The Micmacs of Finland
- Phillip Clifford
- Apr 11
- 25 min read
preface
In 1993, while developing an environmental program that would help lead humankind to a more sustainable future, a group of non-Finns living in the forests of Finland calling themselves the “Micmac” was revealed in the press. Though their claims of being descendants of the First Nations indigenous Mi’kmaq[1] from the Maritime provinces of Canada were both questionable and unfounded, there were some Finns that took them at their word and began to follow their religious beliefs and rituals as neo-pagans.
Whether by design or accident, the “Micmac” created neo-pagan religious beliefs and rituals that some Finns found spiritually compelling. So much so, that these Finns wanted to speak like they spoke, dress like they dressed, eat like they ate, live in the forest like they lived, and worship what they worshiped. Considering that these Finns could have picked any neo-pagan group out there, from in situ Finnish pagan religions such as Ukko’s Faith[2] and Finnish Nature Worship,[3] to Wicca, Druidism and even Nova Roma, this is a significant observation.
Fundamentally, all the neo-pagan religions in the twenty-first century exist simply because our personal spiritualism and sentiments are free to worship what we wish. Our spirituality and feelings aren’t vacuum sealed by the world’s largest organised religions for the most part anymore,[4] and for most of us in the West, our governments generally don’t tell us what to worship unless we’re committing heinous crimes against one another. As neo-paganism is a consequence of our twenty-first century lifestyle, our piousness and devotion to them is fulfilling a necessity that the world’s largest organised religions have either mishandled, misplaced or simply misunderstood altogether.
Rather than this being just a list of neo-pagan religions described ad nauseam, bereft of any human soul or social context, we will go one step further by showing how a neo-pagan religion developed out of the “Micmac,” and speculate as to why this happened by looking at their spiritual beliefs in relation to ecological sustainability, the UN’s Social Development Goals (SDG17[5]), specifically Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (SDG5[6]), and the UN’s World Happiness Report (WHR 2022[7]).
Introduction
Spiritualism
Whether your beliefs are within one of the world’s largest organised religions or one of the many neo-pagan religions, our individual spirituality is that one association that binds us together on this planet. Even as the number of followers within the world’s largest organised religions is falling, our collective spirituality is rising, though more crucially there is some theological debate as to how this rise in spirituality is being expressed. The world’s largest organized religions say that though statistically they are losing followers, those who are remaining with them are becoming more spiritual:
[T]he share of people across a wide variety of religious identities who say they often feel a deep sense of spiritual peace and well-being as well as a deep sense of wonder about the universe has risen.[8] (emphasis in the original)
They may claim that their remaining followers are now strengthening their spirituality within their ranks–perhaps experiencing a modern epiphany–however, it can also be said that the ones who are leaving their ranks are less spiritual thus giving the false impression that the ones who are remaining are strengthening their spirituality. Conversely, the neo-pagan religions claim that the ones who are leaving the world’s largest organised religions aren’t less spiritual, they’re more spiritual, as they’re turning towards more personalised and meaningful ways to express themselves through neo-paganistic beliefs:
While reports tell us that organized religion is going extinct in the United States, the rise in neo-pagan spiritualities suggest there might be more to the story of religion’s role in American lives.[9]
The world’s largest organised religions make it very clear that as their older more religiously observant generations die out, they aren’t being replaced by the younger generation.[10] Conversely, the neo-pagan religions claim that they’re gaining followers in the twenty-first century simply because their movement has beliefs and rituals that cater to the spirituality of all demographics. Most especially:
● The younger generation (born between 1990 and 1996).
● Women and those who are Gender Equality conscious.
● Those who have a deep reverence for nature, an important consideration these days as environmental groups promote sustainability.
● Those who believe that the Earth is part of an interconnected cosmology, that all beings are part of a unified living organism.
● Those who believe that our intellectual and modernised world has drained the sacredness and spiritualism from our lives.[11]
Though there isn’t one holistic neo-pagan religion, belief or set of rituals, this isn’t viewed as a detriment by the neo-pagans; in actuality, it’s viewed by them as its strength.
