Welcome to Romancing Reads.
In this episode, Erica Hargreave reads her article, Discovering Indigenous Newfoundland and Labrador While Following in the Footsteps of the Beothuk People.
Discovering the alive and vibrant culture of Indigenous Newfoundland and Labrador while following in the footsteps of the Beothuk people in central Newfoundland.
Exploring central Newfoundland through its Indigenous culture.
Growing up with a love and respect of nature and culture, whenever visiting a new place, our family would learn about the culture of that place and its people.
This included at home in Ontario and British Columbia, where my mum would have us out in parks most weekends, learning about nature and the Indigenous peoples whose land we walked on and called home.
As fortunate as I have been to learn from and work our first Peoples in British Columbia and other parts of Canada,
I realized in visiting Newfoundland and Labrador for the first time that I knew nothing about the Indigenous people of Newfoundland and Labrador, so was excited to sign up for an Indigenous Newfoundland and Labrador guided trip.
In sharing my excitement about this with a friend who writes about Indigenous tourism, I was told that this may be a depressing trip as the first peoples of Newfoundland and Labrador were driven to extinction.
How wrong that writer was.
The Indigenous Newfoundland and Labrador guided trip was a wonderful mixture of warmth, love, somber history, and vibrant culture that is alive and well, introduced to us by Indigenous Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who are alive and well and have become valued friends.
Misconceptions on Indigenous Newfoundland and Labrador While my writer friend may have been wrong about the first people of Newfoundland and Labrador being extinct, that writer is not alone in believing that fallacy.
As I chatted with our Indigenous Newfoundlander and Labradorian guides, Barbara Young, Wayne Broomfield and Daphne Marsh, on the bus ride to Hare Bay in central Newfoundland where our trip would begin, I learned that many people believe that there are no first Peoples in Newfoundland and Labrador.
This misconception dates back to the purposeful omission of Indigenous Newfoundlanders and Labradorians by Premier Joey Smallwood in negotiating the 1949 terms of the union in Newfoundland and Labrador joining Canada, declaring that there are no Indians.
The intent behind this omission being to make the deal more appealing in that Canada would not need to pay into programs and services or land claims for Indigenous people in Newfoundland and Labrador, an omission that has been further perpetuated in the classroom and in popular culture.
Alive and vibrant Indigenous Newfoundland and Labrador.
Are there Indigenous people in Newfoundland and Labrador?
Yes, very much so.
In fact, today there are 3 distinct Indigenous groups still living in Newfoundland and Labrador.
The Inuit, descendants of the Thule Inuit, who have made Labrador their home for centuries.
Innu, descendants of Algonquin-speaking hunter-gatherers for whom Labrador is home, and the Mi'kmaq, descendants of Algonquin-speaking hunter-gatherers who have lived and travelled throughout Newfoundland for generations, along with the Beothuk, who were driven to cultural extinction in
It is the Beothuk whom my writer friend spoke of in mistaking Newfoundland and Labrador's Indigenous people to be extinct.
And it is the Beothuk whose footsteps we would be following in as we discovered Indigenous Newfoundland and Labrador, or at least a glimpse of it in central Newfoundland.
Please join me in our discovery of Ukda Hamguk, the island of Newfoundland in Mi'kmaq.
Following in the footsteps of the Beothuk people in central Newfoundland
Uncovering Indigenous Newfoundland and Labrador History at the Beaches Our journey began at Hare Bay, where we dined on a scrumptious homemade lunch at Hare Bay Adventures Gift Shop and Cafe as archaeologist and historian Dwayne Collins shared the Indigenous history of the area with us from the beaches, one of Newfoundland and Labrador's most significant archaeological sites.
The significance of the beaches is as a multi-component habitation site, showing evidence of human settlement over a period of nine thousand years.
Archaeological evidence of habitation of the beaches began with the maritime
Archaic for around two thousand years from before three thousand BC to the Dorset culture of pre-Inuit from around five hundred BCE to fifteen hundred CE and ended with the Beothuk from around fifteen hundred CE to likely sometime in the seventeen hundred CE.
While the Beothuk culture is believed to have become extinct in 18 29, Beothuk communities abandoned their coastal settlements in places like the beaches before then due to violent encounters with Europeans moving inland where they could more easily avoid them.
