Mi'kmaw Teaching and Learning Resources

The Mi'kmaq and Government Relations series forms part of the Commissioner of Public Records collection and consists of records relating to the administration of Mi'kmaw affairs in Nova Scotia. Includes Joseph Howe's letter book as Commissioner for Indian Affairs, 1841-1843.

The records of the Commissioners of Indian Affairs consist primarily of correspondence and documentation accumulated by the various Commissioners appointed by the government, chiefly to provide relief and assistance to the Mi'kmaq; predominant dates are 1780 to 1846.

The surviving records identified so far are dispersed among the Mi'kmaq and Government Relations series within the Commissioner of Public Records collection, the George Henry Monk papers and material from Peleg Wiswall.

The Assembly petitions consists of petitions tabled in the House of Assembly from 1816 to 1926 from people seeking legislative action or a grant of money. The Mi'kmaq frequently petitioned for action on such issues as relief, agriculture and fishing, education and roads.

The Petitions series consists of petitions addressed to the governor or lieutenant governor from 1780 to 1907. Included are various petitions from the Mi'kmaq requesting action on such issues as relief and encroachment on their lands.

The land grant registration books accumulated from 1719 to 1851 document the granting and licencing of Crown lands to early settlers in Nova Scotia. Included among these records are various descriptions of land licenced to individual Mi'kmaq persons and families, warrants authorizing such occupation, and original petitions by Mi'kmaq illustrating the conflict of inherent Mi'kmaq aboriginal title with the British system of freehold tenure.

In 1927-1928, Grand Chief Gabriel Sylliboy was arrested and convicted under the Lands and Forests Act for hunting muskrat and possessing pelts out of season. Sylliboy believed he was hunting with full rights under Mi'kmaq Treaties. In 1985, the Supreme Court of Canada overturned the Sylliboy decision. In 2017, Grand Chief Gabriel Sylliboy received a free pardon and apology. Records of the 1928 trial and conviction are available in District Number Six (Inverness County) case files which forms part of Nova Scotia County Courts fonds and consists of case files for causes heard in Port Hood, N.S.

In 1887-88, George Creed, the postmaster in South Rawdon, Hants County — but also a keen amateur ethnologist — spent time in Queens County, where he carefully made some 350 tracings from the Mi'kmaq petroglyphs cut into the rocks at Fairy Lake, Kejimkujik. These petroglyphs record and illustrate the period in history, just after European contact, when the Mi'kmaq were turning from traditional beliefs and old ways to a new faith and new ways.

Isacc Deschamps (ca.1722-1801) was a merchant, office holder, judge and politician in colonial Nova Scotia; his personal papers contain significant evidence of interactions with the Mi'kmaq community at Windsor, where he served as truckmaster.

Digby County lawyer, legislator and judge, Peleg Wiswall (1763-1836), worked actively with the Abbé Jean-Mandé Sigogne during the 1820 and 30s, to establish an experimental Mi'kmaq settlement at Bear River; letters between Wiswall and Sigogne, correspondence with government officials in Halifax and financial accounts for the project, all provide significant information on development of the community.