· web view[wogamaq?] means their relations. [gogamaq?] is your relations. so, in that context,...

3954

Verbatim Inc. - Dartmouth, Nova Scotia - (902) 469-5734

Serving Atlantic Canada Since 1976

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DECEMBER 2, 1999

COURT OPENS (TIME: 0945 hours)

THE COURT Good morning.

ALL Good morning, Your Honour.

THE COURT Mr. Wildsmith.

MR. WILDSMITH The Defence calls to the stand Chief Stephen

Augustine.

CHIEF AUGUSTINE, sworn, testified as follows:

THE CLERK Please be seated and spell your full name?

A. Stephen, S-T-E-P-H-E-N. Augustine, A-U-G-U-S-T-I-N-E.

DIRECT EXAMINATION ON QUALIFICATIONS

MR. WILDSMITH Chief Augustine, would you just indicate to

the Court where you live and your present employment?

A. I live in Rupert in Quebec, about 30 miles outside of

Hull, and I work at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in

Hull.

Q. Let me show you Exhibit 44 that has been marked. Could

you identify what this is?

A. This is my resume.

EXHIBIT 44 [ENTERED] - RESUME OF CHIEF STEPHEN AUGUSTINE

Q. Did you prepare that?



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A. Yes, I did.

Q. Let me show you Exhibit 17, volume 3, which under tab

15, document 15.

A. Yes.

Q. Could you indicate what that is?

A. That's a curriculum vitae.

Q. Have you prepared that as well?

A. Yes, I did.

Q. Is your resume Exhibit 44 an updated version of the

same document?

A. Yes, it's an updated version with a change of address

and more detailed information about past employment and

public presentations.

MR. WILDSMITH I should indicate to Your Honour that I seek

to qualify Chief Augustine as an expert ethno-historian able

to give expert opinion evidence on the aboriginal peoples.

I have this on a piece of paper which I can give to you in

due course. And the aboriginal perspective on aboriginal

European relationships in eastern North America, including

the language, culture, oral traditions and oral history of

the Mi'kmaq Indians.



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My friend, Mr. Clarke, I believe, is able to go part

way with respect to those qualifications. Maybe I should

just let him speak to that before I provide my examination

of Chief Augustine, so that it may be a more restricted

basis as a result.

THE COURT That's fair enough.

MR. CLARKE Yes, Your Honour, there's just two positions

at this time that the Crown is in a position to address.

One is the ethno-historian as an expert ethno-historian. We

would take or request the Court to consider that issue.

And the other one is able to give expert opinion

evidence on the aboriginal peoples and the aboriginal

perspective on Mi'kmaq European relationships in eastern

North America, including the language, culture, oral

traditions and oral history of the Mi'kmaq Indians. That

would be the other clarification the Crown would be seeking

in cross, is rather than all aboriginal European

relationships in eastern North America, it be specific to

the Mi'kmaq/European relationships in eastern North America.

With the caveat that there has been extensive evidence

before the Court from a number of other witnesses in



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relation to the Wawanki Confederacy, which includes, to the

Crown's understanding, some of the Eastern tribes, the

Abenaki, Penobscot, the Maliseet and Passamaquoddy. Our

understanding is that's not the majority of his evidence,

but we're concerned that his perspective on Mi'kmaq European

relationships is where the qualifications should lie rather

than in the broader aboriginal/European relationships in

eastern North America.

MR. WILDSMITH Simply our point, and I will pursue it with

Chief Augustine, is that while 90-odd per cent of it is

going to be about the Mi'kmaq, the Mi'kmaq did have this

interactional relationship with other aboriginal peoples of

eastern North America and we do have documentation relating

to the state of the Penobscot dealing with the British, so

that, in our submissions, he should be able to speak to that

as well.

THE COURT I guess I understand what the issues are. So, go

ahead.

MR. WILDSMITH Maybe what I should do is give you this

proposed evidence guide, which does have the statement of

the qualification on it now.



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THE COURT That's fair. It's helpful to have it.

MR. WILDSMITH So turning, Chief Augustine, to Exhibit 44,

can you tell us about your educational background?

A. On the second page, my most recent degree is in a

Masters of Art in Canadian Studies at Carleton University,

on which a thesis entitled "A Culturally Relevant Education

for Aboriginal Youth - Is There Room for A Middle Ground

Accommodating Traditional Knowledge and Mainstream

Education?" This was successfully defended in December,

1998.

Prior to that, I attended one year for a qualifying

program in a Masters in History at the University of New

Brunswick. I did one semester of History in the Masters

level and I did not complete the program and I did not write

a thesis.

Prior to that, in 1986, I graduated from St. Thomas

University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology

and Political Science. Because those were my majors, I had

to do a qualifying year in a Masters for History program at

UNB.

In 1985, I attended a Native Law Program to prepare



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3960

myself to seek a degree in law, which I did not pursue after

completing the program.

Q. Very well. With respect to your Masters thesis and the

reference to traditional knowledge, with respect to whose

traditional knowledge?

A. This was mainly Mi'kmaq traditional knowledge but it

also reflected on other aboriginal examples in Canada and

North America of their traditional knowledge in areas of

technology using toboggans and building wigwams and

structures and medicines and those other elements that are

integral to their cultures.

Q. Would that, in part, include Maliseet, Passamaquoddy,

Abenaki?

A. Yes.

Q. You indicate on here that you speak certain languages.

English, obviously, you are speaking at the moment.

A. Yes, I speak Mi'kmaq. I have spoken Mi'kmaq all my

life.

Q. And French?

A. And French, yes.

Q. You say you have spoken Mi'kmaq all of your life. Are



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you a Mi'kmaq Indian?

A. I am a Mi'kmaq Indian, born on the Big Cove Reserve in

New Brunswick.

Q. Are you a status Indian as well?

A. I am a status Indian and I am also Captain on the

Mi'kmaq Band Council, representing Sigenigtog, the area

where I was born.

Q. Could you spell that Mi'kmaq word and district for the

record?

A. S-I-G-E-N-I-G-T-O-G.

Q. Are you a member of the Big Cove Band?

A. Yes, I am a member of the Big Cove Band.

Q. Is that located in the general vicinity of

Richebouctou, New Brunswick?

A. Yes, it's in Kent County, and it's about seven miles up

the Richebouctou River.

Q. What about your knowledge of Maliseet or other

aboriginal languages?

A. I am, because the Maliseet language is very similar to

the Mi'kmaq language, there are a lot of root words, I would

imagine about 10 per cent of the words that the Maliseet use



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3962

are recognizable in our language.

Q. Do you regard yourself as a Maliseet speaker?

A. No.

Q. You mentioned that you were a member of the Mi'kmaq

Band Council.

A. Yes.

Q. Can you just explain what you meant by saying that you

were, I believe, a captain?

A. The late Grand Chief Donald Marshall, Senior, called

upon me in 1990 to visit him because he had information that

my family had been involved with the Grand Council in the

early 1900s and he wanted to find out from me what my

relationship was to that family that was participating on

the Grand Council. And he mentioned a name and I said that

was my great-grandfather, and my grandfather, and then my

father before me, had not participated. So he said, "I

think you're supposed to be on the Mi'kmaq Grand Council as

a hereditary chief representing your district."

And so he made the appointment in 1990 and called me to

attend the Grand Council meeting in Chapel Island and I

began my work with the Grand Council as a captain.



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3963

Q. Would that mean that you're a hereditary chief?

A. Yes, I'm a direct descendant of the signer of the

treaty on March 10, 1760, by Michel Augustine, Chief Michel

Augustine, who was living on the Richebouctou River at the

time.

Q. Okay, we'll get into that in more detail but you're a

direct descendent of Michel Augustine?

A. Yes.

Q. And you mentioned the Grand Council, at least in its

modern day format. Could you just elaborate on what that is

and what you meant by representing one particular district?

A. The Grand Council is made up of seven districts

throughout the Maritime Provinces from the Gaspe Peninsula,

representing one of the districts down as far as Tracadie

River. Another district, Sigenigtog, represents -- I mean

expands down towards the mouth of the Saint John River, down

as far as Oxford/Springhill area in Nova Scotia. Then we

have Gesgapegoag, Sigenigtog, Mensigenigtog --

Q. Could you spell those for the record?

A. Starting with the Gaspe?

Q. Well, the ones that you have mentioned.



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A. Gaspe is called Gesgapesgiag, G-E-S-G-A-P-E-G-I-A-G,

and it means the son gets lost over the horizon.

Sigenigtog, S-I-G-E-N-I-G-T-O-G. It's the remnants of what

is left over from an island drifting away. And M-E-N in

front of Sigenigtog, means what is left over when the land

tore itself off from the mainland, and it's been shortened

to Sigenigtog. Gespogoitg is G-E-S-P-O-G-O-I-T-G.

Q. Where is that?

A. Gespogoitg. That is in the Yarmouth, the southern,

southwestern part of Nova Scotia. Segebemagatig is the area

where the wild turnip grows. S-E-G-E-B-E-M-A-G-A-T-I-G.

Q. Is that generally in the area of Shubenacdie?

A. Shubenacadie, around Truro, including Halifax and the

central part of Nova Scotia. Then we have Epegoitg, E-P-E-

G-O-I-T-G, which is Prince Edward Island, also including

Pictou. Pigtogoalnei. P-I-G-T-O-G-O-A-L-N-E-I. Goalnei

means a harbour or a bay. Pictou Harbour or Pictou Bay.

That is all included in one district on the Grand Council

because it is believed at some point the mainland Nova

Scotia and New Brunswick was connected to Prince Edward

Island and this was only divided by a river. Eskegiag, the



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3965

six district, is the area around the Canso and it's spelled

E-S-K-E-G-I-A-G. It means pieces of rock or land, piecing

off the mainland and falling into the water and making a

loud splash. And then Omamagi is the Cape Breton area and

the Mi'kmaq Grand Council is made up of seven of these

districts.

Traditionally, there were two representatives from each

of the districts - a spiritual representative and more or

less one who was responsible for the well being, the

physical well being of the people in those particular

districts.

Q. Perhaps you could just spell Omamagi for the record.

A. O-M-A-M-A-G-I, Omamagi. So the Mi'kmaq Grand Council

is a pre-contact aboriginal Mi'kmaq political, spiritual,

social organization.

Q. In relation to the Grand Council today, rather than

historically, what kinds of functions or activities are they

involved in and what role do you have, in particular?

A. My responsibility there is I represent the Sigenigtog

District on behalf of my people. I am responsible for

carrying the creation story, Tanwebegsulgtieg. T-A-N-W-E-B-



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E-G-S-U-L-G-T-I-E-G. Meaning where we come from or where

our origins are from.

I also interpret the treaties -- I mean the wampum

belts, the treaties that were recorded on wampum belts for

the Grand Council. We have Charles Herney, who we call a

Putus, who is responsible for that function. P-U-T-U-S. He

is responsible for reading the wampum belts and relating

these stories to our people at our gatherings but right now

he is a very old man and he is slowly losing his memory. So

it's been given to me to take over those responsibilities

for the Grand Council.

Q. Okay, thank you. Your present position, you indicated,

is with the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Hull.

A. Yes.

Q. Can you indicate what that position is and what your

duties are in that position?

A. My official title there is Native History Researcher,

but I have also, for a year, over a year now since October

1st, 1998, I have been functioning and acting as -- and

taking over the responsibilities as Curator of Eastern

Maritime Ethnology.



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3967

Q. What does that mean, to be a Curator of Eastern

Maritime Ethnology?

A. I am responsible for the collections that have been

gathered in the museum for the last 100 years that are kept

there. These collections are from the eastern part of North

America that involve Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, Beothuk,

Passamaquoddy, and some Penobscot material.

Q. Are the Penobscot connected to the Abenaki?

A. Yes, they are.

Q. What kinds of materials are we speaking about?

A. Material culture, drums, snowshoes, canoes, things that

were collected by area ethnographers while they were doing

research for the museum or for other museums or universities

in the United States, and they had deposited their

collections to our museum at some point in the past.

Q. In terms of how the Museum of Civilization is

structured, where would you fit into the various divisions

or services within the museum?

A. Well, the museum itself has an executive -- They have a

board of directors, then we have an executive that ensures

the functioning of the museum on an administrative level and



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3968

financial level. Then we have programs. We have a Canadian

Ethnology Services Division. This is where I work. Then we

have Canadian Archeological Survey. All the archaeologists

work there. We have a history department. We have a

folklore department. We have a postal museum and a

children's museum. These are all divisions that take care

of different sectors of the museum in the public side and

they help to maintain the collections in the museum as well

by doing research and publishing material and programming

exhibits.

Q. Can you indicate what the mandate or mission is of the

Ethnology Service that you work as part of?

A. The mandate of the Ethnology Services Division is to

mainly to maintain the collections. Manage and maintain the

collections that we have to ensure their secure condition,

to look after the conservation of those materials, to ensure

that the public have access to the resources in the museum,

as well as to conduct further research to provide context to

the materials that are in our collections.

Q. Could you tell us about the research and the kinds of

materials that would provide context, as you've put it, to



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3969

the physical objects that are contained in the museum?

A. The research would have to be involved in collecting

information about cultural groups that the material may have

been collected.

Q. Does that involve the group of five, I think,

aboriginal nations you spoke about?

A. Yes.

Q. Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Beothuk, and

Penobscot?

A. Yes, it would require a systematic literature research

at archives locally in New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island,

Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. And, on a national level,

with the Department of Indian Affairs and the National

Archives of Canada.

Q. So historical documents would be part of those

collections, would they?

A. Yes, we have an archival section as well in our museum

that has manuscript collections that were at the time of --

Some of them date back as far as the middle of 1600s, notes

by missionaries that have been deposited at our museum

instead of at the national archives.



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3970

Q. Are you involved in the collection and the analysis of

that material?

A. Yes, it's part of my responsibility to accession

material that comes in. It's part of my responsibility to

make available to the public, to the researchers, access to

the resources or to the sources.

Q. Does it involve the interpretation of that material?

A. Yes, it does.

Q. Okay. How long have you worked with the Museum of

Civilization?

A. I have worked there full-time since three years,

October, whatever, 1996. I had worked there earlier on a

contract basis.

Q. Could you explain that?

A. I was involved in providing an update to a list of

aboriginal communities across Canada. Communities like

Restigouche, who have changed their name to Listugutj. L-I-

S-T-U-G-U-T-J. A lot of aboriginal communities across

Canada have changed their names back to their aboriginal

names and part of that task was to update that list, because

we had names that were like Fort George or St. George or



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Coverdale that were not indigenous names to the communities.

So that involved updating and contacting all the First

Nations communities across Canada and aboriginal

organizations.

Q. That was part of what you did under contract?

A. Yes.

Q. If we turn to the third page of Exhibit 44, your

resume, we see the title "Publications."

A. Yes.

Q. Can you, and bearing in mind that the Crown has

conceded your expertise with respect to the Mi'kmaq, could

you go through these publications and indicate what things

might be relevant to your expertise with respect to

Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, or Abenaki?

A. The first publication, "Traditional Indigenous

Knowledge and Preservation of Cultural Property," this

involved identifying cultural objects that were held in our

museum as well as in other museums across Canada and

identifying which ones were sacred and which ones were not

sacred objects and how these objects should be handled.

This involved having to provide source material on Mi'kmaq,



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Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Beothuk, and Maliseet.

Identifying these materials as which ones would be sacred

and which ones would not be.

Q. Would that involve looking at something about the

culture of those aboriginal groups to make that

determination?

A. Yes, I was utilizing the Mi'kmaq Creation Story in

order to indicate how these objects were interrelated in an

aspect of a spiritual ceremony.

Q. Okay.

A. In 1998, "What Have the River Systems Provided to the

Mi'kmaq?" It was a presentation made to the National Parks

at Kouchibouguac.

Q. We notice that the title refers only to the Mi'kmaq.

A. Yes.

Q. My question to you: Is there anything we should be

noting in that that might relate to the other aboriginal

groups besides the Mi'kmaq?

A. I was using the Richiboucto River as an example, but I

would say that this example would apply to most rivers in

the east coast of North America because there are the same



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3973

animals, birds, plants, and trees and conditions that the

aboriginal people would have followed the river system as

their main travel routes and relied on the same kind of

resources.

Q. So would that include the Saint John River or the St.

Croix River or Penobscot River?

A. Yes.

Q. Okay. Anything further, not necessarily in that

article, but focusing in on things that would be germane to

the other aboriginal groups that you may be saying something

about in your evidence?

A. This one, this paper involved explaining about what the

river systems would have provided to the Indians as sort of

like a travel route, a source of food, medicine, clothing,

shelter, all the elements that are necessary to survive or

derived by the river or with the use of the river, and the

Mi'kmaq people would not have survived quite well without

the use of the river as travel routes.

Q. Anything else in the publications that might be germane

to Penobscot, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy?

A. "The Mi'kmaq History of Big Cove" dealt with the



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Creation Story and the relationships, the treaty

relationships between neighbouring groups like Maliseet,

Passamaquoddy, Penobscot prior to contact and then I went

into more detail about the establishment of the Richiboucto

Reserve and then its reduction of 46,000 acres, I guess, in

a matter of 75 years.

Q. So you're saying that to look at Big Cove, you were

looking at the wide relationship that the Mi'kmaq had with

neighbouring aboriginal peoples?

A. During the treaty period and the colonial period prior

to establishment of Nova Scotia, as well as after, I mean

prior to the establishment of New Brunswick as well as soon

after, the way the lands were being granted in New

Brunswick, it involved granting lands to Maliseet as well as

those that lived in Canoose River in southern part of New

Brunswick on the Passamaquoddy area.

Q. Other things under publications that would be germane

to Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot?

A. No, the other cases are more contemporary issues

involving suicides, social, land, and economy for the Royal

Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.



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Q. Okay.

A. In 1991, "The Introductory Guide to Mi'kmaq Words and

Phrases" involved words about trade and interaction with

tribes, ceremonies, and we went into detail about explaining

pipe ceremonies and sweat lodge and those words that are

attached to those kind of activities.

Q. Okay, moving on to thesis supervision, was there

anything in that MSC thesis that you were an external

examiner on that would be related to Maliseet Passamaquoddy

Penobscot?

A. More in a general context of approaching indigenous

communities, approaching indigenous elders, and in an

example, this Masters degree student was going up to Yukon,

Old Crow, to study the porcupine caribou herd, and I was

appointed as her supervisor or asked to supervise on the

indigenous context of her thesis. And I was advising her on

how to approach elders in the community and this approach

needed to have some -- One had to have knowledge of elders

and attitudes and activities of elders and how they would

respond and how they would be -- how interviews would be

conducted and an interrelationship could be established to



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minimize any conflicting situations.

Q. Where was this particular aboriginal group located?

A. In the Yukon Territories up in Old Crow, I mean, yes,

in Old Crow, Yukon.

Q. Okay. Moving on to the statement at the bottom of this

page about expert testimony, you have been qualified in the

past to give expert testimony, have you?

A. Yes, I have. And this part here that I had written, I

had no access to the court text or court document and I was

basing it on what I assumed I had spoken on and I don't

think that this is a proper wording for my qualification.

Q. Is this what you understood that you did, in fact,

speak to?

A. Yes.

Q. And do you now know or do you -- are you able to say

whether you were qualified in that case to speak about

Maliseet, Abenaki, Passamaquoddy as well as Mi'kmaq?

A. I now know, but in my last testimony in New Brunswick,

the Crown made a correction to that line and I don't exactly

know the wording still to that because I was supposed to be

given a part of that transcript, but I didn't -- I have not



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received it, so I am unable to identify the exact phrasing

of that.

Q. Is it your understanding that you were able to speak

about the other aboriginal peoples that were listed here on

your resume?

A. I was able to speak and give my opinion about those

relationships on those -- about those tribes, yes.

Q. All right. And that was in a case indicated here as

Josh Bernard. Was there a second case that you were also

qualified to give expert evidence in?

A. There was a second case involving Francis, I believe,

Harvey Francis. R v. Francis and others.

Q. When were you qualified in that case?

A. I believe in September.

Q. Of this year, 1999?

A. Yes.

Q. Subsequent to the Bernard case?

A. Yes.

Q. Okay. Now you have a lot of information about your

work experience in the subsequent pages here. Can you

isolate from this list things that might relate to the



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Penobscot, the Abenaki, the Passamaquoddy, the Maliseet, and

things that might relate to archival work?

A. In 1991 to '93 I worked for the Big Cove Band Council

as their land claims advisor and it involved doing extensive

research at the Provincial Archives in Fredericton and in

Prince Edward Island as well as in Nova Scotia to look for

documentary material relating to the Big Cove land claim.

Q. And would you then be making copies of that

documentation and keeping it for the purposes of analysis?

A. Yes.

Q. And you did that from January of '91 to October of '93?

A. Yes.

Q. All right. Other things related to original historical

work in archives or published sources?

A. In 1988 I was operating a research consulting services

dealing with archival research for First Nations communities

in New Brunswick. I provide research information from

archival sources to their communities to do profiles.

Q. Does that mean you went into the Archives and did the

research, found the documents and brought them back out?

A. Some of the documentation I had already, yes, and some



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I found during the time that I did provide the service.

Q. Your CV just refers to 1988 here. Is there an end date

to that or how should be understand that?