Neo-paganism and its Fated Rise
Though the academic debate is widespread and continuous, it’s generally agreed that modern homo sapiens emerged from our ancestors some 300,000 years ago. And then, between 50,000 and 65,000 years ago, a “Great Leap” occurred in our way of thinking:
[M]ore advanced technology started appearing: complex projectile weapons such as bows and spear-throwers, fish hooks, ceramics, [and] sewing needles.
People made representational art – cave paintings of horses, ivory goddesses, lion-headed idols, showing artistic flair and imagination. A bird-bone flute hints at music.[12]
Let me make this clear: From 300,000 to 65,000 years ago, this enormous gap where only simple tools and artefacts were being manufactured and used, wasn’t a time of spiritual idleness by the homo sapiens. Our simple tools and artefacts during this time, sufficed for our needs both physically and spirituality. During this time, we didn’t need anything else to ensure our survival from one generation to the next. As simple as these tools and artifacts were to some, they represented something rather profound to those that made and carried them:
These symbols, visual and auditory, operate[d] culturally as mnemonics, not about pragmatic techniques, but about cosmologies, values, and cultural axioms, whereby a society’s deep knowledge is transmitted from one generation to another.[13]
To the untrained eye, a spearhead made before the “Great Leap,” may have just looked like a simple rock shaped into a large arrowhead. However, for the one that could read the spearhead correctly, for example, the son or daughter that inherited the spearhead from their father, they may have seen something else in it altogether different:
[this is pure speculation]
My father made this spearhead during the time when we had very little food and all of our other spearheads broke. Of all the ones our family created for that season, his was the only one that didn’t break despite its repeated thrusts and throws into the animals we needed to survive. My father didn’t survive the season, however, over the years when he was with us he taught us where to find the stones next to the big lake during the warm months, what specific type of stones to use, and how to knap them correctly to create their enormous size and shape, and unbounded strength.
Though I can’t say for certain that these were the exact thoughts of someone who lived between 300,000 and 65,000 years ago, I can say for certain that because they were modern homo sapiens–exactly like me–that they had the potential to think exactly like this. And when the “Great Leap” came, and “representational art – cave paintings of horses, ivory goddesses, lion-headed idols, showing artistic flair and imagination; a bird-bone flute hints at music” was rediscovered by anthropologists, I can say for certain that paganism was already flourishing.
In other words, paganism made us human. Neo-paganism will bring us back to what we lost.
So, what happened? What got most of us off this paganistic path and started following what later became the world’s largest organised religions? If we look at their religious practices, we see that Hinduism and Judaism were established 4000 years ago, Buddhism 2500 years ago, Christianity 1900 years ago, and Islam 1300 years ago. Meaning that, from the time of the “Great Leap” where we have clear evidence of paganism, to the time the first religions got their start to eventually become the world’s largest organised religious practices, approximately 60,000 years of paganistic beliefs and rituals engrained themselves within our collect consciousness, shaping not only our spirituality, but also our humanity. That’s 60,000 years of modern humans creating a deep spirituality for nature, thinking that the earth is part of an interconnected cosmology, and that all beings are part of a unified living organism. The world’s largest organised religions are newcomers to our human spirituality, and that’s why they may no longer be satisfying our spiritual needs. In fact, I suggest that if it weren’t for their efforts to crusade and crush paganism into oblivion through either military force and torture, governmental decree or social pariah, they would have disappeared long ago. Now that it’s becoming socially acceptable to be a pagan once again[14]–Neo-paganism is the act of resurrecting our past and almost forgotten pagan beliefs. As the organized religions in the West aren’t crusading us into oblivion or suppressing our spiritual beliefs any more socially, the rise of Neo-paganism is inevitable.
The Micmac of Finland
Interview with Dr Matti Sarmela[15]
April 1993: University of Helsinki (Finland) (interview face-to-face through a Finnish to English interpreter)
Author
The who?
Dr Matti Sarmela (DMS)
The Micmac [of Finland]. You’re from Canada, surely you must know who the Micmac are.
