Several months ago, I had just randomly come across this project. It was like the first breadcrumb in a trail that has really completely changed my life. It is a wonderful video game, intended to teach Mi’kmaq language, stories and culture to youngsters. Even 56 year old youngsters like me. 🙂

Proceeds from the game sales go to scholarship funds for First Nations youth, wishing to pursue careers in technology fields. Even though I am really not into video games, it has inspired me so much to explore my own ancestry and to develop a similar idea in our virtual world, GroovyVerse. I became an early funder of the game, and also a donor to Indspire which is a scholarship program for First Nations youth.

I hope you will give it a look, and possibly support this effort. Even if you are not Mi’kmaq or a person of indigenous descent, I think you will find some of the stories very familiar. It is no coincidence that they bear similarities to Lord of the Rings. Many of the northern peoples in the Americas, Europe, Siberia have very similar legends. In particular, the Sami in Finland were a great inspiration to Tolkien. In this Mi’kmaq story, one can not help but see the familiar hobbits, trolls and other characters and narratives, that I think we all shared at one time.

If anything. I hope this may make you realize that as difficult as things may seem now. There are people who went through A LOT. And persisted, and thrived and are still here creating beautiful things. We all can too.

https://www.mikmawadventure.com

From the time I was a small child, I had been fascinated with native culture and beliefs. I would devour every book I could get my hands on. I suspect that if future archaeologists explore the woods around my childhood home, they might be puzzled and think an unknown tribe of Hobbits had a civilization there. I littered the place with pint-sized wigwams, stone circles, racks for tanning pelts, spears, attempts at knapping arrowheads..

As an adult, I was lost in the world of adults, living in a polluted mess where everyone is miserable. Longing for another life. Occasionally, I would attend some regional, public powwows, listen to speakers. Or I would run into co-workers or friends who happen to be Nipmuc, Wampanoag or Abenaki. But… I always felt like I was a white kid, a wanna-be, invading people’s sacred space.

All my life, I had no idea that my Grandparents were Mi’kmaq. They came to the United States at a time when the Canadian government was specifically rounding up Mi’kmaq kids to send to the boarding schools. I think our family was terrified and they really had it hammered into their heads to never tell anyone that they are native. After doing some recent geneology, I have discovered that I have about the same fraction of native blood as many of the indigenous people that I respect very much. Most of us have mixed in. Our parents and grandparents have tried to conform and blend in, and so much is lost or forgotten. Now we are several generations distant, have grandparents who have passed, or were very traumatized and don’t want to talk about it directly.

All my life, I have learned mostly from other people, Abenaki, Wampanoag, etc… My family, the Mi’kmaq are hundreds of miles away in eastern Canada. I am trying to learn our language, and our traditional beliefs, which are basically a mix of Catholicism and Mi’kmaq traditional beliefs. Chief Membertou successfully negotiated with the Vatican for that! wow! 🙂 I grew up in a family that identified as French Canadian Catholics. But now reading about my culture and people in modern day Canada, it is all so familiar! I realize that my Grandparents and church stealthily taught me my people’s ways.

I have also discovered, sadly, that my people are struggling, living in poverty and with all of the social ills that comes with. Unless I become rich and can go there and be some kind of wealthy benefactor, I would be a burden on my people. And, even though my people are from far away. My home is here, at Amoskaeg and Massabesic (Manchester New Hampshire) I belong to the land here. So I am a wayward daughter of my people, living far away.

Many years ago, I read a novel “Svaha”, which is pure science fiction. It takes place in a cyberpunk kind of future where the world is corrupt and polluted. Indigenous people had discovered a technology to create shielded enclaves, much like Wakanda in the Black Panther movies. They live happily apart from the world. The character “Gazhee” is charged with the duty of leaving the enclaves and going out into the world, to recover some stolen technology. He faces the sad reality that once he leaves, he can never go home. In his travels through the wastelands, he discovers people everywhere he goes, who long for a different and better life, and he comes to love them and realizes that he has a greater mission to gather a new people, who can build a new world together. This story touched my heart and affected me so deeply.

Now I find myself in a similar situation to Gazhee. I can never really go home. I have to make my home here, among lost people who are longing for a different world. Where I live now. Many of our grandparents are immigrants that came here from the same parts of Canada, to work in the mills, build a life for their children, and likely I am surrounded by similar grandchildren of Mi’kmaq who are lost, and maybe share that same longing. I also run a virtual world called GroovyVerse, which is REALLY cyberpunk, but we have turned our world into a beautiful, peaceful place, and became kind of a weird tribe of our own.

500+ years ago, indigenous peoples moved around a lot, mixed with other people, forgot things, learned new things. Developed and learned new technologies and ways of life. They were continually becoming a “new people” all of the time. My own people became Catholics in 1610, and relatively happily melded that into their own ways. To this day, that is our proud, cultural identity. So here we are, in 2025. We are in a very different place, and a different world. I am far away from home. I am no longer Catholic. I am transgender. I have my own datacenter downstairs in my office that I run an alternate reality universe on, that is home to my tribe of about 200 people whom I love very much like family. Where does that leave me? I long for home, but I can’t go “home”. I am home. home is here. Where does that leave us? People who know everything around us is wrong. We feel trapped.

I think we have to do what our ancestors have always done. Become a new people. Find a way to live in balance with the land and all of our relations in nature. Be good stewards, help the land heal and become green again. I dream of a day when countless salmon jump through the restored Amoskeag falls again, and our children will be free and happy, learn our languages and cultures. I can’t emigrate back to Canada to find that. My people are already struggling. The best I can do to help, and be a good daughter of my people is to continue learning our language, and I am doing ok. I can donate to college funds for our youth, as I have been doing. Perhaps I can teach the language to others like me, in my area (there are thousands!)

I not only hope, I firmly believe that we will someday look around us and wake up. See the beauty that is still all around us, waiting for us to re-join it.