A. Just for that year, yes.

Q. Okay.

A. 1986 St. Thomas University Challenge '86 Project, I was

a student archivist working at the Provincial Archives in

Fredericton at the University of New Brunswick researching

and identifying and photocopying and organizing Mi'kmaq,

Maliseet, and Passamaquoddy documentation at the Provincial

Archives and cataloguing that in a chronological order.

Q. Okay.

A. Most of this information was passed on to history

professors, William Hamilton and William Spray of St. Thomas

University.

Q. And who are they?

A. William Spray at the time was vice president of St.

Thomas University. He's a history professor at St. Thomas

University. William B. Hamilton, he was at the Mi'kmaq-

Maliseet Institute. He was also a history professor at UNB.

Q. What was the Mi'kmaq-Maliseet Institute?



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A. Mi'kmaq-Maliseet Institute was established by an

agreement between St. Thomas University and UNB to focus on

specializing research and education for aboriginal

communities in New Brunswick. And these two involved

Mi'kmaq and Maliseet groups.

Q. Okay. And what else do we find here?

A. In April, 1978, to September I worked for Dr. Charles

Akerman, Department of Anthropology, University of New

Brunswick and Fredericton as an archival researcher. I was

providing research. It was more or less a verification of

documentation whereby the Indians in Maine had submitted a

claim to the State of Maine. And the Attorney General for

the State of Maine, Joseph Brennan, had hired under contract

Dr. Charles Akerman to verify this research, and part of my

responsibility was to do the actual archival work to find

the sources. And to see also if the Province of New

Brunswick had at some time in the past accepted

responsibility for the Passamaquoddy tribe in New Brunswick.

Q. Okay. So that seems to have taken you into the New

Brunswick Provincial Archives and the Maine State Archives

both in Augusta and Orono, Maine?



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A. Yes.

Q. Other things on your CV related to Maliseet,

Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Abenaki, or archival research?

A. No.

Q. Okay. And we have a section here on boards and

communities that you have participated on. Is there

anything in there related to the same issues of the other

aboriginal groups?

A. No, I --

Q. There's a reference in here to the Premier's Round

Table on Environment and Economy.

A. Yes.

Q. What's that?

A. The Premier's Round Table on Environment and Economy

was established in 1973 and once the responsibility was

given to the public, I was invited by premier, then Premier

Frank MacKenna to sit on the Round Table to represent the

aboriginal people in New Brunswick, that would involve

Mi'kmaq and Maliseet representation on the Round Table.

And the Round Table itself is more or less concerned

with environmental issues and the economy of the province.



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In that context, companies who wanted to develop the natural

resources in the province were somewhat cognizant of

environmental factors and how to minimize these impacts on

the environment.

Q. Thank you. And you're still a member of that, are you?

A. I'm still a member, yes. It's been renewed twice

already.

Q. And just in general in your activities, whether they

are personal or professional or otherwise, have you been in

contact with people who are Maliseet and Passamaquoddy?

A. Yes, in fact, I have relatives living in Indian Island

in Old Town and in --

Q. Where is that?

A. In Old Town, Maine, just outside of Orono north of

Bangor on the Penobscot River. There's an island, it's

called Indian.

Q. And you have relatives there?

A. I have relatives that live there that have

intermarried. My grandmother's aunt moved down to Boston in

1888, married there a Passamaquoddy Indian. They had twin

children, two daughters, one moved to Indian Island and one



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moved to Pleasant Point or Sebyiak.

Q. You had better spell that.

A. S-E-B-Y-I-A-K or C, Sebyiac.

Q. So would those people be Maliseet, Passamaquoddy,

Penobscot or --

A. They have been accepted in their communities, so they

identify themselves as Passamaquoddy and Penobscot. And I

have attended Wabanaki meeting that have been held in Orono,

Maine, and in Indian Island as well as in Passamaquoddy.

Q. What are Wabanaki meetings?

A. They are meetings that have been held between Mi'kmaq,

Maliseet, Abenaki, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot tribes.

Q. And that continues to be done periodically today?

A. Yes.

Q. Okay. The next part of your resume deals with papers,

lectures and public addresses.

A. Yes.

Q. Could you, again, highlight the things on there that

might be pertinent to the other aboriginal nations besides

Mi'kmaq?

A. Most of the presentations have been centering around



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indigenous knowledge, relationships to the land, the

creation story, ceremonies attached around aboriginal

communities and in the general context most Eastern

Algonkian-speaking tribes believe in the Glooscap as a

culture hero, a grandmother, other members of the family as

well as their relationships to other species of animals and

trees and plants and birds as being part of their family.

And so this understanding of that relationship, the

spiritual connectiveness involved these other tribes, all

right, people that have been identified as Passamaquoddy,

Penobscot, Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, even Beothuk.

Q. You mentioned Eastern Algonkian?

A. Eastern Algonkian-speaking tribes.

Q. And who would be included in that?

A. All the tribes living from the Delaware River all the

way up to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island,

Newfoundland, even the Inuit and the Montagnais, Mascapee,

Cree.

Q. So that would include the --

A. Ojibwas.

Q. -- Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, Penobscot, Abenaki as well



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as Mi'kmaq.

A. Yes.

Q. Okay.

A. These are all -- linguistically all of these tribes are

related because a lot of the basic words stem from an older

form of the language which has been identified as a proto-

Algonkian and like, for instance, the colour white is wabeg,

W-A-B-E-G. In Mi'kmaq there are various forms of that word

beginning with W-A-B in all Algonkian languages. And the

same for the colour black and the earth, the sky, the sun

and so on, so a lot of these languages are connected in that

way. In the similar way that Latin may be identified as the

base language for the romantic languages, French, Italian,

Spanish, Portuguese. So the Algonkian-speaking people are

these group of people that are interrelated by language in

that context.

Q. The creation story that you have spoken about that has

commonality to more than the Mi'kmaq, can you indicate what

use the Canadian Museum of Civilization makes of you and the

Mi'kmaq creation story?

A. We are undertaking a major project for the last 15



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years to develop the First People's Hall which is about

150,000 square feet of area or floor space --

Q. 150,000 square feet?

A. Yes.

Q. Sounds like bigger than a football field.

A. It's quite large. Because right now we have an area in

the museum called a grand hall which represents mostly the

northwest coast, [Michka, Quaquaculak, Haida, Clinget

Nations and Salish and Shimsham?] And these people are

represented by their longhouses or cedar houses with totem

poles and this makes up a very unbalanced representation of

aboriginal people in Canada for the public. So the museum

has been involved in developing this other area to balance

out this representation to incorporate Plains Indians,

Inuit, Iroquoian and the East Coast.

And part of the First Peoples Hall involves collecting

information about how indigenous societies see themselves

coming into existence as opposed to coming across the

Bering-Beringia Strait, Bering Strait.

Q. Yes.

A. And so we're involved in a massive research project to



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look for creation stories and the Mi'kmaq one has been

chosen as the one that will highlighting the opening in

April 19 -- 2001 when the First Peoples Hall opens so they

will -- the creation story will -- the Mi'kmaq creation

story will be highlighted as a story that indigenous people

have about their own creation and their own existence and

from their perspective.

Q. Why the Mi'kmaq one?

A. Because it has been the longest in contact. The

cultural group has been quite a long time in contact with

European culture and the fact that this story has survived

this long.

Q. What's your role in it all?

A. I'll be relating the story in Mi'kmaq in the creation

story theatre which is part of the inside of this First

Peoples Hall at the very beginning stages of it.

Q. Are you going to be there every day on stage or what?

A. No, they're -- they had planned to videotape my

presentation in a holographic presentation to the public,

but because of funding and cutbacks, they have done a three-

screen projection, one on a screen in front and with two



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screens in the back to emphasis, I guess, the visual context

of the story.

Q. So you'll be telling that story on the film?

A. It will be told on film in Mi'kmaq with a voice-over in

English and in French and with scenery in the back of eagles

and forest, scenery of the Maritime Provinces basically.

Q. Have you already filmed that?

A. Yes, they are just editing. It will be finished

probably in January.

Q. All right. And have you, as a Mi'kmaq person, also

participated in public ceremonies?

A. I have provided a lot of presentations. I have done

pipe ceremonies, sweet grass, sage tobacco-offering

ceremonies. I have done honour songs for aboriginal people

in aboriginal communities, on reserves, for the Grand

Council, for provincial governments, particular government

departments, lawyers, judges, RCMP as well as for the

National Defence, for international work with Environment

Canada, for the United Nations in Rome and as well as in

Madrid, Spain, and for the Governor General.

Q. What it about the Governor General?



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A. During the Order of Canada investiture, there were two

aboriginal people identified, Freida [Henique?] and Rosemary

[Captana?], I was invited to do an honour song for them and

do a smudging ceremony during their investiture at the

Government House. And for the former governor, Governor

General Romeo LeBlanc.

Q. Now you see the Exhibit 17, Volume 3, that you have in

front of you, Tab 15, I believe it is. Are some of the

letters that you received from people thanking you for those

presentations included after your CV or resume?

A. Yes, the first one is a letter from John [Harredy?]

who's the director of Biodiversity Convention Office. He

was asking the director of the museum, Dr. George MacDonald,

if I could come to Spain to represent the aboriginal people

at the United Nations Conference on Biodiversity. I have

prepared a paper on comparing indigenous knowledge and

mainstream science and this was presented as the background

paper for the Government of Canada in Madrid, Spain, at the

United Nations Conference.

Q. And if you -- I don't want you to go through them all,

but if you look to the third last letter, three from the



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back, is that the letter you received from the Governor

General Romeo LeBlanc with respect to the --

A. Yes. That's a letter dated March 1st, 1999. Governor

General Romeo LeBlanc thanked me for delivering the Mi'kmaq

eagle song honouring the seven sacred directions and he

thought it was a very moving experience for all who were

there.

Q. All right. And so you did that at Rideau Hall on

February the 3rd, 1999?

A. Yes.

Q. Okay. Anything else that I haven't covered that you'd

like to bring to our attention about either your work as a

historian, as an ethnologist or with respect to the

Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot?

A. No.

Q. Do you think it's fair to call yourself an ethno-

historian?

A. Depends on who -- fair to who or fair by who.

Q. Well, in your own opinion based on what work you have

done and continue to do.

A. I have quite an extensive knowledge about the cultural



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groups and their history and their relationship with

treaties and their contact with the European nations that

arrived here orally, traditionally and from an academic

context.

Q. What do you mean by an "academic context"?

A. Studying in university, in formal education.

Q. And would that include reviewing historical documents

themselves?

A. Yes.

Q. Documents that are generated by the British or other

Europeans?

A. Yes.

Q. Thank you, Your Honour, those are all the questions for

Chief Augustine on his direct for qualification purposes.

CROSS-EXAMINATION ON QUALIFICATIONS

THE COURT Mr. Clarke?

MR. CLARKE Thank you, Your Honour.

Q. Chief Augustine, with regards to your qualifications as

an ethno-historian, I would like to cover a couple of areas

in that field. Mr. Wildsmith had asked you a number of

questions about your university background.



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In your undergraduate degree, I note that you have

anthropology as one of your majors. Was that correct or was

it a minor in your B.A.?

A. It was a major, yes.

Q. Major? And how many history courses were part of that

anthropology major or were there any?

A. History courses involved three of them.

Q. And what were they in relation to those history courses

that you took in your B.A. level?

A. Indian/White Relations.

Q. In what time frame would that have been?

A. In terms of the course?

Q. Yes, what time frame did the course cover?

A. It was from September to April.

Q. Would it have been 16th century Indian/White relations

or 17th century or do you recall?

A. It covered a wide period and it more or less focused on

Spanish, Dutch, French, and English contacts in North

America and the subsequent history that developed

afterwards, in a general context, in terms of the experience

aboriginal people were undergoing, whether there was



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acculturation, assimilation or those kind of concerns.

Q. So that wasn't specific to northeastern North America,

i.e. New England and what is now referred to as the

Maritimes?

A. It sort of started in the south, like, where Columbus

landed and it developed northward. And the focus ended up

in the New England/New Brunswick areas.

Q. And what was the other courses about?

A. Native people and the law. It was given by [Graydon?]

Nicholas.

Q. And what type of subject matter were those courses

covering?

A. It was treaty-related material, land-related material,

but --

Q. And again were those courses primarily concerned with

what is now the Maritime provinces and New England or did

they cover North America generally, like the previous

course?

A. No, it covered mostly the Maritime region.

Q. And the treaties, which treaties would they have been

with? Were they the Mi'kmaq treaties or were they some of



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the New England treaties as well?

A. It covered most of all the treaties that -- each

student was given an assignment to write a paper on a

particular treaty. But in general, in the class, Graydon

Nicholas lectured to us about -- around the beginning of

1700, around the Treaty of Utrecht period towards the

establishment of the Province of New Brunswick.

Q. What year was that?

A. 1783-84.

Q. Now you say each student was assigned a treaty to write

on. Do you recall which one you wrote your --

A. The Richibucto Treaty, 1760, the one signed by Michel

Augustine.

Q. So that would have been the 1760-61 series of treaties

then, would it?

A. Yes.

Q. One of the things that comes up in these cases is the

reference and use of terminology. In your experience, what

is the Mi'kmaq preference, to use "band," "tribe," "local

community," as far as terminology? What would you prefer to

hear when we refer to that type of thing? Is it "band,"



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"tribe"?

A. It varies, whichever community you go. Most Mi'kmaq

people will say We're Mi'kmaq, or Mi'kmaw. I'm a "Mi'kmaw."

"Nation" has been used because the Assembly of First

Nations organized itself around communities, calling

themselves First Nations. And so a lot of the Indian

reserves identify themselves as First Nations communities.

So instead of using "First Nation," they say "Mi'kmaw Nation

Community.

And the Grand Council itself identifies itself as a

national organization.

Q. As a national -- you mean, the Grand Council of First

Nations or the Grand Council of the Mi'kmaq?

A. The Grand Council of the Mi'kmaq.

Q. Is a national organization or recognizable as a

national organization?

A. Yes, we like to consider it.

Q. So when we refer to, in your reference to communities

of the Richibucto, is that a band, a tribe, or is it a local

community, from your perspective or from the Mi'kmaq

perspective?



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A. Well, since the establishment of the Department of

Indian Affairs in 1876 and the Indian Act, they've

identified reserve or lands reserved for Indians, and

identified Indians to live on those particular communities.

So there's been a lot of movement of those particular

communities, and people that are involved. So this is sort

of like the Department of Indian Affairs referred to these

groups as bands.

Q. So that's the terminology that's more modern in respect

to the history of the Mi'kmaq nation than, say, pre-contact.

It would never have been considered then?

A. No, it would be --

Q. Now you've also indicated that part of your eduction, I

believe, when you were at St. Thomas you did research?

A. Yes.

Q. And that included for the State of Maine?

A. Yes.

Q. Where was that research conducted? Was that in Nova

Scotia, New Brunswick or was it just in the State of Maine?

A. It was mainly in New Brunswick at the Provincial

Archives, the main body of information that was being



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collected was there. But the information verification

element of it was in the Provincial Archives here in Nova

Scotia, in Fredericton, in New Brunswick, and in Maine, in

Aaron and Augusta.

Q. So what was your function? Did you collect it or did

you verify it?

A. I collected the information at the Provincial Archives

in Fredericton. And then I was involved in the verification

of the other information.

Q. And what was involved in the verification process?

A. You're given a document and there's a lot of

information in the documents, and there's source numbers on

the documentation. You go to the particular archive. You

look up the source and you look up the document and match

the document that you have in the binders that they

provided. And it was just to ascertain they were the right

amount of sheaves of documents in that particular reference

series.

Q. And did you do a systematic analysis of those documents

for the State of Maine or was that someone else's

responsibility?



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A. Dr. Charles [Ackerman?] presented a systematic analysis

of that. This was after an oral presentation between myself

and three others that were involved in the project.

Q. And the oral presentation was in relation to the

accuracy of the verification or --

A. Well, it was a systematic -- he organized it in wall

charts on the wall and we were making presentations to him

in order for him to systematize and put it into a report

format to the Attorney General for the State of Maine.

Q. And that was in the late 80s, I believe it was, or was

that in the late 70s you did that?

A. I believe it was in the late 70s. The main land claim

agreement came in 1979-80.

Q. Okay. Now in your opinion, or in your words, what is

the role of an ethno-historian? What is an ethno-historian?

A. An ethno-historian is concerned with the ethnographic,

the structure and the make-up of a cultural group and its

development over time, its change, its structure of a group

as a culture. Looking at issues like language, folklore,

sacred -- they say religious ceremonies, and their political

make-up and their structure, basically.



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Q. What training post-graduate have you done to be

qualified as an ethno-historian or is there a qualification

for an ethno-historian?

A. There's a position at the museum for ethno-historian.

You have to have lots of education and working experience in

the cultural field as well as in the historical field of a

particular group of individuals. My specialization was the

Mi'kmaq and Maliseet and Penobscot/Passamaquoddy of eastern

Canada. There is no -- most ethno-historians have either a

combination of anthropology, history, and archaeology as a

background.

Q. Is ethnology a sub part of anthropology or a

subdiscipline of anthropology?

A. Yes, it is.

Q. Do you have any post-graduate level training in

ethnology?

A. Yes, the course I took with Derrick Smith was an

anthropology course looking at aboriginal issues in North

America.

Q. Did it deal with anything -- did it deal with the

Mi'kmaq or the Maliseet in those studies or it was just a



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generalized review?

A. No, it was a seminar course, and it required presenting

two papers, two seminar papers, and one major work. And my

work was focusing on Mi'kmaq history and the creation story.

Q. Now in the ethno-history or ethnology field, is it

possible to maintain an objective distance or a scientific

detachment when studying a community in which you are

actually a member of?

A. Yes, the discipline now has gone away from the

classical methodological approaches to analyzing

communities. And working in sort of the ethnographic

present has allowed researchers to be in the community, to

live in there and to study their own. In fact, a lot of the

contemporary focus is to present information from the

context of the community. It has been valued more than the

classical researches that involve looking at a cultural

group from classifications that have been established

outside of the community and may bear no relevance to the

cultural group being studied.

One example would be religion and spirituality.

Q. Then have you developed your own methodology or have



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you followed a standard methodology and if so, what

standard, and what procedure do you use?

A. I have developed my own methodological approach to

dealing with aboriginal communities, more on an ethical

basis. Because in the past aboriginal knowledge, aboriginal

technologies have been appropriated from our communities and

other people benefit financially from these type of

researches, especially when it involves mining, medicines,

collection of medicines and knowledge about the environment.

In fact, I have been involved in developing an ethical

approach to doing research in aboriginal communities for

Environment Canada.

Q. Could you take us through step by step, or would it be

too long, your methodology?

A. No, no. By going into an aboriginal community, first

of all, you would have to survey all the literature that you

would be able to find on that particular aboriginal

community. There would be a protocol that you would have to

follow in terms of contacting whoever the administrative or

political head of that community would be to obtain the

necessary permissions or licenses to access individuals



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within that community and then to be able to know the proper

protocol of ensuring the proper handling of information in

terms of confidentiality and by providing the people who

provide information to you with gifts and presents and

monetary stipends to ensure that the process is closely done

in a way that is more beneficial to the community as well as

when you finish your research and do a report, before you

finalize the report, you would give your draft to the

community involved and to see if there is any information

that they would not want to be given publicly, as well as

the final report, when it is presented, that you ensure that

wherever this report and for what purpose the report will be

used that the community are informed, communities are

informed about where this document is going to go. Plus the

benefits from there that might accrue from this information

would be partially negotiated with the community involved.

Q. That format that you use, how does that differ from the

standard methodology that you were taught when you took your

seminar courses?

A. Well, classically -- Well, it doesn't differ that much

because the ideal is to minimize taking somebody's



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information or improperly doing research in the community.

So --

Q. You mean "improperly doing research in the community,"

would that be contrary to local traditions and the local

culture, or contrary to doing research, period?

A. Contrary to local cultures and contrary to the

principles of whatever the researching institute or whoever

provides funding for the research. Classically, what has

happened in the past is anthropologists or historians or

just researchers would come in and start interviewing an

elder or somebody about technology, let's say, about canoes

or toboggans or snowshoes and different people would come

out with patents on those things, and even medicines and

native people would not even be allowed to touch that plant

that has been particularly identified as their traditional

medicinal plant. It's happened in many instances and

Environment Canada has been focusing on providing an ethical

approach to that kind of research.

Q. Now in your work then, do you distinguish between

western scientific understanding of human history and the

history told by the elders of your community and what do you



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do if there is a conflict between the two of them?

A. You don't -- When you have two sources of information

or two sources of knowledge, in the instance of indigenous

people in North America, there is a lot of reliance on

dreams, on visions, on fasting, and how these people are

influenced and use this in terms of their traditional

activities, like hunting, ceremonies, drumming, dancing and

pipe ceremonies, sweat lodge ceremonies. There is a

different sort of information. It's more all encompassing

and it makes sense of everything that is around in its world

view.

While in the mainstream context, research has been

broken down in particular categories, like economy,

political, archaeological, anthropological, social,

cultural, religious and those categories, and it is not

simply possible to superimpose one over the other, the

written context or the oral context over the written. We

have to deal with them separately and juxtapose these two

and take from it a more rounded source of knowledge rather

than saying that is true and that is not true. According to

your cultural traditions, all knowledge and all information



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is valid. If you don't agree, well, that is valid, that you

don't agree, you have your reasons and rationality. In all

likely instances, aboriginal people will not push their

values upon you to change your thinking.

