The Colonization of Mi'kmaw Memory and History, 1794-1928: The King v. Gabriel Sylliboy by William C. Wicken (review)

History rests in the small events that allow meaningful issues to be revealed. This is what William Wicken has done in his latest effort to shed light onto the colonial history of the Canadian Maritimes and the First Nations people's perceptions of the changes brought about by colonialism. The Colonization of Mi'kmaw Memory and History picks up from where Wicken had left us in his previous book, Mi'kmaw Treaties on Trial (University of Toronto Press, 2002), which analyzes the changes in the eighteenth-century Mi'kmaw perceptions of the treaties signed with the British between 1725 and 1761. Here the focus is on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The book analyzes how different interpretations of the 1752 treaty affected the decision-making and the actions of different actors in different eras and thus shaped the unfolding of Nova Scotia colonial history. The central argument of the book is that the Mi'kmaw people's understanding of the treaty, which mirrored their understanding of both the historical events and their own place in a fast-changing socio-political context, changed from that of a guarantee of mutual peacekeeping with the British in the 1790s to proof of Mi'kmaw compliance with the peace agreements in the 1820s, to evidence of the Crown's shortcomings in keeping its end of the deal in the 1840s, to a source of unique rights for the Aboriginal population in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Wicken utilizes the arguments brought forward in the 1928 appeal trial regarding the decision in the 1926 King v Gabriel Sylliboy case - where Grand Chief of the Mi'kmaq Gabriel Sylliboy was found guilty of trapping muskrats during closed season, camping on private land, and cutting wood without a permit - to follow changes back through four generations of Mi'kmaq. More broadly, this book sheds light on the developments of Mi'kmaw memory, consciousness, and experiences between 1794 - when the first public reference to the treaty appears in a letter to the Nova Scotia authorities by a British public official on behalf of a Mi'kmaw population concerned with the increasing presence of white settlers - and 1928, the year of Sylliboy's appeal trial. It also discusses the gradual departure in opposite directions of the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people's interpretations of the role of the treaties. In this context, this book sheds light on the roots of the contemporary socio-political relations between the province's Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations.

The book is divided into three sections - the genesis and rationale of the 1926 court case, the development of the understanding of the treaty by previous generations of the defendant's and other Mi'kmaw witnesses' families, and the development of the defendant's and Mi'kmaw witnesses' understandings of the treaty - that build upon one another effectively and provide a solid framework for the central argument. The scope of Wicken's knowledge of Nova Scotia history and the thoroughness of his source analysis are outstanding. The combination of secondary sources as well as demographic and administrative data offer ample material to support his arguments. In fact, the weakest part of the book lies in the long demographic analyses of Mi'kmaw life given in the third and concluding section of the book. Although interesting and relevant, they somewhat hamper the narrative flow and often steer away from the main argument in the service of yet another statistical piece of evidence.

One merit of the book is its highlighting of the differences in the household economies and lifestyles of the Mi'kmaq from the more isolated and French-influenced Cape Breton Island, where Gabriel Sylliboy was from, and those from mainland Nova Scotia. This allows the reader to grasp the important intra-tribal distinctions in the understanding of the treaties and, as a consequence...