Citation

Mi'kmaw Elder Dr. Daniel N. Paul

October 2013 Honorary Degree Recipient

Dalhousie University Honorary Degree Awarded

Doctor of Laws (honoris causa)

An author whose book makes the past dance before our eyes. A social activist whose commitment to his people honours their experience and pushes others to confront historic racism. A recipient of the Order of Nova Scotia and the Order of Canada, who says his most valued honours are the eagle feathers, tobacco pouches, letters and more sent to him by students as thanks for helping them better understand the importance of according all peoples human dignity and respect.

Daniel N. Paul is the man behind these achievements. A Mi’kmaq Elder, Mr. Paul has committed his life to promoting a better understanding of Mi’kmaq and Maliseet history and culture. He is the author of the landmark book We Were Not the Savages, considered the most reliable text on the history of Aboriginal Peoples in the Atlantic provinces, and described by one writer as “a brilliant and painful account of how the Mi’kmaqs were treated by the Europeans.” The book is used in Native Study courses in many high schools and universities in Canada and the United States. The book, and a complementary website Mr. Paul created www.danielnpaul.com , , form “an irreplaceable contribution to the history of Atlantic Canada and to Aboriginal Peoples of Canada in general,” wrote Robin Oakley of Dalhousie’s Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, in preparing the nomination for this honorary degree.

Mr. Paul has dedicated his life to fighting racial discrimination and credits his family history with influencing his human rights work. His father, William Gabriel Paul, worked as a stevedore on the Saint John, New Brunswick, waterfront. After being laid off during the Great Depression, he and his family were forcibly relocated to the Indian Brook Reserve in Nova Scotia, a place they had never seen before. They were given a roll of tarpaper and told to build a shack. As Mr. Paul writes: “from birth, as Indians, we were treated as ‘Wards of the Crown’ and treated as third class citizens at best. We had the same legal status as drunks and insane persons.”

Daniel grew up hunting, fishing and trapping, and as a young teenager sold magazines, seeds and greeting cards to earn money. At age 14, he set off for Boston. He eventually returned to Nova Scotia, stitching together what he has called a “self-education” and working for the Department of Indian Affairs. He is married and the father to three children.

Through those years, he embarked on community activism, including being the founding executive director of the Confederacy of Mainland Micmacs, initiating fundraising for a new community centre for the Indian Brook Reserve, and working to resolve land and treaty claims. He has served on the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, as a Commissioner of the Nova Scotia Police Review Board, as a member of the advisory council for Dalhousie’s law program for Indigenous Blacks and Mi’kmaqs, among other commissions, committees and councils.

When awarding Mr. Paul the Order of Nova Scotia, the provincial government lauded him for bringing new understanding and perspective to the past. One significant public expression of that shift in perspective involved efforts by Mr. Paul and others to have us rethink the naming of public buildings and landmarks. In his own words: “The accomplishment that I’m most proud of is that I’ve lobbied successfully to have the names of buildings, roads and so on named in honour of colonial officials that brutalized the Mi’kmaq, changed.” His most recent success was the groundbreaking decision to rename Cornwallis Junior High School, in Halifax.

Mr. Paul has received many accolades, including the Grand Chief Donald Marshall Sr. Memorial Elder Award, the Multicultural Education Council of Nova Scotia Award, the City of Halifax Millennium Award and the Orders of Nova Scotia and of Canada.

It is in recognition of his human rights activism, scholarly work and many accomplishments, that I ask you, Mr. Chancellor, in the name of Senate, to bestow upon Daniel N. Paul the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.

Convocation Address - Daniel N. Paul, October 8, 2013

Making a Difference

Good afternoon my friends!

It gives me great pleasure today to be among scholars who are, after years of hard work, realizing an important achievement in their lives, University Degrees! An achievement that provides each of you with an invaluable asset in your future efforts to realize other important career and lifestyle goals!

However, I do hope that the desire to make a difference in your lives, which motivated you over the last several years to earn your Degrees, will continue after today and that it will motivate you to be an active supporter and promoter of positive inclusive changes in society.

The reason I make this appeal is that I strongly believe that we should all strive to be proactive during our lifetimes and expend much personal effort towards helping to make positive societal changes that will move us faster in the direction of having no excluded and underprivileged among us. Such efforts for positive change do make a difference. For example, the results of proactive people making a difference are evident in this room today - people are present who have black, brown and other skin colors, and women, handicapped, etc., most of whom would not be here if brave and conscientious individuals had not in the past mustered the courage to step forward and say, enough, I want inclusion for all

Until recent times exclusion based on race and other factors was widespread and strictly adhered to in Canada. Sadly, Nova Scotia was among the provinces where exclusion was very strictly applied. As an example of how widespread and open exclusion of non Caucasians was in this Country and Province during the 20th century I’ll cite the following racist based gems.