Q. Do you make a distinction in your assessment of oral

history and oral tradition -- Perhaps before we get to that,

in oral history and oral tradition, what is your definition

of oral history and oral tradition?

A. Oral tradition is a culmination of all of the

collective knowledge of indigenous people in a particular

group, cultural group, like the Mi'kmaq people, Mi'kmaw.

Their embodiment of where they come from, there is a general

understanding. There is the sun, there is the earth, there

is Glooscap and all the other entities around him. There is

a general adherence to that belief that we are all related

to each other and we belong to the land and so on. I'm

sorry, can you frame your question again?

Q. Your definition of oral history and oral tradition.

A. Okay. In the traditional oral tradition, it is a

collective memory of all the Mi'kmaq people of their past

history, their past traditions, their past organization,



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their past activities, traditional activities - hunting,

fishing, gathering, collecting and so on. It's embodied in

everybody and it gets passed down in songs. It gets passed

down in ceremonies, in narratives, in dances, in drumming.

Also, in stories. And so this is more or less the oral

tradition, which can span as far back as the memory can take

us about our culture.

Now the oral history is more or less a methodological

approach of collecting information. Oral history can be a

person being interviewed about medicines and the person

could either be writing notes down or having a tape recorder

or a video camera and recording that particular individual's

life experience about what they have experienced in their

lifetime and what they have seen or heard in their lifetime

and how they relate that. That's more a methodological

approach of doing oral tradition. It could be about the Jews

during the war and the Holocaust. It could be about Turks.

It could be anybody who could talk about their personal

experience about a war experience or whatever. That is the

method involved in recording those voices in that context

and those experiences.



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Q. When you are doing that sort of work, do you make a

distinction between what actually happened, the recorded

past, or what people believe might have happened in the

past? How do you distinguish between those two in your

capacity when you are assessing oral history and oral

tradition?

A. Oral tradition would involve interpretation of dreams,

visions and more or less deal with an incident occurring in

relation to when I was born or when my grandmother was born

or when my grandmother canoed across to Newfoundland or

there was a natural disaster or there was some particular

event, a big snowstorm or an icestorm. It could have been

when a young person might have shot a moose for the first

time. Those time frames are -- it's incidences that are

recorded around particular events, around a particular land

formation. It could be around Glooscap's Mountain or around

a certain inlet or around a river. A particular incident

may have occurred. A starvation or a moose didn't come this

year or caribou didn't come and it was a hard winter. So

oral tradition would more or less focus on that while oral

history would identify a particular moment in that person's



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lifetime. More recent, depending on the age of that person.

Q. So tradition is more of a global concept within the

community and history is the individual's recollection of an

incident?

A. Yes.

Q. Is it, in this concept of oral tradition, is it

possible to derive knowledge about what people understood

over 200 years ago from what they understand today occurred

200 years ago?

A. Yes, in the context that the Mi'kmaq Grand Council is

organized in such a way that we would read past treaties.

We would read the wampum belts. We would re-enact the

ceremonies that were practiced traditionally by our people,

and, in this way, these ceremonies involve relationships

between families, relationships between communities and

relationships between neighbouring communities. And so it

was contiguous to the survival of indigenous nations, like

the Mi'kmaq, to ensure that these activities continued, even

symbolically.

Q. When you're reviewing the history that you're talking

about, and your studies, when you look at Mi'kmaq oral



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4009

history and oral tradition, do you view it as a Mi'kmaq or

someone who has training in the western historical

tradition? I'm thinking of your training in university plus

your seminar training and your current employment where you

have obviously have ongoing on-the-job training, I guess,

"OJT," we call it, I guess, or government used to call it.

A. Yes.

Q. How do you review it? Do you review it as a Mi'kmaq or

as somebody who has got an education that allows you to go

in and make a critical assessment of this oral history and

oral tradition?

A. Well, first of all, I am a Mi'kmaq on the Grand Council

from Big Cove. I look at it from that context from an

experiential context. Then I look at my educational

training that has allowed me to look at documentation and be

able to determine what kind of information that I am looking

for. At the beginning, usually there is a sense of

direction it gives you, where this article or document is

going and what kind of information does it record and how

does it record it and who is it about and what is it about

and those main questions you start to ask yourself. And I



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4010

credit that to my academic education, to be able to

critically analyze documentation.

Q. We've heard evidence in this Court and I'm just

wondering, from your experience and your knowledge, not only

as a Mi'kmaq individual and elder and hereditary chief, is

their culture, the Mi'kmaq culture, primarily an oral

culture?

A. Primarily, yes, because it is not taught in the schools

about our history or culture, about our treaties, our

relationships with Europeans. It is not taught in a formal

way in schools.

Q. Was there any form of hieroglyphic developed by the

Mi'kmaq prior to European contact or European contact?

A. There was a form of symbols that had been utilized by

the indigenous people to convey message on trails, on boats

in the waters, on the land and the river systems, marking on

trees and so on, as well as on their own clothing, on the

hats of women that may gather. There are particular designs

on the hat that would identify a particular woman at a

ceremony to determine whether she was the chief's wife,

grand chief's mother, chief's daughter, or chief's sister.



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In this way, younger members of the tribe would not

inappropriately approach a lady for asking the wrong kind of

questions. These markings differentiated also hereditary

chiefs that would have come from certain districts and so

on.

When the missionaries arrived, LeClerc developed a

standardized system of these hieroglyphics and began to

teach the Indians about prayers. Maillard also further

developed these and [Crowder?] and they published books, and

most recently, David Schmidt published a book on these

hieroglyph.

Q. I note on your outline that you will be referring to

some works that are in Exhibit 17 by Ms. Cruikshank.

A. Yes.

Q. She is an anthropologist, is she not?

A. She is.

Q. And you have a basis in anthropology in your -- In your

work, do you follow her opinions or do you just use her as a

reference?

A. I follow some of her opinions but I have also other

opinions about some aspects of it, but I will go into that



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in more detail.

Q. This form of hieroglyphics, it was developed when, 17th

century, 16th century?

A. When LeClerc arrived, he --

Q. Okay, so it's post contact.

A. Yes.

Q. And it's a form of communication, is it not?

A. It was a communication that was standardized by LeClerc

in order to facilitate him teaching the Lord's Prayer and

Catholic prayers to the Mi'kmaq people.

Q. Is the wampum or wampum belt a form of communication as

well?

A. Yes, it is.

Q. It is a form of written communication, is it not?

A. More symbolically than written. It is a construction

of wampum quahog shells that are almost a quarter of an inch

in height and about the same in diameter and they have been

strung on sinew and they form figures on a belt that is

strung together by these quahog shells and there are symbols

on the belt that might indicate a pipe or a wigwam or other

elements, individuals, and these are just more or less



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4013

representations and symbols of a larger discussion that

might have taken place and an interpretation of that larger

discussion is minimized to a symbol and whoever reads the

wampum tries to replicate the context of that speech that

was given.

Q. So each time it's read by a different individual, it

could be read differently.

A. There would be not a transcript that somebody would

have to read. You would have to --

Q. Interpret it.

A. Yes.

Q. Now you mentioned ways of expressing this oral or

relating the oral tradition. Tings like stories, legends,

myths, songs, dances. Do you distinguish between these

various forms of expression of the oral tradition, or are

they all just expressed the same way, or is there a

difference? Is there one mode that expresses it differently

than another?

A. I don't understand the exact context.

Q. Well, when you go out into the community, as in your

capacity from the museum, and you're going to a community



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4014

that you have never been to before and you're assessing -- I

suppose you've probably been to quite a few. And you want

to assess some of their oral traditions and you go through

your protocols and your methodology and you want to assess

that oral tradition and some of it is expressed to you in

different forms, and I believe you mentioned there was

dances, there's song, there's the dreams or the myths. Is

there a difference in how you assess those or do you assess

them all in the same way?

A. You would have to, in terms of the kind of assessment,

in terms of eliciting some sense of knowledge from that --

I'm still trying to -- Like maybe a song or a particular

song of a particular community, I would more or less, in

order to analyze that, I would want to determine when that

song is sung in relation to what activity, who has the --

who is the bearer of that song and how did they come to sing

that song and what does the song mean. In that context,

this is how I would analyze.

Q. So I gather from what you're saying then, it's not just

the song. It's when it's related, how it's related and by

whom. So there is a whole bunch of things that you take



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4015

into consideration when you consider the tradition of that

particular item?

A. Yes, you would have to establish the context of that

particular -- I just still didn't fully understand the

context of that.

Q. My apologies. Do you have any training in

historiographic from the museum? Have you done any

historiographic work at all?

A. I did more of my historiographic training is during my

qualifying year at UNB for Masters in History.

Q. That was the three of four months --

A. No, I did one full year at UNB and then one semester in

the Masters program, and it was more or less on the

historiosicity and historicity, historicism, methodologies

in gathering information in the historical context plus the

-- most of my studies was on Loyalist history in the east

coast from the American Revolution to the settlement of New

Brunswick as a colony.

Q. I note as well that you're going to be mentioning and

you're going to be relating some -- the creation story and a

couple of other types of stories that are part of the



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4016

Mi'kmaq culture. Is there any oral traditions that are

secret that the community would never disclose to outsiders?

A. Yes, there are.

Q. Would they be individually with regards to the

community or would they be in regards to the background of

the Mi'kmaq community or nation rather than one individual,

particular individual?

A. It is most of them are individually based, like a

family story or a family experience in the past or a certain

legend that is told is particular to that family.

Q. I guess we would refer to it in our parlance as "the

skeleton in the closet" sort of thing.

A. I don't know, but there are also stories that

communities don't want to share and then there are stories

as well the whole Mi'kmaq Nation might not want --

Q. Okay.

A. -- either at the Grand Council or at the band level.

Q. And I note, in general, the -- in your publications,

the majority of them, if not all of them, when you deal with

the Mi'kmaq are primarily with your own background in New

Brunswick, is that not -- would that be true without going



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4017

into too much detail? There's some peripheral specifics

with regards to some of the communities in Nova Scotia?

A. Well --

Q. For example, is there anything dealing with the

Eskasoni or the Membertou, Whycocomagh areas like in Cape

Breton in any detail or is it just generalization in any of

those publications?

A. For the publications?

Q. Uh-huh, things --

A. They're more contiguous to all of the Mi'kmaq Nation.

Q. But they're titled --

A. Not just New Brunswick alone.

Q. Okay. They're titled Big Cove. That is a specific

reserve, the "Mi'kmaq History of Big Cove"?

A. Yes.

Q. Okay. And that would cover the reserve at Big Cove

itself, would it not?

A. It begins with the creation story and talks about the

Mi'kmaq as a nation and how the relationship with the

Europeans --

Q. Okay. So the creation story and the relationship with



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4018

the Europeans is in general. Have you written anything

specific about any of the reserves in Nova Scotia other than

sort of in general terms?

A. No.

Q. As a hereditary chief, I take it that's passed down

from father to son type of position?

A. Yes.

Q. It's not an elected position, is it?

A. No.

Q. Okay. And because of the ancestral heritage it makes

you a hereditary chief. Now you're a captain in the Grand

Council, correct?

A. Yes.

Q. Of the Mi'kmaq First Nation?

A. [no audible response]

Q. Is the Grand Council is responsible over all reserves

in the Maritimes Mi'kmaq reserves?

A. It's responsible for all of the area of territory in

Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island. As I was

explaining in my explanation of what the Grand Council

encompassed, it's responsible for on-reserve and off-reserve



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4019

as well.

Q. Okay. And as a member of the Grand Council, you -- do

you report to the Grand Chief or how does that hereditary

function, is it -- what I'm thinking of it's sort of like

the House of Lords in England where the British had these

hereditary lords. Is it ceremonial or is it a functionary

position?

A. It's a combination of ceremonial, political, spiritual

and I don't think I can equate it to the European system of

governing things or hierarchy of order, I have orders that

you have to do this or it's more an embodiment of all of

Mi'kmaq life and culture and traditions and spiritualities.

And those responsibilities to each other and to the Grand

Council are more or less consensual.

Q. Do they have any political responsibility over the

Mi'kmaq Nation as far as direction and guidance and --

A. Oh, definitely.

Q. -- polity?

A. Definitely, yes. That includes part of it and it's not

just the political.

Q. And as a captain of that Grand Council, you're -- and



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4020

in regards to your research and everything, you can be

impartial with regards to your commitment to the Grand

Council as a hereditary chief?

A. Impartial in what sense?

Q. Your obligations and your impartiality of your -- where

your evidence is, where it will be coming from. Do you feel

impartial or do you feel committed?

A. I can't -- I don't know how you --

Q. Can you separate your responsibilities as a witness

from your commitment to the Grand Council?

A. Oh, yes, definitely.

MR. CLARKE That would be all the questions, Your Honour.

THE COURT Mr. Wildsmith?

ARGUMENT RE QUALIFICATIONS - MR. WILDSMITH

MR. WILDSMITH I have not a great deal to say, I guess, at

this point. No further questions for Chief Augustine.

With respect to his qualifications, I think we have run

through the fact that in addition to all of his expertise

that the Crown concedes with respect to being Mi'kmaq, his

areas of responsibility at the Museum of Civilization

include Indians of Eastern North America and, indeed, it



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4021

seems like his area of expertise extends to Eastern

Algonkian speakers, but certainly is including a fair degree

of expertise relating to Penobscot, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy,

the other aboriginal peoples who live in Northeastern North

America.

What I seek to qualify him with respect to I believe

corresponds with what Judge [Lorden?] qualified him for with

respect to his testimony at least in the Bernard case in New

Brunswick with the exception that Judge Lorden was not

comfortable, if I can put it that way, with the term "ethno-

historian." And my understanding of where he was coming

from was that you had Dr. Wicken who had a Ph.D. and was in

the discipline of ethno-history, and I think that with

respect to Judge Lorden, he was looking for somebody not who

had expertise in the area, period, but somebody who had a

Ph.D. or an equivalent background to Dr. Wicken.

In our submission, there are different levels, you

might say, and I think, in essence, what we have in Chief

Augustine is somebody with greater expertise about the

Mi'kmaq side of or the ethno side of it, but less expertise

perhaps on the side of being an historian, but, yet, it



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should not change the fact that that is the discipline

within which he works and within which he's been trained and

within which he has experience and within which his role at

the Museum of Civilization requires him to actually

participate. So while you could set the bar at different

levels, it would seem to me that on the standard test of

who's an expert vis-a-vis this court, that Chief Augustine

qualifies and should be treated with sufficient respect to

be called an ethno-historian. That's what he does.

THE COURT Thank you. Mr. Clarke?

ARGUMENT RE QUALIFICATIONS - MR. CLARKE

MR. CLARKE Clarification, Your Honour, I believe, I know

that Mr. Augustine or Chief Augustine was not sure what he

had been qualified as. On page 93 of the transcript in the

Bernard case, Judge Lorden qualified him, just for

clarification, "I will declare the witness as an expert in

aboriginal peoples of Eastern North America qualified to

give opinion evidence with respect to their language, their

culture, their customs, their ceremonies, oral history, and

oral traditions. And that was the same qualification that

Judge Lorden provided Mr. Augustine in the [Vinyl Paul?]



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4023

case, which, I think, Mr. or Chief Augustine referred to as

the Francis case, which was subsequent to the Bernard

testimony.

The restriction on the ethno-historian, from the

Crown's perspective, is that, from the Crown's perspective,

Chief Augustine has vast knowledge. He has experience in a

lot of fields. His resume speaks for itself and the CV

speaks for itself with his understanding and comprehension

of his community, "his community" being the Mi'kmaq

community specifically. The Crown has no quarrel with that.

The ethno-historian takes that expertise into a

different field, from the Crown's perspective, as not only

must he be able to understand and comprehend the community,

but he must also have some form of, I would think,

professional or educational training beyond what we have

heard today, which is a number of history courses at the

B.A. level and coursing at the Master's level. Yes, he's

done some archival or archival research. I don't believe,

from the Crown's perspective, it would qualify in the same

area as what Dr. Reid and Dr. Wicken have been qualified

before this Court.



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4024

I believe, from the Crown's perspective, that we don't

have any quarrel with his qualification to be able to speak

on behalf of the Mi'kmaq and their European relations in

Eastern North America, specifically with the qualifications

regarding language, culture, and the oral tradition and oral

history of the Mi'kmaq.

We quarrel with the quasi-professional qualification of

an ethno-historian.

Dr. Wicken himself is an academic; he teaches; he's

written in the field. The work that -- the papers and the

publications that, and due respect to Chief Augustine, are

specific to the community, the East Coast, but I don't think

it takes us into the qualification of an ethno-historian,

but we'd have no quarrel with him being able to give expert

opinion on the aboriginal people's perspective, especially

the Mi'kmaq-European relations in Eastern North America.

That's all.

MR. WILDSMITH If I could add one footnote, Your Honour.

THE COURT Go ahead.

ARGUMENT ON QUALIFICATIONS - MR. WILDSMITH

MR. WILDSMITH Notice that the statement of qualifications



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4025

is with respect to the aboriginal perspective on aboriginal-

European relationships. I think the concern that Judge

Lorden had, which is acknowledged in this statement, is that

Chief Augustine won't be asked about the British or the

European perspective or the European practices or the

British practices. That kind of information has come in

through Dr. Reid and Dr. Wicken. So what he will be

restricting himself to in his testimony is the aboriginal

perspective on that relationship and that documentation.

DECISION RE QUALIFICATIONS

THE COURT A person can acquire the expertise necessary to be

recognized as an expert for purposes of testifying through

training, through experience or through a combination of the

two things. There isn't any specific background that every

person must have in order to be found to be an expert in a

certain field. No doubt there are elements that would have

to be found that would apply to everyone, but I think it's

quite clearly the case that whatever the field might be,

having a Ph.D. in that field is not a necessary requirement

for expertise to be recognized.

Chief Augustine has testified during this part of the



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4026

proceedings with great clarity and a total absence of jargon

so I was able to understand everything that he was talking

about, at least to the extent I can know about these things

at all. And at one point in describing how or what his

evidence had been previously and what he had been qualified

to testify about previously, he said, now this is not an

exact quotation, but this is more or less what he said, that

he had quite an extensive knowledge of the groups, and he

included there all of the groups that he's been asked by the

defence to be qualified on, and their history and the

treaties and their relationship with the Europeans both

through oral tradition and academically.

And I think that's a very good description of what I've

heard about the background that he has had. There's not the

slightest doubt in my mind that that does qualify him to

testify as an ethno-historian. He does know a great deal,

obviously, about the history of all of these peoples,

including the other eastern groups which were mentioned and

he works as an ethnologist, obviously recognized by the

Government of Canada as an expert in that area and the work

that he does quite clearly involves a considerable



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4027

historical aspect.

As I say, I don't think there's any doubt at all that

he qualifies. Not in the same way as Dr. Wicken was

qualified. They've taken different paths to reach the point

of being qualified to testify as experts in this area.

That's not picking one over the other. I'm just saying

there's more than one route to get to that point.

I'm more than satisfied that Chief Augustine has

followed one of them and is qualified to testify exactly as

described in the qualifications that were suggested by the

defence.

MR. WILDSMITH I don't want to be redundant, Your Honour,

I'm not sure if I read into the record, and this document

wasn't intended to go into the record, so perhaps I'll just

confirm that what he's qualified --

THE COURT I'm sorry, do you want me to read it? I've got it

here in front of me --

MR. WILDSMITH Yes.

THE COURT -- and I will.

Qualified as an expert ethno-historian able

to give expert opinion evidence on the



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4028

aboriginal peoples and the aboriginal

perspective on aboriginal-European

relationships in Eastern North America,

including the language, culture, and oral

traditions and oral history of the Mi'kmaq

Nation Indians.

MR. WILDSMITH Thank you, Your Honour. Would you like to

take the morning break now?

THE COURT Perhaps we could do that?

COURT RECESSED

COURT RESUMED


DIRECT EXAMINATION

MR. WILDSMITH Thank you, Your Honour, I have two more

pieces of paper here to mark as exhibits. They've been

marked first Exhibit 45, which is called The Mi'kmaq

Creation Story Outline, and Exhibit 46, which is Ancestors

According to Oral Tradition of Alguimou and Augustine. And

just at the outset, Chief Augustine, would you just identify

what they are and then we'll come back to them later.

Exhibit 45 first, the document that's called The Mi'kmaq



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4029

Creation Story.

EXHIBIT 45 [ENTERED] - THE MI'KMAQ CREATION STORY OUTLINE

EXHIBIT 46 [ENTERED] - ANCESTORS ACCORDING TO ORAL TRADITION

OF ALGUIMOU AND AUGUSTINE

A. This is an outline of the creation story itself with

the Mi'kmaq names written on one side to explain what these

names mean in relation to the story that I am going to

relate later on in my testimony.

Q. Okay. And did you prepare these two pages, the

outline?

A. Yes, I did.

Q. Okay. Thank you. And Exhibit 46?

A. Exhibit 46 is in relation to the -- my family history,

the line of descent in the Alguimou clan as well as

Augustine. Alguimou was baptized as Augustine in 1747 and

the line of descent from thereon to myself.

Q. And on the second page, the last name that appears in

the line of descent is Stephen Joseph Augustine?

