S4: Shanawdithit

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Tämä on kyl, että Canada on hienoa. Tämä on kyl, ja näin järjestelmää. Helijä. Helijä on. Tää on kyllä, että näin kyl, että äistää kyl, että seuraavaa seuraavasti. Tämä on kyl, että näin järjestelmässä. Tämä on hienoa ilman edelleen. Ja, seuraavaa seuraavaa. Tämä on nyt järjestelmässä, ja näin järjestelmässä, että näin järjestelmässä, ja hän on kyl, että hän on hienoa. Tämä on kyl, että hän on hienoa, mutta hän on hienoa ilman edelleen. Hän on hienoa ilman edelleen. Ja seuraavaksi, että hän on hienoa ilman edelleen. Halijaa, että hän on hienoa ilman edelleen. Ja, seuraavaksi. Ja seuraavaksi Daniel Day Lewis. Ja, seuraavaksi. Ja, seuraavaksi. Ja seuraavaksi. Ja seuraavaksi. Ja seuraavaksi. Ja, seuraavaksi. Ja seuraavaksi. Daniel Day Lewis, joo, joten hän on hienoa ilman edelleen. Ja seuraavaksi. Ja seuraavaksi. Ja seuraavaksi. So that ending is an Indigenous man standing at the edge of a mountain with Daniel Day-Lewis. Madeline Stow, for some reason. Our resident historian on the show, Andrea, brought up a really good point that this film actually combines the two big myths. White man goes quote-unquote note, and the other one is the kidnapped white woman. She said, "In both instances, the white person assimilates into the Indigenous culture and finds it superior, and then are very reluctant to return to European society, and almost always end up teaching other white people some big lesson that they learned." And so, thank goodness Daniel Day-Lewis and Madeline Stow make it out alive. What a big surprise. Of course Madeline Stow would live. Of course. But in the real world, the Stockbridge Muncie Band of Mohican Indians are alive and well, but yeah, that is a longstanding mythic tale, the myth of disappearing Indigenous people, and one that is really taken hold when you read about the Bioffic people. So, let's talk about the most common story of the Bioffic and Shana Dithet. Right. If you look up the Bioffic on the Canadian Encyclopedia, it starts with, "Bioffic," meaning, the people or true people in their language, were the now extinct inhabitants of Newfoundland. At the time of European contact, they may have numbered no more than 500 to 1000. Their population is difficult to estimate, owing to a reduction in their territories in the early contact period, and the absence of surviving documentation. So, based on the emails that people have sent us, I think this is the common belief because many people ask us about the disappearance of the Bioffic, the thought that is after contact, they were all decimated or disappeared. Yes. And here is a bit on Shana Dithet also from the Canadian Encyclopedia. Shana Dithet, also known as Nance or Nancy April, the last Bioffic, born circa 1800, in what is now Newfoundland, died 6th of June 1829 in St. John's Newfoundland. Shana Dithet's record of Bioffic culture continues to shape modern understandings of her people. So, that too is also the wide-held belief about her that she was the last, you know, she died in her 20s, and just FYI, we're not picking on Canadian Encyclopedia here because these articles are very long actually, and they have a much more detailed nuanced account of it. But these intros, I think, are just good examples of how, you know, the kind of standard kind of information you'll find about this with a quick Google search. Yes. But, you know, there are many indigenous and non-indigenous scholars, historians, and artists, that maintain that this is a Western romanticization of what may have happened. Well, it's, you know, this is the ever, the challenge in indigenous country is the population wants to think of us as Beads and Boxkin. The population wants to think of us as a disappeared people. And, you know, valorizing Shana Dithet makes that easier. It's like, oh, yeah, too bad. You know, the last of the biotic people, now there are no indigenous people. When in reality, we are everywhere. We are doing everything. "Event Nidigenikas, Gidaganzi Bnon Gondjaba." My name is Yvette Nolan. My people are from Gidaganzi B. Elgonklin First Nation. My father is Irish off the boat. And I am a playwright, director, dramaturg, and apparently the breadest. So obviously, we needed to talk to Yvette about this. If you listen to our credits and you should, go all the way to the end. Yeah, don't do that thing. Don't you do that thing? Don't you? Do not stop at the, what you think is the end. Anyway, Yvette Nolan is our story editor. We've known Yvette for a really long time. Yes. We've known Yvette for a very long time. Really long time. Yvette wrote the libretto for an opera about Shana Dithet. You called her up to see what she learned about the biotic people and Shana Dithet in the process of making that show. I did. I did. The show that she was working on was co-produced by tapestry opera in Toronto and opera on the Avalon in Newfoundland. And Yvette and composer Dean Burry spent a long time researching the biotic. So she knows so much. But the first thing I actually wanted to know was what she knew about this story before they started researching. Well, Lija. Canada, a people's history. Do