This displacement from the Beothuk coastal settlements is suspected to have contributed to their population decline along with the
violence and disease that the Europeans brought due to loss of access to important food sources in competition with European trappers for food sources inland.
Back in Hare Bay Adventures gift shopping cafe, Wayne Broomfield, our Inuit guide's eyes light up in recognition and excitement at one of the artifacts that Dwayne Collins has from the beaches in a display cabinet with special permission for educational purposes.
As Duane demonstrates for us, this stone tool is designed for scraping the fat from a seal skin.
A short boat trip later, having crossed the Dover Fault into Bonifista Bay, we are clambering out of the boat and onto a spit of land at the beaches.
It's not long after Duane leads us off the beach and onto a meadow of
coarse and hardy coastal vegetation pointing out the depressed areas which denote where Beothuk Mameteak pit houses once stood, that my eyes alight at seeing the evidence of ancient middens, the garbage piles of the people that once lived there."
Duane chuckles, commenting on how there is nothing that gets an archaeologist more excited than an ancient garbage pile or privy.
As we walk along the shore, Duane points out other indicators of the Indigenous people who once lived there, from stone artefacts to firecracked rocks littering the shore, to the dark charcoal layer of the soil, indicating a period of habitation, which I'm assuming was from the most recent Indigenous peoples to have lived there, the Beothuk.
Aside from the beaches being situated in a sheltered harbour with easy access to harvest from the sea, while still having land access for hunting, an important draw to this site for seasonal settlement by these hunting and gathering people would be its close proximity to a rhylite supply for making tools and weapons for hunting.
The Rhylite Quarry, known as Bloody Bay Cove Quarry, is thought to have got its name from the violent confrontations between Europeans and Beothuk in the 18th century.
Duane tells us that it is believed that some of the Europeans' brutality towards the Beothuk was in response to Beothuk quote-unquote stealing the European fishermen's supplies.
Aside from the Europeans' response to this being brutally violent, this quote-unquote stealing was in all likelihood a misunderstanding, as it was often supplies that were left on Ukda-Humkuk shores when the European boats departed for the winter, the Beothuk then making the logical assumption that these items left behind were unwanted items abandoned on the shores.
It was also believed that ownership was not a belief held in Beothuk culture, rather their beliefs revolved around a community of sharing.
Today, a new threat presents itself in preserving and learning about the people that called the beaches home for thousands of years, and that is climate change, causing rising sea levels and the erosion of the banks of this valuable archaeology site.
Duane already points out artifacts in the shallows and trees being uprooted, making it increasingly difficult to map out what period of time different tools came from.
For a time, archaeological projects and the Burnside Heritage Foundation helped preserve the beaches with a breakwater and interpretation through a recreated mammateague.
But with winter storms breaking apart such structures, money is needed to help preserve this important historic site before it is washed away.
meeting the Beothuk at the Beothuk Interpretation Centre Provincial Heritage Site.
The next morning had us at another abandoned Beothuk village site at Boyd's Cove, where today stands the Beothuk Interpretation Centre Provincial Heritage Site.
Here we walked a peaceful and serene trail to the Beothuk village site active between 1650 to 17 20CE.
It is thought the Beothuk would have abandoned this village site in 1720 to avoid European contact as at that time Twillingate was being built up as a European settlement.
There among the birch, alongside the melodic trickle of the stream, stood a statue artistically crafted in memory of Shauna Didit.
The last known Beothuk.
Shanandidit is thought by some to be the last remaining Beothuk.
The reality is that in all likelihood, ancestors of the Beothuk still walk on Turtle Island.
I, in fact, met a young woman of Beothuk ancestry in my travels abroad in the autumn.
With the few remaining Beothuk in the early 1800, however, their quest became about survival by going into hiding and possibly joining other Indigenous communities like the Innu and Mi'kmaq, as some accounts suggest.
Beothuk culture did become extinct, though, with Shanadidit's death in 18 29.
Although there have been some glimmers of hope and remembrance over the years, like the recording of Santou's song in 19 10, Santou Tony was a woman who self-identified as Beothuk, with a Beothuk father and a Micmac mother.