A. That's me, yes.

Q. That's you. Okay. And we'll come to that in a few

moments. My first question to you then, following the



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4030

evidence outline, is this, what can you say about the

Mi'kmaq system of knowledge? How is knowledge kept and

recorded and transmitted within Mi'kmaq society?

A. Mi'kmaq knowledge is basically in the oral tradition

and a lot of the information and knowledge is passed down

from generation to generation, from grandmother,

grandparents, great-grandparents to their children and their

grandchildren and so on. A lot of the information is held

in stories, like the creation story.

Other stories that have been identified by writers,

like Silas Rand, who was a linguist studying the Mi'kmaq

language in the 1800s, who collected a series of legends.

He refers to them as legends. These are stories that --

about our culture and our tradition, our relationship to the

land and so on. It embodies that as well as songs,

ceremonies, sweet grass ceremonies, tobacco ceremony, pipe

ceremonies, sweat lodge ceremony, sharing ceremonies and so

on.

Q. What kind of information would be recorded in that

system of knowledge that would have to do with political

structure, leadership, territoriality?



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4031

A. Information would be more or less family stories,

family stories and then family stories in relation to land,

places where events occurred and how the families were

involved or attached to these places.

It also involves events that occurred over these places

and so the transference of knowledge relates to those

elements as well as elements that touch upon the spiritual

realm dealing with figures like Glooscap, his nephew, Martin

Apistanootj. And so --

Q. Sorry, I missed that word.

A. A-P-I-S-T-A-N-O-O-T-J. And it would involve those

kinds of relationships with grandmothers, grandfathers,

children, mothers and animal, as well, experiences with

animals. It would identify a particular species of animal,

like a rabbit. It would talk about -- The oral tradition

can talk about that relationship of that rabbit with the

people, in terms of its applying itself for food, it having

white fur and brown fur and some of its physical

characteristics would be explainable through those creation

stories and --

Q. Would they deal with issues such as who were the



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4032

Mi'kmaq, where did they live, how was their traditional

economy structured?

A. Yes.

Q. How was their political organization structured?

A. It would embody that sort of knowledge or information,

but in the context that oral tradition comes down to us, it

doesn't separate spiritual, physical, political, social

elements. It doesn't say this is a social story about

rabbit and the Mi'kmaq. It would explain the relationship

and the interconnectiveness of everything around an

individual in a community and a rabbit and so on.

Q. Okay, and what about the concepts, and I know that my

friend, Mr. Clarke, explored this with you a bit in his

cross-examination on your qualifications, but I would like

to bring it out again, about the concepts of oral tradition

and oral history and how knowledge and information is

carried within the Mi'kmaq community through those concepts?

A. Throughout our -- Could you repeat that?

A. I'm asking about oral tradition, what is that; oral

history, what is that?

Q. Oral tradition is a combination of all of the



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4033

information that is known collectively in the collective

memory of a community in our Mi'kmaq community about our

culture, our traditions, our spiritual ceremonies, our

relationships with each other as human beings in our

communities as well as our neighbouring nations and so on.

It would embody those traditions about how those

relationships would have been maintained or enhanced in the

past.

Q. Would they be recorded in stories and legends?

A. They would be recorded in stories and legends and

songs.

Q. And other bits of information as well?

A. Yes.

Q. Okay, and what about oral history?

A. Oral history would be information that an individual

would be able to relate about what he experienced, what he

observed and what he knows in his own particular or her own

particular lifetime, and to be able to offer insights into

those experiences.

Q. How is it that you would come to know the oral

tradition and oral history of the Mi'kmaq?



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4034

A. Being a descendant of the original signer of the treaty

in 1760, Michel Augustine, and others before him, Algimou,

the name appears in various formations, but in our language,

it means Algimou, A-L-G-I-M-O-U. It is to be like a loon or

to behave like a loon or to have that characteristics of a

loon. In Mi'kmaq, the name "loon" is Algimou -- or gimou.

Q. And Exhibit 46 that you have already identified, has

those two words on it, does it not. Gimou, the loon; G-U-I-

M-O-U. As well as Algimou.

A. Yes. So it came to a point in time for the Mi'kmaq

people in eastern Canada that the Government of Canada was

formed in provinces and there was a division of territories

and a responsibility to look after the Indians went to the

federal Department of Indian Affairs and so, therefore,

Indian Reserves were established.

There was also missionary work that was done by the

church and the priests and they were given the sole

responsibility to enhance the religions element, the

Catholic religion among the Mi'kmaq people and to be put on

Indian Reserves. In that context, a lot of the traditional

activities were discouraged and to the extent that the



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4035

Mi'kmaq people began to lose contact with their own history

and their own traditions and their own ceremonies. And so

my great-grandfather and my grandfather and my father

basically didn't participate too much in the Grand Council

and its structure because it had been more concerned about

trying to obtain living off the land and so they weren't

more or less concerned about how the structure of the Grand

Council was to survive and so my father and my grandfather

were not involved in the Grand Council. Not until such a

point that I was asked to participate, being the direct

descendant of the Augustine clan and the Alguimou clan who

had traditionally been involved in the Grand Council all

along.

Q. So your knowledge about the oral traditions and oral

history --

A. My knowledge came to me from my grandmother, Agnes

Augustine, her maiden name is Thomas. She was originally

from Lennox Island, Prince Edward Island, and she married my

grandfather, who was 40 years her senior, when she was 13

years old. So she was able to hear stories from my

grandfather, who talked about stories about his great-



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4036

grandfather, having signed treaties in the Maritimes

Provinces and explaining about the ceremonies that were

attached to those treaties.

And the Creation Story happened to be one of those

stories that was attached to the relationship between

ourselves, the land, as well as with other people, and it

was a way of conducting ourselves in our lives, I guess, as

a means of survival on the land with the animals and with

other people. So the Creation Story forms that foundation

of knowledge in the Mi'kmaq society.

Q. Do you interact with other members of the Grand Council

or other elders in the community to obtain information from

them about the oral tradition and oral knowledge?

A. Yes, I participate in the Grand Council meetings every

year. They are still functioning around the church and the

missionaries, because of treaty arrangements and agreements

that we entered into with the French in 1610 when our Grand

Chief Membertou accepted baptism on June 24, on the Feast of

St. Jean Baptiste. When he accepted, he offered the

protection of the Mi'kmaq to the French. He offered

protection for the French by the Mi'kmaq people. That the



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4037

Mi'kmaq would not hinder or bother the French. In the same

context, the French offered in exchange protection by the

French by the Vatican.

Q. Okay, we'll come around to the wampum belts, but you

mentioned about meeting at Chapel Island of the Grand

Council.

A. And because of that influence and that agreement, the

coming together at Chapel Island on the Feast of St. Anne

has organized our Grand Council around there in respect of

that exchange agreement with the French.

Q. How long has that been going on?

A. Well, since 1610, more specifically, 1635, the mission

was established and a chapel was built on Chapel Island.

Q. Where is Chapel Island, just to put it in the record?

A. It's in Omamagi, in Cape Breton, near St. Peter's.

Q. Okay. You spelled Omamagi before and I see that it's

also spelled on Exhibit 46. Just to divert here for a

moment, are there different orthographies for recording the

Mi'kmaq language?

A. There are about five different orthographies right now

that are in existence. LeClerc, when he developed the



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4038

hieroglyphics in the early 1600s, mid-1600s, he used the

French alphabet, their French pronunciation system to record

the Mi'kmaq language, for his own benefit. It wasn't

utilized to teach anybody.

Maillard relied on those documents to learn the

hieroglyph himself and to further advance his work on

developing a more refined hieroglyphic writing system in the

Mi'kmaq. But Maillard continued the same linguistic, the

writing system as LeClerc because of the French

pronunciation and their knowledge of linguistic

terminologies and the symbols that are used to record.

Later on by the 1800s, Thomas Irwin from Nova Scotia,

Prince Edward Island --

Q. Thomas who?

A. Irwin, I-R-W-I-N, developed an interest and recorded

the Mi'kmaq language using an English alphabet and he tried

to publish some material on this and he was not able to and

gave his work over to Silas Rand, who developed another form

of an English alphabet recording the Mi'kmaq language.

Again, finally, around the turn of the century, 1900,

Father Pierre Pacifique from Restigouche recorded the



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4039

language again in French with a different linguistic, with a

different alphabet or different orthography.

And then later on, Don [DeBlois?] who worked at the

Museum of Civilization, developed another form that was

different than Rand's and I believe Bernie Francis, from

Cape Breton, also developed another form. And I am aware of

another one that is being developed by [Manny Metallic] in

Restigouche.

Q. So there are a whole variety of ones. Which ones are

you using or which one are you using when you provide

spellings to different words?

A. I can read all of them, basically, but I am more

comfortable using with Rand's -- not Rand but Father

Pacifique's system because of people in my community, in Big

Cove, have relied on Father Pacifique's system of writing.

But I interspersedly, in order to facilitate some spelling,

I borrow from Bernie Francis as well because it's a more

simpler English orthography. I mean, using the English

alphabet.

Q. So we have talked about you acquiring knowledge through

the Grand Council meetings and the interactions that take



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4040

place there. What other sources do you have for

information?

A. Over the last 26, 27 years, I have been employed by the

federal, by the provincial, by native organizations and

bands across most of the Atlantic region and it has enabled

me to visit most native communities because a lot of the

work that I was doing was delivering a service to the

aboriginal people as well as interpreting the culture and

traditions of our people to the government people who were

providing the service to native communities. So I have had

a lot of opportunity to visit the local communities, talk to

elders and hear stories and songs and record their stories

or songs or whatever.

Q. Does that include visiting communities and speaking to

people who would be in the present day province of Nova

Scotia?

A. Yes.

Q. Are you familiar with and have you visited and talked

to people from all or some or most of the reserves?

A. I visited all Mi'kmaq communities, all 30 of them in

the Maritime provinces. Even in Newfoundland, Conne River.



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4041

Q. Have you spoken with elders from those communities?

A. I have spoken to elders in our own language and

recorded stories and exchanged stories and compared stories.

Q. As a result of that process, do you have information to

share with us that goes from pre-contact times to the

present?

A. Yes, I will be able to relate the Creation Story and

some of the stories of my grandfather and other stories in

relation to relationships between the Mohawk or the Gwedech.

They were recognized as a Gwedech. G-W-E-D-E-C-H. Or

sometimes it's spelled with K-W-E-D-E-C-H.

Q. And they're the Mohawk, are they?

A. They're identified as the Mohawk people.

Q. Okay.

A. And also stories that relate our relationships with the

Penobscot, Passamaquoddy and Maliseet people and the Inuit

people.

Q. Would it relate to issues of land use and occupancy and

trade, Mi'kmaq economy, Mi'kmaq political organization from

that time period towards the present?

A. It would include that information but not specifically



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4042

only that information.

Q. Fair enough. Perhaps I could take you back to Exhibit

46 now, since we have talked about some of the things that

are on Exhibit 46, and you mentioned your grandmother, if I

remember correctly, who came from Prince Edward Island.

A. Yes.

Q. Is she identified on this?

A. No. Yes, on the bottom, under the date, 1871, Thomas

Theophile Basil Tom Augustine was born at Humphrey's Mill,

near Moncton, who was the son of Thomas Augustine and

Theodus Knockwood. And Basil Tom married Agnes Thomas of

Lennox Island, Prince Edward Island. She was born June 14,

1898 and died December 7th, 1899 -- I mean 1998, sorry. She

was over a hundred years old when she passed away.

Q. And if we look from that reference to 1871 and Thomas

Theofield Basil Tom Augustine, and we look over to the next

page, we see his name appearing there, do we, and your line

of descent?

A. Yes, Thomas would have been my father's father.

Q. And so your grandmother would have fit at that point in

the chart.



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4043

A. Yes.

Q. Beside Basil Tom Augustine.

A. Yes. He was a brother of Noel Tom Augustine, who was

my great-great-grandfather on my mother's side.

Q. Yes, what this line of descent is showing is that you

come from two descendants of Tom Augustine.

A. It was some way and my grandmother explained to me that

our people maintained our linage. They would be more or

less cross-generational marriages. Where, in fact, my

father would have been my great-grandmother's first cousin,

and I would have been in my grandfather's generation on my

mother's side.

Q. Yes, so to put this together, because I'm not very good

at this first cousins and all the different ways of

explaining this, both your mother and father are descendants

that could go back to Michel Augustine.

A. Yes.

Q. All right. I am not sure that it's necessary to go

through the details of Exhibit 46 that you have prepared

here, but do we see Michel Augustine on here from 1760s?

A. 1730 is the approximate birth date of Chief Michel



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4044

Augustine, baptized as an adult on August 27th, 1747.

Q. How would you know that precise date?

A. I have the copy of the certificate somewhere. Not the

certificate but the information relating where his baptism

was recorded. Then his son was Joseph Augustine and one of

the ways a lot of our people were able to record knowledge

about certain events, that they would take on the name of an

important person who had contacted him, more like a surveyor

general or a lieutenant-governor or a governor, and they

would take on the name. In this case, Joseph Augustine

sometimes came out as Mitchell or Morris, and Mr. Morris was

a surveyor general at the time in that period who was

conducting surveys on lands around the reserves.

Q. Yes, I think we have already seen references to Charles

Morris in Dr. Wicken's evidence.

A. And then his son was Peter Joseph Augustine, who was a

chief in Richiboucto River in 1798 until about 1839. He

died about 1841 at a very, very old age. I think they said

he was about 104 years old. His son, Noel Augustine, did

not become chief because Moses Perley had commissioned a

Jacques Pierre Paul as Chief of the Richiboucto Tribe in



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4045

1841. So Noel Augustine's son was Tom Augustine, and then

Tom had two sons, Noel Tom and Basil Tom. He had other sons

as well but these were more important for me in my linage.

So they were named such in this line of descent of my

ancestors.

Q. In the date of 1848, we see a reference to Tom

Augustine marrying Theotiste --

A. Theotiste Knockwood.

Q. And the word "nocout" appears there?

A. Nacout, yeah.

Q. What does that mean?

A. It was more or less no coat. They didn't wear a coat.

Q. No coat.

A. No coat. The "no-coat" family more or less lived

around Moncton, around Peticodiac region, down into as far

as Springhill, Nova Scotia and further down.

Q. Does this indicate at all whether the name Knockwood is

derived from Nacout?

A. Yes, it does.

Q. Is that your understanding?

A. Yes, it is. There are Knockwoods in Prince Edward



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4046

Island and in Nova Scotia and in New Brunswick as well.

They're the same group that are related from the Knockwoods

that she stems from.

Q. There are Knockwoods in Shubenacadie.

A. Yes.

Q. Can you take us back to 1730 on this and Michel

Augustine and you've mentioned about Algimou. Can you tell

us how Algimou became Augustine?

A. Michel Augustine was baptized on Feast of St. Augustine

on August 27th, 1747 and was given the name Augustine.

There was a practice of the missionaries, when they baptized

somebody on a certain feast day, they attributed or gave

that name to the individual, a saint name, either Joseph.

Like my name, for instance, Stephen Joseph Augustine. But

there was also names like Francis, Paul, Joseph, Peter,

Peter Paul. Those are all saint names taken from feast days

in the Christian or Catholic calendar.

Q. So does that explain why the name Algimou is used on

your Exhibit 46 for the 1400s, 1500s and 1600s?

A. Yes, the name is Algimou and it appeared in various

formations throughout the early documentation. Alguimou,



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4047

Algimatimg, Algimout, Argimout. When Panoniac was killed in

Membertou's time in 1608 --

Q. Who was killed?

A. Panoniac.

Q. Spelled?

A. P-A-N-O-N-I-A-C. There was a name applied to a person

who brought his body back and it was spelled A-R-G-I-M-O-U-

T. And it's a French spelling and it's pronounced Argimou.

Q. Okay, this Exhibit 46 indicates that your ancestor,

Peter Algimou, in the 1600s, lived in Cape Breton in the

District of Omamagi.

A. Peter Algimou or Denys, they called him Pierre Denys or

Pierre Algimou. He ended up being involved in a war and his

son, Tomas Denys, he and his son moved to Cape Breton and

the grand chief that was John Denys, he's a descendant of

that same family, from the Richiboucto River.

Q. But the Denys moved to Cape Breton.

A. Yes.

Q. If you go back to the 1500s, there is some reference,

and I don't know if this is what you were referring to,

Algimou is Chief of the Richiboucto River District.



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4048

A. Yes.

Q. His brother, Denys, lived in Omamagi, and his other

brother, Pedousaghtigh.

A. Pedousaghtigh lived in Esedeiik.

Q. Which is Shediac.

A. Yes. There is another brother, Sabchaulauet, who lived

up in the Miramichi. S-A-B-C-H-A-U-L-A-U-E-T.

Q. Is that not the same name that we saw for someone who

signed the treaty in 1761 from Miramichi?

A. Yes.

Q. In the 1400s, the name is slightly different.

Algimatimg

A. Algimatimg

Q. Is that a predecessor name to Algimou?

A. Yes.

Q. And you're indicating in here that that individual

lives in a variety of locations?

A. Yes. The Algimou family was a very large family among

the Mi'kmaq people and there are a lot of stories and

traditions. I will be able to talk about it when I arrive

to my grandfather's story about Listugutj and Nemisgog.



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4049

Q. Could you just identify what those locations are that

are in modern day terms that are put in the Mi'kmaq language

in the 1400s here?

A. Listugutj is that area or community around the Gaspe in

Quebec. Nemisgog is in that area as well.

Q. We can get the spellings of this off Exhibit 46, or at

least the court reporter can, so we won't bother spelling

it, but the second one is from the Gaspe area as well?

A. A little bit further south.

Q. Yes?

A. Lsipogtog is Richiboucto River.

Q. Is that the next one?

A. Nabosageneg is the Aboujagane River. Sigenigtog is

that area where I represent. Epegoitg is Prince Edward

Island. Omamagi is Cape Breton. And these individuals

appear in documentation that have been also recorded by the

early missionaries, like by our --

Q. Why is it that people are living in so many different

locations?

A. It was a large family. There were no particular

boundaries stopping anybody from moving freely and living



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4050

and surviving on the land.

Q. So does that mean one individual lives or moved to all

of these communities?

A. Yes. Usually at a lot of our gatherings, or mawiomi,

M-A-W-I-O-M-I, a lot of marriages would be organized in

these kind of gatherings so that individuals could decide to

marry somebody in Prince Edward Island or Gespogoitg or

around the Yarmouth area or Cape Breton or in New Brunswick,

and move there where the woman would be from and would be --

They would live and be assumed or consumed in that society,

in that group.

Q. Did that pattern persist after contact with the

Europeans?

A. Well, it persists today. My grandmother was Prince

Edward Island, from Prince Edward Island and she married my

grandfather, who was originally from Big Cove but was living

up near around Moncton. And then my dad married my mother

from Big Cove and that's where they settled.

MR. WILDSMITH Your Honour, I am not sure how late you would

like to go. I was going to move to Exhibit -- Volume 15 at

this point.



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4051

THE COURT Probably a good time to stop then till quarter to

two.

MR. WILDSMITH Okay.

COURT RECESSED (12:40 hr)

COURT RESUMED (14:59 hr)


MR. WILDSMITH Thank you, Your Honour.

Q. One small matter, Chief Augustine, before we start on

your exhibit number 46, the Alguimou ancestry, can you

comment on the change of name from the 1400 to the 1500s,

the change in the spelling?

A. In the 1400s?

Q. Yes. We have A-L-G-I-M-A-T-I-N-G and then by the 1500s

it's Alguimou, A-L-G-U-I-M-O-U.

A. Alguimou is the actual word, actual name of the family

clan.

Q. Which one, the one in the 1500s, Alguimou, would --

A. Alguimou.

Q. Yes.

A. Is to be like a loon, but, generally speaking, the

French and the English couldn't discern the name Alguimou.



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4052

The Mi'kmaq people also played along with giving names or

nicknames to somebody. Algitmating means that that person

is being sent around everywhere.

Q. Oh, I see.

A. Playing with the name Alguimou. They gave him a

nickname, Algitmating. Who's he? He's our chief or we send

him everywhere, so the name would have applied Algitmating,

meaning he's being sent everywhere. Or Alguimou, it's just

the different ways that the French and the British recorded

the name. The Mi'kmaq people would have just used Alguimou

or Algitmating.

Q. All right. Going back to our evidence guide then, I

think you've finished explaining the concepts of oral

tradition and oral history. Do you recall if there was

something more you wanted to say on those subjects?

A. On those documents?

Q. Just -- not on the documents, we'll come to that, but

just on what is meant by oral tradition or oral history and

any distinction between the two.

A. I think I've said what I had to say on that.

Q. Okay. So we'll turn now to the first document that



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4053

you'd like to speak to, which is document number 289 in

Volume 15 of Exhibit 17. Now this seems to be an item that

you are the author of?

A. Yes. This document was prepared for a group of mining

interests companies in conjunction with the Federal

Government of Canada through the Natural Resources. And

they wanted to have a perspective about traditional

knowledge, how they can treat traditional knowledge in their

environmental impact assessment studies which were very

important for mining and resource extraction companies to

have consideration for.

And so I was contacted by Natural Resources and asked

to put together the element on traditional knowledge, a

definition and belonging to the land, approaches to how to

preserve traditional ways and that was it.

Q. Okay. In the definition that appears there on the

first page then?

