The Stone Canoe: Two Lost Mi’kmaq Texts (review)

There is a tendency in literary criticism to read Indigenous texts as hybrid works, detached from their cultural context. Craig Womack’s seminal 1999 work, Red on Red: Native American Literary Separatism, broke new ground in insisting that Native texts should be evaluated within their cultural context and according to Indigenous aesthetics. In particular, Womack argued for reclaiming oral traditions from the ‘pablum . . . of complicated narrative turned into kiddie stories’ by Eurocentric ethnographers. As if to exemplify Womack’s arguments, The Stone Canoe represents a profound reclaiming of Mi’kmaq oral tradition, epistemology, and aesthetics.

The Stone Canoe was inspired by the discovery of two manuscripts, written in Mi’kmaq, dating from 1847 and 1884. These manuscripts represent the only remaining Mi’kmaq versions of the narratives painstakingly told to Silas T. Rand over the years by Mi’kmaq storytellers attempting to ensure that their oral literature would be preserved in the face of the profound changes of colonization forced on Mi’kmaq people during this interval. With these manuscripts, contemporary language speakers can begin reinterpreting at least some of the stories told to Rand in Mi’kmaq but written out by him only in English, and interpreted simplistically, through Eurocentric aesthetics and norms, as ‘legends’ suitable primarily for children.

We learn at the start of the book how Rand carelessly neglected or obscured the identities of the storytellers, appropriating their works as part of ‘his’ masterpiece. As a result, the authors spent considerable efforts in attempting to identify the names of the storytellers responsible for the two manuscripts (Susan Barss for the 1847 narrative, and an individual known only as ‘old man Stephens’ for the 1884 narrative). The authors evoked the manner in which these stories were told, as traditional nineteenth-century Mi’kmaq people invited Rand into their homes and lives, and told him stories while they worked at basket-making and the other crafts that they relied upon for their livelihood. We picture their patience, as master storytellers, having painstakingly to repeat the narratives word by word, over and over, with constant interruptions to explain certain meanings and to ensure that Rand encapsulated the stories in Mi’kmaq properly and accurately. While the authors are gentle in their evaluations of Rand, they also clearly articulate the extent to which he devalued the knowledge of these narrators and failed to respect the time and patience they took with him, only to have him subsequently translate the work into English using a European idiom, and then destroy the Mi’kmaq versions – as if there was no inherent value in preserving these narratives in Mi’kmaq for the posterity of Mi’kmaq people.

After presenting Rand’s adulterated versions of these stories, the authors then re-translate the two narratives, in a manner informed by Mi’kmaq cultural knowledge and aesthetics. In this telling, the authors quite wonderfully evoke the setting in which these stories took place, the values they encapsulate, and the context in which they were meant to be received. However, the re-translations into a Mi’kmaq idiom, without explication, are in some respects somewhat baffling to those of us who have not been exposed to the knowledge and aesthetic values associated with the Mi’kmaq language.

The last part of the book therefore features an interpretation of some of the layers of meanings that were encapsulated in the traditional narratives. Utilizing the ancient motifs of Mi’kmaq art as an interpretive device, and providing meanings grounded in the Mi’kmaq language, the authors reinvest the stories with the power of some of the philosophical grounding that profoundly infuses traditional Mi’kmaq life. The result is a wonderful exploration of Mi’kmaq epistemology.

Craig Womack has suggested that Indigenous oral traditions can teach us ‘what it means to be part of a clan, a town, a nation.’ In reclaiming the Mi’kmaq oral tradition as encapsulated in two lost Mi’kmaq narratives, The Stone Canoe truly has something profound...