Chief Lightning Bolt

By Daniel N. Paul  

Paperback $21.00

EPUB $20.99

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Here is a contemporary Mi’kmaq legend of the life of a great man, who becomes chief, the embodiment of Mi’kmaq values of humility, courage, honour, service and sacrifice of personal gain for the sake of others. He lived a long and storied life, hundreds of years ago, before the arrival of the European scouts and, later, their warships. He was a renowned warrior but, more so, a peacemaker. His people followed him to the point of devotion, yet he was uncannily modest, even embarrassed by his own achievements. He suffered great loss, yet his understanding of his place, his role in a great society, a greater natural world and an inestimable metaphysical world, guided him through his pain.

Mi’kmaq readers may recognize these time-honoured themes based on traditional tales passing values generation to generation. Others will gain a new appreciation for what was lost under colonialism and the attempted genocide of this vibrant, sophisticated and successful culture and society.

With We Were Not the Savages, Daniel Paul changed the way the world understood the history of Eastern Canada and the fully developed civilization that existed before the arrival of the European explorers and settlers, and the nature of the subsequent violent attack on that culture. With Chief Lightning Bolt, Paul shows us exactly what was lost, the beauty of the Mi’kma’ki that once existed, the culture that survived and is only now beginning to recover.

“Being with Chief Lightning Bolt from his beginning to the end, is a great way to learn the history of our ancestors. A unique way of teaching about the past. Wela’lin.”

— Theresa Meuse, author of L’nu’k: The People

“It is incredibly entertaining while gently enlightening modern day readers about the humane, balanced, honourable, trustworthy, civil and democratic nature of pre-contact Mi’kmaq society.”

— Randolph Bowers, author of Sacred Teachings from the Medicine Lodge

Roseway Publishing
  • Fiction
  • ISBN: 9781552669693
  • October 2017
  • 288 Pages
  • $21.00
  • For sale worldwide
  • Kindle
  • ISBN: 9781552669716
  • September 2017
  • $20.99
  • For sale worldwide
  • EPUB
  • ISBN: 9781552669624
  • September 2017
  • $20.99
  • For sale worldwide

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Authors

  • Daniel N. Paul

    Chair of the Council on Mi’Kmaq Education and the Committee of Canadian Genocide Scholars

    Daniel N. Paul was born in 1938 on the Indian Brook Reserve, Nova Scotia, and now resides in Halifax with his wife Patricia. Paul, a freelance lecturer and journalist, is an ardent activist for human rights. He is a former justice of the peace and a former member of the NS Police Commission and has served on several other provincial commissions, including the Human Rights Commission and the Nova Scotia Department of Justice’s Court Re-structuring Task Force. He holds, among many awards, honorary degrees from the University of Sainte Anne and Dalhousie University and is a member of both the Order of Canada and the Order of Nova Scotia. Previously, Paul was employed by the Department of Indian Affairs and was the founding executive director of the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq (CMM). His writing career includes a novel, Chief Lightning Bolt, several booklets, magazine articles, hundreds of newspaper columns, chapters for a dozen or so edited books.

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