A. On the first page after the title, it says "traditional

knowledge," and it has an illustration of an aboriginal

person holding a young boy. The next page to that it says,

"traditional knowledge, a definition." Here I would just



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4054

like to begin with the second paragraph --

THE COURT Excuse me, what does is it that we're --

MR. WILDSMITH That's 289.

THE COURT 89, thank you.

MR. WILDSMITH 289.

THE COURT Thank you.

MR. WILDSMITH Perhaps I could stop you just before you do

get to that, Chief Augustine. I see you have in front of

you a notebook.

A. Yes.

Q. Could you explain what that is and what the information

is that's in that notebook?

A. Well, in this notebook most of the documentation that I

have an opportunity to look through I've noted page numbers

and places where it's important for me to refresh my memory,

to focus on and to help me explain my perspective and

opinion on these.

Q. Okay. So that's information that you prepared and

recorded yourself in that notebook?

A. Yes.

Q. To aid in refreshing your memory and assisting you in



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4055

working through the documents?

A. Yes.

MR. WILDSMITH Your Honour, is it okay if he makes use of

that?

THE COURT That's fine. Yes, that's fine.

A. It's all handwritten notes. In the first paragraph, it

just explains who I am and the context of how story-telling

came into my purview. In the next paragraph,

Traditional knowledge (is based) is used

within the context of aboriginal social

values and philosophies, mainly, that the

earth and (everything) every being, animal,

plant and rock upon it is sacred and should

be treated with respect.

On the other hand, aboriginal

spirituality is a belief system based on

creation stories, dreams, and visions and

gives meaning to the knowledge and principles

of a way of life, but even though it is part

of every activity of daily life for

traditional people, it does not in itself



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4056

constitute traditional knowledge, rather, a

spirituality conveys an interrelationship

(with all things) that all things are

connected and must be considered within that

context. This holistic approach serves to

maintain harmony and balance between

individuals and the environment.

Traditional knowledge cannot be

standardized due to the vast diversity of

aboriginal cultures and because no two

landscapes or ecosystems are the same. It

represents the culture of a community where

elders act as a library of knowledge.

Traditional environmental knowledge can

be used wisely in environmental assessment on

aboriginal traditional territories. It may

include knowledge of natural cycles of land,

water and winds, wildlife patterns and

previous land use activities.

And then it goes on to say that

Consideration of traditional knowledge



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4057

(in the last paragraph) recently has been

included as a requirement in environmental

review guidelines for mining projects in

Canada. (And this is in context to this

piece of literature.) However, it has been

taken into account in some resource projects

for many years as indigenous knowledge or

local knowledge. Despite this, much of the

traditional knowledge used by mining

companies does not exist in written form.

Clearly, understanding and using

traditional knowledge requires a commitment

to long-term relationships, respect for

aboriginal culture and a sustained effort to

listen and to share information.

And on the next page, the notion about belonging to the

land,

The elders teach that Mother Earth is

sacred, that you live with the land and that

you share Mother Earth with all other living

entities, animal life, plant life, mineral



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4058

life and so on. Aboriginal people have lived

in harmony with the land and consider

themselves as belonging to the land rather

than owners of the land.

Traditional elders tell diverse creation

stories according to their tribal group that

explain the connection between their people

and the land on which they live.

Q. Is that information that you provided for this

publication?

A. Yes, I did.

Q. And does that information apply with respect to the

Mi'kmaq in present day Nova Scotia?

A. Yes, it does.

Q. Okay. And is traditional knowledge part of then what

you are bringing to the Court in your subsequent testimony?

A. Yes, it is.

Q. Okay. And did you have recourse to, it says in here,

"elders as the libraries of knowledge," in order to get the

information that you were going to convey to the Court?

A. Yes.



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4059

Q. Okay. Other things in this document?

A. No.

Q. All right. Let's turn to 294 which makes reference to

an article by Julie Cruickshank.

A. Yes.

Q. Appeared in The Canadian Historical Review in 1994

called Oral Tradition and Oral History reviewing some

issues. What use would you like to make of this document?

A. I want to be able to offer some written accounts about

identifying and explaining the difference between oral

tradition and oral history by an anthropologist who has

spent a lot of time doing research among aboriginal

communities collecting traditional knowledge and recording

stories.

Q. She didn't do her work with the Mi'kmaq, did she?

A. No. Julie Cruickshank's work was basically among the

Denys people in the Northwest Territories or the western

part of Northwest Territories, mostly in the Yukon

Territories from Old Crow all the way down to [Tegish?].

Q. The information then that you were going to point us to

in this document, is it opinions that you agree with and



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4060

share?

A. I agree with some elements of what she is wanting to

share here. And so I'm going to offer some opinions and go

through parts of her paper here.

Q. Okay. Then perhaps you could make clear in your

testimony which parts you do not agree with.

A. Yes. Julie Cruickshank sets out in this paper an

explanation of oral tradition and oral history by reviewing

some contemporary issues from various perspectives. She

outlines that there seems to have been some shift going

along, happening among anthropologists, folklorist in terms

of their evaluation of the importance and -- of oral

tradition and oral history.

And she wants to, in her article, summarize these

elements in terms of how oral tradition is used in a

contemporary context in cross-cultural education. And she

also wants to explore whether there is an overview that

could provide some ethnographic instruction for people

today.

And on page 404, which would be on the next page, in

halfway she looks at the historical approach to analysis of



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4061

oral tradition. And in this, the first paragraph she says

that

The terms 'oral tradition' and 'oral

history' remain ambiguous because their

definitions shift in popular usage.

Sometimes the term 'oral tradition'

identifies a body of material retained from

the past. Other times we use it to talk

about a process by which information is

transmitted from one generation to the next.

'Oral history' is more a specialized

term usually referring to a research method

where a sound recording is made of an

interview about first-hand experience

occurring during the lifetime of an eye

witness.

And in this context, I would tend to say I agree in terms of

it being a methodological approach, but in terms of sound

recording, that -- it includes sound recording, but it also

should include a visual recording as well as a written

recording of accounts in --



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4062

If a historian or a researcher was interviewing an

elder or somebody and writing down this information, I do

believe that that information forms a basis of a part of an

oral history conveyed by the informant at the time.

Q. Do we have examples in the evidence books here of that

form of oral history?

A. Yes, the work that has been done by Silas Rand, Francis

Ganong, by other recorders of history, interviewed elders

about information concerning place, nomenclature in Nova

Scotia and in New Brunswick and so on.

Q. If I could just show you Volume 1 of Exhibit 17 and

direct your attention to the material that would be

identified in here on page 39, from there forward, are there

other examples in there besides, I believe you mentioned,

Rand and Ganong of --

A. The information that I have used, yeah, is gleaned from

that context.

Q. I mean, people who have recorded oral history at some

point in the past.

A. Yes. William F. Ganong, William Francis Ganong, who is

a natural scientist. He described the natural evolution of



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4063

the geography of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and Prince

Edward Island and he relied on Mi'kmaq and Maliseet and

Passamaquoddy elders providing information about that.

Q. What about Item 301?

A. Bernard Hoffman's doctoral dissertation involved

research, interviewing Mi'kmaq people in mostly around New

Brunswick and more predominantly in Burnt Church, but did a

lot of research in relation to -- Most of the elders that he

interviewed were from Burnt Church. Diamond Jenness, he has

visited Atlantic Canada as well. Laura Lacey. Laurie Lacey

interviewed Mi'kmaq elders.

Q. Did you mention Pacifique.

A. Pacifique. Father Pierre Pacifique. He edited a

newspaper that was published from Restigouche, New

Brunswick. It was written totally in the Mi'kmaq language

with a little interspersed with some French. And it was

published for about 30 years out of Restigouche. And he was

in touch with a lot of the Mi'kmaq communities, and he

provided service and interviewed a lot of Mi'kmaq people to

provide that information. And, in his article, "Le Pays des

Mi'kmak," he includes a lot of that documentation.



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4064

Q. What about Speck?

A. Frank Speck, he was an anthropologist. He was out of

the University of Pennsylvania and he worked out of the

university museum there. He travelled throughout the

Maritime region, in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, New

Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, and he also did some

major work in Montagnais Territory among the Innu Nation

there. And he collected information from elders and

documented it and provided it to the museum.

Q. Wilson Wallace?

A. Wilson Wallace was another anthropologist. He, along

with his wife, developed a history book as well as on his

own. He wrote an article for the American Anthropologists

called "Medicines Used by the Mi'kmaq Indians," and as a

result of his visits to the Mi'kmaq communities to ascertain

documented material on medicines, the use of medicines.

Q. And do you know Ruth Whitehead?

A. Ruth Whitehead also worked at the museum, Nova Scotia

Museum and she is also an anthropologist who specialized in

Mi'kmaq history and culture and she's done a lot of

publications, writing, and interviewing elders and so on.



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4065

Q. Are these all sources that you have and use in your

work at the Museum of Civilization?

A. Yes.

Q. Okay. So, I'm sorry, we got a little digression from

page 404 here in Document 294.

A. Again, going down as far as page 408, "Contemporary

Approaches to Analysis of Oral tradition." In the second

paragraph, she says:

Broadly speaking, oral tradition, like

history of anthropology, can be viewed as a

coherent open-ended system for constructing

and transmitting knowledge. Ideas about what

constitutes legitimate evidence may differ in

oral tradition in scholarly investigation and

the explanations are certainly framed

differently. They cannot be compared easily

nor can their accuracy or truth value

necessarily be evaluated in positive terms.

From this perspective, scholarly papers

can be understood as another form of

narrative structure by the language of the



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4066

academic discourse.

And I agree with her statement in this paragraph.

Q. What do you understand it to mean to say that it is a

"coherent open-ended system" in the second line?

A. In that it has a certain structure in the way the

information is offered or delivered. Structure according to

that cultural -- that culture's context of structure.

Q. What do you make by "open-ended"?

A. Open-ended meaning that it incorporated and involves

different elements, like social, political, religious,

economic elements, as well as spiritual and supernatural.

Q. Okay. Are there things in this article?

A. No. There's four cultural contexts that she wants to

analyze in her approach and they're more perspectives from

an anthropologists who studied oral tradition. She also

looks at a prospectus from a historian who studied oral

tradition and an ethno-historian who has studied the oral

tradition, as well as a court of law in relation to a court

case involving indigenous knowledge being offered as part of

evidence.

And she indicates that the stories are based on



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4067

families to places, events, and sites, and these have some

context and relevance to the information that is offered.

In the first case, she talks about [Renatto Resaldo?]

who did an ethnographic study of the [Elongat?] people in

the Philippines during the 1970s. He was able to try to

obtain some understanding of their meaning of their oral

traditions.

In that context [Resaldo?] looked at the information

that the people had offered in the oral context and it

seemed to be based on events that occurred and identifying

certain geographic locations. In that context, there was

some meaning that could be obtained from that relationship

between people in their environment and the places that they

named on that environment.

Q. You mean in the oral tradition, there were locations or

place names?

A. Yes.

Q. Included in the oral tradition.

A. In terms of understanding those names in that context.

As for the historian, Judith Binney, who studied the Maori

in New Zealand, she was also looking at the issues about



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4068

Maori histories and what do they mean in terms of their

relationship with the land, with each other, and so on, and

that she was able to make some recognition of the

relationships that were involved, the information that was

offered by the Maori in terms of their dances and songs and

music.

And then she looked at Ethno-historian Cohen, who on

page 411.

Q. 411, yes.

A. In the third full paragraph, she said -- or he says:

If we look at how oral tradition is used

in practice, we come to see that for the

majority of the people, it is not a set of

formal texts. It is a living, vital part of

life. Knowledge of the past is not the dead

and dying survivals of a past oral culture

handed down through narrow conduits from

generation to generation but is related to

the critical intelligence and active

deployment of knowledge. Furthermore, it is

inclusive rather than exclusive.



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4069

People will always acknowledge that some

elders know or remember more than others,

just as they will acknowledge that written

versions of oral accounts are valuable but

neither authoritative elders nor written

texts close off the discussion and

circulation of historical knowledge in the

communities.

Q. What does that mean for us?

A. He is saying here that the oral tradition and the

written elements must be considered together in order to

glean from it valuable information and that one cannot

discount the other.

In the fourth example about the courts, there is, I

guess, an attempt to codify oral traditions and songs and

dance and narratives and, in this context, the writer

explains the example of the Gitksan Wet'suwet'en.

Q. They were the people that were involved in the Dogamot*

case?

A. Yes, on page 412, if I can just make a summary here.

The Gitksan Wet'suwet'en shared their



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relationship to the land on their own terms

by using oral tradition in that they were

stating that they were an organized society

before contact. They had house clan systems

in place prior to contact and after contact

and they had linkages to the past and to the

present as demonstrated in their totem poles

and oral tradition was their statement to

their title to the land.

In two contexts, the Gitksan offered their stories, which

are called adaawk, A-D-A-A-W-K, and it's the stories that

are integral to their culture and traditions and their

ceremonies and dances. The Wet'suwet'en K-U-N-G-A-X, was

their songs and dances and ceremonies that were attached to

the stories that the Gitksan were relating.

Q. You might as well spell those other two aboriginal

names and I will just do it. G-I-T-K-S-A-N for the Gitksan,

and W-E-T-apostrophe-S-U-W-E-T-apostrophe-E-N for the

Wet'suwet'en.

A. And down on page 14, again in the third paragraph, in

the second sentence on the second line, it says:



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Oral tradition anchors history to place

but it also challenges our notion of what

place actually is. We frequently view place

simply as a location, a setting or stage

where people do things.

Indigenous traditions make place central

to an understanding of the part and map

events along the mountains, trails and rivers

connecting territories.

Oral tradition also complicates our

definition of what constitutes an event. We

usually think of an event as a discrete,

apparently bounded incident and view stories

as illustrations that may supplement our

understanding of such events but our

definitions reflect our own stories and

events defined by a historian may appear

epiphenomenal (I don't know if you want me to

spell that) indigenous accounts that invoke a

very different kind of sequence of causality.

Again, the notion of place as being very important in that



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the land and families are a part of that notion of place.

It is important in this context of Mi'kmaq that our

stories and oral traditions are also attached to the land

and places and events that took place over the land.

Q. Are there a lot of places in Nova Scotia which have

Mi'kmaq names?

A. Yes, there are very -- In fact, most of Nova Scotia and

-- well, all of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and Prince

Edward Island all have Mi'kmagy. We have names for the

rivers and shores and forests and mountain areas and valleys

in our language. Either they are descriptive names of the

area, just saying it's a nice, shiny river or it's a nice

high hill.

And there is a lot of occurrence of same names in Nova

Scotia and in New Brunswick and in Prince Edward Island.

Like, for instance, Tracadie. Tracadie is a Mi'kmaq name

and it means Tlakatimk. T-L-A-K-A-T-I-M-K. Tlakatimk is

where you sit down and play games. And so the place where

you sit down and play games is always identified where they

may have gathered together for certain ceremonies and part

of that gathering is to spend time playing games of memory



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4073

and dexterity and endurance, because some of these games

would last two or three days at a time.

Q. How old would those words be, the Mi'kmaq words for the

places?

A. They would be precontact names, and sometimes contact

names where they may have met Europeans and wanted to play

games with them as well.

Q. That was on page 413, I believe, that you were reading.

A. Yes. And so, in that context, I think the oral

tradition and oral history has been fully outlined by Julie

Chruikshank in terms of how these concepts have been used by

anthropologists, by historians, by ethno-historians, as well

as by the courts, and she offers an opinion which states

that there is, yes, an ethnographic lesson that we can

obtain from this and there is a method that we can obtain

information from oral tradition and oral history, as well as

the written documentation. And I agree with her on that.

Q. Okay. And do you find that applicable to the Mi'kmaq

in Nova Scotia?

A. Yes.

Q. All right. I would like to move to the Wolfe article



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4074

in volume 17, 326.

A. The Wolfe article, I make reference to this because

Alexander Wolfe was a descendant of a very strong family

among the [Sotoanishnanee?] people in Saskatchewan and, like

myself, he undertook to study his own culture's history,

their stories, their oral tradition, and he has moved

forward with this perspective and tried to capture some of

these stories in a written context. He has offered some

opinions in his work by publishing a book entitled, "Earth

Elder Stories - The Pinayzitt Path." The word Pinayzitt is

spelled P-I-N-A-Y-Z-I-T-T.

Q. Do you know what that means or what that is a reference

to?

A. The people.

Q. Path of the people?

A. Yes. So in the preface, Harvey Knight, who is a well

known anthropologist, who works in the University of

Minnesota, I believe, offered to write the preface to this

article and in the preface he comments on Wolfe's work on

Roman numeral 8, viii. On the second paragraph, Harvey

Knight says:



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Wolfe's work is significant in that it

is a written presentation of authentic Indian

history. His book contains many of the

important elements of the traditional Indian

approach to history. He presents historical

accounts in narrative form interwoven with

the significant events, personalities and

notable places, such as the ancestral

homeland and sacred pilgrimage site of his

people.

Historiographic elements, such as the

genealogy and maps are presented to support

these accounts and to serve other important

traditional functions as well. A clan's

genealogy was essential for determining the

procreation of healthy offspring and thereby

ensuring their survival.

Geographic knowledge of plains, lakes,

rivers and mountain ranges was crucial to

their survival because it was on these vast

areas that they roamed, hunted, and gathered



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4076

food, evading and confronting their

traditional enemies.

Again, in ix, on the next page, number 9, Harvey Knight

makes a reference to the correct and respectful approach to

traditional -- to oral traditions which Wolfe recommends in

his introduction. It is important to reiterate his points

briefly, and he says:

First, to gain a deeper understanding of

the history and culture through the stories

of its people, one must first learn the

language of the family, tribe, or nation to

which the stories belong. Language and

culture are inextricably interwoven and

interdependent.

Second, in approaching oral traditions,

one must become aware of the principles and

practices that govern those traditions, just

as western literary traditions have their

modes and devices in history its established

methodologies, Indian oral traditions have

rules and principles that are distinct and



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4077

valid in their own right.

Third, it should be recognized that the

practice and principles of oral traditions

vary from band to band and nation to nation.

Their form and content is determined by

language and environment.

Finally, anyone seriously undertaking

the study of Indian oral tradition should be

prepared to respect and preserve these

traditions in their pure form. This can only

be done if the written form is manipulated to

conform to the rules, language, and style of

Indian oral traditions. But the ultimate

goal should be to achieve a balance, allowing

Indian oral and written traditions to coexist

side by side without one diminishing the

importance of the other.

And I think this is an important element that needs to be

firmly put forward in analyzing and studying oral

traditions.

Q. But what do you get then from the reference to "oral



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4078

and written traditions side by side not diminishing one from

the other"?

A. That information can be obtained from both sources in

order to round out a fuller vision of the occasion that may

have occurred at some point in time in the history of the

aboriginal people.

Q. Okay, thank you. Anything further?

A. Furthermore, in the introduction that was written by

Mr. Wolfe himself, he, on page 13, he on the second full

paragraph, he says:

Grandfathers realize that a time was

coming when what they had to say would be

important to the well being and stability of

their descendants yet to come. From

predictions made from before their time, they

knew that in the future there would be a need

for the [Inishnabay?] to know of their

descendency and history, their language and

their culture. Without this, future

descendants would become lost and would be in

confusion.



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Again, in the third paragraph:

These stories show why certain customs

are observed in a certain manner as

prescribed by their cultural and spiritual

tradition. In some of the stories, there is

humour.

Another type of story told by

grandfathers and grandmothers to convey a

lesson in life employ a deceiving legendary

character named [Nannapooshow?] who was able

to communicate with all creation. He

sometimes ended up a loser. Other times, he

did some good things and the way in which he

did them was humorous.

The [Nannapooshow?] stories, the

grandfathers, said were to be told during the

winter season. The stories relating to the

family and the historical background of the

[Inishnabay?] could be told at any season.

A lot of these stories were about survival, about the

buffalo, about the people and their relationship with the



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4080

buffalo and how they survived with the help of the buffalo

in their culture because the buffalo provided their food,

clothing, and shelter and so on, as in on page 17.

MR. CLARKE If I might just interject, Your Honour.

Perhaps I am missing the relevance of this. This is dealing

with western Canada, I believe, and all we have here at tab

326 is an introduction. I don't think we have the main

articles that Mr. Wolfe wrote. All we have is the

introduction to what appears to be a book of some sort and

Chief Augustine is referring to the preface and the

introduction.

Is there a point other than just reading what it's for?

I mean, maybe there's something here that I'm missing but,

again, there is no book here. It's just the introduction to

some article or book written by Mr. Wolfe. Again, it's

dealing with western Canada and unless there is a direct

relationship between this and the oral tradition or oral

history of the Mi'kmaq, or eastern natives in eastern

Canada, I can't see the relevance of it.

MR. WILDSMITH We will be bringing it back around to the

relevance. I think until Chief Augustine has concluded,



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4081

that would be the appropriate time to ask, well, what is the

connection of this to the balance of his testimony.

THE COURT Unless I missed the point, this is talking as the

other parts of the evidence I've heard this afternoon, or

most of it, about the significance, uses, ways of

determining and all that, oral traditions, and I take it

that it's being offered as a general thing.

MR. WILDSMITH Exactly, that the same kind of thing happens

in the west happens here.

THE COURT That's what I understood was being said.

MR. WILDSMITH Yes.

THE COURT I don't see any problem with that evidence.

MR. WILDSMITH All right.