Author
I know who the Micmac were, however, these days those indigenous First Nations people want to be called the Mi’kmaq.[16]
DMS
These Micmac say that they’re the descendants of Canadian soldiers who stayed in Europe after the Second World War and had children with European women. The rest are disenchanted Canadians who had departed Micmac reserves in the Maritimes.[17] I mean, regardless of whether they’re legit Micmac, they want to live in the Finnish forests like the Indians[18] once did. Over the next seven years, we want them to create an open ecological and sustainable university, where everyone can learn their religion and beliefs, recreate their housing, and forage and grow the food they’ll eat. The Micmac have been living off the land for thousands of years in Canada, they’ve learned to survive, we need their knowledge.
The more that DMS spoke about the Micmac being the Mi’kmaq, the more my skepticism grew. For the last four years, I had been studying social anthropology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the Canadian province where I was born and raised, and left when I turned twenty-five. As this was also the same Maritime province that the Mi’kmaq inhabited multi-generationally, studying their ethnography–written by those of European descent and the Mi’kmaq themselves–was part of my studies. I was especially interested in learning about their traditional medicinal remedies, and spent many hours marching through the forests in Nova Scotia, Mi’kmaq books in hand, looking for the right plants and photographing them. With my own family ancestry being associated with the Mi’kmaq, like all the families of European descent in the Maritimes, you would think that if a group of Mi’kmaq migrated to Finland, I would have heard about it.
I hadn’t.
It wouldn’t have been polite to argue with DMS about this. I mean, he could have been right, I didn’t have any real evidence to say otherwise. There was something very peculiar about these Micmas he was describing, something that I didn’t want to miss.
He spoke passionately about the Micmac’s right to live in Finland as “Lifestyle Indians in the forest, living off the land.” He said he was working with a Finnish Member of Parliament[19] and a landowner in Lapland who was providing the land[20]
Author
Can I meet these Micmac?
DMS
Absolutely. Stay by your phone tonight and you’ll receive a call from their leader giving you instructions on what to do next.
Well, that answer seemed rather cloak-and-dagger, what am I getting myself into?
Interview with The Leader of the Micmac: OM
April 1993: Vantaa, Finland (interview in English over the telephone)
OM[21]
I was born in the woods in Québec between two Micmac reservations, I see myself as an ‘unreserved Indian.’ I was exiled from Canada twenty-five years ago for political reasons and came to Europe because I wanted to live free.
Author
Can you speak a few words of your Micmac for me? I know a few words of Mi’kmaq; are they similar languages, can we have a conversation?
OM
I could, however now I want to speak English because you are using English. It makes no difference to the person who’s speaking what their mother tongue is simply because they are speaking a particular language and other people label them as speaking this or that language. I speak a proto-Micmac language, I have chosen to have this proto-Micmac language speak for me and that’s the way I and my people think.
It was assimilation or death in Canada. I am cynical because I was persecuted by Trudeau,[22] but I have no hard feelings.
During the course of the interview, all the references he made about the Europeans making first contact with the Mi’kmaq in the 1500s he knew well, as did I. It was obvious that we both studied the same ethnographic source material on the Mi’kmaq. When I asked him to elaborate on the stories he was telling me, to tell me something that his grandmother told him about her time as a child–perhaps even a story about her grandmother making a Mi’kmaq basket in front of her for example–he only told me more of the same from the same ethnographic source material.
It was at this point in the interview that I could have just called him a crackpot, hung up on him, and moved on with my life. However, everything he was saying did have a grain of truth to it, if you stretched that grain of truth just a little bit.
This story he told about being born between two Micmac reservations in Québec, at first seemed rather far-fetched. During the 1960s though, when the residential schools and government centralisation programs in Canada were in full swing against the indigenous First Nations people–forcing them to assimilate into Canadian society by forbidding them to speak their own language or follow their own spiritual beliefs, attempting to “civilize them” into becoming either farmers or blue collar workers in factories–it wouldn’t surprise me that some family groups hid themselves in the woods for as long as they could to protect and preserve their Mi’kmaq sovereignty, language, beliefs, and rituals. As well, his refusal to speak Mi’kmaq with me wasn’t so unusual. I knew many Mi’kmaq at university in the 1990s who couldn’t speak their own language, a testimony to the destructive nature of Canadian assimilation, that anyone caught speaking Mi’kmaq was either severely punished or worse.[23] And this bit about being a political exile, could have been him alluding to the FLQ Crisis (October Crisis[24]), which did take place twenty-four years ago matching his timeline.
