OUR HISTORY

Our History

The Wolastoqiyik / Wəlastəkwiyik are the Indigenous people of the Wolastoq / Wəlastəkw watershed and adjacent areas.

Their traditional territory encompasses lands as well as marine and fresh waters from the Bay of Fundy in the south to the St. Lawrence River in the north. This large territory includes parts of the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Québec as well as northeastern Maine in the United States. The Wolastoqiyik/Wəlastəkwiyik are also sometimes known as “the Maliseet”, a name given to them by their Mi’kmaq neighbours.

Our role is to provide technical support and advice to the Wolastoqey/Wəlastəkwey Communities in New Brunswick on matters that relate to Wolastoqey/Wəlastəkwey constitutionally protected Aboriginal and Treaty Rights. Our mandate is to ensure Wolastoqey/Wəlastəkwey Communities can be properly consulted in a way that upholds Wolastoqey/Wəlastəkwey constitutionally protected Aboriginal and Treaty Rights.

The Wolastoqey Nation in New Brunswick was formed in 2017 to help coordinate and provide technical support and advice to the Wolastoqey Communities in New Brunswick: Matawaskiye, Neqotkuk, Pilick, Sitansisk, Welamukotuk, and Wotstak.

The Wolastoqey Nation in New Brunswick is not the rights holder, nor the body to which the duty to consult is owed.

The Wolastoqiyik/Wəlastəkwiyik are the Indigenous people of the Wolastoq/Wəlastəkw watershed and adjacent areas. Their traditional territory includes lands as well as ocean and fresh waters from the Bay of Fundy to the St. Lawrence River. This large homeland spans parts of New Brunswick, Québec, and Maine, and it predates and transcends the political boundaries that non-Indigenous governments imposed upon this area in recent centuries.

The Wolastoqiyik/Wəlastəkwiyik are sometimes known as “the Maliseet,” a name their Mi’kmaq neighbours gave them that refers to the cadence of the Wolastoqey/Wəlastəkwey language.

The Wolastoqiyik/Wəlastəkwiyik inhabited these lands and used a variety of resources in their territory since time immemorial. They refined useful technologies adapted to their needs and local environmental conditions, like lightweight birch bark canoes, toggle harpoons, snowshoes, and toboggans. They also developed sophisticated social and political structures to govern life in their communities and nation as well as relations with neighbouring Indigenous peoples and visitors from afar.

After contact between Wolastoqiyik/Wəlastəkwiyik and European fishermen and fur traders increased in the late 1500s, deadly diseases from across the Atlantic that Indigenous peoples had never been exposed to began devastating Wolastoqey/Wəlastəkwey communities. Although the exact number of people these diseases killed was not recorded, well over half of the Wolastoqey/Wəlastəkwey Nation likely perished in the early contact era, and foreign diseases continued causing death and suffering into the 20th century.

The Wolastoqiyik/Wəlastəkwiyik found some Europeans to be kind people interested in forging positive trading and social relationships. However, after some time many European individuals began encroaching on Wolastoqey/Wəlastəkwey land and resource rights, acts which were an afront to Wolastoqey/Wəlastəkwey sovereignty over their lands, waters, and resources. Many also did not respect Wolastoqey/Wəlastəkwey beliefs and traditions, and some European men sexually and physically abused Wolastoqi/Wəlastəkwi women.

Sovereignty is the authority of a People to govern themselves.

As a result, Wolastoqey/Wəlastəkwey relations with some visitors and groups of settlers became characterized by violence and long campaigns of resistance to aggressive efforts to dispossess them of their lands and rights, and deprive them of their dignity as human beings. Generally, relations with France and French settlers were more positive than they were with Great Britain and its colonies.

Dispossess means to take people’s land or other possessions from them.

The Wolastoqiyik/Wəlastəkwiyik and their neighbouring Indigenous allies in the Wabanaki Confederacy fought a series of wars on land and sea with the British between the late 17th and mid-18th centuries.

The Wabanaki Confederacy refers to an alliance among the Wolastoqiyik/Wəlastəkwiyik, Peskotomuhkati (Passamaquoddy), Penobscot, Abenaki, and Mi’kmaq. While the Confederacy was first formally established in the 17th century, it emerged from an interregional political structure these nations had developed long before meeting Europeans. Wabanaki means “People of the Dawn-land” in reference to the territories of these peoples being in the east and closest to the sunrise.

