Mi’kmaq Photographs

posted by Rosina Plumley, July 17, 2019

Two or three years ago I came across these beautiful and evocative enlargements of personal and family photos pasted on utility boxes in Riverview, New Brunswick. I heard that similar images had been put up one night several months earlier in Moncton’s downtown area. Apparently those were torn down immediately by municipal authorities. Presumably the enlargements that can be seen in the images below were spared because the utility companies on whose boxes they were posted chose to take no action.

Moncton and Riverview are part of “the traditional unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq Peoples. This territory is covered by the ‘Treaties of Peace and Friendship’ which Wəlastəkwiyik (Maliseet), Mi’kmaq and Passamaquoddy Peoples first signed with the British Crown in 1726. The treaties did not deal with surrender of lands and resources but in fact recognized Mi’kmaq and Wəlastəkwiyik (Maliseet) title and established the rules for what was to be an ongoing relationship between nations.” (CAUT)

The photo enlargements were striking because they were not treated as art by being put on display in a gallery. They are not anthropological depictions of Native people meant to be viewed by the immigrant community. They are everything that art is not.

Instead, the enlarged images were taken by non-artists and the subjects appear to be family and friends. By posting the enlargements, the people in the images – in a way – repopulated the area where Mi’kmaq people have lived for tens of thousands of years. Individuals and families living daily life on their own land. Reclaiming it.

The photo enlargements were without pretension. They were not art striving for permanence and staking a claim to be beyond nature. Instead, the enlargements were subject to the elements, fading, dissolving in the rain. Accepting and respecting nature and not attempting to deny it.

Sadly, in the months following the day I took the photographs below, I noticed that the posted enlargements were subject to something else. It appeared that they were being scraped off by unknown people. Presumably individuals from the mostly white population who for some reason harbour hostility to Natives and wish to expunge even images of them from Native land. A predictable outcome in line with Native history.