With American anthropologist Frank Speck, Santou recorded the last known account of the Beothuk language, singing for him a Beothuk nursery song that she remembers her father singing to her.
Shana Didut's story.
As for Shana Didut, her story is one of survival in the face of tragedy and turmoil.
She was born in 18 oh one, spending her lifetime fighting for survival with Beothuk populations dwindling, their traditional way of life becoming increasingly difficult in the face of encroachment from European settlements and other Indigenous peoples, as well as infectious diseases from Europe.
which they had little or no immunity against.
The Beothuk were slowly being cut off from the sea and their food sources.
Encounters with Europeans were often filled with violence and brutality.
She herself was shot as a child by a European trapper while washing venison in a river.
In 18 19, she witnessed her aunt Demazduet's capture by armed Europeans led by John Payton, Jr., intent on recovering their possessions and taking a Beothuk to train to be a translator between their people.
Trying to explain she was a nursing mother with a newborn baby, Demazduet's husband and the leader of their people, Nana Sabat and his brother were killed while attempting to negotiate Demazduet's release.
Her infant son left behind died 2 days after Demazduet was taken.
Demazduet never made it back to her people alive.
In 18 20, after dying of tuberculosis on her return voyage home, her body was left in a coffin
along the lakeshore of Beothuk Lake for her people to find and lay to rest next to her husband and child.
In April, 18 23, Starving, Shanadidat, her mother Dobishet and sister made their way to the coast at Badger Bay in search of mussels.
There they encountered European fur trappers.
With her sister and mother sick with tuberculosis, they were too weak to fight and run, and went with the trappers to Exploits Islands, where soon after, Chana Didat's mother and sister died of tuberculosis.
At this time, Chana Didat estimated that no more than 15 people were left in her tribe,
Shanadidat spent the next 5 years working as a servant in the household of magistrate and merchant John Paydon, Jr.
on Exploits Island.
In 18 28, the newly formed Beothuk Institution, now the Beothuk Institute,
moved Shanadidat to St.
John's where she lived for a year with the philanthropist and scientist William Ebbs Cormack, helping him to better understand Beothuk culture and history.
Cormack, the president of the Beothuk Institution, established the institution to consolidate community support for projects aimed at opening communications with Newfoundland's Beothuk and saving them from extinction.
Alas, this was a little too late.
Much of our knowledge of Beothuk culture and history, however, comes from Seanan D. Dutt in this year, which ended up being the last year of her life.
She translated English words into her own language, drew pictures of Beothuk tools, food, mythological figures, homes and other artifacts, and illustrated various encounters between her people and the European settlers.
At age 29, on June 6 of 18 29, Shana Didet died in St.
John's of tuberculosis, an infectious disease brought to Newfoundland by the Europeans that had taken so many of her people before her.
Back in that peaceful birch and conifer grove in Boyd's Cove, I stared in the eyes of the statue created in remembrance of Shana Didet by artist Jerry Squires, with love and sorrow, apologizing to her for the tragedies she and her people faced in her all too short life, and thanking her for all she shared of Beothuk culture and history so that her people are remembered and not forgotten.
In walking back, I lagged behind our group to take a moment of silence in that peaceful woods and crossing the stream to share a prayer with the spirits of the Beothuk, later joining Daphne March for a smudging in the spirit garden as I left a message of my own and tied it with a ribbon to a tree.
Final days of captured Beothuk women on Exploits Islands.
That afternoon, as we landed on Exploits Islands and took a walk with Paul Langdon of Adventures Newfoundland to the grave of John Payne Jr.,
I was glad to see that at least Shanadidat Dubuchet and Shanadidat's sister were able to return to their home of the sea at the end of their lives and to die, in the case of Dubuchet and Shanadidat's sister, in a peaceful place filled with beauty.
Miawi Pukek first Nations, keeping the memory and teachings of the Beothuk alive.
While the Beothuk are culturally extinct, a visit the next day to the Maui Pukek first Nations at the mouth of Maui Pukek
river on the bay d'espoir to join the passengers of an adventure canada cruise for a mini powwow was a beautiful reminder that not only is indigenous culture alive and well on
Newfoundland and Labrador, but that they have creative forward-thinking communities that are building towards sustainable futures and fighting to keep their culture alive, recognized, and to undo historic misconceptions.