you remember that series from the CBC back in the day? The very opening shot was of Shana Dithet the last of the biotic. So it is part of the Canadian sort of mythology, right? She was a scullary maid in the Newfoundland Outport of exploit's bay, but she held the key to a great mystery. She had been found lost and starving in the winter woods. Her family was dead. The white people gave her shelter and nursed her back to health. The settlers named her Nancy, but she called herself Shana Dithet. They knew she was a biotic Indian, but nothing more. Where were the rest of her people? The biotic had always been mysterious. The early European fishermen called them the Red Indians because they painted masks of ochre on their faces. But when the first white settlers came to Newfoundland, the biotic moved deep into the interior away from the newcomers. For decades there was hardly any content. Then, Shona Dithet was found. It was as if Shona Dithet had stumbled out of a land of ghosts. Yeah, like everybody else on this land that we currently call Canada, I receive the same history, which was the biothic where the people of Newfoundland who were exterminated by colonization first to go. Now, when we did the story of the story about Shona Dithet, we talked to a lot of, because there are no biothic elders, no biothic knowledge keepers, because of this story of how the biothic have disappeared. The closest relation we had was the Migma people, both the Migma people of Newfoundland and the Migma people in the Atlantic provinces. And we brought a lot of those artists on to the project. And they maintained that the biothic bloodline goes on, because the Migma and the biothic intermarried. We're trading partners, lived next door to each other. And because part of the story is when Shona Dithet got split off from her people, some of them went around the lake and continued on, and we don't know where those people went to. A big part of this story is really about how the biothic were written about, versus the oral accounts of what may have happened to them. We'll look into that after the break. Okay, so there are millions of podcasts, and maybe you're cool to stick with the ones you already know you like. But if you're just a little paranoid about missing out on the best new stuff, we can help. Every other Thursday, the Sounds Good newsletter will bring you one must-hear show from CBC podcasts. And because we're true audio nerds, we'll also tell you about shows that we love that we didn't make. Go to CBC.ca/SoundsGood to subscribe. We hope that you'll be able to make a lot of progress in the future, and that you'll be able to make a lot of progress in the future. If you're a shopkeeper, you'll be able to make a lot of progress in the future. You'll be able to make a lot of progress in the future. Go to the shopkeeper, shopkeeper, and then you'll be able to make a lot of progress in the future. Okay, so let's talk about the complexities of this story. This is the complicated thing about history, and the thing that we keep coming back to on this show, you know, that there are many types of historical accounts, oral and written, and often in Canadian contexts, the written seems to overshadow the oral stories, which is an indigenous way of record keeping. Right. And when it comes to Shawna Dithet and the Biothic, a lot of the earliest writings are by European men. There was this guy named William Kormack, who ended up writing a lot about the Biothic, and he was very determined to find them or find out what had happened to them. And this research method that he was doing is now known as salvage ethnography. So this method, it revolves really around the idea that indigenous peoples were going extinct. And so it was up to the white people to preserve as much of the knowledge and their way of life as possible. It's very problematic, obviously, but it's also complicated now by the fact that some of these records are now very valuable pieces in recovering histories. But they're only one part of the puzzle, right? It's good to remember who wrote it and who was documenting this. A vet recommended this great book called Tracing Okre, changing perspectives on the Biothic. It has writings from both indigenous and non-indigenous scholars. And it goes beyond the main story we have all heard. In it, they found that Shawna Dithet's mother and two of her siblings were killed in 1818. A year later, she watched her uncle get killed and her aunt kidnapped. She was also shot at and injured twice and all of this may have forced her relationship with Europeans so that she could decrease the harm that had come to her and her family. Eventually, she and another sister and her adoptive mother were captured and only Shawna Dithet survived and then was made to live as a maid to a settler family. She was forced to work as a servant for the next several years until 1828, when she was sent to St. John's by the Biothic Institute. This was an organization set up by William Kormack. He wanted to find out more about the Biothic and establish good relationships and he was under the assumption that she was the last Biothic. This goes back to the idea of