Treading lightly Walking barefoot among Keji’s petroglyphs STORY AND PHOTOS BY DARCY RHYNO
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ick Whynot stands barefoot and proud—his tattooed arms crossed— on rocks covered in messages from the past. All around him are dozens of images scratched into the exposed bedrock here on the shores of Kejimkujik National Park. This is the second largest collection of petroglyphs in Canada and a direct link between the man standing before me and his Mi’kmaw ancestors who left their marks here over the past hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. Whynot begins his tour of the Keji petroglyphs by pointing out tiny but detailed images of tall ships under sail. “I particularly love these two,” he says. “They actually took the time to put in the cannons. It’s like a Spanish galleon.” The Parks Canada tour guide is a resident of the nearby Wildcat Reserve—a member community of the Acadia First Nations band—so he feels in his bones the importance of these images. “That would have been something to behold when you’re paddling to PEI or Newfoundland in a birchbark craft, and you see a big ship like that.” As he speaks, I think of stories we tell ourselves today of UFOs and visiting aliens. Pondering the impact of strange, unidentified sailing objects by his ancestors, Whynot continues. “Those are stories you’re going to bring back and draw for people, seeing these massive ships with people on them.” He’s been living and learning the ways of his people for most of his life. He grew up hunting and trapping around the national park with his father and uncles. Another Wildcat resident, Todd Labrador, offers birchbark canoe building workshops every summer at Keji, and Whynot has participated. “I also took up knife making with my uncle,” he tells me. “Now, I do knapping. That’s taking stone and turning it into projectile points and tools.”
Top: French missionary petroglyph at Kejimkujik; Nick Whynot; Spanish galleon petroglyphs. NOVA SCOTIA
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