settled along the Beautiful River, edging the Wəlastəqwewiyik away from their traditional territory. Officials came to ask a chief by what right the Wəlastəqwewiyik held the lands. He pointed at the graveyard and said, “These are the graves of our grandfathers, these are the graves of our fathers, these are the graves of our children!”.

In 1851 there were settlers squatting on reserved land in Meductic but rather than remove the illegal occupants the federal government purchased a small two hundred acre plot for a new reserve up the Beautiful River where it is fed by the Meduxnekeag in the town of Woodstock.

In 1945 a centralization plan was hatched to move all the Wəlastəqwewiyik to Kingsclear near Fredericton. The Wəlastəqwewiyik were able to fight geographic centralization through political centralization.

The band purchased more land in 1992 and now the reserve has 426 acres. In 1996 they began commercial fishing operations that work at a profit and in 1997 they started several successful business ventures on the reserve.

Their Wiskolamson “The Wind Blows Very Strongly” renewable energy project has five wind turbines in operation and there are plans for building more. The project is expected to provide clean power to 6000 homes.

The Wəlastəqwewiyik have lived, fished, hunted, gathered and farmed from one end of the Beautiful River to the other for centuries. Although their intimate interaction with the river has been compromised, they continue to maintain a culture based on their traditional relationship with the river. The Maliseet Nation Conservation Council continues to assess and advance the health of the Wǝlastǝkw watershed's ecosystem.

“Maliseet" is a Mi'kmaq word for the Wəlastəqwewiyik, meaning “one who speaks carefully". It is the speech of the Wəlastəqwewiyik that may have named the large group of Eastern Woodland people that share with them the Algonquin language, as their word "ɛlæˈɡomoɡwik" means "they are our relatives". Their relatives in the Great Lakes region were the Anishinaabe, who are also river people.

The Humber River was called Cobechenonk by the Anishinaabe for “leave the canoes and go back”. Long before European contact the Anishnaabe traversed the Toronto Carrying Place Trail from the mouth of the Cobechenonk to the place at Ouentironk or Lake Simcoe called Toron-ten by the Wendat and meaning "the place where trees stand in the water”.

In the late 17^th Century the fur trade compelled the Onödowá’ga or Seneca to come from the south side of Lake Ontario to establish villages on the north shore. Near the mouth of the Cobechenonk at the beginning of the portage on the eastern bank they built Teiaiagon, which sometimes had five thousand people and fifty long houses. Around the village the three sisters were sown in raised mounds that protected the seeds from late frost. The leaves of the squash shaded the mounds to keep roots cool and discourage weeds. Men fished, hunted, made war, traded and cleared fields and women tended crops.

In the late 17^th Century the Mississauga, a river people that had mastered the waters of Ontario, moved south from the northeast shore of Lake Huron to the mouths of rivers like Cobechenonk on the north shore of Lake Ontario, forcing out the Onödowá’ga that had colonized the area for forty years. They established their own settlement across the Cobechenonk from Teiaiagon.

They planted corn on the riverbank and at the mouth of the river. Small parties hunted game during peboon or winter, tapped maple trees in seegwum or spring, met with other groups to fish in neebin or summer, and harvested wild rice on riverbeds in tuhgwuhgin or fall. They used maple syrup to season rice and game. Birch bark was used for utensils, containers, wigwam covering and transportation. When they moved they left the wigwam frames behind, rolled up the birch bark and paddled away in light and fast birch bark canoes.

In 1787, three Mississauga chiefs signed the Toronto Purchase Treaty. The British bought Toronto from the Mississauga for £1,700 and a few trade items. But the chiefs had not signed the document and the legality of the treaty was questionable. In 1805 a new treaty was signed by eight chiefs with a payment of ten shillings. The Mississauga were reserved exclusive fishing rights in Etobicoke Creek and other tributaries to the west but there is no record that this was ever honoured.

Between 1783 and 1820 Loyalists moved into the traditional homelands of the Mississauga to clear their hunting grounds for farms and to overexploit the waters. It took two generations for the federal government to settle the Toronto land claim with the Mississauga of the Credit First Nation for $145 million.

If we live in relation to the ecosystem of a place it becomes part of our identity. When cultures such as those of the Europeans allow such a relationship to gradually fade over centuries, the pain of separation from one’s environment is far less painful. But when the loss of place is sudden, as was the case for the Wəlastəqwewiyik, the Mississauga and many other Indigenous groups, the alienation is devastating.

            That night for dinner I had the last of my chicken legs, a potato and some gravy while watching Zorro.

            This story begins with a funeral for Martinez, the man that had impersonated Zorro in the previous episode. But it turns out that Martinez is not dead and that Captain Monastario has him holed up in a cave in the hills. Monastario asks him to pose as Zorro again so as to discredit the hero. He tells him to rob the jewelled crown of the virgin from the monastery as Zorro and he can keep the crown. But while he is committing the robbery one of the padre’s Native servants tries to stop him and is killed. When Don Diego hears that Zorro was seen riding to the mission he changes to Zorro and goes there but is surprised when Native start shooting arrows at him and calling him a killer. He can’t appear as Zorro again until he figures out what’s going on. He goes to the local cantina with some fake jewels that are convincingly similar to those that had been on the stolen crown. The same dancer as in the last episode is performing for the crowd and when she is finished and people are tossing coins he secretly throws a fake ruby among them. The jewel gets a lot of attention and one of Monastario’s men goes back to tell the captain. Monastario figures Martinez has been locally spending the jewels and he goes out to the hills to confront him with Don Diego following. Monastario stabs Martinez while he’s sleeping but it was really leaves under a blanket, as Martinez had anticipated betrayal. They have a sword battle and Martinez wounds Monastario’s hand. Don Diego can’t let Martinez get away and so he comes forward and takes up Monastario’s sword. What proceeds is a fake looking battle as Don Diego pretends to be a clumsy swordsman so as not to reveal that he is Zorro while still successfully warding off Martinez. Clearly the actor playing Martinez is toning down his skill for the battle with Don Diego. Don Diego wins while making it look like an accident.

            Shortly after dinner my not having taken a siesta earlier caught up with me and I went to bed an hour and a half early.