In the case of the Maui Pukak first Nations, as Mi'kmaq people, they have been working to demonstrate that they existed in Newfoundland and Labrador before European contact by building a 26 foot birch bark canoe named Spirit Wind that they crewed and crossed the Cabot Strait from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia in July of 19 99.
They have fought the Canadian government to be recognized as a First Nations in Canada and get access to money for their reserve, and the provincial government to self-govern that money without the province taking over sixty thousand dollars in administrative fees from it.
After being met with a year of red tape from the provincial government in 19 83, they went to St.
John's to demonstrate and get an audience with MPs.
This led to a group of 9 men risking their lives in a hunger strike in a desperate plea to the government to release the funds owed to them.
Those monies that they were successful in obtaining have been used to turn the Maui Pukek first Nations Reserve into a thriving community with homes with modern-day expectations, education for the community and jobs to help them be sustainable and move forward, industry building nearly a hundred percent employment on the reserve,
Miaui Puket cultural education in their schools and through their community centre and a community garden with the belief that we will secure our future by investing in our past.
In honour of those warriors, in 20 24, a documentary entitled The Forgotten Warriors was released on CBC.
While others may have forgotten those warriors and how Conn River was turned into a thriving, sustainable community, the Miawe Pukak first Nation have not.
They beam with pride at their warriors, hang their posters and share their stories through the community centre, and introduce them with well-earned respect and a great deal of warmth.
We were fortunate to meet one of these warriors and the apprentice of one of the warriors who continued to not only work creatively to preserve their Meowy Phuket culture, but that of the Beothuk too.
The warrior we met was Sagamwa Mesel Joe, along with Derek Stride, apprentice to warrior and Mi'kmaq master builder Billy Joe.
Aside from all the amazing work that Sagamwa Meseljo has done throughout his life to create a thriving, prosperous, and sustainable community for the Meawe Pukak first Nations at Conn River,
Micelle Joe has also worked with Sheila O'Neill of the Halepu Mi'kmaq first Nations to reclaim the story of Sylvester Joe, the Mi'kmaq guide engaged by William Ebbs Cormack to take him across Newfoundland in the early eighteen hundreds in search of the last remaining Beothuk people.
Micelle Joe and Sheila O'Neill have created 2 books to date, a historically based fictional account of Sylvester Joe's journey with Cormac, based off of Cormac's diaries entitled My Indian, and a sequel to that story entitled Zuluwe, based on the idea of Sylvester Joe's own quest to find the last remaining Beothuk people on his own after parting ways with Cormac.
Both are interesting stories that help one to better envision Indigenous Newfoundland in the 1800.
Meanwhile, Billy Joe, the boat builder behind Spirit Wind, has now built, with Derek Stride, a replica of a Beothuk canoe in the traditional way with the goal of keeping these skills alive in their community and passed down through the generations.
While the Forgotten Warriors of 1983 may now be among the elders of the Myawe Pukak first Nations, from their footsteps emerge young Myawe Pukak Warriors intent on sharing their culture with pride to lead the way for future generations.
Among them, we were fortunate to spend time with and learn from Cassie Lambert, both a warrior in the Canadian Armed Forces and a jingle dancer, and to meet Director Noel Joe, who is determined to share more of his people's stories, stories that I will look forward to from them and from other members of the Meawee Pukeke first Nation who join them.
I feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity to walk in the footsteps of the Beothuk, to be honoured in sharing in Indigenous Newfoundlander and Labradorian stories, to have the friendship and guidance of our Indigenous Mi'kmaq and Inuit guides, and to have spoken with Miaui Pukek first Nations warriors and learn from them.
While what I have learned and experienced may seem like a lot in writing and reading here, I realize it is just the tip of the iceberg.
I have so much more to learn about and experience of Indigenous Newfoundland and Labrador.
I have strived in writing this to be as accurate, respectful, and factual as possible.
But with history, especially oral history, accounts can differ depending on who you speak to and who has passed the stories down to them.
In the attached article, you will find some of the sources I used along with our guides, but if you feel I have shared something inaccurately here, please let me know.
Thank you.