The Mi'kmaq (Micmac): How Their Ancestors Lived Five Hundred Years Ago by Ruth Holmes Whitehead

The Mi'kmaq (Micmac): How Their Ancestors Lived Five Hundred Years Ago Reviews

• 
  Lara Maynard

  I seem to have an earlier edition of this small book, as the main title is The Micmac, with the spelling that was common until about a decade or more ago. The edition is undated, but from the same publisher, Nimbus. I picked it up at a Friends of St. John's Libraries book sale fundraiser, along with a great haul of other books.
  
  This is a tidy little introduction to the Mi'kmaw people. I don't know if it was published for use in school studies, but it certainly has a social studies textbook feel. And the two quotes on the back cover suggest that it was indeed produced for school cirriculum, especially perhaps for Nova Scotia. The book also feels a bit like something you might have picked up in a souvenir shop or airport giftshop a couple of decades ago. The drawings remind me of drawings and dioramas from the exhibit about native or aboriginal (the words used then, now 'indigenous' is more accepted) people once at the old Newfoundland Museum formerly on Duckworth Street in St. John's NL.
  
  The portions of the book that I found most interesting were about food and medicine and magic. The addition of berries (blueberries maybe?) to what seems to be moose sausages makes it more appealing than any sausage I've had: "Fat, meat and berries were stuffed into the intestines, then hung in a smoky place in the wigwam for later use" (p. 12).
  
  Sad fact learned: 75 percent of the Mi'kmaw population was gone within 100 years of European contact.
  
  Nominee for understatement of the book: "The 19th century was a harsh time for most Micmac."
  
  Point of contention: The book refers to Mi'kmaw as living in the Maritimes, and does not really address the fact that Mi'kmaw people have also historically lived in Newfoundland (which is not a Maritime province, but is part of the Atlantic provinces) and still do. See:
  
  The History of the Newfoundland Mi'kmaq:
  http://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/ab...
  
  Mi'kmaq:
  http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca...
  
  
• 
  Freya Abbas

  Nice book that shows how innovative the ancestors of the Mi'kmaq were. It goes into a lot of detail about the technologies they used such as the birchbark canoe, the snowshoe, the toboggan. It also described the types of art they did like porcupine quillwork.
• 
  Alex

  Wished it had been a little longer. An informative read, nonetheless.