Lest We Forget ....

She has a household name here in Newfoundland and Labrador.

And she passed away on this day in 1829.

Shanawdithit.

Her death was extraordinary. She was the last known Beothuck who graced our fair isle.

Shanawdithit succumbed to a white man's disease called tuberculosis - the "cough demon" that had taken many of her people.

Having surrender to, or been captured by, Europeans due to destitution, Shanawdithit lived for 5 years as a housekeeper on the Exploit Rivers.  Still only in her late twenties, she spent the last year of her life in St. John's under the care of William Cormack (who to his credit had formed the Beothuck Institute in 1827 to help build a bridge to these aboriginal people.) 

Through drawings and words, Shanawdithit or Nancy April (as she was called)  shared much of what we know about her native people and culture.

Did we, as white people, mean  to wipe to another human race? Perhaps not, but clearly we did not do enough to save them.

From the time we landed on these shores during the Viking era, and annexed their land over time, it took mere centuries to eradicate a people who lived here for many, many moons.

Shawandithit feared her people would be wiped out and her nightmare came true...

....

Which brings home the point, you never know how a small act over time can contribute to the end of something so precious as a human race and a culture. 

So, today if you hear people riling against the slow erosion (or the outright eradication by government decisions) of our traditional way of life and industry here in Newfoundland and Labrador, don't regard them as alarmists or tune them out. 

It can happen - Shanawdithit's story attests to that.  Bit by bit over years, decades and perhaps centuries, one small thing after another is taken away ... until there is nothing left.

Every single decision taken today by each of us and particularly by governments has a butterfly effect so that in 100 or 1000 years, the ripple reverberates to dilute or eradicate a people and a place. 

Rural Newfoundland and Labrador has to stand guard against this.

It has been written that Shanawdithit didn't laugh a lot.  How could she? As the last of her native people, her shoulders and heart must have felt especially heavy.

Shanawdithit is reported to have died in a naval hospital and the latest archaeological evidence suggests her remains are buried under the Southside Road. 
 
This special and brave Newfoundlander is commemorated in a statute in Boyd's Cove by renowned artist Gerry Squires.  It is meant to evoke the spirit of the Beothucks as well as the tragedy of their demise.

Lest we forget ...

Shanawdithit, the person
The Beothucks, her lost culture
and the hard lessons learned from the disappearance of an entire people and their way of life.

And on the 185th anniversary of her death, this is a call to government to make something (more than a plaque) of her life and her presence here in our capital city. 

She deserves nothing less and a whole lot more.   



          We have traces enough left only to cause our sorrow
          that so peculiar and so superior a people
          should have disappeared from the earth like a shadow"
          William Cormack