salvage ethnography you were talking about. And so he moved her into his house so he could document what she remembered. It's hard, right? All of the writing we have about her is from the European gaze. And we have some of that writing from the period, but of course a man in 1822 is different from a man in, you know, 2022. William Kormack had this one indigenous woman in his care and couldn't find anyone else. She must be the last Biothic and the whole purpose of his exploration was to come back to St. John's and start the Biothic Institute where he would have hold all of this knowledge, but he didn't find anybody, you know, tales told or like they didn't want anything to do with the white folks anyway. And so they just kept moving out of the way and why would they the colonizers were killing the indigenous folks for all the usual reasons. So no wonder that Biothic people were trying to get get out of, you know, the rapidly colonizing St. John's Newfoundland. Like a vet said, there are Migma people who maintain there was intermarriage. There are accounts of other people talking about their Biothic relatives or parents years after Shana Dith is passing. There is also an account in the book I mentioned that says that Kormack hired a Migma guy to find the Biothic and the Migma oral history suggests Kormack may have been led away from the Biothic people on purpose. And I think at some point she, you know, she may even have been like, I'm not, I'm not going back out there because I don't want to lead the white guys to my people. I mean, I'm sure she could find them. She seemed to be quite the wayfinder with her maps and everything, but she was also sick. You know, she had tuberculosis. She didn't live very long, but I think I think there are, of course, there still be off at bloodline that goes on. And then who knows what happened to those people who went around the lake. Like if you don't want to be found, maybe, you know, we always indigenous people have always merged with other groups in order to keep our, in order to keep ourselves surviving. We have, we've always done that. We've always joined with other groups. And that could well have happened to those, those Biothic's who went around the lake and left Shana Dithibind. And speaking of what she left behind. Yeah, it's actually incredible. You can, you can find all her sketches and maps online. I really took to the fact that she drew both the really complicated things like these complex maps, but also the simple everyday things like what the cups look like that they used, you know, how the buckets for water were constructed, things like that. I asked of it, which ones stood out for her? All of them. I mean, I, there's so few of them and I was so profoundly involved in them. What's amazing about them is she drew maps of her territory as if she were a bird. And so she drew a map of the lake. And then she drew all the people in like this is the where my people were going. And this is the white man following them. And this is where this, this, these women were killed. And this is where they went. She drew it, but there's astonishing to me. How did she, how could she see that from the ground? It's not like she had a drone. It's not like the trees were tall enough, but she could see the whole picture in her mind's eye, which that is astonishing to me. Shauna Dith at the Opera premiered in 2019, Marion Newman, who is coagula, Stolo, English, Irish and Scottish, played the lead role in that production. Marion actually hosts Saturday afternoon at the Opera on CBC Music. And it was a beautiful collaboration between indigenous and Canadian artists to give voice to Shauna Dithet. The looking back at Shauna Dithet, I don't want to disappear in her. The whole opera was made to make her reappear to keep her in, but to keep her in our minds as a living, breathing person and not a statue. Not someone who was silent, not someone who was without agency, but as someone who lived, who had family, who made choices, who made art. That was the purpose of the opera, and I think if we just try and think of indigenous people as statues or on horses or in teapies, we can't move forward. And isn't that what we're all talking about right now, moving forward? (gentle music) And that's a wrap on season four. Thanks to all the people who spoke to us and contributed this year, we could not have done this without you. Thank you listeners for listening, thank you everyone for tuning in. We really, really appreciate it. The Secret Life of Canada was recorded in Jotjage, also known as Montreal, the territory of the Gnokkahaga and Toronto, on the traditional lands of the Haudenosaunee Wendat and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit. This episode was written, hosted and produced by me, Leah Simone Bowen and me, Phalen Johnson, research assistance by Andrea Eidinger, story editing by Vett Nolan, with mixing and sound designed by Braden Alexander. Our digital producer is Rochene Nyer, senior producers Tina Verma and Arif Nourani is the director of CBC podcast. Our logo is by Bada Wogan, illustration and design. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca/podcasts.