Michael Joe brings the boiled cherry bark to the woman with the sore throat. He tells her to swallow it down quickly. "Don't taste it," he says. His medicine has a bitter flavor.

"That's something white medicine and Indian medicine have in common," the woman says.

Michael Joe's medicine is very old. The way to find it and make it has been passed down among Mi'kmaq people for hundreds of years. When Michael Joe goes into the bush he wears jeans and running shoes. He carries a nylon knapsack. His ancestors wore animal skin shoes and clothing. They carried woven baskets. But what Michael Joe does in the bush is the same as his ancestors have always done. They went to the same places. They gathered the same plants. It is easy to hear the voices of the ancient Mi'kmaq walking through the bush with Michael Joe. It is easy to imagine them sitting in the same sunny opening and praying beside the cherry tree.

In 1987 the Conne River band was granted a small reserve. It is about three square kilometers of land. The reserve was a special deal with the federal and provincial governments.6 The band gets federal funding like other native reserves in Canada. Seven hundred people live there. Conne River is the only native reserve in Newfoundland.

The Mi'kmaq people have done a lot on their tiny piece of land. They built their own school and medical clinic. The band has started several businesses, including a Christmas tree farm. There is very little unemployment. The people there have special rights to fish salmon on the Conne River. They have the same kind of rights the Glenwood Mi'kmaq band want. Michael Joe says getting reserve status and control of their funding wasn't easy. Band members had to lobby, protest, and even hold hunger strikes.

They still do not have the right to negotiate a land claim. But Michael Joe is trying to change that. The Conne River Mi'kmaq believe they have the right to a large part of the Bay du Nord wilderness area near their reserve. Michael Joe's main job as chief is to gather enough historical proof to show the Mi'kmaq lived in the area before Europeans arrived. This is part of the rules for land claims.

6 Most native reserves and land claims are based on agreements between native people and Europeans. These agreements are called treaties. They were signed during the settlement of North America. Many native groups did not want to sign these treaties. But they feared their people would not have any land of their own if they did not agree to live on reserves. Britain did not sign any treaties with the Mi'kmaq people of Newfoundland.