Kluscap Mountain and Chapel Island: Sacred Sites of the Mi’kmaq

Long before Gaelic legends took their place amidst Cape Breton’s craggy hills and swirling mists, the Mi’kmaq laid claim to the spiritual power of the island’s rugged landscape.

On the finger of land that stretches northeast of Baddeck, between the Great Bras d’Or Channel and St. Ann’s Bay, Kelly’s Mountain – known as Kluscap, or Gluskap Mountain to the Mi’kmaq – rises 300 metres above the ocean. According to Mi’kmaq legend, the great prophet Kluscap (or “Glooscap”) once dwelled on the mountain and will one day return. A late 1980’s proposal to develop a quarry on the mountain’s west slope was met with opposition from both First Nations groups and conservationists, who have called on the province of Nova Scotia to provide protected area status to the sacred site.

Chapel Island, known as Mniku to the Mi’kmaq, lies at the southwest end of the Bras d’Or Lakes near the on-shore Chapel Island Reserve. The island is an ancient Mi’kmaq meeting place and is the site of Abbé Maillard’s 18th century Catholic ministry. Maillard is credited with building the Chapel Island’s first church in 1754. The island has served as a place of Catholic pilgrimage and is the home of the annual St. Anne’s Mission, a ceremony held on the last weekend of July. The Procession of St. Anne continues a tradition dating back to the conversion of Mi’kmaq Grand Chief Membertou in 1610, in which a yearly review by the Mi’kmaq Grand Council, or Sante’ Mawio’mi is combined with a worship service, celebrations and feasting.

The Centralization Years

In the early 1940’s, the Mi’kmaq community of Eskasoni, on the north shore of the Bras d’Or Lakes’ East Bay, experienced a sudden explosion in population, as the Nova Scotia Department of Indian Affairs began implementing a Mi’kmaq reserve centralization program. Officially, the program was designed to reduce costs associated with the administration of many small reserves, and to improve the living conditions and economic opportunities of the province’s First Nations.

Opponents of the program protested the uprooting of established communities, questioned the effect of forced consolidation on the Mi’kmaq culture and suggested that the government policy had undertones of racism. Nevertheless, many Mi’kmaq were moved to Eskasoni, in Cape Breton, and Shubenacadie, in central Nova Scotia. In some cases, abandoned homes were destroyed in order to prevent the return of former residents.

Although those who moved were promised jobs, good housing and better access to medical and recreational services, overcrowded living conditions and unemployment plagued the centralized communities. By the 1950’s, it was apparent that the centralization policy had failed. Local Mi’kmaq Band Councils began to take control of their own affairs, and a new approach to First Nations reserves was gradually adopted. There are now 13 Mi’kmaq First Nation reserves in the province of Nova Scotia.