Broken Promises

But that is not what happened. Little by little, the Mi’kmaq lost their lands and their way of life because more Europeans were coming to live in Mi’kma’ki. Sometimes the newcomers were cruel. In 1749, Edward Cornwallis, the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia, promised to pay a reward for every scalp from a Mi’kmaq man, woman or child that was brought to him. Sometimes the new people passed their diseases, such as influenza, measles and smallpox, on to the Mi’kmaq. The Mi’kmaq had never been around these diseases before and could not fight them. Many of them died this way.

This Mi’kmaq rock carving was done before 1500 and was found near Bedford, N.S. The eight-pointed star is often used in Mi’kmaq carvings as a symbol of the sun.

In the 1860s, the Canadian government passed laws about how all First Nations people would live. The laws were called the Indian Act. The government did not ask the First Nations people who they had signed treaties with how they felt about this. Before this, the Mi’kmaq had looked to their elders and leaders for rules about how to live. Now different people from far away were making decisions about their lives. The government also set aside small pieces of land for First Nations people to live on. The pieces of land, which were called reserves, were not big enough to hunt or fish on, so the people became dependent on the government for what they needed.