Nation Micmac de Gespeg

The Micmac de Gespeg nation is one of the First Nations or Premières Nations of the Canadian province of Québec . They belong to the Mi'kmaq , an Indian group in the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada. They have been living on the Gaspé Peninsula since the 16th century at the latest; their missionary work took place at the end of the third quarter of the 17th century by Franciscan recollections . They were not given a reservation and therefore live in Montréal and Gespeg . The responsible ministry recognizes almost 530 people as members of the tribe. The Mi'kmaq call their traditional territory Mi'gma'gi, the Gespeg lived in the seventh district, which is called Gespegeoag.

history

The seven districts of the Mi'kmaq

The Mi'kmaq of Gespeg settled in the 16th century in the east of the Gaspé peninsula on the Gulf of Saint Lawrence . They were one of the three Mi'kmaq groups in the region. Their staple foods included Atlantic salmon , lobster , shrimp .

mission

By 1675, the inhabitants of the village of Gespeg had been in contact with the French in the region for several decades. Around this time the recollect priest Chrestien Le Clercq (1655 - after 1700) from Flanders began to evangelize with the local Mi'kmaq . Although he was not very successful, he left a description of the circumstances he had encountered.

In 1675 he was designated for the mission in Canada. Emmanuel Jumeau accompanied him from his likely birthplace of Bapaume . On October 27, he reached Percé on the Gaspé Peninsula. It was there in 1672 that Hilarion Guénin and Exupère Dethunes began their mission. Le Clercq went to the Mi'kmaq, whom he called "Gaspésiens". He had learned their language only a little, but was soon able to compose a dictionary to assist future missionaries. He went to the Mi'kmaq of Restigouche in 1676, then to Nipisiguit (Bathurst (New Brunswick) | Bathurst). In early 1677 he went to Miramichi near Chatham . He would have almost starved to death and frozen to death had it not been for Mi'kmaq, who wore crosses on their clothing, an apparition about which the recollects made various speculations. Le Clercq simply called it 'Porte-Croix' ('cross-bearer') - as far as we know today, it was more of a totem bird with spread wings. From 1678 to 1680 he left the Mi'kmaq because of a crisis of meaning, but then returned - but from then on he was allowed to spend the winter in Québec. In 1681 he returned temporarily to France and became a priest of Governor Buade de Frontenac . He was probably not back with the Mi'kmaq until 1682, and finally left them in 1686.

In 1691 his report Nouvelle Relation de la Gaspésie was published in Paris , and again in Lyon in 1692 . His order had already introduced the principle in 1615 that the priests should report in detail; the Jesuits later followed this example. The report is exclusively devoted to the Mi'kmaq of the Gaspésie, a term he first introduced. In it he deals with the origin of the Mi'kmaq, then birth, clothing and jewelry, housing, nutrition, language and religion, belief and superstition, rule, rules and laws, marriage, war, hunting, celebrations and dances, disease and death.

His second work was entitled Premier établissement de la foy dans la Nouvelle-France in 1691 , in the same year it was published under Établissement de la Foy , and finally it was called Histoire des colonies francaises in a new edition the following year .

Recognition as an Indian tribe, reservation issue

In 2008 Linda Jean Simon was chief of the Indian tribe recognized by the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development in 1972 ; she was followed in 2011 by Claude Jeannotte. The tribe has no territory available, so that around three fifths of the relatives live in Gespeg and two fifths in Montréal . The Ministry recognized exactly 527 people as belonging to the Micmac de Gespeg nation in October 2011. In 2013 there were 808. In July 2014, 708 people were recognized as First Nation.

The history of the missionary work by Le Clercq from 1675 onwards gave rise to an attempt to present the lifestyle of the time in a museum, the Site d'interprétation de la culture Micmac de Gespeg .

See also

• History of Québec
• First Nations history

source

• Chrestien Le Clercq: Nouvelle relation de la Gaspésie , Paris 1791.

Web links

• At Gespeg in the year 1675 , archive.org, November 16, 2013
• Website from 2008 ( memento from September 19, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) as a subpage of the Tribal Council (archive.org)

Remarks

1. ^ Digitized version of the Paris edition of 1691 .
2. ^ Digitized version of the 1691 edition .
3. ↑ digitized version .
4. ↑ According to information from the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, First Nations Profiles, La Nation Micmac de Gespeg ( Memento of the original from March 1, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ^ Aboriginal Portal Canada .