Description
Andrea Bear Nicholas is a Wəlastəkwew (Maliseet) from Nekwətkok (Tobique First Nation) and Professor Emerita at St. Thomas University, where she held the Chair in Native Studies for twenty years and developed the first university-based Indigenous Language Immersion Teacher Training Program in North America. She has published widely on Indigenous history, Oral Traditions, linguistic rights, and revitalization.
The head of tide of the Wəlastəkw, known as Ekwpahak in Wəlastəkwey (Maliseet), has long been a gathering place for the Wəlastəkokewiyik and was reserved for them by colonial authorities in the mid-18th century. However, while 11,000 Loyalists invaded unceded Wəlastəkwey territory after the American Revolution, Judge Isaac Allen — a member of the province’s Executive Council — purchased Ekwpahak in a highly questionable dealing. Deprived of their land, some Wəlastəkokewiyik settled a few miles upriver at what became Kingsclear First Nation.
In this long-awaited volume, Andrea Bear Nicholas assembles Oral Traditions, archival documents (including census and church records, government reports, newspaper accounts, and letters), paintings, maps, and photographs to document the history of the Kingsclear First Nation: from its establishment in the late-18th century to the disastrous mid-20th century attempt to centralize the entire Wəlastəkokwey Nation at Kingsclear, and the aftermath. The documents clearly demonstrate the destructive impact of colonialism upon the Wəlastəkokewiyik, from their dispossession by Loyalists and the establishment of the Sussex Vale Indian School in the late 18th century, to the increasing restrictions on traditional life that both impoverished and oppressed them.