Negotiating the Political Ecology of Aboriginal Resource Management: How Mi'kmaq Manage Their Moose and Lobster Harvest in Unama'ki, Nova Scotia, Canada

Since the Supreme Court of Canada affirmed the fishing and hunting rights of the Mi'kmaq nation in 1985 and 1990, the government has failed to accommodate these in appropriate and effective resource management frameworks. In Unama'ki/Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, the subsistence harvest of lobster and moose by Mi'kmaq has therefore caused cross-cultural conflict and ecological concerns. Since 2006, the Lobster Management Plan (Unama'kik Jakejue'ka'timk) and the Moose Management Plan are being developed under Mi'kmaq leadership to manage the Mi'kmaq harvest communally. These innovative management initiatives will serve as case studies for this thesis to explore how Mi'kmaq negotiate the political ecology of co-management in Nova Scotia and effectively assert Mi'kmaq rights to resource harvest and selfgovernance. Most notably, the management plans employ cultural principles of sustainability and pro-active approaches to cross-cultural communication. This research shows how Mi'kmaq communities have developed resource management capacities and frameworks that can also inspire the self-government aspirations of other aboriginal nations in Canada. Mi'kmaq strategies and experience suggests that aboriginal leadership and cultural principles are integral to the meaningful implementation of aboriginal resource rights. Semi-structured interviews with Mi'kmaq and governmental resource managers illustrated diverse discourses of aboriginal resource rights, ecological knowledge and sustainability. Aiming to represent research insights appropriately, this thesis follows the decolonization agenda of aboriginal methodologies and features reflective discussions of the author's positionality within the Mi'kmaq research community. This also allows for a review of how the author came to terms with conflicting discourses and aboriginal ontologies of ecological knowledge, as well as the requirements for decolonizing research. Supporting reflective insights, a framework of anthropological political ecology and poststructuralist arguments for ontological diversity explain the validity of aboriginal perspectives on ecological knowledge and resource rights, which is the premise of decolonization paradigms. A review of engaging with aboriginal culture both in theory and practice concludes that the practical experience is essential for an appreciation of aboriginal perspectives and thus integral to cross-cultural communication and co-management relationships

An Empty Shell of a Treaty Promise: R. v. Marshall and the Rights of the Non-Status Indians

One of the difficult issues presented by R. v. Marshall is that of who is a Mi\u27kmaq person, or more generally who is entitled to claim to be a beneficiary of the Treaties of 1760-61. This paper examines a number of possible approaches to this matter, including ones based on residence (on or off reserve), descent and the terms of the Indian Act. It notes the deficiencies of existing tests and of Canadian case law that has addressed Aboriginal identity in other contexts. It concludes by noting that the negotiations which must follow in the wake of Marshall present the opportunity for a new, good faith dialogue to establish the rules for ascertaining First Nations membership

Capitalism and Dispossession: The Commodification of the Countryside and the "Improvement" of Mi'kma'ki, 1760-1860

Taking mainland Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island as its case studies, this thesis attempts to uncover the mechanisms by which the Mi'kmaq were dispossessed of their lands in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Dispossession is here problematized as a process connected to, but distinct from, the imposition of British jurisdiction in Mi'kma'ki following the conclusion of the Seven Years' War. In key respects, dispossession was an inherently local, unpredictable process involving a myriad of actors with disparate motives and interests; at the same time, it was given structural coherence by imperial and colonial land policies, which subjected settlers qua subjects of the Crown to common economic compulsions and constraints. This thesis argues that it was the promotion of capitalist social property relations in particular that provided the greatest impetus for the dispossession of both Mi'kmaq and settlers in this period, giving rise to complex intra- and inter-class dynamics. Although imperial and colonial policies varied widely in their efficacy and application across wide swathes of mostly unpoliceable territory, the promotion of capitalist economic imperatives played a decisive role in facilitating dispossession in even the remotest and most marginal areas. Crucially, it gave rise to widespread squatting, frustrating the authorities' plans for the orderly and profitable settlement of the colony and necessitating a policy of compromise with implicated settlers. By the mid-nineteenth century, authorities largely abandoned their policy of protecting indigenous reserves, opting to sell squatters their improvements in what amounted to a fire-sale of encroached-upon Crown lands

