N.S. celebrates Treaty Day | CTV News [Video]

Nearly 300 years after the first Mi’kmaq treaties were signed, people gathered on Tuesday in Halifax and elsewhere in Nova Scotia to mark Treaty Day.

Since 1986, Oct. 1 has been Treaty Day in the province and since 1993, October has been Mi’kmaq Heritage Month.

“These treaties are to keep our people doing the things that we were doing for centuries and centuries before,” said Emma Stevens, a Mi’kmaq singer-songwriter who lives on Cape Breton’s Eskasoni First Nation.

Though it was written more specifically for National Truth and Reconciliation Day on Sept. 30, Stevens said her latest song, “Voice of the Earth,” also carries a message on Treaty Day.

“(The song is) all about how the earth is hurting, and how the Indigenous people are slowly losing their connection to earth,” Stevens said. “And how we all have to help bring it back; not just Indigenous people, but everybody as a whole.”

Mi’kmaq …