Many people love Sperry’s Beach and the warm shallow water there that lets you wade across the mouth of the Petite Rivière when the tide is right and connect to the Risser’s Beach boardwalk. You may not know, however, that as you do that, you are only a few hundred feet away from a sacred Mi’kmaw burial ground.
While both oral evidence and colonial records attest to the continuous presence of the Mi’kmaq throughout so-called Lunenburg County, it took the sustained advocacy of Elder Ellen Hunt (1952–2024) to have Mi’kmaw burial grounds in the County recognized, preserved, and commemorated. The Mi’kmaq people—and local settler families—always knew about the sacred burial ground. In the 1980s, Ella Marguerite Letson of Port Medway recalled that the Mi’kmaq from the area:
buried their dead in Petite Rivière, and my aunt said she could remember them chanting as they rowed down the [Medway] river. They went to Great Island, and there was what they call a carry-over, or a portage, and then they took and walked on the other side and then rowed to Petite Rivière, where they buried their dead…
During the twentieth century, however, the burial site was robbed, artifacts were stolen, and the site was even razed by the landowner, so that no stones remain. The landowner’s descendants, however, disagreed with how the site had been treated, and agreed to allow access and commemoration.
A small group was formed, including Elder Hunt and the late Elder Daniel Paul, to restore and preserve Mi’kmaw burial sites: The Mi’kmaw Burial Grounds Research and Restoration Association. In 2008, a monument commemorating “Mi’kmaw and Acadian ancestors buried at this site” was blessed and dedicated in Petite Rivière. Of course, there are many other Mi’kmaw burial grounds throughout the County, including in Mahone Bay and Lunenburg.
Thanks to Elder Hunt’s work, those in Bridgewater and Indian Point (unsurprisingly, this community between Mahone Bay and Martin’s Point is one of many so named, attesting to the omnipresence of the Mi’kmaq at the time of contact) are now commemorated with similar monuments. The Bridgewater site is at the back edge of the St. Joseph’s Catholic cemetery on St. Phillips St, and the Indian Point graveyard (so well-known that M. B. DesBrisay described it in his History of the County of Lunenburg) though it has since been destroyed by developers, is commemorated at the very end of Indian Point Rd before it turns into a private drive.
How to get there:
Drive down Drew Hill’s Rd and park at the beach parking lot. Follow the footpath along the water south for about 500ft, until you see a small gate at the treeline, leading to a fenced-in clearing with the memorial stone.
Further reading:
Ellen Hunt and Margaret Knickle, My Ancestors Live Here (Formac, 2024)
Janet E. Chute, Muiwlanej kikamaqki / Honouring Our Ancestors: Mi’kmaq Who Left a Mark on the History of the Northeast, 1680 to 1980 (University of Toronto Press, 2023)
James (Sa’ke’j) Youngblood Henderson, The Mi’kmaw Concordat (Fernwood Publishing, 1997)
Daniel N. Paul, We Were Not the Savages (Fernwood Publishing, 2022 [1993])
William C. Wicken, The Colonization of Mi’kmaw Memory and History, 1794-1928 (University of Toronto Press, 2012)
Ruth Holmes Whitehead, The Old Man Told Us: Excerpts from Mi’kmaw History, 1500-1950 (Nimbus, 2015 [1991])
Jay Lalonde is a local resident and a historian.