A Post-Colonial Era? Bridging Ml'kmaq and Irish Experiences of Colonialism

This dissertation explores the links between the past and present impacts of colonization in Ireland and colonization in Mikmaki (the unceded territories of the Mi'kmaq Confederacy known to Canadians as the Maritimes provinces). It asks how might deepening our understandings of these potential links inform accountable and decolonial relationships between the Irish and the Mikmaq? In doing so, it argues that comparatively examining Irish and Mikmaq experiences of colonialism can offer concrete insights not only into the way that the Irish and the Mikmaq have an interwoven past, but also the way that the legacies of colonialism are permeating everyday life in the present in both regions. Refusing colonial representations of Mi'kma'ki and recentering Mi'kmaq worldviews throughout this comparison, this dissertation presents Mi'kma'ki as a discrete and sovereign (occupied) territory. The dissertation begins by providing an overview of the geographical and sociopolitical context of Ireland and Mi'kma'ki while introducing some of the links that have caused community members in both nations to call for this type of comparative research to be completed. The second chapter explores key historical moments in Irish and Mi'kmaq history which serve not just as a foundation for understanding the historical context of current experiences of colonialism in both regions, but also highlights the way that Ireland and Mi'kma'ki have had their pasts interwoven by British colonialism and the Irish diaspora. Drawing on oral life histories gathered in the bordertowns between County Donegal and Derry/Londonderry in Ireland, as well as Eskasoni First Nation in Unama'ki (Cape Breton) in Mi'kma'ki, the third and fourth chapters respectively explore the way that Irish and Mi'kmaq community members are currently experiencing the impacts of the legacies of British colonialism in everyday life. Finally, the dissertation concludes by reiterating the main insights shared by community members around the current state of colonialism, postcolonialism, and decolonization in both regions, before briefly discussing the postdoctoral research (and other areas of inquiry) that are expanding the inquiry of this project further while highlighting how the Irish and Lnuk might use the insights from the project to increase their collaborations and support one another

'A gossamer web, is life' : biomedicine, the Mi'kmaq and the reclamation of traditional healing knowledge

113 leaves ; 29 cm.Includes appendices.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 104-113).Biomedicine and the traditional healing practices of the Mi‘kmaq are outgrowths of their respective cultural backgrounds. In the socialized biomedicial milieu of contemporary Nova Scotia this has created unique and nuanced challenges in the provision of health care to Mi‘kmaq patients. Additionally, the reclamation of all-but-lost traditional knowledge concerning healing among the Mi‘kmaq has proven to be, at times, problematic. This thesis examines these issues, and presents a new interpretive framework within which to approach the regeneration of traditional healing. The result is a valuable and useful contribution to scholarship in the field, and provides insight to those policy-makers involved in the provision of care to Nova Scotia‘s First Nations citizens

After 12,000 years of yesterdays : where will Debert be after 12 years of tomorrows? : the impact of Mi'kmawey Debert on the culture, economy, and environment of the Mi'kmaq

216 leaves : ill. (some col.), maps (some col.) ; 29 cm.Includes abstract and appendices.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 207-216).Microfiche. Ottawa : Library and Archives Canada = Bibliothèque et Archives Canada,Near Debert, in central Nova Scotia, lie 12,000-year old archaeological remains. Sophisticated hunters and tool makers utilized the resources of Mother Earth to care for their families in a land only sixty miles from glaciers. A 1963 excavation uncovered 4,000 stone tools and eleven hearths. This Paleo-Indian, caribou-hunting camp was declared to be one of world-wide importance. The Mi'kmaq commissioned further research on the site and found an additional 1,500 artifacts in 1991. The Confederacy of Mainland Mi'kmaq with a Mi'kmaw Elders' Advisory Council is creating a Cultural Centre to tell the story of the First People. Mi'kmawey Debert has the potential to provide many benefits to the Mi'kmaq and all Nova Scotians through healing, re-establishing culture and language, creating a major tourism generator, and providing employment and education. Mi'kmawey Debert is a multi-faceted initiative that deserves the support required to make it a reality

Tacitus' Germania and the Jesuit Relations: Intertextuality in the Transatlantic World of the Early Jesuits in New France.

The first Europeans who wrote about the Indigenous people of the newly discovered Americas, not only used medieval, but also classical literature as a tool of reference to describe 'otherness.' As true humanists, the French Jesuits who arrived in the New World were deeply influenced by their classical education and, as claimed by Grafton, reverted to ancient ethnographic texts, like Tacitus' Germania, to support their analyse of the Indigenous people they encountered. Books talk to books. Inspired by Germania, the early French Jesuits managed to convey to their readers a subtle critique of their own civilization, enhancing, like Tacitus, the virtuous aspect of the so-called barbarians they described while illustrating the corruption of their respective civilized worlds. This thesis suggests that the essence of Tacitus' work is definitively present in Pierre Biard's letters and his Relation. His testimonies illustrate the connection the early French Jesuits had with the humanist thought of their time

I smooth\u27d him up with fair words : Intersocietal law, from fur trade to treaty