Just before the phone call ended, he gave me these parting words:
OM
You know, they call us ‘Indians.’ I’m not an ‘Indian,’ I’m a human being. All indigenous people around the world call themselves this no matter who or what they are, it is the purity of our minds that reveals this to us. We chose to live this way, we believe in our way of life.
It was these last words that struck me. I mean, OM could have been a Mi’kmaq perhaps by birth or perhaps simply by following Mi’kmaq rituals and beliefs. The former would have made him part of an indigenous group (re)learning the rituals and beliefs of the Mi’kmaq, the latter would have made him a neo-pagan. With regard to OM being a neo-pagan, this is exactly the point that I made earlier about spiritualism, that the ones who are leaving organized religions aren’t less spiritual, they’re more spiritual, that they’re turning towards more personalized and meaningful spiritual ways to express themselves through neo-paganistic beliefs. Thus, OM is spiritually a Mi’kmaq practicing neo-pagan Mi’kmaq rituals and beliefs, no different from someone in the USA saying that they’re spiritually a witch practicing neo-pagan Wicca rituals and beliefs.
At the end of the phone call, OM gave me a date, time, and directions to meet the Micmac.
Meeting the Micmac: First Impressions
When I got off the bus and walked to the address,[25] I knew I got to the right place when I saw these two enormous teepees in the front yard.[26] I would say that the tallest poles were well over fourteen feet tall (four meters). The yard was quiet and the house sitting on the property had its front doors wide open. Off to the side of the house was a small woodshed and in front of it was a woman sitting on the ground in the early morning sunshine streaming through the leaves of the large maple trees that dotted the property. She wasn’t sitting idly, she was sewing leather strips into the inseams of a pair of jeans. This wasn’t unusual even for some indigenous First Nations peoples in North America, the younger generation sometimes sewing leather strips onto their favourite articles of clothing to enhance them.
From a distance, everything she wore looked exactly like the clothing the indigenous people from North America wore when they posed for cameras in the 1800s. When you got closer though, you could see that everything she wore only looked like indigenous clothing, however they lacked the authenticity of materials and symbols. Her clothing was a jumbled array of styles and symbols reminiscent of the plains First Nations peoples, and nothing even remotely looked like it was Mi’kmaq. The exact same clothing style can be used to describe what the two men wore when they came out of the woodshed. When I spoke to them in Finnish, no one understood me. When I switched to English, our communication got better, though they didn’t say much about themselves, only describing what they were doing.
After twenty minutes of me watching them sew leather strips into jeans, OG came out of the woodshed and said OM told him that he was to be my guide for the day.
Interview with My Guide: OG[27] (face-to-face interview in English)
When OG walked up to me, he was someone that stood out from the crowd. He was wearing a bright red polyester top and pants, which was odd considering polyester’s negative impact on the environment. Under this red top he wore a black wool long-sleeved tunic. His pants had leather strips sown into the inseams, much like I described with the three I met earlier. His hair was braided into two ponytails which hung from either side of his head over his ears. The headband he wore was made from plastic beads and had numerous chevrons on them pointing in different directions. He wore a round pendant which hung to his sternum, with the same style of pendant fastened tightly around his neck.
What was the most striking about his red top was the enormous symbol he had sewn into the middle of it. It was a large yellow disk with a five-armed starfish in the middle of it–indeed a traditional Mi’kmaq symbol–and in the middle of the starfish was a stylized symbol of the earth, giving the whole arrangement a Mi’kmaq interconnected cosmology, unified living organism awareness about it. Another striking symbol was on his loincloth, two stylized moose with intertwined antlers and lightly touching foreheads, and above the antlers a red sun. The moose is also a traditional Mi’kmaq symbol. Of all the Micmac I met that day, OG certainly had the most symbols that closely resembled the Mi’kmaq. Though no one looked more like a Mi’kmaq than OG, all of the Micmac had the same basic clothing style.
OG
I’m the Secretary General of the Seattle Experts on Environmental Development Syvilization (SEEDS[28]). I’m strongly against the world becoming one culture. If I want to take on a Native North American style of living and thinking, that should be my right. What I feel is important, what you feel is important and neither of our feelings are better than the other.
