Daniel N. Paul


Daniel N. Paul,, is a Miꞌkmaq elder, author, columnist, and human rights activist. Paul is perhaps best known as the author of the book We Were Not the Savages. Paul asserts that this book is the first such history ever written by a First Nations citizen. The book is seen as an important contribution to the North American Indian movement. One writer stated, "It's a Canadian version of Dee Brown's bestseller Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and, as such, served a valuable purpose in raising public consciousness about Miꞌkmaq history, identity, and culture."
Among his many awards, Paul has been conferred with the Order of Canada and the Order of Nova Scotia. He received from Université Sainte-Anne an honorary Doctor of Letters degree. He has an honorary law degree from Dalhousie University and is the recipient of the Grand Chief Donald Marshall Memorial Elder Award. He states: "High among the most appreciated honours that I've received during my career are the dozens of small items, Eagle Feathers, tobacco pouches, letters, mugs, etc., given and sent to me by students as thanks for helping them better understand the importance of according all Peoples human dignity and respect." During his active career, he has visited and lectured at most high schools, junior high schools, and elementary schools in Nova Scotia, several out of province, all universities in the Maritimes and at many others elsewhere in Canada and the United States of America. His brother Lawrence Paul is the former long-serving chief of Millbrook First Nation.

Life

Prior to Paul's birth, his parents Sarah Agnes, née Noel, and William Gabriel were relocated from Saint John, New Brunswick, to Indian Brook 14, Nova Scotia. Paul was born at Indian Brook, the eleventh of fourteen children. During his childhood, he earned money through selling the Star Weekly, Liberty Magazine, seeds, and greeting cards, and painted the interior of houses. He married the love of his life, Victoria Oakley, and had three children.
He attended the Indian Day School on Shubenacadie Indian Reserve to grade eight. He left home for Boston when he was fourteen and came face to face with the oddities of big-time city life for the first time. He laughs at his first memories of the adventure, saying good morning to all he encountered on the street and being fascinated by bag ladies. He returned to Nova Scotia in 1960 to attend Success Business College in Truro. He is mainly self-educated and asserts that he has at least a Masters from the University of Life, possibly a Ph.D.
In 1971 he began work for the Department of Indian Affairs, and from 1981 to 1986 was the department's Nova Scotia District Superintendent of Lands, Revenues, Trusts, and Statutory Requirements.
A community activist, he was the founding Executive Director of the Confederacy of Mainland Micmacs from 1986 to 1994, and while in this position, initiated fundraising for a new community centre for the Indian Brook Reserve and founded and published the Micmac/Maliseet Nations News. In addition to publishing duties he initially wrote editorials for the paper and much of its copy. During his tenure at CMM, Paul also started a trust fund for the Confederacy, which would support financing legal issues for the six bands associated with the organization. His leadership helped resolve the Afton Band's 170-year-old treaty claim to old Summerside property. In addition, he worked to resolve land claims for the Pictou Landing Band. He has served on the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission and on the Nova Scotia Department of Justice's Court Restructuring Task Force, among other provincial commissions, as a justice of the peace for the province, and has been a member of the Nova Scotia Police Review Board for over 20 years. He has also written bi-weekly op-eds for the Halifax Chronicle Herald newspaper.
On January 14, 2000, he received a millennium award from the city of Halifax for his contributions. In 2001, Paul was involved with a CBC documentary entitled Growing Up Native, and in Bear Paw Productions' Expulsion and the Bounty Hunter.

Author

Paul has written numerous articles in newspapers and academic journals. He has written chapters for several books - two editions of the Mi'kmaq Anthology, Dawnland Voices, Living Treaties, Nova Scotia - Visions of the Future, and Power and Resistance. His novel Lightning Bolt will be published 2017 and his biography by Jon Tattrie. His most well-known work is We Were Not the Savages, which is now in its third edition. Paul is critical of colonial historical accounts of the Mi’kmaq people:
Post-colonial historian Geoffrey Plank writes:
Many post-colonial historians, such as Thomas Naylor, applaud Paul's efforts to render visible the harms the British conducted toward the Mi'kmaq people. Naylor writes:

