In 2024, I collaborated with Elders Ramona Nicholas and Gina Brooks in support of new work by the brilliant Mi’kmaq porcupine quill artist Tara Francis. This new work from Tara — titled oetjgoa’tigemg, meaning the time that has passed up until now — was reported on in the UNB Newsroom in an excellent story by Kayla Cormier, which you can read in its entirety at this link. Thanks to the Faculty of Arts at UNB in Saint John for commissioning this project.

“Dr. Rachel Bryant, in collaboration with Elder Ramona Nicholas, sourced the historical documents about the Menahkwesk harbour for this commission. She spoke about the importance of Tara’s piece for bringing this history back into our collective consciousness.

‘Here in Saint John, we often think we’ve totally paved over and replaced all that history… We forget the island. We forget the village. We forget the whales. We forget the turtles.’

Despite being embedded in French and Scottish colonial documents, there are stories to be told about this island.

‘Tara’s piece shares this Wabanaki story,’ said Dr. Bryant. ‘I have stories in these documents too—that’s the colonial part.’

She credits Elder Ramona’s scholarship for helping her conceptualize the idea that, in every historical document from this territory, there is a boundary between non-Indigenous and Indigenous Peoples.

‘I am grateful to be able to help pull this information out from these violent contexts and to work with artists like Tara, who can then tell this story in a way that’s beautiful… and removed from those colonial contexts. Now this history is accessible to Wabanaki students in a way that’s not going to hurt them,’ she said.

‘It’s important for Indigenous students to see reflections of themselves and their ancestors on campus. And for settlers to always remember whose land this is and how we got here. To feel connection to these histories and to one another.’