Daniel N. Paul facts for kids

Daniel Nicholas Paul, CM ONS, (December 5, 1938 – June 27, 2023) was a Miꞌkmaq elder, author, columnist, and human rights activist. Paul was perhaps best known as the author of the book We Were Not the Savages. Paul asserts that this book is the first such history ever written by a First Nations citizen. The book is seen as an important contribution to the North American Indian movement. One writer stated, "It's a Canadian version of Dee Brown's bestseller Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and, as such, served a valuable purpose in raising public consciousness about Miꞌkmaq history, identity, and culture."

Among his many awards, Paul was conferred with the Order of Canada (2005) and the Order of Nova Scotia (2002). He received from Université Sainte-Anne an honorary Doctor of Letters degree (1997). He had an honorary law degree from Dalhousie University (2013) and was the recipient of the Grand Chief Donald Marshall Memorial Elder Award (2007). He states: "High among the most appreciated honours that I've received during my career are the dozens of small items, Eagle Feathers, tobacco pouches, letters, mugs, etc., given and sent to me by students as thanks for helping them better understand the importance of according all Peoples human dignity and respect." During his active career, he has visited and lectured at most high schools, junior high schools, and elementary schools in Nova Scotia, several out of province, all universities in the Maritimes and at many others elsewhere in Canada and the United States of America. His brother Lawrence Paul is the former long-serving chief of Millbrook First Nation (1984-2012).

Life

Prior to Paul's birth, his parents Sarah Agnes, née Noel, and William Gabriel were relocated from Saint John, New Brunswick, to Indian Brook 14, Nova Scotia. Paul was born at Indian Brook, the eleventh of fourteen children. During his childhood, he earned money through selling the Star Weekly, Liberty Magazine, seeds, and greeting cards, and painted the interior of houses. He married the love of his life, Victoria (Pat) Oakley, and had three children.

He attended the Indian Day School on Shubenacadie Indian Reserve to grade eight. He left home for Boston when he was fourteen and came face to face with the oddities of big-time city life for the first time. He laughs at his first memories of the adventure, saying good morning to all he encountered on the street and being fascinated by bag ladies (elderly women who lived on the streets with their possession in shopping bags). He returned to Nova Scotia in 1960 to attend Success Business College in Truro. He is mainly self-educated and asserts that he has at least a Masters from the University of Life, possibly a Ph.D.

Paul's personal web site lists his occupations since age 22, beginning as an accounts clerk in 1961 and employed by the Canadian department of Indian Affairs 1971-1986. From 1981 to 1986 he was the department's Nova Scotia District Superintendent of Lands, Revenues, Trusts, and Statutory Requirements.

A community activist, he was the founding Executive Director of the Confederacy of Mainland Micmacs (CMM) from 1986 to 1994, and while in this position, initiated fundraising for a new community centre for the Indian Brook Reserve and founded and published the Micmac/Maliseet Nations News. In addition to publishing duties he initially wrote editorials for the paper and much of its copy. During his tenure at CMM, Paul also started a trust fund for the Confederacy, which would support financing legal issues for the six bands associated with the organization. His leadership helped resolve the Afton Band's 170-year-old treaty claim to old Summerside property. In addition, he worked to resolve land claims for the Pictou Landing Band. He has served on the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission and on the Nova Scotia Department of Justice's Court Restructuring Task Force, among other provincial commissions, as a justice of the peace for the province, and has been a member of the Nova Scotia Police Review Board for over 20 years. He has also written bi-weekly op-eds for the Halifax Chronicle Herald newspaper.

On January 14, 2000, he received a millennium award from the city of Halifax for his contributions. In 2001, Paul was involved with a CBC documentary entitled Growing Up Native, and in Bear Paw Productions' (Eastern Tide's) Expulsion and the Bounty Hunter.

Author

Paul has written numerous articles in newspapers and academic journals. He has written chapters for several books - two editions of the Mi'kmaq Anthology, Dawnland Voices, Living Treaties, Nova Scotia - Visions of the Future, and Power and Resistance. His novel Lightning Bolt will be published 2017 and his biography by Jon Tattrie. His most well-known work is We Were Not the Savages, which is now in its third edition. Paul is critical of colonial historical accounts of the Mi’kmaq people.

We Were Not the Savages

In Paul's book, he addresses numerous issues. One of these is the validity of the Treaty of 1752 and the importance of Jean-Baptiste Cope in the maritime history of the Americas.

Treaty of 1752

Paul has praised Chief Jean-Baptiste Cope for negotiating the November 1752 Peace and Friendship Treaty with the Crown, "in a desperate attempt to prevent the complete annihilation of his people". According to historian William Wicken, the only written evidence connecting Cope with the treaty is his signing the treaty on behalf of ninety Mi’kmaq at Shubenacadie. Furthermore, these historians suggest no other Mi’kmaq leaders would endorse the treaty and that Cope himself tore it up six months after the treaty was ratified. The Crown did not formally renounce the Treaty until 1756.

Despite the short-term fate of the 1752 peace treaty with hostilities continuing soon afterward, some Nova Scotians continue to celebrate the signing of it annually on Treaty Day. As Paul also notes, in 1985, the Supreme Court of Canada finally affirmed and recognized its validity In this case, the Crown prosecutors argued that Cope had violated the treaty, which, in turn, made it null and void. Paul asserts, in contrast, that it was the Crown who violated the treaty - not the Mi'kmaq. In his book, Paul cites in extenso a journal entered under oath by eyewitness Anthony Casteel regarding a resumption of hostilities the following spring, and concludes by noting: "[i]n the 1980s, descendants of the [European settlers], (i.e., the Crown) attempted to nullify the Treaty of 1752 in the courts by claiming that Chief Jean Baptist Cope had violated the terms of the treaty during the Casteel incident. But they conveniently overlooked the facts that [the Crown], by their refusal to prosecute two murderers [involved in the Attack at Mocodome], [were] in clear violation of the treaty and that Chief Cope had had very little involvement in the [Casteel] affair."

See also

• Canadian Who's Who - Paul was entered in the publication in 2004