Controversy

Paul's assertions in his publications have caused controversy with numerous scholars of colonial history. Along with Paul, most contemporary scholars of the colonial period in Nova Scotia document the illegal means in which local British authorities confiscated native land. The work of these scholars has been used to address issues of legal reparation. There is also agreement that the British engaged in a long history of frontier warfare against aboriginal families in North America, including the Mi'kmaq people. Paul's work has been helpful in highlighting the history of the British bounty proclamations against aboriginal families. In We Were Not the Savages, Paul outlines the history of the New England and Nova Scotia governors' use of scalping proclamations against the Mi'kmaq. He specifically quotes Massachusetts Governor William Shirley's scalping proclamation of 1744, that of Governor Cornwallis in 1749, and that of Nova Scotia Governor Charles Lawrence in 1756. He also states that there is evidence some Mi'kmaq had even been targeted as early as in the governor of Massachusetts' scalping proclamation of 1694.
All agree that the British authorities ordered the use of colonial warfare practices which involved killing Mi'kmaq for scalp-bounties. In contrast to these scholars, however, Paul asserts that the Mi'kmaq leaders did not employ such tactics against British families in defense of their homeland. He states that the renegade Mi'kmaq who did participate in such "crimes" were "mercenaries acting beyond the authority of their leaders", who were doing "dirty work for the French". Paul asserts the people who acted "savagely" were primarily those of European descent - not the Mi'kmaq.
Historians Geoffrey Plank and Stephen Patterson, however, offer evidence that indicates some of the Mi'kmaq leadership did support frontier warfare against Protestant families, such as Chief Jean-Baptiste Cope. Further, Edward Cornwallis' decision to put a bounty on the Mi'kmaq was not based simply on the Raid on Dartmouth that immediately preceded it. Historian John G. Reid's work indicates that by the time Cornwallis had arrived in Halifax in 1749, there was a long history of the Wabanaki Confederacy killing British civilians along the New England/ Acadia border in Maine during conflict. Grenier indicates that frontier warfare against families was the standard practice by all parties through the six colonial wars which started in 1688.
Along with challenging Paul's assertion that the Mi'kmaq leadership did not use the standard warfare practice of the period, historians have also disagreed with Paul labeling the British use of colonial warfare as "genocide". Post-colonial historian John G. Reid states, "I believe is essentially a 20th-century term, and I'm not sure that it's the best way to understand 18th-century realities... What happened in the 18th century is a process of imperial expansion that was ruthless at times, that cost lives…. But to my mind, you can't just transfer concepts between centuries." Kyle Matthews, the lead researcher at the Montreal Institute For Genocide and Human Rights Studies, states, "The word 'genocide' is today used by anybody, at any time — some people use it to get media attention or to support a cause," he said. "I think that’s a real problem."
In response to these challenges to his work, Paul writes that most objections to his work "come from Caucasians, probably of British ancestry. It's understandable they try to minimize the horrors their ancestors committed." Paul also asserts that his work is largely responsible for British colonial figures' names being removed from landmarks because they used frontier warfare against Mi'kmaq families. In We Were Not..., he mentions his participation in a successful 1998 campaign to change the name of a Nova Scotia highway that had been named after New England Ranger John Gorham. Paul's efforts have also led to the removal of the name "Cornwallis" from a junior high in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He has also advocated for the removal of the Edward Cornwallis Statue in Halifax.
While applauding the strengths of Paul's work, others have actually lamented that Paul continues the imperialist tradition of minimizing the effective Mi'kmaq armed resistance against the British Empire. He omits many accounts of the Mi'kmaq using standard colonial warfare and labels the Mi'kmaq warriors who did as "mercenaries" and "criminals". Reid remarks that Paul's work "undoubtedly traveled further down the road of engaged history and even participant history than many other historians would be comfortable in going…"

We Were Not the Savages

In Paul's book, he addresses numerous issues. One of these is the validity of the Treaty of 1752 and the importance of Jean-Baptiste Cope in Maritime history.

Treaty of 1752

Paul celebrates Chief Jean-Baptiste Cope for negotiating the November 1752 Peace and Friendship Treaty with the British, "in a desperate attempt to prevent the complete annihilation of his people". According to historian William Wicken the only written evidence is Cope signed the Treaty on behalf of ninety Mi’kmaq at Shubenacadie. Further, these historians suggest no other Mi’kmaq leaders would endorse the treaty and that Cope himself destroyed it six months after it was ratified. The British did not formally renounce the Treaty until 1756.
Despite the short-term fate of the 1752 Peace Treaty with hostilities continuing soon afterward, some Nova Scotians continue to celebrate the signing of it annually on Treaty Day. As Paul also notes, in 1985, the Supreme Court of Canada finally affirmed and recognized its validity In this case, the Crown Prosecutors argued that Cope had violated the treaty, which, in turn, made it null and void. Paul asserts, in contrast, that it was the British who violated the treaty - not the Mi'kmaq. In his book, Paul cites in extenso a journal entered under oath by eyewitness Anthony Casteel regarding a resumption of hostilities the following spring, and concludes by noting