In 1938, the year I was born a Status Indian on Shubenacadie Indian Reserve, we were classified by the British North America Act as Wards of the Canadian Crown, a Status that gave us the same legal rights as drunks and insane persons. Resulting from the trust responsibilities for Indians and Indian lands that the BNA Act placed on the Canadian government it, in 1876, enacted the Indian Act to provide it with the legal means to responsibly administer it’s constitutional responsibilities. Among the Act’s racist provisions was one that made it illegal for lawyers to work for us without first obtaining permission from the Federal Crown. All federal Indian Affairs programs, including education and health, were begot by politicians and bureaucrats with one goal in mind, solve the Indian Problem, assimilate the Tribes out of existence.

In the Nova Scotia of that era African Nova Scotians and our people were the most denied. Both Peoples were barred from many establishments, segregated services for both communities were common. The Nova Scotia Justice system was feared and viewed as the enemy by both communities, the RCMP were the enforcers and chief persecutors. Justice was not ours. I’ll relate one of many instances of perverted justice: Junior Marshall, after being wrongfully convicted of murder was told by a Nova Scotia Supreme Court justice during his appeal of his wrongful conviction that “he was the architect of his own misfortunes.” The list of such instances is endless

It takes people of courage to make a difference. To this end there were many prominent promoters of civil and human rights who came forward over the last several decades to do peaceful battle for equality and justice, high among them were such luminaries as Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela. However, let’s not lose sight of the fact that there were a multitude of individuals who were also on the front lines and suffered the consequences for demanding equality.

The late Dr. Carrie Best, a very prominent African Nova Scotia activist, comes to mind. During the 1930s, at a time when white supremacy was still running very high in this Province, she was producing and distributing a news letter encouraging her people to press harder for equality. I told her in the early 1990s that from my own experience with white supremacist thinking during my youth, and more so in the 1980s and since, that I thought she was a most courageous person to have dared to openly challenge white society at that point in time. Her response was “I’ve watched you walk into a few fires during the last few years and you probably felt some fear, but for you, as with me then, the cry of our people for justice and equality was and is far more important than the fear of physical harm.”

Because of the stigma of being wrongfully depicted by Caucasian society as the descendants of uncivilized savages of an inferior culture, something that we were taught in Indian Day and Residential schools in the 1940s, I undertook in the mid 1980s the task of changing Nova Scotia’s negative view of my people the Mi’kmaq. It strikes me as weird in the extreme that the victims who had their lands stolen and were almost exterminated in the process were and are viewed as the culprits and the British aggressors were and are viewed as the heros. To begin the process of dispelling such nonsense I wrote a book in 1993 entitled We Were Not the Savages. The first edition was published in 1993, I encourage you to read the 2006 edition, its contents are eye openers.

Since then, from some quarters, I’ve been told and asked some shocking things, a few examples: “how dare you be so disrespectful of my sainted ancestors who did so much for your people, educating and civilizing them, you don’t have any appreciation of what wondrous things my ancestors did for your people do you?” and this one especially got my dander up - “you’re not very respectful of your betters are you?”

Such statements were uttered by individuals who had absolutely no knowledge of the fact that the Mi’kmaq, before the European invasion of the Americas, had one of the highest standards of living in the world and a culture that included social programs such as child and elder care, it also had marriages, divorces, etc. Sharing and honour were the cornerstones of Mi’kmaq culture, two items that were not then items of much interest in European cultures.

Today, because of my efforts, and the efforts of many more individuals such as the late Chief Noel Doucette and Sister Dorothy Moore, a lot more true Mi’kmaq history is being taught in Nova Scotia schools, however, there is a long way to go. In closing, I want to acknowledge that many of you are leaving here today heavily burdened by student loans which will take years and much sacrifice on your part to retire. To me, in a rich country such as Canada, such a situation is unacceptable. In my estimation, this is a view I’ve shared publicly many times before, free post secondary education for all Canadians must be considered a right of citizenship and be implemented as soon as humanely possible, and all outstanding student loans forgiven.

Good luck and may you all enjoy much success!