THE COURT Obviously, if it gets to the specifics, it's of no

direct consequence to anything we're dealing with here,

which doesn't mean that the generalities aren't of some

significance.

MR. WILDSMITH No buffalo here.

THE COURT That I've seen. Except in the Saint John Zoo,

once, I think.

CHIEF AUGUSTINE The significance of the preface and the



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4082

introduction is how Mr. Wolfe was according respect and

identifying an approach that he used that was very important

in conveying the history and traditions of his culture, his

own people, and how he went about to record this information

in the context that this information would be discernable to

the general public.

In this way, Harvey Knight provides a preface by

commenting on Alexander Wolfe's approach to this and, in the

same context, in a general context, I would say the same

thing applies in my own experience in analyzing my own

culture and traditions to convey it in a discernable way to

the general public in an English language rather than in the

Mi'kmaq language. That is all I have to say on this article

now.

MR. WILDSMITH Okay. And I take it that this is an

introduction and a preface to a larger book that contains

these earth stories.

A. Yes, the larger book contains the actual stories that

his grandfather told him about raiding certain communities,

about moving about on the plains in certain areas in

Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, all the way down even into the



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4083

United States.

Q. So the stories themselves are set in a different place

in Canada and no direct pertinence to Nova Scotia?

A. They have no pertinence to Nova Scotia.

Q. So that's what you wanted to say about the Wolfe

introduction?

A. It's the approach and methodology of treating oral

tradition.

Q. Okay, and with that introduction, then, would you like

to turn to the Creation Story?

A. Yes.

Q. In that regard and without disturbing the flow of your

story, there is a reference here to two items from volume

15, 287 and 288. You have volume 15 still up there, I

believe?

A. I lost my guide. I don't know what happens to it. The

reference to the Creation Story is in 15-287. It is an

article that was published after I made a presentation to

the Canadian Association of Conservation of Cultural

Property in Whitehorse in the Yukon. And it is the written

presentation the people, the general public that was in



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4084

attendance who are mostly people that worked in the museums

as conservators that had to handle certain objects belonging

to aboriginal people and they wanted to determine which

objects were sacred. And in order to put the objects in a

context, I related the creation story which explains the

significance of the pipe ceremony, the tobacco, the sweet

grass, the pipe bags and --

Q. Okay.

A. -- all of what is involved in the spiritual context of

the creation story.

Q. And, similarly, there's an account of the creation

story in the next article, is there?

A. In the next article, I wrote for The Turtle Quarterly.

It was a special edition focusing on the survival of

indigenous cultures in North America. And I wrote about a

Mi'kmaq perspective on the history of Big Cove and included

the creation story as a starting point to our story and then

went on to talk about historical events that took place in

our community.

Q. So the creation story is a creation story that applies

to Big Cove, according to your piece under Tab 288. Does



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the creation story have application to the Mi'kmaq in

present day Nova Scotia?

A. Yes. Because it explains the -- geographically the

placement of people on Mi'kmagy. Like the Seven Districts

of the Mi'kmaq Grand Council are explained in the creation

story. The ceremonies that we do during our Grand Council

meetings are explained as well in the creation story. It

also explains the interconnectiveness and the relationship

between Mi'kmaq people and their land, the role of the

mawiomis, the role of animals, birds, plants and fish and

the whole cultural makeup of the Mi'kmaq people identifying

themselves with their clothing and the techniques they used

to build canoes and snowshoes and toboggans and wigwams and

their medicines, the kind of foods they eat and the clothes

they wear.

Q. Okay. Without further ado then, perhaps we should move

to that, bearing in mind Exhibit 45 that has the list of

names and spellings on them so we don't need to break, I

think, the flow of your story by spelling the names that are

already on Exhibit 45.

A. Yes, if I may have my bundle.



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4086

Q. You've just taken an item out of your knapsack. Would

you just explain what it is and give a little description

for the record?

A. The bundle that I have taken out contains certain

sacred objects that are integral to our ceremonies in our

culture, in the Mi'kmaq culture, in the Mi'kmaq Grand

Council. The bundle has been part of our family, the

Aguimou family, and it's been passed down through

generations. And it contains basically ceremonial objects

and story -- the creation story that I am going to share is

attached to the bundle and explains the contents of the

bundle. And --

Q. What's the bundle made out of?

A. The bundle is made out of duffle cloth, deer hide and

glass beads sewn with cloth thread or cotton thread and

sinew. Some of it is cloth ribbons, red, white and black,

which are the traditional colours for the four sacred

directions in the Mi'kmaq world. And it's basically made

out of material from modern day context in society.

Q. The duffle cloth you refer to, it looks like a bright

red colour.



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4087

A. It is red, yes.

Q. It is red. Any significance to the colour?

A. Red is a colour signifying the sacredness of our

knowledge and traditions. It also represents our blood as

well as the earth in our cosmology as well as the wisdom and

knowledge of our elders.

Q. Proceed.

A. In the context of the creation story being passed down,

the elders explain the significance and the meaning of our

pipe ceremonies as well as the sweet grass ceremony, the

tobacco-offering ceremony and the sweat lodge as well as the

significance of and the meaning of eagle feathers. And the

bundle itself contains all these sacred elements. It has

elements of rocks, stone, eagle feather, sweet grass, the

sacred pipe, tobacco, and a wampum belt.

Q. What's the pipe made out of?

A. The pipe is made out of stone and wood and it's

decorated as well. It's carved.

If I may start with the creation story, I would just

like to sing one song, one line of a song to honour the

knowledge of our ancestors who passed down this information



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to us, and it's part of having to sing this song in order

for me to continue with the story. [Witness sings song in

Mi'kmaq.]

That is a song inviting the spirits to come and gather

and watch over us and preside over and guide me in terms of

my deliberation of my words in -- about my culture and

traditions.

Q. I don't suppose we'll find that written down anywhere.

A. No. The elders have always taught our people that the

significance and the meaning of the number seven is very

important because there are seven levels of creation. The

beginning element, the first part is Geezoolgh, I don't

think I need to spell that out.

Q. No, it's on Exhibit 45.

A. And Geezoolgh is a concept more or less of creation

because the word in itself means "you have been made" in our

Mi'kmaq language. If we tell somebody Geezoolgh means you

live, you exist. There is no concept of an entity or a

human configuration maybe looking down above the clouds

below us. It has no gender. It has not even a human

context to it. Geezoolgh was borrowed by the French



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4089

missionaries to identify the creator or God in the French

Catholic context.

But in our context, we say "Geezoolgh" is you have been

created so once you become aware of your ears and your eyes

and your nose and your mouth, between your mind and your

heart, you are aware of your world, well, your creation has

begun. And once it's stopped, well, your creation is

remembered by your family and friends. And so it is in the

context of that that we consider creation. So that's the

first level. It's everything was made.

And the next level is the Sun, which we call Nisgam,

and Nisgamich is the term we use for grandfather, N-I-S-G-A-

M-I-C-H. Grandfather Sun casts its shadow on us, so we

always refer to Nisgam as the shadow-giver. It gives us our

shadow. And everything that is on the surface of the world

which has a shadow and the shadow moves has spirit, if I may

borrow the English context of spirit. But part of that

context of spirit for us is our physical appearance, our

heart, our beating heart and our beating lungs that generate

air and our blood through our system. Our blood flows

through our veins. We are connected to our shadows by our



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4090

feet. And so we are also attached to the earth by our

blood. And so our blood is connected to our ancestors who

have gone on to the other world, the spirit world. So

Grandfather is a very important element in our world view.

The second element to be created is the Earth,

Oositgamoo. It's made out of two words, "wesgit" means the

surface of and "gamoo" is to stand upon. So when you

combine the two words together it's a surface of area upon

which we stand and share with all living entities, whether

it's the birds, plants, trees or fish or animals. And so

all of these we share as equals.

And upon the surface of the world or earth,

Oopsitgamoo, the life-giver, the spirit-giver and the

sustainer of life, which is Geezoolgh and Nisgam and Mother

Earth, caused a bolt of lightning to hit the surface of the

earth to shape a person out of the elements of the earth,

out of the sand, out of the rocks, out of the wood and grass

and whatever else there is on the surface of Mother Earth

was come to together, was brought together by that bolt of

lightning and it made a shape of a human.

The head was in the direction of the rising sun towards



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4091

the east. Its feet were in the direction of the setting sun

and its -- both of his hands were outstretched, one to the

north and one to the south. This person we call

Geululesgop, "the first one who spoke," which was later

given the name Glooscap, was given its creation. And it was

not until the passing of one winter that a second bolt of

lightning hit the same spot where Glooscap lay.

And this time he was given his toes and his fingers and

all his other extremities and our elders teach us that he

was also given seven sacred parts to his head. And he was

given two ears to listen to his world from the goodness of

his heart because our elders tell us that when we become

formed as a new life, the first thing we hear is our

mother's heart and that heartbeat is always expressed in the

use of the hand drums in our culture. The drum beat is our

-- the beat of our mother.

The second two elements of creation on Glooscap's head

is two eyes that he could see his world around him to

observe the changing elements of its surface. And so he had

to look at the world around him from the goodness of his

heart.



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The sixth -- the third element are two holes in his

nose, the creation of his nose provided Glooscap to be able

to breath in the air that he needed to live. He also was

able to sense, to smell his place and everybody's place

around him, so that he would be able to sense from the

goodness of his heart and understand his world around him.

And, last, his mouth, and from the mouth, our elders

tell us, we take in the air, we take in the water that is

shared for everybody. We take in medicine to help our

bodies to be in a healthful way and food to sustain

ourselves to live for a long time.

And the last to come out of the mouth is words so that

our elders tell us if we learn to listen, to look at one,

excuse me, to look at one another and sense each other's

place and share our foods and our medicines, we will be able

to live comfortably and that our words will come out in a

way that is respectful to one another.

And so it is in this way the elders tell us that

Glooscap was given these seven sacred parts to his head.

Also Glooscap was still stuck to the surface of Mother

Earth. He was to look and observe the changing faces of



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Mother Earth, the trees and the birds, changing, the animals

changing, fish also changing, blanket of snow arriving on

Mother Earth to protect her and so on. And so he was stuck

for the passing of one winter on the surface of the earth

until Grandfather Sun came back to visit longer each day,

the snows began to melt and the ice melted and the leaves

began to form and the birds came back and so on.

Also, the thunder spirits returned to the area where

Glooscap lay and the third bolt of lightning hit where

Glooscap was laying and he stood up. And our elders tell us

that the concept of the cradle board in our society is very

important and is reflective of the way that Glooscap was

stuck to Mother Earth because he had to observe the changing

face and he had to understand the world around him before he

had the freedom to travel around.

Q. That was a cradle board?

A. The cradle board.

Q. What's that?

A. It's a piece of board that is usually designed and in

such a way that a young baby could be strapped to that board

with a deer or moose hide and with blankets of fur. And the



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child would be secure in this cradle board with its hands

tied and there's a protuberance around the head of the child

where if the cradle board were to fall down, the child would

not hurt itself. And --

Q. What are the boards made out of?

A. The board was made out of pine or spruce or it could be

made out of hardwood or cedar. And it was designed in such

a way to hold a baby upright and that the mother could carry

it on her shoulders and travel wherever she did to carry --

to collect medicine or make food or make a fire or build a

shelter. The child observed those things because the mother

carried it and either hung it on a tree or put it in a

wigwam where the family lived.

So this concept of the egtigenakin in our language,

E-G-T-I-G-E-N-A-K-I-N, meaning "my other right hand," this

concept is embodied in the Glooscap's attachment to the

Earth is his attachment to his mother and in the same way

this other right hand, which is the cradle board, is

attached to the mother, and in that way the child learns to

take food in its mouth and observe its world around it.

And eventually the hands are free and then the body is



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free and the child is ready to walk about realizing that

fire is hot, a knife is sharp and certain things are already

realizable for the child. So in this context, Glooscap had

to be knowledgeable of those elements of Mother Earth before

he was given his freedom.

So when the third bolt of lightning hit where he was

laying, he stood up and right away he said, "Geezoolgh,

thank you for giving me my life. Grandfather Sun, thank you

for giving me my shadow and my image and my heart and my

lungs and my blood and my connection to yourself. Thank you

for providing spirit into my life." And he looked down to

Mother Earth and he thanked the Earth for allowing herself

for his creation.

And he looked to the east, to the direction of the

rising sun, he looked to the south, to the west and the

north. And he turned around seven times and then he

travelled to the direction of the setting sun until he

arrived to area where there are lots of mountains and then

he decided to travel south until he arrived to an area of

red soil and then he decided to turn back north to the land

of the ice and snow. And at this point, he decided to go



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back to where he owed his existence, which was somewhere in

eastern North America.

And there he arrived where the bolts of lighting had

hit the earth. The sparks were still left over on the

ground. And as he was looking up at Grandfather Sun, he saw

a bird circling around and slowly this bird was soaring

around gracefully in a circular pattern until it landed in

front of him and it was the gitpo, the bald eagle. And the

gitpo identified himself, "I am gitpo, I am bald eagle. I

have come from the great spirit, the giver of life."

Q. Could you spell that, gitpo?

A. G-I-T-P-O. And he says, "I -- because I fly the

highest of all the birds and see the furtherest of all the

birds, I have become the messenger for the Great Spirit and

I have come to tell you that you are going to be joined by

your family to help you understand your world."

And so as the eagle was flying up into the sky, a

feather fell and before it landed on the earth Glooscap

picked it up before it landed and he held onto it and he

hung on to the feather since then. And, according to our

tradition, oral traditions, the eagle feather has always



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symbolized our relationship to the life-giver and our

relationship to the sacred bird, the eagle, the bald eagle.

Q. Is that an eagle feather you now have in your hand?

A. This is the bald eagle feather that we hold and we

bring out during our ceremonies and during our discussions,

our meetings and when we do these things.

Q. Part of the sacred bundle.

A. This is part of the sacred bundle, yes. So as Glooscap

turned around and he looked over, he saw an old woman

sitting on a rock and he wandered over. She was -- had grey

white silvery hair glistening from the sun reflecting off

her. He wandered up to her and said, "Who are you? Where

did you come from?"

And she turned around and said, "Glooscap, my grandson,

you do not recognize me. I am Nogami, I am your

grandmother," she said. "I owe my existence from this rock

on the ground. Early this morning dew formed on this rock.

And with the help of the Giver of Life, Grandfather Sun and

Mother Earth gave me a body of an old woman already wise and

knowledgeable."

She said, "If you respect my wisdom and knowledge, I



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will help you understand your world. I will teach you how

to obtain your clothes and your food and your shelter and

your tools and your medicine and how you're going to travel

about, on the water, on the ice, on the snow, and on mother

earth."

Glooscap was happy that his grandmother came to join

him. He called upon an animal that was scurrying along near

the forest and this animal was Abistanoodj, the Martin, and

he looked at Martin and said, "My brother," he said, "can

you come? I want to ask a favour of you." And the Martin

said, "Yes, my brother, Glooscap. What do you want? He

said, "I want to ask you if you can give up your life so

that grandmother and I can continue to live. We need to

obtain our food, our clothing, and all these things that we

need to survive from you." The animal says, "My brother,

take my life." And Glooscap took Abistanoodj and passed him

over to grandmother. And grandmother snapped its neck, laid

him down on the ground.

In the meantime Glooscap looked up and offered his

thanks for taking the life and asked for forgiveness for

taking the life of an animal who was his brother, and



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apologized.

And in that same time he also asked if the Giver of

Life and the Shadow Giver and Mother Earth could give back

the life of this animal, because he says, "The animals are

my brothers and sisters, that I will need to rely on them

forever so that we will be able to continue to live." And

so the animal came back to life. And Glooscap told

Abistanoodj to go back into the forest where they will stay

forever, so that they will enjoy this relationship with one

another.

In the meantime there was another dead animal in its

place. Grandmother prepared the animal to be cooked and

asked Glooscap to bring together seven sparks that were left

over from the bolts of lightening and to put together seven

pieces of wood on top of these sparks in order to build our

fire which we call Uktchibuchtao or the Great Spirit fire.

And it was upon this fire that the first meal of meat

was eaten to celebrate grandmother's arrival to the world.

And so as time went on, Glooscap decided to go down by

the water. And as he was walking down by this tall, sweet-

smelling grass, a young man stood up in front of him. He



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was tall. He had black, long hair and white sparkling eyes.

And it frightened him. And he looked at him and he said,

"Who are you? Where did you come from?"

He said, "My uncle, you do not recognize me. I am your

sister's son. My name is Nedawansum. I owe my existence

from the direction of the rising sun, far out in the ocean,

which ocean caused the waters to roil up. And foam began to

form on top of this water. And the foam was blown ashore,

and it rolled along collecting sand and seaweed and all the

other elements of the earth. And finally it rested on this

sweet grass. And with the help of the Giver of Life, the

Giver of the Spirit of Life, and the Sustainer of Life gave

me a body of a young man."

He said, "I bring my physical strength. I also have

spiritual giftedness, and I also have vision for the

future." And he told Glooscap, "If you respect this in me,

it will help you understand your purpose in this world."

And so Glooscap was happy that his nephew came into

this world. He called upon the fish of the waters and the

oceans. And he said, "My brothers and sisters, the fish,

can you come ashore and offer yourselves so that we can



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continue to survive because you will be able to provide to

us all the elements that we need to continue to live." And

so the fish came ashore and offered themselves.

Glooscap told his nephew to gather the fish and bring

them to grandmother, and grandmother prepared a feast of

fish to celebrate his nephew's arrival to the world.

And so Glooscap and his grandmother and his nephew were

enjoying their world around the fire, keeping warm, cooking

their meals and so on.

So one day Glooscap was alone by the fire. A woman

came and sat beside him and said, "Are you cold, my son?"

He looked at her and said, "Who are you? Where did you come

from?"

She said, "I am your mother. You do not recognize me,

my son. I owe my existence from the leaf of a tree that

fell to the ground. And early this morning dew formed over

this leaf. And with help of the Giver of Life, the Spirit

Giver, and the Shadow Giver, and the Sustainer of Life,

Mother Earth gave me a body of a young woman."

She said, "I bring all the colours of the world, all

the blues of the skies, the yellows of the sun to form



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together the greens of the grass and the forest. The red of

the earth, the black of the night, the white of the snow and

all the colours of the rainbow."

And she said, "I bring strength so that my children

will withstand the elements of the earth, and I bring

understanding that they will rely on one another and listen

to one another, so that the will continue to survive and

exist."

Glooscap was happy that his mother came into existence.

This time he called upon his nephew to go and gather all the

food from the plants and the trees and the roots and brought

these together for grandmother to prepare a feast to

celebrate his mother's arrival to the world.

And so in this way Glooscap was able to enjoy the

wisdom and knowledge of his grandmother. He was able to

enjoy and understand the spiritual giftedness, the physical

strength and the vision for the young people for the future.

And also the strength and understanding of his mother.

So one day the eagle came back to visit Glooscap when

he was alone. And he said, "Grandmother and you have to

leave the world. You have to go to the spirit world. And



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the only time that you will come back is some day when the

Mi'kmaq people are going to be in the danger of ceasing to

exist. Glooscap will come back to help. You and

grandmother will have to stay in the spirit world, but you

have to instruct your mother and your nephew to make sure

that this spirit fire never goes out, because out of this

fire a spark will fly, and when it lands on the ground a

woman will be created. And another spark will fly out, and

another woman. Finally there will be seven women created

all together. And seven more sparks will fly out and seven

men will be created. And together they will form seven

families. And they will disperse from the area of the fire

by taking a piece of the fire with them."

And we are told by our elders that the Mi'kmaq people

arrived in Mi'kmagy and divided themselves into seven clans,

in order not to forget the significance and the meaning of

the number seven in relation to the creation story.

And so the seven districts of the Mi'kmaq Grand Council

are set up in such a way that the clans would not interfere

with one another in the way that they survive from Mother

Earth, the elements of Mother Earth, from the rivers and the



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forests and the oceans, but they will be able to survive

from the fish, the animals, the birds, and the plants and

the trees.

So Glooscap also instructed his mother and nephew that

when the people dispersed from the area, the seven original

families will return to the area of Uktchibuchtao or the

Great Fire, which is, we believe, somewhere between Montreal

and Quebec City, modern day Montreal and Quebec City.

Somewhere in between there is the area of the great fire.

And after the passing of seven winters, Glooscap told

his mother and his nephew that the Mi'kmaq people will

gather their seven fires and bring together their wood, some

elements of stone, and skins of animals, as well as

medicines that will be identified as the strongest medicines

that offer themselves, healing and wellness.

So after they arrive to the area of the Great Fire, all

the seven original families will rekindle the fire by

bringing their fires back together to honour the Giver of

Life, Geezoolgh, Grandfather Sun, Nisgam, the Giver of the

Shadows of Life, the Spirit Giver, and Mother Earth, the

Sustainer of Life.



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They will also honour Glooscap's creation because the

bolts of lightening that hit the earth caused sparks to be

left over, to be used for the Great Spirit fire. And so by

relighting this, it honours, symbolically, those first four

levels of creation.

In order not to forget the significance and the meaning

of the grandmother, we take the stones, the rocks from which

grandmother owed her existence, and we would be able to

bring together seven rocks which represent the seven stages

of creation, seven more rocks to represent the original

families, seven more rocks to represent the seven clans of

each of those seven families, and seven more rocks to

represent the seven medicines that are brought together from

each of those seven original family groups.

