Burying the Hatchet Ceremony (Nova Scotia)

The Burying the Hatchet Ceremony (also known as the Governor's Farm Ceremony) happened in Nova Scotia on June 25, 1761 and was one of many such ceremonies where the Halifax Treaties were signed that successfully ended a period of protracted warfare, which had lasted over seventy-five years and encompassed six wars, between the Mi'kmaq people and the British (See the four French and Indian Wars, Father Rale's War and Father Le Loutre’s War). The Burying the Hatchet Ceremonies and the treaties they commemorated created an enduring peace and a commitment to obey the rule of law.

Despite the intentions of the British dignitaries who attended the ceremony and helped draft the treaty, many of British commitments and rights the treaties afforded to the Mi'kmaq for becoming British subjects were not delivered on. Since the treaties were enshrined into the Canadian Constitution in 1982, there have been numerous judicial decisions that have upheld these treaties in the Canadian Supreme Court, the most recognized being the Donald Marshall case. Nova Scotians celebrate the Treaties of 1760-61 every year on Treaty Day (October 1).

The northeastern region of North America, encompassing New England and Acadia/Mi'kma'ki, increasingly became an area of conflict between the expanding French and British Empires. Expansion by both Empires, over a seventy-five-year period, through six wars brought the Mi’kmaq and Acadians into conflict with British New Englanders.

Frontier warfare against families was the Wabanaki Confederacy and New England approach to warfare since King William's War began in 1688. Over this seventy-five years, there was a long history of the Wabanaki Confederacy (which included the Mi'kmaq) killing British civilians along the New England/ Acadia border in Maine (See the Northeast Coast Campaigns 1688, 1703, 1723, 1724, 1745, 1746, 1747).

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