These wars were concluded by diplomatic negotiations and Treaties of Peace and Friendship between Great Britain and the Indigenous nations involved in the conflicts. The first Treaty known to have been made between British representatives of colonies that later became part of Canada and the Wolastoqiyik/Wəlastəkwiyik was co-developed in 1725 and signed in 1726. The treaties were formal sovereign nation-to-sovereign nation agreements that drew on both Indigenous and British legal traditions and goals. They were co-developed by Wabanaki Peoples and the British to end conflicts and foster peaceful relations to benefit both groups. The written treaties and the oral negotiations that helped define them were not land surrenders or one-sided agreements.

The Peace and Friendship Treaties and verbal negotiations that informed them protected the rights of the Wolastoqiyik/Wəlastəkwiyik and neighbouring Indigenous peoples to keep using lands and resources in their territories without being “molested” by British governments or settlers. The treaty signed by Wolastoqiyik/Wəlastəkwiyik in 1760 included all the contents of the 1725-1726 treaty (which they renewed with the British in 1749). However, the 1760 treaty also included provisions to facilitate trade between the Wolastoqiyik/Wəlastəkwiyik and the British, including by establishing trading facilities known as “truckhouses.” These historic treaties are the foundation of Wolastoqey/Wəlastəkwey Treaty Rights.

The Supreme Court of Canada, the country’s highest legal institution, has ruled that the Peace and Friendship Treaties continue to be legally binding agreements, and that the Crown has the duty to uphold and honour them. This means federal and provincial governments and all Canadians must respect Wolastoqey/Wəlastəkwey Treaty Rights. We are all Treaty People! Courts have also clarified that the treaties include written documents as well as oral negotiations, agreements, and understandings that must all be considered in order to fully understand them.

While the right of the Wolastoqiyik/Wəlastəkwiyik to receive fair treatment by the British/Canadian justice system was guaranteed by the Treaties, in practice, it was often either denied outright or heavily infringed upon in past eras. Some colonial legal officials supported the dispossession of Wolastoqiyik/Wəlastəkwiyik of their lands in violation of terms of established protocols between the British and Indigenous Peoples as well as the terms of British policy and international law as was reflected in the Royal Proclamation of 1763, all of which put restrictions on the settlement of Indigenous lands in British North America.

The Royal Proclamation of 1763 is a legal document issued by King George III that included instructions on how British authorities in North America were to deal with Indigenous peoples and lands. Though not the source of Indigenous land title, the Proclamation recognized Indigenous land title and restricted colonial settlement of Indigenous lands. As shown by Wolastoqi/Wəlastəkwi scholar Andrea Bear Nicholas, Nova Scotia’s dispossession of Wolastoqey/Wəlastəkwey lands was an illegal violation of this important Proclamation*.

*Andrea Bear Nicholas, “Settler Imperialism and the Dispossession of the Maliseet, 1758-1765.” In Shaping an Agenda for Atlantic Canada, Edited by John G. Reid & Donald J. Savoie, 21-57 (Black Point, NS: Fernwood Publishing, 2011).

Wolastoqey/Wəlastəkwey efforts to obtain justice for settler violence received mixed responses from colonial courts. In 1786, a murder trial in New Brunswick led to the conviction and hanging of a settler who shot and killed a Wolastoqi/Wəlastəkwi man in cold blood. However, when a Wolastoqi/Wəlastəkwi man who was physically abused by a prominent Fredericton Loyalist tried to take his abuser to court in 1799, his case was dismissed because he could not find a lawyer willing to prosecute it.

Wealthy white men could assault Indigenous people and get away with it because wealthy white lawyers would not help Indigenous people seek justice and all local lawyers back then were white men. The abused man also faced a language barrier as he spoke primarily Wolastoqey/Wəlastəkwey and the courts did not operate in the Wolastoqey/Wəlastəkwey language.

Later generations of Wolastoqiyik/Wəlastəkwiyik also faced huge obstacles getting legal support. Between 1876 and 1880, under the federal Indian Act that Canada imposed on Indigenous people, any Indigenous person who became a lawyer lost their “Indian Status” in Canadian law even if they wished to keep it. Canada also made it illegal for lawyers to represent Indigenous people between 1927 and 1951 unless they had approval from the Department of Indian Affairs.

Canada imposed the Indian Act on Indigenous people in 1876. This oppressive law gave Canada far reaching powers over many aspects of the lives of First Nations people, including the governance of their communities and lands as well as their ability to exercise rights and practice cultural traditions. This Act also forced thousands of children to suffer abuse and alienation in Residential and Day Schools and inflicted many other terrible harms to Indigenous individuals, communities, and nations.

The legislation has been profoundly criticized by First Nations people and human rights advocates for generations for being unjust, paternalistic, discriminatory towards women, as well as a vehicle of cultural annihilation and genocide.

