P.E.I. national historic site recognizes Mi'kmaq history

A national historic site on Prince Edward Island now wears three names; English, French, and Mi’kmaq.

The land near Rocky Point, P.E.I., just across the harbour from Charlottetown, has had many names over the years, Skmaqn, Port-la-Joye, and Fort Amherst.

The oldest of the names is the last to be recognized by the federal government.

The name plaque officially recognizing Skmaqn, was unveiled at a ceremony Friday morning.

The chief of Abegweit First Nation was on hand, and he called it an act of reconciliation.

“It’s the truth. It is an accurate snapshot of history, and that’s all it is,” said Chief Rod Gould Jr., Abegweit First Nation. “It’s not creating something that hasn’t existed. We’ve always been here.”

Alongside the name, the park now has a new interpretive display, which the project manager says takes the Mi’kmaq out of the past.

“So it’s not just, ‘they were here, then the French came and they went away,’ it was more like, ‘the French and Mi’kmaq continued to interact, and life continued,’ so the stories are interwoven through time,” said Barb MacDonald, Parks Canada project manager of Special Initiatives.

Chief Gould said the recognition of the Mi’kmaq is an important step forward.

“We are the first people. We are part of, this is Mi’kmaq’ki. This is where our ancestors were here for a long, long time, and just to have that acknowledgement puts us in a good place where we can have a good discussion moving forward,” said Gould.

Like much of the island, this is a place touched by many people from different cultures across hundreds of years, and the hope is this will make that history a little clearer for people visiting the park.

The new name and interpretive panels are part of a new Canada-wide effort to show the full history of places around the country, from the first people of the areas all the way up to the modern day. 

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