It’s time to make Mi’kmaq central partners

Government should put Mi’kmaq people back into the center of Islanders’ historical consciousness

Premier Wade MacLauchlan may have thought that I was joking when I suggested in my previous letter to the editor that the Prince Edward Home property and the Lt.-Gov.’s Fanningbank residence right beside it ought to be returned to the Mi’kmaq. I was not. I was exercising my moral imagination in trying to figure out what actions of government would put the Mi’kmaq people back into the center of Islanders’ historical consciousness.

When you have over $40 million being poured into the renovation of Province House, absurdly generous deals like the Mill River Resort with Don McDougall, and infrastructure projects for roundabouts or sewage pipes from Stratford to Charlottetown, we can all see the continuing marginalization of the Mi’kmaq.

I was hopeful that the Premier would make it his legacy to rectify the situation of the Mi’kmaq, that he cared enough about justice to reset the broken relationships. Perhaps the job is really too big for him alone, and because it requires the intense co-operation of the Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, P.E.I. and Canadian governments, it simply cannot happen in our age of universally disappointing government.

I think that action on basic guaranteed income programs, improved health care system and other universally oriented action should be conceived as connected to helping the marginalized, whatever their identity or culture. So the more universal all government programs become, the better for all concerned.

Governments have no philosopher’s stone for making money out of nothing, but the credit they are extended because they cannot declare bankruptcy is a collective resource which an equality minded Premier would extend more generously to the Mi’kmaq so that they could develop the land and businesses to feed their families better.

In 2014, Stratford erected a statue of Mi’kmaq long distance runner Michael Thomas in one of the stinkiest locations possible, beside its sewage lagoon as if we could all honour him while holding our noses and walking quickly by. The Premier needs to demonstrate authentic moral leadership and make the Mi’kmaq land claim issue central to his actions. In a morally enlightened world, it would be possible to pass laws declaring the Lt.-Governor’s position out of date and thus marginalize the British Empire and its imperialistic symbols instead of its victims.

But shuffling ceremonial offices is not sufficient to rectify and liberate us all from the clear mistakes of our history. Why not return the valuable waterfront land that will become available when the Stratford sewage lagoon is removed and decontaminated to the Mi’kmaq, in almost its original condition? Then build a proper boardwalk or path from the Charlottetown waterfront to Stratford so that cruise ship passengers could stroll the boardwalk, and breath fresh air.

In this carefully rectified world, the tourists maybe could visit a reconstructed Mi’kmaq village right besides the harbour at the former Stratford sewage lagoon site, buy woodcarvings or other art and artifacts. They could pause and gaze at the Michael Thomas statue in wonder at how the Mi’kmaq people have been able to make it through the long distance of the last 400 years of nauseating marginalization.

The places in P.E.I. where fresh water and food was naturally abundant should be central to the rectification effort, because the choice locations and the best properties constitute what an equality minded Premier would deliver back to the original care-takers of this Island.

It might be absurd to return Cavendish Beach or developed parts of the National Park on the North Shore, but returning the mostly undeveloped Blooming Point Beach lands and putting in a proper access road, and then permitting the Mi’kmaq to show us how they lived on these beaches would be the right kind of action.

This island is beautiful and full of natural resources because many generations of Mi’kmaq lived here, and it is simply time to pay respect to their ecological wisdom and make them central partners in the future development of this land.