There are many “Indians” in North America who are trying to gain their status of who they are. Some are rejecting their forced Western assimilation, their forced Western ways. They want to become recognized for who they are, as are we.
Many may find our ideas good, who knows what the case will be. Many will react positively and agree. We have certain spiritual duties to the planet, spirituality is not a dirty word.
Communication is the key to who we are. Language is not the structure by which to see us, simply because understanding us for who we are is. For you to come see us for who we are, and then understand us, then we can say that we communicated successfully.
All the Micmac you see here today, they were once Western educated people. We all rejected that part of us to go back to nature. The Micmac are all in a period of transition into becoming traditional. Simply put, the Western culture is not working and many people are expressing a need to find a better way. All people are in transition to find a better way. We are offering a way that all people can accept or reject depending on their personal nature.
Traditions are rooted in the future, not the past. It is true that a tree is rooted to the ground, but the ground from which it came exists in the past. The crown of the tree is moving into the future and traditions will exist because we will have created our own traditions and heritage. You can choose whatever parts you wish to take. Survival of a nation is through its expression.
Observations within the Micmac Village
After this interview, OG and I walked around the Micmac village looking at the different activities while he explained in detail what we saw.
Constructing the side-by-side ‘quams
In the middle of a large clearing, a number of people were erecting two enormous ‘quams[29] side-by-side using English as a universal language. What struck me were the three different groups of people involved in this construction:
● Micmac: With their distinctive jeans with leather strips sewn meticulously into the inseams. They wore elaborate bright-colored fabrics, with various patches sewn on that displayed many different North American First Nations’ symbols. They all wore headbands and pendants, and had their hair in two braids on either side of their heads. They were both leading the construction and doing the most to keep construction running smoothly.
● Finnish Micmac: With their close imitation of the Micmac clothing, as if they were learning what to wear and how to sow to make their outfit fit in better with the Micmac. They were following the guidance of the Micmac, asking for advice frequently, and were extraordinarily happy to be helping out anyway they could.
● Finns: With their typical 1990s exercise sportswear and t-shirts, nothing about what they wore looked even remotely Micmac. They were more curious than helpful, and lent a hand only when they were absolutely needed. They only spoke Finnish and only spoke amongst themselves.
Everyone was having fun, the conversations were punctuated with frequent laughter, smiles and jokes about who was working the hardest.
The Micmac Musicians
In the middle of the Micmac village were two Micmac Musicians: One was playing a drum that was African designed and store purchased; and, the other was playing a wooden flute that was also store purchased. They played a stylized melody that repeated frequently that sounded like something you would hear from a 1950s “spaghetti western” movie whenever the “Indians” would make their appearance onscreen.[30] They played enthusiastically, adding some great atmosphere to the whole occasion.
A Discussion about Food
We walked up to a Micmac who was attaching leather strips to the handle of a large machete. On his left was a roughly constructed willow basket that OG stated was used to gather one of their food sources in the forest. OG explained that everyone in the village was strictly vegetarian. When I took a sample of what the Micmac used for food to a traditional Finnish forest gatherer, he stated simply “This is grass. They’re eating grass like cows.” When I took the same sample to Dr. Juha Helenius, Professor of Agroecology at the University of Helsinki, he identified the plant as Rumex acetosella or more commonly known as “sheep’s sorrel.”
The Teaching of Proto-Micmac during Basket Construction
In a small clearing sat a few Finnish Micmac with one Micmac teaching them how to make a large precisely constructed willow basket that’s worn on the back while gathering. The language the Micmac was using to teach, OG called Proto-Micmac.
Some Closing Thoughts
Reading these descriptions, clearly these Micmac were not the Mi’kmaq. True, it’s possible that OM was Mi’kmaq by birth, and yet, regardless of whether he was, it was obvious he was simply trying to rekindle his personal spirituality while attempting to live in a neo-pagan Mi’kmaq village in the forests of Finland. In fact, sadly, all the Micmac were, and from all the observations, so were the Finnish Micmac. Tragically, none of them got the opportunity to do so as very soon after I visited them, they were ordered by the Finnish government to disperse. Despite the pleas from all their supporters, the Finnish government categorized the Micmac as a national security threat and told them to either leave Finland or be jailed. They were gone by 1994. Finland joined the Schengen agreement in 1996, allowing for the free passage of EU[31] citizens shortly after Finland joined the EU in 1999. One wonders if the Micmac had been just a few years later, with their freedom of movement assured by EU law, that they could come to Finland in order to set up their neo-pagan lifestyle, beliefs, and spirituality without hindrance. If this were the case, would the Micmac now be much publicized and touted as the model for every neo-pagan religion to follow?
