Mi'kmaq

The Mi'kmaq are an Indigenous nation of Canada's Atlantic coast, whose homeland, Mi'kma'ki, takes in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, much of New Brunswick, the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec and parts of Newfoundland and northern Maine. Among the first North American peoples to deal regularly with European fishermen and traders, they allied with the French, fought the British for decades and then made treaties whose promises still shape Canadian law. Historically called Micmac, they number more than 66,000 people today.

Mi'kmaq is the plural and Mi'kmaw the singular and adjective; the people also call themselves L'nuk, "the people". The older spelling Micmac, widely replaced by the 1980s, is regarded by many Mi'kmaq as a colonial form. Mi'kma'ki was traditionally divided into seven districts, plus Newfoundland, each with its own chief and council that made laws, settled disputes, allotted hunting and fishing grounds and decided on war and peace.

Archaeological evidence in south-western Nova Scotia shows use of the land for at least 4,000 years. Small bands of related families moved with the seasons: in spring they gathered at streams for smelt and herring and collected eggs; in summer they lived in larger coastal camps, fishing for cod, catching shellfish and hunting seals and porpoises; in autumn they caught eels and then dispersed inland to hunt moose and caribou. Moose supplied food, clothing, cord and tools. Women decorated clothing with porcupine quillwork. Petroglyphs at Kejimkujik show Mi'kmaw homes, people, animals and ships.

Above the districts stood the Grand Council, Sante' Mawio'mi, made up of district chiefs, elders, wampum readers who kept the treaties, a women's council and a grand chief, traditionally from Cape Breton. It met, and still meets, on the island of Mniku in Bras d'Or Lake. On 24 June 1610 Grand Chief Membertou was baptised a Catholic, beginning a long alliance with the French. A hieroglyphic script, developed by the missionary Chrestien Le Clercq in the late 1670s inspired by marks Mi'kmaw children made to help them remember prayers, was long used for religious texts.

European fishing camps were trading with the Mi'kmaq by the sixteenth century, and furs soon became central to the exchange. After King Philip's War the Mi'kmaq joined the Wabanaki Confederacy. Allied with the Acadians, they fought the British in six wars over some 75 years, raiding new settlements such as Halifax and Lunenburg and resisting the expulsion of the Acadians during the French and Indian War. They were not party to the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, by which France gave up most of its claim, and never ceded land. Between 1725 and 1779 they signed a series of Peace and Friendship Treaties with the British Crown, and the Halifax Treaties of 1760–1761 ended the fighting.

The arrival of New England Planters and Loyalists brought heavy pressure on land, and in the nineteenth century officials offered "relief" while urging the Mi'kmaq to farm and send their children to British schools. The Indian Act of 1876 undermined the Grand Council by imposing elected band governments. From 1930 to 1967 Mi'kmaw children were sent to the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School. The Mi'kmaq were famous makers of hockey sticks, and the oldest known stick, carved between 1852 and 1856, is theirs.

In 1999 the Supreme Court of Canada's R v Marshall ruling upheld a treaty right, under the treaties of 1760–1761, to fish, hunt and gather for a "moderate livelihood", followed by tense disputes over lobster fishing. In 2010 Canada and Nova Scotia agreed to consult the Grand Council on matters affecting the Mi'kmaq. In Newfoundland, Miawpukek was recognised in 1987 and the landless Qalipu First Nation in 2011. About 9,245 people spoke Mi'kmaw in 2021, and band-run schools have strengthened education.

Our maps from 1492 to 1715 draw an approximate Mi'kma'ki in the Maritimes. Its neighbours were the other Wabanaki nations, the French colony of New France and the Beothuk of Newfoundland.