Constructing a Sacred Chronology: How the Nova Scotian Institute of Science Made the Mi’kmaq a People without Prehistory
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the Mi’kmaq were the focus of two moments in the development of the public sphere in the British settler colony of Nova Scotia. One moment saw concern for the Mi’kmaq’s welfare increase and the focus of that concern become fixed on “civilizing” through assimilation. Another was a growing scientific curiosity expressed through the founding of intellectual organizations such the Nova Scotian Institute of Science, and often at odds with prevailing religious beliefs, which adhered to the “sacred chronology” of the Bible. These moments converged in the addresses on cultural history made by members of the Nova Scotian Institute of Science between 1864 and 1912. The interpretations offered by the institute’s members demonstrate an increasing separation of the contemporary Mi’kmaq from the precontact past of the province, thus constructing a chronology that—if not biblically sacred—was sacrosanct to the narrative of progress that underlay the settler project in Nova Scotia.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.024 | 0.017 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".