About OM, there’s a brief and scathing online article about him, published in 1993, calling him a fraud. There’s also a CBC[32] documentary about him, which also calls him a fraud. Neither of these sources I’ll cite as I don’t want to reveal OM’s identity even though he died in 2015 in a country far from the EU. Even the Micmac’s biggest supporter Ilppo Okkonen didn’t understand what exactly OM was doing when he called himself a Micmac, and then attempted to show Ilppo that he had a direct indigenous lineage to the Mi’kmaq. Though later Ilppo stated that OM “did some dishonest things,” though what exactly these dishonest things were he hasn’t revealed publicly. Was OM calling himself Micmac to connect with his spirituality or to commit fraud? We’ll never know.
Despite his shortcomings, the biggest impact that OM had on the Micmac can be best summed up by one of their members. While on the walking tour of their village with OG, one the Micmac came up to me forcefully and said:
This is how I want to live, here, in the forest as a Micmac. You tell everyone, most especially my parents, that I’ll never go back to the way I was, that this is my choice. I belong here!
The Micmac as Neo-pagans
Introduction
From the time of the Europeans arriving in North America, many indigenous First Nations people living in what is now the USA have had their beliefs and rituals appropriated by others for both profit and New Age Spiritualism. The latter, much to the chagrin of the First Nations people who called these New Age practitioners “Wannabe Indians:”
Many New Age practitioners, in their quest for ‘harmony with the earth’ and ‘spiritual enlightenment,’ have shamelessly stolen American Indian ceremonies, songs and rituals, often for profit. They have defended their right to use these ceremonies, saying that these practices are a part of the earth and therefore available to everyone (a kind of a New Age public-domain) and furthermore, we are all brothers and sisters and are obligated to share our wisdom for the betterment of humanity.[33]
Of course, this doesn't explain why some Finns would have a spiritual affinity for the Micmac, to copy their dress and follow their religious beliefs. I mean, if any Finn really wanted to follow a neo-pagan religion, they could have followed the ones that are already pre-Christian and active in Finland: Ukko’s Faith[34] and Finnish Nature Worship. About the latter:
Belief in spirits that reside in nature (including those of animals).
The concept of ancestor spirits living in the afterlife, instead of heaven or hell.
The survival of Balto-Finnic myths and spells as a living oral tradition.
A way of life closely connected to nature based almost entirely on self-sufficient agriculture or hunting and fishing.[35]
It’s this Finnish Nature Worship that most closely resembles Micmac neo-pagan beliefs and rituals. Though practitioners of Finnish Nature Worship will argue vehemently that they are not neo-pagans, just pagans. Not only did the Micmac themselves feel in harmony with nature and celebrated it whenever they could, but also, they created ceremonies and rituals that enhanced their experience with it.
Once OG showed me around the village for a little while, he brought me over to one he called their “Religious Leader” OP. Fortunately, we had a few hours to discuss Micmac beliefs and rituals.
Interview with OP[36] (face-to-face interview in English)
OP
Research is wrong. We must observe the earth and exist with it. We must study the earth and discover what its problems are and solve them. We must look for primeval conditions and use traditional knowledge.
There must be a function for human beings that is beyond book learning at school. I feel it exists in our roots. A feeling takes time to understand and since we [the Micmac] are all searching for a new vision of life, it will take some time to formulate how it is to be. Somebody must take the first step in the quest to find a new program of the mind. I am trying to find the subconscious level of the new program.
A living being is a collection of cells. These cells function for the good of the world. In thinking of the world, we are seeing a world dying; its body is dying. We all have an old program that must be brought back so that we can find ourselves.
We [the Micmac] are living with the seasons. Only by living with the seasons can we find our lost harmony. To explain this harmony, I will give it to you in Western concepts so that you may be able to understand it better. Let me draw you a picture.
