Medical Appropriation in the ‘Red’ Atlantic: Translating a Mi’kmaq smallpox cure in the mid-nineteenth century

This thesis answers the questions of what was travelling, how, and why, when a
\nKanien’kehaka woman living amongst the Mi’kmaq at Shubenacadie sold a remedy for
\nsmallpox to British and Haligonian colonisers in 1861. I trace the movement of the plant
\n(known as: Mqo’oqewi’k, Indian Remedy, Sarracenia purpurea, and Limonio congener) and
\nknowledges of its use from Britain back across the Atlantic. In exploring how this remedy
\ntravelled, why at this time and what contexts were included with the plant’s removal I
\nshow that rising scientific racism in the nineteenth century did not mean that Indigenous
\nmedical flora and knowledge were dismissed wholesale, as scholars like Londa Schiebinger
\nhave suggested. Instead conceptions of indigeneity were fluid, often lending authority to
\nappropriated flora and knowledge while the contexts of nineteenth-century Britain, Halifax
\nand Shubenacadie created the Sarracenia purpurea, Indian Remedy and Mqo’oqewi’k as it
\nmoved through and between these spaces. Traditional accounts of bio-prospecting argue
\nthat as Indigenous flora moved, Indigenous contexts were consistently stripped away. This
\nprocess of stripping shapes Indigenous origins as essentialised and static. Following the
\nplant backward to its apparent point of origin highlights the more complex reality.
\nThis work is undertaken within the broader framework of ‘Red’ Atlantic history,
\nthat seeks to bring complex Indigenous histories into broader accounts of medicine in the
\nAtlantic World. I will highlight that the ‘Red’ Atlantic approach, when undertaken by nonIndigenous historians, requires recognition and honesty about of the historian’s own
\nposition. This is not Indigenous history. Due to the constraints of distance, time and funding
\nI was unable to obtain testimonies from current members of the Mi’kmaq community.
\nHistories that do not include this important resource, from oral historical cultures, cannot
\nclaim to be Indigenous histories. Though revisionist, my work is informed by my position as
\na white woman educated in western academia therefore it remains “American Indian
\nhistory largely from the white perspective.”

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