Mi'kmaq

and you were always told that you were of Passamaquoddy.

And Micmac.

And Micmac descent.

And then we had our DNA done and...

Zip.

No, you will start with a land recognition because we are virtuous.

First, I acknowledge that we are in Mi'kma'ki, the traditional and unceded ancestral territory of the Mi'kmaq people.

I also recognize that African Nova Scotians are a distinct people whose histories, legacies, and contributions have enriched that part of Mi'kma'ki known as Nova Scotia for over 400 years.

African Nova Scotians are a distinct people? I

recognize that African Nova Scotians are a distinct people whose histories, legacies, and contributions have enriched that part of Mi'kma'ki known as Nova Scotia for over 400 years.

There's literally nothing more racist than what that RCMP officer just said.

African Nova Scotians, because you're not Nova Scotians.

Max kneels, brushing mud away from the largest spiral.

"This is Micmac," she says, half to herself, but there's English too.

Her finger traces the half-legible inscription burned into the frame.

"Haverly Mining and Works.

Its digital readout blinks once before dying, displaying only the same single word as Wesley's recording: drift.

Art shifts papers, his silence razor-edged.

Together we examine the remaining binders, each inscribed with the mining company's blocky type and handwritten Micmac marginalia.

The pages are damaged, water limp and salt-stained, but readable in parts.

Levy had one as well.

Micmac this afternoon.

I've got one more for you.

So the code word is still coming.

Turtle Grove was swept away.

The visible scene is a Mi'kmaq community near the shoreline, homes among trees, displaced families, and officials surveying ruined land.

Behind it are Turtle Grove, Mi'kmaq residents, colonial displacement, blast and wave damage, relief inequality, land and memory.

On December 6, 1917, the French munitions carrier Mont Blanc and the Norwegian vessel Imo collided in Halifax Harbor.

The resulting fire and explosion killed nearly 2,000 people, injured about 9,000, and devastated the north end and parts of Dartmouth.

If you were living in, in a, in Zuni culture or something like that, or a Pueblo culture in the Southwest, you know, you go up to, to the Northeast.

And if you're in Mi'kmaq, culture the owls considered a messenger and can bring bad news but the owl itself isn't bad and there's lots of tales and folklore within

north american native traditions where the owls have you know

stories of bravery and courage and and and so they're not all bad so there's all kinds of signs but Everyone says that about the owl.

They are included in the permanent collections of the University of Hartford and the University of Southern Maine.

Summer is an enrolled member of the Listuguj Mi'kmaq First Nation.

Summer, welcome to the program.

Thank you, Jon.

Fantastic

FantasticSo I guess I'll read this final poem, and, um, and this one came fr- out of some archival research as well for the same book of essays that I'm writing.

It's a series of beadworks and a book, and it's, they both are titled Indian Country 1975, and they start with being given a cache of family slides from a Central Main Indian Association gathering in August of 1975, which is the month and year of my birth and seven months before my Mi'kmaq father is murdered, right? So it's a, it's a, they're these close family slides, and they're my aunt and uncle kind of dressed in Plains Indians regalia, but at the same time reclaiming their Wabanaki identities.

So it's a, it's a really interesting moment in time, and then the project goes, spreads out from there, and it's, it's personal essays and beadworks.