by Gabrielle McLeod and Fawzi Ibrahim

Inside The Barn archery range, located just outside the Mi’kmaw community of Membertou, Unama’ki (Cape Breton), Clifford Paul prepares to shoot an arrow from his wooden, metallic-textured bow.

He closes one eye to focus, pulls back the string to the corner of his mouth and lets go. His arrow hits one of the animal targets set up at the far end of the room.

“For me, the flight of the arrow is a spiritual extension of who I am and who my ancestors were,” says Paul, a Mi’kmaw archer and archery coach. “It’s still who we are today.”

Paul says archery is like an art; full of creativity and hard to suppress.

“If there’s ever a time where I cannot shoot that bow, I’ll find a way. That’s how much I’m drawn to it. That’s how much it means to me,” he says. “There’s nothing more exciting than this sound of a flying arrow.”

Paul first picked up a bow when he was a young child. His older brother taught him how to make his own bow out of sticks and fishing line with arrows made using cattails.

Paul’s own children and grandchildren have taken up the sport. He says it’s important to pass on the teachings to honour the legacy of their ancestors.

“I have to teach them how to make those bows that I made when I was a kid so that they can carry that narrative,” Paul says. “The story doesn’t end with me.”

At the indoor archery range, Paul jokes around with ...

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