A Thought-Exercise in Decolonization: Reflections from a Mi'kmaw Historian Revisiting the Acadiensis Readers

A Thought-Exercise in Decolonization:Reflections from a Mi'kmaw Historian Revisiting the Acadiensis Readers Mercedes Peters (bio) THIS COMMENTARY IS ALMOST A YEAR-AND-A-HALF in the making. It began with an email inquiry about whether or not I would be interested in doing a Mi'kmaw historian's reading of a set of readers Acadiensis published in the early 1990s. I am currently training as a historian in an era where more scholars than ever are considering what it means to do scholarship that breaks down the oppressive structures that have shaped the academy for generations before us, and, at the same time, my lived experiences as a Mi'kmaw woman shape my work. So, in the original plan, I was going to write a commentary on what The Atlantic Region to Confederation and The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation looked like through the eyes of a historian using a decolonizing lens.1 Before I get into what I mean by decolonization in the context of scholarly writing, I think it is important to explain why this forum piece took over a year to produce because, in an almost serendipitous way, it was the extra time I spent thinking about this commentary that allowed it to morph into what it eventually became. This is still, in part, a commentary on the Acadiensis readers I was initially asked to review, but more than that it is an attempt to make transparent the kinds of collaborative thought-work and action that must go into decolonizing scholarship in general and in the Atlantic Region specifically (Mi'kma'ki/Mi'gma'gi, Nitassinan, Nunatsiavut, Peskotomuhkati, and Wəlastəkwihkok). This is by no means a definitive or prescriptive discussion about how we could decolonize writing histories in and about this region, nor is it a piece that simply asks for more representation of Indigenous peoples in our field. Instead, in the little space I do have, I want to start a conversation by asking questions [End Page 115] of those who do history – or any scholarship, for that matter – in and about the "Atlantic Region" however one might define it.2 Decolonization, despite a prefix that denotes a closure of, or a moving away from, is a remarkably generative process that necessitates a collaborative effort of learning, unlearning, and thinking beyond the colonial boundaries our discipline has set for us. To demonstrate this, at least on a smaller scale, I have set up this forum piece as a kind of collaboration. At the core of my commentary sits three conversations I had with three brilliant historians doing work on the Atlantic Region: Harvey Amani Whitfield, Natasha Simon, and Thomas Peace. Each conversation ended up centering around a key theme that got me thinking not as much about the original Acadiensis readers as I did about the possibilities inherent in a new generation of readers. What follows is an overview of how these conversations shaped my own thinking about how colonialism has impacted Atlantic Region historiographical projects, and what it would look like to embark on a rewriting of this region's history in a way that refuses the colonial boundaries that have shaped it. The pandemic's impact What the isolation that came with COVID-19 offered was a seemingly endless time to think, something that is not always beneficial to someone trying to fit their thoughts into a three-to-four-thousand-word piece. At the same time as we reckoned with the inequalities in our societies that the pandemic fed upon and made worse, this year also presented an inescapable barrage of colonial violence that made focusing and existing as an Indigenous woman in the academy exhausting beyond words. This experience is not isolated to 2020 and 2021, but there was something about the lack of interaction with our usual support networks that made it particularly grueling. When I began writing this back in October of 2020, I watched live from my home in Vancouver as RCMP officers, DFO officials, and settler fishers launched attacks on Mi'kmaw lobster fishers from Sipekne'katik First Nation for exercising treaty rights. I took [End Page 116] off for home, hoping to be...

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