Thus, through this diagram, waves of light are transformed into the soul. This is the general way to find a direction for all, not just the Micmac. To test this diagram is to live it, there’s no other way. The Western world cannot find the answer, to teach you to understand this. The Western world cannot teach you to understand life.
The spirit is like a bird. The Earth is this huge cosmic ship somewhere in space and all the people on it are sad. We are trying to see the Earth for what it is, a huge life-giving orb.
We [the Micmac] are on a crusade to overcome the darkness. The spirit of the world is dying. We must fight for it to win. Only the primeval people can show us the way to change.
In our society, we have individual goals: air, water, fire, and earth. We each belong to a cell that takes care of the collective goals of our society. For each cell, we have a Guardian, chosen by the others in the cell as a gift of responsibility. Guardians have the responsibility to coordinate activities for the entire group.
Everyone has a part to learn and a part to teach us all. We are all like cells of a body working together for the greater good of the whole. All of us who lived in the Western world lived apart from the body. We tried to think that we could live without the help of others–we are doomed to die if we continue to act alone. We are trying to learn to live together.
After this interview, OP and I walked around the Micmac village looking at the different activities while he explained in detail what we saw.
The “Jumping Over the Fire” Ceremony
Every new visitor to, and returning resident of, the Micmac village must jump over this one designated fire at the village’s perimeter. As it was explained, “By the fire’s heat, you’ll be able to feel your body’s aurora lift up into the trees above you, your aurora will waft all around the village and be part of it.” There was a real mixture of all groups present: Micmac, Finnish Micmac, Other Micmac,[37] Finns, and people like myself who were invited to the village for the day. Each time someone jumped over the fire and were inside the village’s perimeter, they turned and laughed and joked with the ones that hadn’t jumped over yet. While this was going on, the Micmac Musicians came over and played their music, including a drumroll each time someone jumped over the fire. We were all having such great laughs, I heard many different languages spoken, the Micmac made the whole experience fun!
The “Evening” Ceremony
The “Evening Ceremony” begins when everyone stands together in a long line looking at the sun on the horizon. Everyone was standing in a long line without a sense of hierarchy. As the sun sat, everyone observed five minutes of absolute silence, heads bowed. Once the sun dipped below the horizon, everyone gave five minutes of vigorous applause and laughter, giving thanks and praise to nature and the surrounding forest. Then, once everyone had a drink of spring-fed water from a wooden bowl that was carved roughly (it was passed down the line from person to person, with a Micmac refilling the bowl when needed), their one meal of the day was served to everyone as they sat on the forest floor. Their meal was what I would describe as a cake, which tasted like bananas, nuts, and sheep’s sorrel. How this “Evening Ceremony” differed in the winter is unclear, however keep in mind that many indigenous First Nations peoples had different ceremonies that matched the weather and season.
Some Closing Thoughts
During the time that the Micmac were present in Finland, there was an incredible amount of speculation in the media about what they were to accomplish. Even today in 2022, they still come up in conversation with my family and friends and even though I do my best to discuss the truth of what I saw, heard, and read, there is still quite a bit of misinformation floating around out there. Ilppo Okkonen, who brought these people to Finland and tried his best to get the Finnish government to allow them to live in woods as he originally intended—an open university of sustainability—he is still out there in the media, telling everyone that it would have worked had everyone just stopped being so sensational and paranoid to sell newspapers and spread gossip.
To the point, whether they intended it, or while they were doing something else it happened by accident, the Micmacs were creating a neo-pagan religion that some Finns were willing to follow.
What is significant, that these Finns weren’t drawn to the Micmac only because of their desire to be part of an environmental group that was looking to create a sustainable future. Yes, it’s true, that much of what was said about the Micmac was this open university of sustainability, however these Finns could have found this in almost all the other neo-pagan religions out there. Why they chose to follow the Micmac as neo-pagans will be the exploration of this book.
There was something about the Micmac of Finland that drew people into their way of life. In fact, there’s something common about all neo-pagan religions that draw people into their way of life.
[1] To make it clear: “Mi’kmaq” [miːɡmaɣ] refers to the indigenous First Nations people of Canada, and “Micmac” will refer to these “Micmac of Finland.”
