In an effort to understand how the Beothuk were assimilated into Mi’kmaw communities for protection in the 1800’s, Sagamaw Mi’sel Joe embarks on a genetic research project. #CBCShortDocs

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Sagamaw Mi’sel Joe of Miawpukek First Nation has long held an ancestral responsibility passed down from his great-grandfather, Sylvester Joe.

In the late 1800s, Sylvester Joe was asked to complete two tasks. The first was to guide an English explorer across the interior of Newfoundland, helping him to find the Beothuk tribes, in order to exterminate them. The second task was bestowed on him from his community: to protect the Beothuk.

The British explorer never found the Beothuk, mostly thanks to Sylvester Joe’s quick thinking. Generations later, Mi’sel Joe continues to protect the Beothuk by aiming to prove that they were assimilated – not exterminated – and that descendants of the Beothuk still remain and exist in Newfoundland. He chooses to do this with a genetic mapping study inside his community.

The study not only finds Beothuk ancestry, but also uncovers a connection between the tribes of Newfoundland and the tribes of the Eastern Woodlands, thousands of kilometres apart and separated by an ocean.

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