Lost and Stolen: Finding Real Ancestry in Europe
I am not a historian. I miss the trees for the forest. The details escape me, sometimes. But I have ancestors, just like you. Just like me. And they are listening. As a person of Northwestern European and Mi'kmaq descent, I have parallel searches for history running, always on my mind. On my rarely-cleared browser. The Mi'kmaq ancestry was kept a secret, my grandmother always unsure of where she came from. She too, kept quiet. But the the stories behind the documents, the pictures, have begun to pour. Grandma's childhood unfolds before my ears. I sit on the line between family history and embodied identity, afraid to tip the wrong way. She promises we'll make bannocks soon. Just like her mother. Just like her grandmother. But Settler identity is what I've known, and still what I will always carry. Longing for traditions, for spiritual belonging, I declared myself Wiccan at age nine. The Neo-Pagan religion blends several northwestern folk spiritual belief...