So in this way when we do our sweat lodge ceremony, we

do a dome-shaped covering, almost like a domed-shaped tent

where inside the seven representatives from the seven

original families, sagamow, we call him, the Grand Chiefs of

each of the original families would sit down and represent

their own people.

The sagamow, in our language, represents the most



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oldest individual and the most knowledgeable individual in

our society whose responsibility is to look after the

spiritual, physical and emotional well being of his own

people by providing them with the necessities of life and

the spiritual connectedness to his own people from life til

death. And in this way, the sagamow have this

responsibility.

Q. What's the word and how do you spell it?

A. S-A-G-A-M-A or M-O-W or M-A-W. The spelling varies,

sagamow. "Mow" means the "most" and "sag" means "long time

ago." The most long time ago individual.

So the seven representatives gathered together to do

the sweet grass -- the sweat lodge ceremony. They call upon

seven rocks at a time. They close the area where they all

gathered inside of the sweat lodge. They ask for

forgiveness. They pray to the seven entities of creation

and they sing together. They bring their words together.

And they pour water over red hot rocks that have been placed

inside of the Uktchibuchtao. And in this way steam is

created and the situation becomes really hot inside of the

sweat lodge and this is how we acknowledge our recreation.



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It is coming back into the womb of our Mother Earth. And in

this way we celebrate our creation as well as grandmother's

arrival to the world.

Seven more rocks are called upon for the seven original

clans, seven more rocks to the seven clans or sub clans of

each of the seven families, and seven more rocks for the

seven medicines. And there are four rounds altogether for

the sweat lodge involving 28 rocks altogether.

And so once this is all done, everybody is red hot from

the heat and steaming and sweating. And when the flap of

the sweat lodge opens, everybody comes out almost like a

newborn baby, all red and shiny, and crying sometimes, like

a newborn baby would cry.

And this is how we symbolically give thanks and

represent grandmother's creation, arrival to our world, is

through the sweat lodge ceremony, by heating the rocks and

pouring water on the rocks and creating steam.


of the nephew who arrived from the sweet grass and the salt

water of the ocean and the foam and all the other elements,

we take the hair of our Mother Earth and braid it, just like



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4108

our own hair.

Q. And you're holding up in your hand now, what?

A. This is a braided piece of sweet grass that has been

burnt on the end. And we light the sweet grass on the

Uktchibuchtao, and we offer the smoke of the sweet grass to

the Giver of Life, to the Shadow Giver, as well as to Mother

Earth, the Sustainer of Life, and to the direction of the

east where Glooscap and the eagle come from, the south where

the grandmother comes from; the west where our ancestors as

well as the young people with the vision for the future, our

past as well as our future is represented in the west, and

in the north, our mothers, who have the medicine in their

systems for us to continue to survive and exist. And the

medicine bear, the white bear, the polar bear of the north

is a symbolic representation of our connection to our

mothers.

And so our words are entrusted in our smoke from the

sweet grass, and so we say we offer this smoke to these

seven sacred directions or the seven sacred entities, so

that we will lodge our promises to them, and so that we will

be able to continue in our life in such a way that we hold



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4109

these sacred covenant and relationships with these spiritual

entities as well as with the bird entities, the animal

entities, the plant entities, and the fish entities that are

involved in the creation.


of the mother, we take the leaf of the plants and the bark,

and we form that together to make our tobacco. And in this

way this represents the mother. Glooscap's mother comes

from the tree and the leaf of the tree is used as our

tobacco. And we offer the tobacco to the giver of life and

ask in forgiveness. And we say these long prayers that we

ask if we, you know, we ask for forgiveness for taking a

life. We ask for forgiveness if we have offended something.

We ask for strength so that we will continue and guide us in

our deliberations and so on, all these seven sacred

entities. The tobacco is offered each time and then placed

in the fire and the burning of that tobacco and the rising

of the smoke gives the words, delivers these words, our

intentions to the spiritual entities as well.

Q. Any particular leaves or bark that you refer to, any

particular plants or trees?



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A. It depends on where people are living. There are

elements of cedar. We have bearberry leaves. There are

sweetgrass. There is sage involved. Some bark of certain

trees. We have wild tobacco that is incorporated in that.

As well as some real tree, parts of a tree, like red cedar

that included in this as well. That's basically it. And in

order to put everything in a meaningful whole and that

everything makes sense and is connected and inter-related,

because our name, Mi'kmaq people, Nigimaq, and [Nigamana?]

It is a term that makes reference to my relations. Nigimaq

means my relations.

Q. Spell that, please?

A. N-I-G-M-A-K or M-A-G. Or M-A-Q, depending on where you

are. If I was in Eskasoni, I would say Nigimaq. And if I

was in Big Cove, I would say Nigimaq. And, in Restigouche,

they would say Nigimaq. So Nigimaq means my relations.

[Wigimaq?] means his relations. [Wogamaq?] means their

relations. [Gogamaq?] is your relations. So, in that

context, the word nigimaq became a noun. Became a noun

rather than a pronoun because each time my relations, your

relations, his relations, in our language, in the Mi'kmaq



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language, logically, there is no such thing as a word as

relation separate away from something else. It has to be

attached to something. It's my relation, your relation or

their relation. So the word nigimaq is more or less a

European formulation to signify these people are a relation

of people and we have not --

Q. You mean they are related to each other?

A. We are related to the animals. We are related to the

land. We are related to the sun, yes. So, in that context,

the stone from which grandmother owed its existence is

shaped into a pipe.

Q. You're now holding a stone bowl, is it?

A. This is a stone bowl that it is not a traditional

Mi'kmaq pipe. It is one that has been given to me to carry

for the Treaty Number 6 of Cree in Alberta where one of the

members of their tribe, Wandering Spirit, who was hanged

during the Riel rebellion, it has been in his family for a

long time and the elder of that was carrying it after

hearing the Creation Story related to me, that he had a

dream a year before when he was preparing for a sundance,

that somebody from the direction of the rising sun had just



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4112

saw a figure coming with a gift and he said that Creation

Story was a gift to me, and I was supposed to give this pipe

to you. And I've been carrying this since 1992, from a

ceremony that I did in Frog Lake with the First Nations

Circle on the Constitution. So it's been an honour for me

to carry it.

My own pipe is in a sacred bundle and I am not allowed

to take it out unless I do it in a particular ceremony among

my own nation.

So I am using this Cree pipe as an example. So the

stone of the pipe, the stone is shaped into a pipe that

represents grandmother. The stem of the pipe comes from a

tree that is Glooscap's mother.

Q. Is that true as well of the Mi'kmaq pipe that you

referred to?

A. This is true of the Mi'kmaq pipe. This is more a

representation of a 10-day fast that I undertook, fasting

without food and water, in order to obtain a vision as to

the kind of stem that I am going to put onto this pipe. I

had to undergo this ceremony in order to properly receive

and carry this pipe.



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Q. So the stem you have there is a Mi'kmaq stem, is it?

A. It is a stem. It is my own design of the stem. In our

culture, the pipe gets passed down from generations. The

stems stay with the person.

And sometimes the stems are offered in a sacred fire,

or Uktchibuchtao, in order to bring to another level of a

ceremony or a closure or a continuance or another phase of

our spiritual activities.

So this is a stem that comes from the tree. It's made

out of black cherry, cherrywood. And so it brings together

the spirit of the mother and the grandmother. The wisdom

and knowledge, the understanding, the spiritual guidance

that the mother has and we bring together to form the pipe.

So we take the tobacco that comes from the leaves as

well from the mother and we fill the pipe offering the

tobacco to the seven sacred entities, because we call upon

these spirits to sit around and to listen to our

deliberations, our words and so that we will be able to send

the smoke back with the spirits and say go back to where you

come from and take our words with you. So guide our words

and protect them so that they would not be disrupted or



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4114

broken, unless we come back together and call these spirits

back together and we want to agree to change our words and

then blow the smoke back to these entities.

Also, in order, once we fill the pipe with seven

pinches of tobacco and it's brought back together, we take

the hair of Mother Earth, which is represented by the

nephew, who arrived on the sweetgrass. We take the

sweetgrass and light it on the Uktchibuchtao or the spirit

fire and we draw the smoke into our mouths but not into our

lungs and we offer -- we blow the smoke. This is how we

entrust our words. So the tobacco and the pipe ceremony and

the sweetgrass ceremony is integral to our relationships to

each other as human beings, our relationships to the

animals, the plants and the birds and the fish, our

relationships as clans we relate to each other, and our

relationships with our neighbouring nations, like the

Gwedech, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy people, the Maliseet

nations.

And, in this way, we are able to sit down and share our

words and we come to some consensus or agreements and this

is how we do our ceremonies. Once the ceremonies are done,



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we sit down and we have these feasts to signify these

arrivals of these different entities. We have a feast of

birds to offer thanks to Glooscap's creation. We have a

feast of animals to honour grandmother. We have a feast of

fish to honour the young people and a feast of plants and

fruits and vegetables to honour our mother. In this way, we

are able to have these feasts to offer food to one another

as our thanks to our creation and providing respect and

dignity to our deliberations.

In this way, when we gather together, when we go to the

tobacco or the sweetgrass ceremony, we say we are going to

put our differences outside of this circle and when we come

inside of the circle, we cleanse our ears so the sweetgrass

ceremony is done and we cleanse our ears, our eyes, our

mouth, our nose, and our hearts and our hands. So, in this

way, we will look and hear and sense and share our words

from the dignity of our hearts and our minds with a clean

mind and an open heart.

So a lot of our ceremonies are in relation are in this

context. This is the meaningful symbolic embodiment of

solemnizing our words with one another and these extend to



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4116

animals as well as birds, plants and whatever between human

beings, between families, clans, districts, nations and so

on.

So, in a lot of ways, a lot of these ceremonies had

been observed and recorded in the written context but the

full understanding of them was not ever conveyed in the

documentation that is available surrounding ceremonies that

involved European peoples and treaty agreements. I say that

in advance in the context of this process.

There is a process whereby this ceremony, the pipe is

brought out and this ceremony is conducted when we gather

together to just share things or to come to some consensus

on issues. Either they could be conflicting. It may be

involving war or peace or it could be just marriage and

whatever.

Q. Now you mentioned something about the seven sparks

making seven women and seven sparks making seven men, that

they formed seven clans and went into seven different areas.

A. Yes.

Q. Can you say anything as to whether the Creation Story

says anything about where those seven places are?



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A. They just basically went east and west and north and

south and some places in between in some of the areas. The

Abenaki probably is one of them. The Algonquin Nation,

Odawas are one of them, certainly, and the Montagnais

probably one of them. The way the story came down to us is

more or less its context in our world view.

A similar kind of a Creation Story was recorded among

the Penobscot Nation by an individual by the name of Joseph

[Nicolar?] who published the book in 1890s, in Maine, and it

was entitled "The Life and Traditions of the Red Men," and

there is also a version of the Creation Story that was

related to him by his own ancestors in the early 1800s. And

it also includes Glooscap, his grandmother, a nephew and a

mother figure and those other elements of creation.

Q. You were mentioning a location thought to be somewhere

between Montreal and Quebec?

A. Somewhere in that area.

Q. Is that the origin of Glooscap and the fire from which

the seven clans were formed?

A. Yes.

Q. Would the Mi'kmaq be one of those seven?



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A. The Mi'kmaq are one of those that belong to those seven

original families. Even at the time of contact, these

people had some differences but they had traditionally come

together to the area of the great fire to form a council

with the Abenaki, the Odawas, the Maliseet, the

Passamaquoddy, Penobscot Nation and the Mi'kmaq people.

Q. Okay, anything further on the Creation Story?

A. The only other element is these colour sequences, the

white represents the north; the yellow, the east; the red,

the south; and the black to the west. Because early in the

morning when we are doing our ceremonies, mostly this is

when it occurs, during the sunrise, and the direction of the

east is yellow. The sun is coming up and when we look

behind us, it is still darkness in the west. And to the

north there is white for the snow. To the south is the

redness of the land in the south. The soil is red.

Q. So the bundle contains four pieces of cloth that were

the colours you just gave?

A. Yes, and the ribbons on the stem of the pipe represent

the blue of the sky, the green of Mother Earth. And the

purple representing our hearts, which represents grandfather



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4119

sun, who gave us our shadows, our spirits, our hearts and

our -- I was going to say liver -- but lungs.

Q. I think we have covered on the record the other

elements that you have identified in the bundles except

maybe the tobacco was in a buckskin pouch, is it, a deerskin

pouch?

A. The tobacco is in bearskin pouch with glass beads on

there with an image of a thunderbird. It was given to me

from the [Ishnabay?] people in [Giddygonzeebee] in Maniwaki

near -- northeast of Ottawa, about two hour's drive.

Q. And the rocks were in another pouch that you did not

take out?

A. The rocks are representations of grandmother and they

are rocks that have been given to me from different areas of

the world and there is even a piece of coal that comes from

France, the children of France who were afflicted with

cancer gave me a piece of coal when I went there to do

ceremonies for them.

Q. Okay, so that brings to a close the Creation Story?

A. Yes.

MR. WILDSMITH Would Your Honour like to take an afternoon



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break?

THE COURT All right. Let's try to be back by quarter to

four, just make it a short break.

COURT RECESSES

COURT RESUMES


MR. WILDSMITH Chief Augustine, are we ready now to move to

the stories that came from your grandfather, John Simon.

A. Yes. There are two stories that are significant in

explaining our relationships as family groups and our

relationships between each other, between ourselves as

living within the different districts of our Grand Council.

I might just explain a little bit the whole notion of

our use of English terminology in this context to try to

explain. Districts in our context, in our words does not

attribute territoriality towards our society. Like there

were no visible boundaries between the districts and nobody

was standing guard on each of those areas saying, well,

you're now in Sigenigtog. You're now in -- And so when I

say "Districts of the Grand Council," in the context that I

would use it in our own language, we call it mawiomi. M-A-



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W-I-O-M-I. Mawiomi is sort of like a fire that is burning.

We come to the fire to warm ourselves. We come to the fire

to cook our meals. We come to the fire to perform our

ceremonies. And we come to the fire to enter into agreement

with one another. And so the purpose of the mawiomi is to

keep these fires going in such a way that all of our people

within our mawiomi, within -- that identified themselves

attached to that fire will come to that fire during our

gatherings and ceremonies.

So the mawiomi, in that context, is a way of ensuring

that people survive, that we would be able to provide

clothing and food and shelter and those things that when an

individual is not able to provide that for themselves, like

elders and orphan children or widows. And so in this way,

the function of our mawiomis and the sagamaw in that

context, is more integral to the survival of our peoples

within a certain geographic area.

But it's not territorially identified in the way that

municipalities would be identified, in a way counties would

be identified in the European context. So --

Q. Would there be seven of those mawiomis?



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A. There are seven mawiomis in the Grand Council, so, in

this context, the story -- the first one, if I might make

reference here to number 3 on the evidence guide --

Q. Yes.

A. -- Grandfather Johnny, S-I-M-O-N-D-S, the ethnographer

that was collecting this information in 1964 thought my

grandfather's name sounded like Simonds so she spelled it

that way. It was Marie L.G. Corsetti that collected this

information in 1964.

Q. Could I just ask you to take a look at Volume 17 and

the two tab numbers that are marked there just to identify

whether those are written components of those two stories?

Is that what you're referring to now by the ethnographer who

collected them? That's Exhibit 17, Tab -- Volume 17,

Documents 314 and 315.

A. Yes. These are the documents that I'm going to talk

about.

Q. Okay. I'm not going to ask you to read them or

anything. I just want you to identify them. And you say

they were originally collected by Angeli or L.G.

A. L.G. Corsetti.



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4123

Q. And these two documents, are they contained in the

collections of the Canadian Museum of Civilization?

A. Yes, they are. They're identified as 3-F-15M, Box 23,

F4 and the next one is also in the same reference area.

Q. So were they collected independently of you?

A. Independently of me?

Q. Yes.

A. Yes, they were. We have the tape recordings and the

translation was done by my grandfather's son's wife.

Q. So were they recorded as Mi'kmaq language?

A. The originals were recorded in the Mi'kmaq language.

And I must say, the written context vary a little bit.

Q. Yes.

A. Because of the education of the person that was trying

to translate them.

Q. And did you get the stories from your grandfather

directly or grandmother directly?

A. I got them from my grandfather, Johnny Simon, with whom

I lived with after I came back from Germany. My parents

wanted me to learn more about my culture, my language from

my grandfather, Johnny Simon, and my godmother, and she



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wasn't my biological grandmother, she was my

stepgrandmother, but she was also my godmother, who was an

Acadian person that was adopted in Big Cove when she was a

child. And she grew up in Big Cove speaking our language

and learning our culture and knowing more about our culture

than most. She was very instrumental in teaching me a lot

about my own traditions as well as my grandfather. This

story comes from my grandfather, Johnny Simon.

Q. Told to you directly.

A. Yes. S-I-M-O-N.

Q. Yes. And I see on Exhibit 46, the Alguimou clan

history, there is a reference to a John Simon, S-I-M-O-N.

A. Yes, that would be his -- that would be my mother's

father.

Q. And that's who you're talking about here?

A. Yes.

Q. Okay.

A. There are two stories in relation to him conveying

them. One is about Oijiboget and the other one is

Getoasoloet. They're reversed or inversed here --

Q. You would like to tell them in the reverse order --



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A. I'd like to tell them in the reserve order because --

Q. Oijiboget first?

A. Oijiboget, yes. It's a story about an individual that

I was living in Restigouche with a community of Mi'kmaq

people. I say "a community," would be around Bay de Chaleur

area and finally in and around where the modern day

community of Restigouche is, that general area around there

has been identified as Listugutj. It encompasses several

rivers and the Bay de Chaleur and in the south side of New

Brunswick as well. So --

Q. At the risk of asking a silly question, can you put a

time frame on when the story would take place?

A. Before the arrival of Europeans to North America. The

story is about Kwedech people, K-W-E-D-E-C-H, arriving and

raiding a Mi'kmaq community.

Q. Kwedech are those that we earlier suggested might be

Mohawk?

A. They've been suggested to be the Mohawk people, yes,

that were occupying the area around Montreal, Quebec, on the

south side of the St. Lawrence River. And they came and

sometimes arrived in Gaspe and so a lot of times there were



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skirmishes between the Mi'kmaq and the Kwedech and a lot of

the oral context refer to those skirmishes and this is one

of them. And the Kwedech, having arrived and wiped out

almost every Mi'kmaq in the area and chased away the rest,

captured a woman and the woman was pregnant. And she was

taken by a Kwedech chief and she gave birth to her baby.

And the Kwedech chief adopted him as his son.

And the young person grew up in the Mohawk and Kwedech

territory with the other kids. Finally came home to his

mother one day and said, "They're making fun of me and the

way I talk. They're making fun of me. They call me

Oijiboget, meaning a little bit small for his size. And so

his mother says, "Well, that's because you're not one of

them." And he says, "Well, who am I then?" And she says,

"You are a Mi'kmaq and you come from Mi'kmagy and your

father, the chief, stepfather, killed your father and took

me and captured me as his wife and now we are here."

And the young boy wanted to know if he could learn the

language of his culture. And so the woman started to teach

him about the language and started to show him canoes and --

that are more or less made by the Mi'kmaq people, snowshoes



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4127

so she could determine who his own people were, medicines,

traditional medicines and all these other things that he

needed to know about his own culture.

Q. When you say that, can you tell the difference between

snowshoes that come from one aboriginal group from another

or canoes that come from one --

A. Well, the canoes are distinctly different among the

Mi'kmaq people. In relation to the Kwedech, the canoes have

the high gunnels on the side and they have a low front and

back of the canoe to -- for more or less river travel as

well as ocean travel. And some of the rivers are rough that

are near the oceans and so they were built in such a way to

withstand high waves and which are differently constructed

than canoes that are made more or less for inland travel in

the lakes and the lesser rivers.

Q. Is that true of snowshoes as well?

A. Snowshoes are, among the Mi'kmaq people, because the

snow is wet and it freezes a lot of times and there's crusty

snow, the snowshoes are made in such a way that the webbing

that is made out of moose hide is thicker and has a kind of

like a wider knitting.



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Meanwhile in towards Kwedech territory, the snowshoes

are a little bit more closer woven and there are thinner

stripes of hide used, and so it facilitated weight being

carried on light powdery kind of snow as opposed to the snow

that was in the East Coast that was wet and crusty.

Q. Okay. So --

A. So --

Q. -- wanted to know --

A. -- the mother taught the young boy the difference

between these techniques of our -- how we survived and to

understand those. Also she taught him the Mi'kmaq language.

And so one day he decided that he would kill his stepfather

and so he attacked him while he was sleeping one day and hit

him on the bottom of his foot because he knew that the

Kwedech chief was a spiritual, strong, spiritually strong

individual, this was a way to kill the person is to hit him

under the heel. And this is how he discovered the weakness

of his stepfather and killed him in that way.

And he had asked his mother to prepare him moccasins

that were designed in the Mi'kmaq way, snowshoes, and arrows

and whatnot so that he -- when he arrived back in Mi'kmaq



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4129

territory, that he would be recognized. But as soon as he

left, it was during the summer, and he automatically assumed

the shape of a turtle and hid in the sand and he -- to

escape detection from the Mohawks. And then he turned into

a loon and dove in the water and swam for long ways, the

alguimou, and this is where the family name comes from that

bird.

