Connecting Irish Travellers With the Mi'kmaq by Sandra Bunting

Connecting Irish Travellers with the Canadian Mi’kmaq
By Sandra Bunting

You may not think that Irish travellers have much in common with the New Brunswick Mi’kmaq. However, a group of academics are looking into similarities of the two groups. One of those involved in the study is Dr. Niall McElwee, a Social Science consultant living in County Galway.

Dr. McElwee became interested in the culture and languages of Canada’s First Nation people after attending a conference in Banff in 2001. The opening prayer in front of the thousand delegates was given by an Ojibwa man. Before he started he apologised in advance for not being able to say the whole prayer in his own language. This struck a chord with Dr. McElwee. In Ireland today, Irish (or Gaelic) is spoken pockets, English being the dominant language. The irony was not lost on him that the Irish had contributed to the loss of First Nation language through their running of residential schools in Canada.

That event in the west of the country started him on a journey to examine his own Irishness and explore connections between Canada’s First Nation and Ireland’s Traveller Community. In previous work and study, McElwee was surprised that the world’s top scholars in the field of Child and Youth in Social Science knew nothing about Irish Travellers although they were familiar with the different communities of First Nation people.

Dr. McElwee became interested in Canada long before he first went there. His Aunt Norma, a journalist, lived in Vancouver for about 25 years before moving to London, and used to send him literature and information on first nation peoples. After studying English, politics and Sociology at NUI, Galway, McElwee went on to complete a PhD in Youth and Child Care in Cork. In 1992 he worked with residential childcare, prostitution issues, Travellers and manned a student help line. As the editor of the Irish Journal of Applied Social Studies, he received one or two articles from Canada and formed connections with the University of Victoria, the University of Alberta and the New Brunswick Community College in Miramichi on the east coast of Canada.

It was in Miramichi that the research into connections between the Mi’kmaq and the Irish Travellers became formalised. A research team was formed with McElwee and his wife Susan McKenna forming the Irish side, interviewing First Nation Peoples in their communities (Reserves) of Big Cove, Eel Ground and Burnt Church. The interviews include participants of all ages. McElwee remembers a series of interviews with several generations of the same family. The Grandmother spoke only Mi’kmaq, her daughters spoke both Mi’kmaq and English and the children only spoke English.

In turn two researchers from New Brunswick, Margaret Sullivan and Lisa Durrett, have been documenting the lives of Travellers in Ireland. Preliminary findings are being presented to each community, not an easy task as it has to be vetted by the Native councils on one side and will go before a central Travellers’ Committee in Dublin on the other side.

The research will be collected into a book, which will include other elements such as poetry and drawings of both Travellers and First Nation Peoples, traditional stories interwoven with personal accounts of the four researchers. Dr. McElwee, who is working out of the Athlone Institute of Technology, also has experience in creative writing and edited a literary journal for several years.

The researchers are exploring the connections and the differences of these two geographically-separated groups. It is bound to be controversial. On first glance, many of the same social problems have occurred in both communities. The big questions being asked are what is it to be a member of the First Nation people in Canada or a Traveller in Ireland. It examines the definitions by Modernists and by Traditionalists. The study is interested in the influence of the iconography of each of the groups, the common fascination with fire and horses. It looks at differences in terms of space: the reserve which is contained in a large track of land and the Travellers halting site which is crowded and just enough space for a caravan. But in the end, both groups are enclosed, contained.

The study does not attempt to say that Irish Travellers are the same as the Mi’himaqs or that they are genealogically related. However, researchers are intrigued by the name Ward, which is prevalent in both groups.