History is an essential part of aboriginal law. The two disciplines, however, may produce incompatible narratives of indigenous-settler relations. In addition, indigenous legal traditions and the fur trade in the old North West have been under-represented in Canadian legal history, a gap that demotes over two centuries of working relationships to a brief preface to the numbered treaties and confederation. This dissertation seeks to bring under-observed normative relations between indigenous and European traders into Canadian legal history. It further considers the relevance of fur trade law to the jurisprudence on aboriginal treaty rights and the significance of history in overcoming historical injustice in settler states. Using an ethnohistorical methodology, three case studies are presented on the law of the fur trade followed by a chapter connecting the interpretation of the intersocietal law of the fur trade to the interpretation of treaties in history and law. Focussing the fur trade as conducted by the Hudson\u27s Bay Company and the North West Company, the case studies investigate the normative expectations of the indigenous and company traders around particular aspects of the trading relationship. These aspects include institutions of leadership, the formation and maintenance of friendships, negotiations of trading post location, and the exchange of provisions and support in times of famine and illness. In these case studies, the intersocietal law of the trade is interpreted as incomplete and often laden with misunderstanding. It involved competition between normative systems and harboured persistent disagreements, even while sufficient shared obligations and occasional shared meanings emerged to support robust working relationships. This interpretation of the intersocietal law of the fur trade demands a shift in the characterization of treaties in history and law. I argue that to better serve the aims of justice and reconciliation, both the classification of treaties in history and the interpretive focus of the treaty rights jurisprudence must change to allow the complexity of the historical relationship - including the disagreements and injustices buried in simpler narratives - to emerge

Dancing with scalps: native North American women, white men and ritual violence in the eighteenth century

Native American women played a key role in negotiating relations between settler and Native society, especially through their relationships with white men. Yet they have traditionally languished on the sidelines of Native American and colonial American history, often viewed as subordinate and thus tangential to the key themes of these histories. This dissertation redresses the imbalance by locating women at the centre of a narrative that has been dominated by discourses in masculine aspirations. It explores the variety of relations that developed between men and women of two frontier societies in eighteenth century North America: the Creeks of the Southeast, and the Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia. This dissertation complicates existing histories of Native and colonial America by providing a study of Indian culture that, in a reversal of traditional inquiry, asks how Native women categorised and incorporated white people into their physical and spiritual worlds. One method was through ritualised violence and torture of captives. As primary agents of this process women often selected, rejected or adopted men into the tribes, depending on factors that ranged from nationality to religion. Such acts challenged contemporary Euro-American wisdom that ordained a nurturing, auxiliary role for women. However, this thesis shows that ‘anomalous’ violent behaviours of Indian women were rooted in a femininity inculcated from an early age. In this volatile world, women were not shielded from the horrors of war. Instead, they became one of those horrors. Therefore, viewing anomalous actions as central to the analysis provides an understanding of female identities outwith the straitjacket of the Euro-American gender binary. With violence as a legitimate and natural expression of feminine power, the Indian woman’s character was far removed from depictions of the sexualised exotic, self-sacrificing Pocahontas or stoic Sacagawea. The focus on women’s violent customs, which embodied several important and unusual manifestations of Native American femininity, reveals a number of jarring behaviours that have found no home within colonial literatures. These behaviours included sanctioned infanticide and abortions, brutal tests for adolescents, scalp dancing and death rites, cannibalism, mercenary wives and sadistic grandmothers. With limited means of incorporating such female characteristics into pre-existing gender categories, the women’s acts were historically treated as non-representative of regular Indian lifeways and thus dismissed. Colonial relations are therefore analysed through an alternative lens to accommodate these acts. This allows women to construct their own narrative in a volatile landscape that largely sought to exclude those voices, voices that challenged dominant ideologies on appropriate male-female relations. By constructing a new gender framework I show that violence was a vehicle by which women realised, promoted and reinforced their tribal standing

Reconstructing Identity: A Personal Pespective

Challenged by adverse experiences in the first year of law school, the author of this paper uses her experience to trigger an analysis of identity discourse in the law. In Part I, she shares her experience and characterizes it as an epistemological dilemma to the traditional legal methods of identity construction. She introduces the two traditional methods of identity construction: the impartial trajectory and the categorical trajectory and briefly demonstrates that, because her experience was specific to her first year of law school at Dalhousie University, both trajectories limit her claim to knowledge. Using her own experience and others found in the literature, the author reconstructs a legal paradigm to identity. Throughout the paper, the author draws upon illustrations, literature and theory from various sources: (dis)ability, gender, race, and sexual orientation. It is in the author\u27s view that all of these claims encounter similar challenges to expression and identity