[2] Ukko’s Faith: Siikala, A-L., Sinisalo, S. (1987) UKKO Encyclopedia.com https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/ukko
[3] Alhonen, A. (n.d.) Notes on the Finnish Tradition, 2. http://www.taivaannaula.org/notes.pdf
[4] These will be counted as the world’s largest organized religions: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Judaism.
[7] The UN’s WHR (2022)
[8] Masci, D. & Lipka M. (2016 January 21). Americans may be getting less religious, but feelings of spirituality are on the rise. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/01/21/americans-spirituality/
[9] Hanson, M. (2019 September 30). Could neo-paganism be the new ‘religion’ of America? Big Think. https://bigthink.com/the-present/modern-paganism/
[10] Lipka M. (2015 November 3). 5 key findings about religiosity in the U.S. – and how it’s changing. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/03/5-key-findings-about-religiosity-in-the-u-s-and-how-its-changing/
[11] Hanson, M. (2019 September 30). Could neo-paganism be the new ‘religion’ of America? Big Think. https://bigthink.com/the-present/modern-paganism/
[12] Longrich, N. (2020 September 9). When did we become fully human? What fossils and DNA tell us about the evolution of modern intelligence. The Conversation.
[13] Turner, V. (1974). Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors. Cornell University Press.
[14] Hanson, M. (2019 September 30). Could neo-paganism be the new ‘religion’ of America? Big Think. https://bigthink.com/the-present/modern-paganism/
[15] Dr Matti Sarmela, Chair of Cultural Anthropology, University of Helsinki, 1988 to 2000.
[16] To make it clear once again: “Mi’kmaq” [miːɡmaɣ] refers to the indigenous First Nations people of Canada, and “Micmac” will refer to these “Micmac of Finland.”
[17] The Maritime Provinces are in Canada and consist of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. Mi’kmaq reserves are also in the Province of Québec.
[18] The word “Indian” is no longer used to describe any indigenous First Nations peoples of Canada, though you will find the word is still used in the USA.
[19] Erkki Pulliainen: Kaila, K., Rantila, K., & Varis, N. (2018, October 5). On the Trail of the Iriadamants. YLE.
[20] Ilppo Okkonen: Kaila, K., Rantila, K., & Varis, N. (2018, October 5). On the Trail of the Iriadamants. YLE. During my visit, I saw Ilppo a couple of times. I tried to initiate a conversation with him once, he clearly wasn’t interested.
[21] To protect his identity, I’ll be using fictitious initials.
[22] Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Canadian Prime Minister, 1968 to 1979 and 1980 to 1984.
[23] The worst being execution. “Genocide” and “assimilation or death” are the words used these days to describe the treatment of First Nations peoples while in the residential schools and government centralization programs. The Canadian Encyclopedia (2021, January 18). Genocide and Indigenous Peoples in Canada. The Canadian Encyclopedia. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/genocide-and-indigenous-peoples-in-canada
[24] Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) or the October Crisis: Clément, D. (2022). October Crisis Canada’s Human Rights History. https://historyofrights.ca/history/october-crisis/4/
[25] I won’t reveal the address, other than to say it’s in Finland.
[26] The Micmac didn’t call these teepees, they called them ‘quams, which is a play on words from wigwams.
[27] To protect his identity, I’ll be using fictitious initials.
[28] If the Micmac were still around today, they would undoubtedly use “Sustainability” instead of this awkward “Sylvilization.”
[29] They were using poles that were fourteen feet long (four meters).
[30] Afrodrumming. (2019). Oldest Native American drumming ever (0:17 to 0:44) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igmpvrRQIkI
[31] European Union.
[32] Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
[33] Butterfield, N. (1990 April 17) New Age Movement Stealing American Indian Ceremonies The Seattle Times https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19900407&slug=1065168
[34] Ukko’s Faith: Siikala, A-L., Sinisalo, S. (1987) UKKO Encyclopedia.com https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/ukko
[35] Alhonen, A. (n.d.) Notes on the Finnish Tradition, 2. http://www.taivaannaula.org/notes.pdf
[36] To protect his identity, I’ll be using fictitious initials.
[37] I couldn’t tell their nationality.
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