These and other oppressive laws and policies made it very hard for Wolastoqiyik/Wəlastəkwiyik and other Indigenous peoples to organize land claims or seek justice on other matters through the legal system. In addition, the high cost of going to Court and cultural biases like the favouring of European written historic records over Indigenous Oral History severely limited meaningful Indigenous participation in the justice system until recent decades. A New Brunswick court house in Burton is even built upon Wolastoqey/Wəlastəkwey graves that were shamefully destroyed to dig a basement in 1947.

Indigenous peoples in Canada are primarily oral cultures who traditionally related cultural and historical information through spoken word rather than with written documents. The history they have passed down across generations by word of mouth is known as Indigenous Oral History. Until the Supreme Court of Canada’s Delgamuukw Decision in 1997, courts privileged written historical evidence over Indigenous oral history, which they often dismissed as hearsay. This discriminatory practice was a huge obstacle to Indigenous participation in the justice system to defend their rights and pursue land claims. The 1997 Decision requires courts to treat Indigenous oral history on equal footing as European written records. However, Indigenous people still face uphill struggles to have their oral history respected and it is often subject to hostile scrutiny in court.

History told from a Wolastoqey/Wəlastəkwey perspective often sounds dramatically different from the history that many New Brunswickers grew up learning. Wolastoqey/Wəlastəkwey history can be unsettling for settlers to hear as it complicates and challenges assumptions and values they hold about the past and present of the world around them:

Men cast as upstanding colonial military officers and political elites in North American history supported acts of violence and genocide against Wolastoqi/Wəlastəkwi men, women and children.
Prominent politicians and lawmakers made laws that criminalized Wolastoqey/Wəlastəkwey resource use (hunting, fishing, harvesting wood, etc.), which kept families on the brink of starvation for generations, and they supported efforts to deprive Wolastoqiyik/Wəlastəkwiyik of their lands, cultures, and identity.
Most historians ignored the fact that colonialization occurred through the unlawful dispossession of Wolastoqiyik/Wəlastəkwiyik from their lands, and many early histories of New Brunswick valorize European colonialization and marginalize Indigenous perspectives on historical events and processes.
Many local people celebrated in books, museums, and monuments for developing industries earned fame by destroying forest, river, and ocean habitats Wolastoqiyik/Wəlastəkwiyik depended on. As a result, parts of the Wolastoqey/Wəlastəkwey economy were destroyed and several animals they had deep cultural relationships with were extirpated or driven to extinction. Wolastoqiyik/Wəlastəkwiyik were seldom allowed to share in the prosperity that resulted from the development of the lands and waters that were taken from them.
Teachers and missionaries praised for bringing European civilization and languages to Wolastoqi/Wəlastəkwi children suppressed the Wolastoqey/Wəlastəkwey language and culture. Kids were forced to attend Residential Schools and Day Schools where they suffered horrific physical, sexual, and mental abuses from educators.
Respected doctors and scholars conducted research that desecrated the remains of Wolastoqi/Wəlastəkwi ancestors who were dug up without Wolastoqey/Wəlastəkwey consent. Burial grounds and sacred sites have been flooded by dams or destroyed by other forms of development.

This list could continue for pages, however, in the past most writers and educators either omitted these and other Wolastoqey/Wəlastəkwey truths from their work or justified them as necessary steps in society’s march towards greater progress and civilization which, to them, meant being more like Europeans than Indigenous people.

One of the first Residential Schools in Canada was set up in Sussex by the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and run by New Brunswick government officials. Instead of receiving an education, most of its Wolastoqi/Wəlastəkwi students were farmed out to settlers as servants and virtual slaves. Many suffered horrible sexual, physical, and emotional abuse from the people responsible for their care. The school was closed in 1826 after the Society learned of the abuses and that school officials were taking money intended for the education of Indigenous kids to teach settler kids and to line their own pockets.

In the late 1800s, Canada created its own system of Residential and Day Schools, and Wolastoqi/Wəlastəkwi children forced to go to these facilities also suffered terrible abuses. These schools used education as a weapon to devalue and destroy the Wolastoqey/Wəlastəkwey language, culture, and way of life. Although these publicly funded schools are thankfully now all closed, Wolastoqi/Wəlastəkwi families and communities are still healing from the violence and trauma inflicted upon them for generations.

The Wolastoqiyik/Wəlastəkwiyik have endured over 4 centuries of colonization; the loss of most of their lands; as well as sustained assaults on their children, culture, beliefs, and rights. However, they remain resilient in the face of profound hardships and are a vibrant people who are spearheading initiatives to strengthen their rights, culture, language, and relationships with their homeland today.