Aaron Sel's alienation from identity and rebuilding of belonging

Aaron Sel’s alienation from identity and rebuilding of belonging turns a return to family into a difficult education in responsibility. He first arrives in Mi’kma’ki hoping that descent from Jinot Sel will secure an immediate place for him; instead, he discovers both how little he knows of Mi’kmaw life and how much the community itself has suffered. Only after leaving, enduring work at sea, and coming back with a different sense of himself can he accept belonging as participation rather than an automatic reward of bloodline.

An Uneasy Return

After Jinot leaves for New Zealand with Mr. Bone, Aaron makes his way to Mi’kma’ki and the family band of Kuntaw, his father’s grandfather. He expects a ceremonial welcome, warmth, answers to the mysteries of his identity, and the attention of young women. The reality is disorienting. He does not know how to repair eel weirs, distinguish a blueberry from an enchantment, or hunt caribou and beaver; the animals he imagines hunting are no longer there. His inheritance gives him a connection to the community, but it does not give him the skills or familiarity needed to take part in its life.

Aaron voices his disappointment to Etienne, saying that he has no friends and that everyone is against him. Etienne responds by inviting him to the river to repair the weir. Aaron cannot fit the rocks together or place the stakes correctly. He says he needs a gun, but guns are unavailable to those without money. The episode makes the gap concrete: he wants the tools and status of a life he has not learned to live, while the work of belonging begins with practical tasks and shared responsibilities.

Kuntaw, the Sel clan’s elder and sagmaw, names that mismatch directly. Aaron wants too much, he tells him; in the community he must learn to give, not take. Yet Aaron leaves after two restless years and returns to Boston. The departure does not settle his identity. It marks the failure of his first attempt to make kinship alone answer the question of where he belongs.

The Departure and a Changed Perspective

In Boston Aaron looks for Jinot, who remains in New Zealand, and drifts around the waterfront. Two men invite him to drink; afterward, he wakes aboard the Elsie Jones, a ship bound for London, with no memory of how he got there. As a green hand, he faces a hard voyage marked by storms and danger. The experience gives him strength and knowledge, but also hatred for the bosun, Crumble. He vows to kill him if he survives, only to find that Crumble has disappeared by the time the ship reaches London.

The weeks Aaron spends seeking a ship in London become a turning point in how he understands himself. At nineteen, he feels physically strong and alert, and more watchful of other people’s movements and faces. More important, he recognizes that his earlier presumption—that he would be central in any scene—has been broken. He now wants to return to Kuntaw’s band and try again with a more willing heart. He imagines that Kuntaw may be dead and Etienne may have taken his place, but he is prepared to return without demanding the welcome he once expected.

On the voyage back to Halifax, Aaron’s joy at nearing land accompanies a further change in outlook. He is glad to return despite Etienne’s anger at his departure. He is ready to trap, build weirs, and fish, and he no longer expects his relatives to honor him simply because he is Jinot’s son. His sea skills might also be of use. The change is not a rejection of his Mi’kmaw identity; it is a recognition that identity cannot substitute for learning, work, and reciprocal ties.

Return to a Displaced Community

The landscape Aaron retraces makes clear that the community he remembers has not stood still. A trail through the forest has become mostly cleared land, settlements, and farms, with settlers burning woodland. Children driving cattle along the shore hurl insults and clamshells at him. Aaron also remembers that, on an earlier journey, a Mi’kmaw family had fed him and given him shelter, and told him that the Sels had gone to K’taqmkuk. When he finds the old wikuom site, only weathered poles and rotted coverings remain; he realizes the family must have moved to a Mi’kmaw village farther on.

At a ruined settlement, Aaron learns that sickness, hunger, and repeated displacement have devastated the people who remain. Their account describes children dying, food becoming scarce, settlers claiming firewood, and Mi’kmaw families being driven from places where they tried to make wikuoms. A potato crop has rotted after heavy rain, and the people have been reduced to searching for food and shelter. The discovery unsettles Aaron: he remembers having had a cold heart since the death of his childhood brother Amboise, but now feels appalled by what he sees.

Aaron has no food with him, but he has his wages. He considers whether the people are strong enough to buy provisions themselves and calculates that Halifax would take two days to reach and return from; Sydney is closer, and he may find a settler willing to sell food along the way. He promises to come back with food and sets off. His response contrasts with his first arrival: he no longer approaches the community primarily as a claimant asking what it will provide him. Faced with its need, he thinks about what he can do for others.

Welcome and Reconciliation

When Aaron reaches Kuntaw’s wikuom before dawn, the elder wakes, listens, and calls him close, describing himself as overjoyed to embrace a son of the Mi’kmaq who has come home. Kuntaw asks his wife, Maudi, to call everyone and prepare food; the next day the family and community gather for a celebration. Maudi builds a fire on the riverbank and brings out her large cooking pots, while Alik, Etienne, and Peter bring mackerel. Women from nearby wikuoms join them to help prepare the feast. The welcome is enacted through people, food, and collective preparation, not through a test of ancestry.

Aaron tries to explain that he has changed, but Kuntaw answers with an image rather than a demand for explanation. He puts water and mackerel oil in a wooden bowl and stirs them together. The oil rises to the top. Kuntaw identifies water with the white man and oil with the Mi’kmaw, using the mixture to describe his own past attempt to become white and the return of the Mi’kmaw part of himself. He imagines a future in which the two peoples become more blended while each changes, and says that the Mi’kmaw will hold their country again someday. His image acknowledges cultural contact without treating Mi’kmaw identity as something Aaron must erase to belong.

Aaron and Etienne later sit on the ground, drawing strength from contact with the earth. Etienne says they searched for Aaron in Boston but never found him. Aaron recalls that, on his earlier visit, he had not understood what the Sels were trying to make: their effort to create a Mi’kmaw place had seemed uncertain to him, like a cup that appeared to hold tea but contained only its shadow. Now, when Etienne asks whether he feels that way, Aaron answers that he drinks the shadow and finds it good. The image registers a changed relationship to a community that cannot restore an untouched past. Aaron accepts the imperfect, present reality of belonging rather than rejecting it because it falls short of what he expected.

Belonging in a Larger History

Aaron’s return takes place against a longer history of dispossession and pressure on Mi’kmaw life. Père Crème recognizes that Mi’kmaw people suffer as France takes their country and corrupts their children through its goods and forceful ways; he also describes them as loving their land and children and having lived there across untold generations. When Sosep tells Theotiste that the French king has given their lands to the British, Theotiste objects that the land is theirs to begin with, not the king’s to give. These moments frame Aaron’s family’s search for a home within an ongoing conflict over who has the authority to define land and belonging.

Sosep also describes settlers’ animals destroying food, boats and nets taking fish, and introduced plants displacing other plants. Although he recognizes that most settlers do not mean harm, he warns that their numbers are overwhelming. His answer is not to abandon all change: the Mi’kmaq, he says, will live in two worlds, preserving a Mi’kmaw world in which plants, animals, birds, and people are persons who help one another. Aaron’s arc gives that principle an individual shape. His first return confuses inherited identity with readiness and entitlement; his later return follows practical hardship, attention to others, and a willingness to learn. He is welcomed as Jinot’s son and as a Mi’kmaw son, but the reconciliation rests on the work of living among his relatives and accepting a community changed by forces beyond his control.