Finding Kluskap

The Mikmaq of eastern Canada were among the first indigenous North Americans to encounter colonial Europeans. As early as the mid-sixteenth century, they were trading with French fishers, and by the mid-seventeenth century, large numbers of Mikmaq had converted to Catholicism. Mikmaw Catholicism is perhaps best exemplified by the communitys regard for the figure of Saint Anne, the grandmother of Jesus. Every year for a week, coinciding with the saints feast day of July 26, Mikmaw peoples from communities throughout Quebec and eastern Canada gather on the small island of Potlotek, off the coast of Nova Scotia. It is, however, far from a conventional Catholic celebration. In fact, it expresses a complex relationship between the Mikmaq, Saint Anne, a series of eighteenth-century treaties, and a cultural hero named Kluskap. Finding Kluskap brings together years of historical research and learning among Mikmaw peoples on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. The authors long-term relationship with Mikmaw friends and colleagues provides a unique vantage point for scholarship, one shaped not only by personal relationships but also by the cultural, intellectual, and historical situations that inform postcolonial peoples. The picture that emerges when Saint Anne, Kluskap, and the mission are considered in concert with one another is one of the sacred life as a site of adjudication for both the meaning and efficacy of religionand the impact of modern history on contemporary indigenous religion.