Home to Mi’kma’ki


More than 500 Mi’kmaw items in the NMAI collection are destined for a new museum in Nova Scotia


By Anne Bolen


The Kluskap Cave, named for a Mi’kmaw hero, towers over this beach on the north coast of Cape Breton in Nova Scotia.


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n the north coast of Nova Scotia is a cave known to the Mi’kmaw people of Canada as the center of the uni- verse. Tucked into a rocky cliff above a remote beach


off Cape Breton, this portal is where the Mi’kmaw cultural hero Kluskap walked from this world into the next. Getting to this sacred place is a difficult trek. One must scramble down a steep ravine, traverse a stream and then scale a cliff to reach it, yet many still choose to make the pilgrimage. “It challenges you physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually,” said Clifford Paul, a Mi’kmaw wildlife manager at the Unama’ki Institute of Natural Resources. But, he said, “Once you get there, you feel that you have walked the path of your ancestors.” That connection to homeland, or Mi’kma’ki, and to each


other, or Lnu’k, is at the core of Mi’kmaw worldview. Tan- gible items such as a basket a grandmother decorated with sweetgrass, a cradleboard that carried a great aunt or even the tool that an uncle used to carve a wooden figure can serve as a bridge between these Indigenous peoples and their ancestors.


WINTER 2022 AMERICAN INDIAN


PHOTO COURTESY OF THE MI’KMAWEY DEBERT CULTURAL CENTRE


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