Anyway, he pretends to act as a bird or turns into a

bird and the Mohawk chase him with spears and they can't

detect him under water because he swims fast and stays under

for a long time.

Then he shapes -- changes his shape into a rabbit and a

rabbit dives into the snow and buries itself into the snow

and escapes detection by the Mohawk or the Iroquois. And

they use spears to destroy the snow, and today they have a

game that's called snow snakes that is in relation to this

chase to try to capture this Mi'kmaq who escaped the

Kwedech.

And so they tried to throw their spears in the snow and

they don't hit the rabbit. And then he turns into a

partridge and he climbs on the trees and hops from tree to



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tree. Finally, he arrives in -- back into Mi'kmagy because

he hears several children playing and he knows that they're

speaking Mi'kmaq, so he jumps down and turns into a child

and take -- goes home with these children. And in this way,

he arrives to the home back to Listugutj.

And the mother recognizes that this young person is not

who he's supposed to be, so he says, "Who are you?" And he

says, I am Oijiboget. I am son of this certain Mi'kmaq

chief that used to be here. And he says, "Oh, I know you,

who you are."

And so she instructed him to go to the next wigwam

which was the grandmother's house and he stayed there and

decided to seek the hand of the chief's daughter. And this

chief happened to be somebody else that's not originally

from this area and he had a battle with the chief, and this

is more or less cutting it short.

Because what the story indicates is that the Mi'kmaq

people in this story, in this legend identify themselves

between the nation that they had battles with and that

Oijiboget is this person that came back from this to tell of

his survival and to come back to his people and identify all



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4131

of these elements of his own culture as well as weaving

himself into the land, in the water, in the sand, in the

rabbits, in the birds and the trees.

And in this way we are also -- the story identifies

that there is a spiritual connection to these animal

entities and these bird entities and elements of Mother

Earth, the snow, the earth, the water and the trees and

those things that are the embodiment of our world. And that

this relationship has significance to what we do today and

our beliefs and our relationships today with our earth.

So the story of Oijiboget basically ends there. He --

well, he goes back and attacks the people and they raid the

Kwedech and there is a games going on of endurance and there

seems to be almost like a game of chess going on inside of a

wigwam between he and Mohawk chiefs. And in this way, there

is some kind of a spiritual battle going on which sometimes

has been misrecorded as a real all-out bloody battle between

the Mohawk and the Mi'kmaq people, but it was more or less a

family skirmish.

So that's -- in that context I want to just relate that

part of the story as the beginning part of it. The next



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chapter goes into Getosasaloet.

Q. And that's the story that's under Tab 314 then in

Volume 17.

A. Yes, and this one is about a Mi'kmaq chief that lives

in Restigouche area, again. And he is attacked by Kwedech

and he was supposed to have listened to his father not to

wander too far into Kwedech territory and he does. And so

he runs afoul of the neighbouring Kwedech and he is attacked

and he survives, but his village is in shambles and

everybody's ran away. So he wants to survive and he goes to

the mountain where they call that today Sugarloaf Mountain

in Campbellton.

And he goes to the base of that because there's a

source, a water source and a spring which is supposed to

have spiritual values to it and then if you go and put your

wound or whatever, that you will be fixed. And so

Getoasaloet lays under there and finally his wounds are

fixed up.

And finally he decides to travel through Mi'kmagy and

he goes to [Dubosemkek?], to Burnt Church, Eel Ground,

around that area Kouchibouguac, [Bedjibouquack?] Richeboucto



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River, Buctouche River, Cocagne, Shediac, Aboujagane and he

keeps going all the way down to Shubenacadie, Canso, and on

to Onamagi, and he wants to go and visit his uncle, who is

Pierre Algimaut. And he asked his uncle if there is a young

woman --

Q. So he is from Restigouche?

A. And he goes all the way to Onamagi.

Q. Which is Cape Breton.

A. To Cape Breton.

Q. Where his uncle lives.

A. Where his uncle lives and he asked his uncle if he

could have the hand of a woman in that community and the

uncle says yes, take her with you. So, on his way back, he

picks up people and he advises them, he stops at Aboujagane.

He also talks to --

Q. Where is that?

A. Aboujagane. There is a community there and he stops

there to visit and says I've been attacked, you know, and

now I have a new wife and I want you to help me reform my

community. And he is told that he can take some families

with him to join him. And he talks to a person by the name



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4134

of Alguimou as well in that area. Al --

Q. My geography must be bad because I don't know where

that particular place is that you're referring to. Perhaps

Your Honour does or the Crown does but I don't.

A. Aboujagane is near Shediac, New Brunswick. Between

Moncton and Shediac. It's a river. It divides and we call

it Aboujagane meaning where the river divides.

But also when you start to put a needle into a bead,

you say Nabosagegen. So it has a double meaning. People

where they made beads, also where the river forks out. And

so he continues his way. He stops at Lsipogtog and talks to

Michel Augustine and asked if he can provide some elements

to his family and they go back.

And he arrives back to Listugutj and he and his wife

marry and they have children and his two young sons go out

and camp somewhere in the wilderness and the young sons hear

somebody coming and one of the sons says "I don't hear

anything," and the other says, "I do. It's coming. It's

arriving." For two days he listens and finally on the last

day, a frog appears and says, you know, "The Kwedech are

coming. You had better go and warn your father because



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they're going to do the same thing."

So they go and warn his father and the father says, "I

don't know anything about the Kwedech. I am a powerful

chief. I know I should have knowledge about this thing and

I don't know it." So his mother and children and his wife

leave the area and he is left alone. Again, he is attacked

and the community gets wiped out and he does the same thing.

He goes back looking for more people, but not for a wife

this time. And he comes back again, repopulating the area.

And the fact that the area is called Listugutj today,

in our language, when you say "Listugutj," means don't heed

your father. Don't listen to your father. Don't obey your

father or disobey your father. So that area got to be named

Listugutj for disobeying your father. The story is in

relation to a young man not obeying his father.

Also, the story is used in a context of almost like the

main frame for our ancestry. It involves and includes

elements of our past, like our ancestors. Algimating is

also included in this story, Michel Argimou or Michel

Augustine. Pierre Algimou is also included in this story.

And so these people may have spanned two, 300 years in our



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past but they're all incorporated in this one story about

this person travelling back and forth through our mawiomi to

try to repopulate and also explaining the nature of the

naming of that area. So it has several functions in our

world view.

So it is important in the way that the story is

conveyed. It embodied the supernatural elements or our

society, also incorporating the real life contemporary

personages in our culture as well as those individuals that

were known to be very famous for their involvement in

certain events that took place in our history.

Q. Was Getoasaloet looking for a wife in all of the

communities that he was going into?

A. He was looking for a wife when he went to Omamagi or

Cape Breton, and he found one. He was involved in a

different -- There's other legends that are attached to it

and they expand and kind of develop in different way. There

is a story about him and his relationship with that woman

and the woman spirit and soul being taken out somewhere in

the ocean and seven wizards or witches taking her soul out

of her and keeping her in a teepee far out in the ocean.



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So that has a story in the context of relationships to

people who are gifted to do things in a supernatural way,

and it also conveys the protocols and the mannerisms that we

have to have in relation to those individuals. Because if

we don't treat them right, that they could make life

miserable for us. Or if we treat them right, that they

could make life good for us. They were not always

identified as evil or bad and, in our context, I firmly

believe there was no element or understanding of bad.

As in relation to the Creation Story, the story

unfolded and everything was explained as it related to

everything else. There was no dualism in the context of

good and evil counterplaying one another.

And I think the story that is related about Glooscap's

wife being taken by a witch, an evil witch, is more or less

a European interpretation of the story when it was recorded

by Silas Rand and the influence of the priest to indicate

those people who have spiritual giftedness are evil and are

associated with the devil.

Q. In the Getoasaloet's story, you indicate that he moved

from Restigouche to various communities along the way to



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Omamagi?

A. Yes.

Q. What significance should be attached to your reference

to those places?

A. Well, the names of those communities along the way,

Aboujagane and the connectiveness of those communities and

those rivers. Like Lsipotog was not the community of

Richiboucto or the community of Big Cove or Indian Island on

the Richiboucto River. Lsibougtou was that area where the

river of fire, Uktchibuchtao, as you will recall, is the

great fire and Lsibougtou, Richiboucto River, in our

context, L-S-I-B-O-U-G-T-O-U, refers to the path of the

fire.

When you travel along the river, it goes east to west.

Early in the morning as the sun is coming, it looks like the

river is on fire and in the evening, when the sun is

setting, when you are going back into the river, it looks

like the river is on fire as well. So they call that river

the path of the fire. Lsibougtou.

And it also bears significance to the Algimou family

that lived on the Richiboucto River. It also bears



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4139

significance to the Pierre Denys Algimou that moved to

Omamagi or Cape Breton in that there is a relatedness and

there's connection to the Pierre Algimou, who was in Omamagi

and Pierre Algimou is the Pierre Denys that moved there and

had the son named Thomas Denys and Tom. Toma Denys had a

great-grandson, his name was John Denys, who happened to be

the Grand Chief of the Grand Council is 1910.

Q. Anything further you would like to say about those two

legends?

A. It's the oral traditions are always speaking about our

relationship and our connectiveness to the physical and the

spiritual world and it embodies all aspects of our life, our

daily life.

Q. Shall we move to Item 4, the wampum belts?

A. Yes.

Q. Perhaps I could start by showing you Defence Exhibit

17, volume 2, and the item that is found under tab 14.

Would you identify what that is?

A. Under tab 14, there are several photographs.

Q. Do you recognize those?

A. I took those photographs of the wampum belt.



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Q. There's four pages in here?

A. Yes.

Q. Of photographs. I guess a total of eight photographs.

Or, sorry, seven photographs.

A. Seven photographs. The magic number seven. Yes, these

are seven photographs. The first one, I might show here is

an element of the --

Q. Could I ask if you have the belt with you?

A. I have the original wampum belt here, which is a

replica of the one that was entered into between the French

and the Mi'kmaq during Membertou's baptism in 1610 on June

24th. The occasion was recorded on a wampum belt some time

after that period and our people, the Mi'kmaq, kept a wampum

belt that had a white background with purple beads that

represented the symbols on the wampum.

And a wampum belt was given to the French that had

purple background and white beads as the symbols, almost

reverse of what the Mi'kmaq had and kept among our people.

Q. Having identified these as photographs you've taken,

are you able to say that they're accurate representations of

the belt and the tape measure or the circumstances in which



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4141

they were taken?

A. Yes, I put the tape measure for the sake of offering

the size of it or dimensions of the wampum belt.

Q. Perhaps then for the purpose of your testimony now, you

might take the actual belt and use that.

A. Yes. These photographs are representations of the

original.

Q. How did the particular item that you're holding in your

hand come into existence?

A. How did this one come into existence?

Q. Yes. You said it was a replica or reproduction.

A. I made it. It took me about eight months.

Q. Show it to His Honour.

A. It's made out of glass beads, synthetic sinew and

dental floss and it's a replica of the original that is kept

in the museum in Rome.

Q. It's in the Vatican?

A. In the Vatican, yes.

Q. Have you attempted to see the original?

A. I visited the Vatican two years ago and I was told by

the representatives there that the museum where the wampum



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4142

belt was stored had been closed. It was closed before the

Second World War and all of the collection that was in the

museum was placed inside the Vatican somewhere underneath in

what they called the catacombs underneath the Vatican in --

and so after the war, they did not reopen the museum. And

so these objects were still somewhere in the catacombs and

they could not locate them.

Q. So you sought to see the original and you were

unsuccessful.

A. I was unsuccessful, yes.

Q. What made you think that it was there to start with?

A. There was an article that was published by David

Bushnell.

Q. Is that the article that's found at Volume 15 under Tab

293?

A. Yes, it is. And this is an article written by David I.

Bushnell, Jr., 40 American Anthropologist, Volume 8, 1908,

on pages 243 to 255 and it's entitled North American

Ethnographical Material in Italian Collection. And in his

article on -- there's is -- I don't think a page number

attributed to it, but after -- two pages after 248 there is



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4143

a, oh, no, sorry, I missed a page.

Q. Are you looking at the page after 249?

A. Yes.

Q. 249 is chopped off on the top right corner, but it

looks like it's page 249 and then there's a picture of two

or, sorry, well, there's a picture of two items called

"wampum stole in the Museum of the Propaganda Fede Rome".

A. Yes.

Q. Fede?

A. Yes. And this is the photograph that Bushnell took of

the wampum belt that he physically saw when he visited the

Vatican in Rome and at the Collegio de Propaganda Fede.

Q. Is that a photograph, the -- what appears in the

"American Anthropologist" in those photographs?

A. Yes.

Q. How do they compare with this item in Tab 14 of the

defence documents?

A. They're are similar.

Q. It shows your belt folded?

A. Yes.

Q. In a similar way?



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A. In a similar way. I tried to replicate as much as

possible from the physical description as well as from the

photograph.

Q. Okay. Where's the physical description of it?

A. I believe it's on the following page, on page 250 on

the second paragraph or third paragraph, well, second and

third paragraph. It starts to talk about "The gem of the

North American collection is a piece of wampum which is

probably the finest existing example of that form of art."

And then it describes it's width and length and the number

of beads it contains and all. And it says here, "It was

probably made for some missionary in St. Lawrence Valley or

in the Iroquoian country." But he didn't have any specific

information. And where the document -- where the wampum

belt is stored, there was no information about the

provenance of the wampum belt.

Q. The provenance of it?

A. Yes.

Q. And so he identifies it as being Huron?

A. He assumes that it was something that came from the

Iroquoian-Huron.



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Q. But you don't think it is.

A. No, I know it's not.

Q. Okay. Why do you know it's not?

A. From our elders' knowledge, oral tradition.

Q. And where did that come to you from?

A. From my grandmother, from my great grandfather or great

great great, whatever.

Q. Okay. And you were going to read the belt to us.

Where did you get the information that would allow you to

read the belt?

A. My grandmother shared a story about the significance

and the meaning of the belt. As well as members of the

Mi'kmaq Grand Council have information about the meaning of

the belt. And this information has been systematically told

in our Grand Council meetings.

Q. Okay.

A. Systematically -- successively, I meant to say.

MR. WILDSMITH Your Honour, we certainly could tell the tale

of the wampum belt now. I'm just looking at the clock. I'm

not sure what you might like to do. It will certainly take

us past 4:30.



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THE COURT How long do you think it's likely to take?

MR. WILDSMITH Ten minutes.

THE COURT I don't see any problem with continuing on.

MR. WILDSMITH Okay.

A. Okay. In the middle of the wampum belt there are two

figures. One individual holding something in his hand on a

string, it looks like, and it has a heart and a head and two

legs, a triangular body. The inside of it is kind of white.

They're holding a cross and the other person is dressed in

black with a hat and holding onto something in its hand.

And our elders tell us that this is Membertou accepting the

cross from the missionary, Jesuit missionary who offered to

baptize him.

Q. That's the figure that's to the left of the cross that

you said they're holding onto as you face the belt --

A. Yes.

Q. -- figures are in the upright position?

A. The figure in the black is the black robe or the Jesuit

missionary who baptised Membertou.

Q. And the cross, is that located in the centre of the

belt?



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A. The cross is located in the centre of the belt, each

one is holding onto the cross.

Q. Okay. So the figures are on either side of the cross.

A. We are told that the missionary was holding onto a

Bible and Membertou was holding onto a sacred bundle,

"sacred" bundle, not "secret" bundle.

Q. Yes, I notice the transcripts from New Brunswick kept

calling your bundle a "secret" bundle rather than a "sacred"

bundle. I hope they get it right in these transcripts.

A. So in this agreement, Membertou and the missionary

priest offered each other an exchange, protection to one

another. The missionary priest showing the keys to heaven,

that's what they are supposed to represent.

Q. It looks sort of like "Fs" on the belt.

A. Yes. Accordingly, these were supposed to represent the

Vatican, keys to the Vatican in Rome. The Membertou, the

Grand Chief, offered the symbol of peace with the cross,

arrows.

And there are seven jagged lines here. The big one

represents the Grand Chief and then there are six smaller

ones that represent the captains of the seven -- the other



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Grand Councils, I mean, the other mawiomis.

And the figure of an Indian holding onto a bow which

symbolizes in the way he's holding onto it that he doesn't

offer any sense of war or conflict towards the French. This

is a peaceful symbol and that all the seven mawiomis would

gather together to protect the French in that same context

that the French came.

And these other figures are -- more or less present the

hieroglyphs that the -- that was asked of me in my

qualification. These are the symbols that are mentioned.

The dot over here represents Grandfather Sun and its

ray is shining on an individual giving him his shadow.

There are men and women that represent a group of

people which represent the Mi'kmaq people. And then for the

French, there is a person holding onto a cross where

Grandfather Sun is giving him his shadow.

And then another group of individuals signifying the

men and the women in that society, so it is the French

people that had the priest identified individually and the

connections and the men and the women represent the families

and together they form another group of individuals and they



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4149

come together as a new group of people under this

representation of a building with a cross. It is a church,

the Catholic church.

And we are told that the Mi'kmaq, upon accepting the

religion, baptism, that they would be able to come in and

out of the church as they pleased and that in the church the

windows would be wide open. There would be no stained glass

windows to stop the Indians from seeing their world alive

and well outside, that their spiritual-related connection to

that world is still ever present.

And in the similar context, Membertou explains that

they will bury the hatchet, that they will allow, this is

the symbol here on this end is this is a tomahawk and the

symbols to bury the tomahawk has been very strong among our

societies. And to bury the tomahawk, they told the French,

"We will bury ours first and you put yours on top, so if you

take hold of your weapons, then we will have to take hold of

ours in our defence and that we would not be the attackers

ever in this relationship."

Q. Is the point of the tomahawk any significance to the

direction of it?



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A. The direction towards Mother Earth is saying that we're

burying our weapons in the heart of our mother and that we

will not take them up. So also there is a symbol of a pipe,

and I was relate -- explaining the pipe ceremony here and

how we bring out the pipe to solemnize our words. And in

this way, this agreement was made and solemnized with a pipe

ceremony. And that is the wampum belt.

Q. So in an overall sense, what is represented by the

relationship that's embodied in that belt?

A. It's a relationship of protection and respect for one

another between the French and the Mi'kmaq Nation. And

Membertou accepted baptism as a condition of that agreement

saying that I will accept the conditions of the church. I

will accept the baptism in respect of your culture and your

traditions and you will respect mine in the way that we have

our sacred bundles and that we survive and exist in this

world.

Q. Are you aware of any European documentation in and

about 1610 that records this from a French perspective or

that represents a treaty or agreement with the French?

A. Marc Lescarbot, who was a lawyer that travelled with



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Champlain, wrote a letter about this baptism that took place

for Membertou who happened to be a very old, old Mi'kmaq

chief and was respected by everybody around him and that he

was baptised on the Feast of St. Jean Baptiste.

Father Biard also wrote about him and a lot of other

missionaries wrote about Membertou's baptism as well as

other historians like Beamish Murdoch in his three volumes

of The History of Nova Scotia makes reference to Membertou's

baptism as well as Bernard Hoffman, in his thesis. He talks

about Membertou's baptism and his relationship. And there

are lots of other publications explaining that as well as, I

do believe, [Sagigh?] Henderson also published a book on the

Mi'kmaq [Concordat?] also explaining the wampum belt then

and the Membertou's baptism.

Q. But you were saying there might have been or there was

a reverse wampum belt to that that had purple background

with white lettering that was presented to the French to the

priest?

A. Yes.

Q. Is that recorded anywhere in European documentation?

A. Well, Bushnell writes about the -- that wampum belt and



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it's in the photograph. It's the purple background with the

white figures on it. And that's the one that is in the

Vatican in Rome. And the other reserve is -- has been kept

among our people, and for many years, whenever a Mi'kmaq

chief or part of his family died, pieces of the wampum belt

were buried with him and so there will be elements of the

wampum belt that have been buried all over Mi'kmagy by our

people and has disappeared over the years, yes.

MR. WILDSMITH Okay. I think that, Your Honour, bring us to

the close for the afternoon.

THE COURT All right. When would you suggest that we're

likely to get back to Chief Augustine tomorrow?

MR. WILDSMITH I'm hopeful it would be around the morning

break.

THE COURT Okay. So is it reasonable to ask come back for 11

or are you available --

MR. WILDSMITH I would think so, although there's no reason

why he shouldn't come back for whenever he feels like, at an

earlier point.

THE COURT All right. That's fine. Then we'll -- the court

will begin tomorrow morning at 9:30, but we'll be hearing,



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first of all, from Dr. Wicken, and so you'll have to wait

for the conclusion of his evidence before you'll start

again. Okay? And I should have said this earlier, but, in

any case, I just have to tell you that during the course of

your testimony, you're not to discuss your evidence with

anyone.

A. Yes, Your Honour.

THE COURT All right. That's all then.

WITNESS WITHDRAWS

COURT ADJOURNED (16:40 hr)



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4154

REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE

I, Margaret E. Graham, Court Reporter, hereby

certify that I have transcribed the foregoing and that it is

a true and accurate transcript of the evidence given in this

matter, taken by way of electronic tape recording.

___________________________

Margaret E. Graham

DATED this 2 day of December, 1999, at Dartmouth, Nova

Scotia.



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