Sorting “Natives” from “Indians” : interrogating historic burials in the Catholic Burying Ground on the Dartmouth Common (1835-1865)

Abstract

This research disrupts a colonial narrative about settlers and hundreds of “Indians” inscribed on a monument as part of a non-Indigenous tourism scheme to raise money and clean up the abandoned Catholic Burying Ground on the Dartmouth Common. Many Natives of Ireland and others, not Natives of North America, are identified by a detailed analysis of handwritten death records and other sources. They were all but forgotten when the municipality took control of the cemetery in 1975 without a copy of the church records. This left a gap in public memory that allowed variations of an “old Indian burial ground” narrative to evolve from burials in the ground (1962) to burials in a mound (2010). The findings are relevant to the national project of Truth and Reconciliation and serve as a cautionary tale about the importance of seeking truth before reconciliation. This research will be of interest to Irish researchers and descendants of those who died; residents of Halifax Regional Municipality who own the cemetery in trust; government administrators, planners, and surveyors; Catholic organizations in control of historic records; and to social, legal and Indigenous researchers who grapple with constructed “Indian” identities as a way of decolonizing the story of Canada.