In Stories from the Six Worlds, it is their stories, passed down by word of mouth, that best preserve and present Mi’kmaw culture. For in their tales, the People themselves speak about their world and give us glimpses of how their universe manifests, in all its fascinating otherness. Mi'kmaw stories have many levels: entertainment, instruction, warnings. They might subtly encode maps of the land's important resources, or of the wheeling skies at night. Telling stories, Elders wove humour and stark tragedy, terror and beauty, to teach their listeners how to survive. More importantly, they underlined, over and over again, how their listeners, as humans, must conduct themselves. Their tales resound with the universal themes included in any worldview—Order and Chaos, Courage and Fear, Change, Revenge and Mercy, Death, Rebirth, and Power—yet are powerfully rooted in Mi'kmaw tradition, Mi'kmaw land. Their voices still speak to us, down the centuries.

Ruth Holmes Whitehead, ethnologist and assistant curator at the Nova Scotia Museum, Halifax, has worked with the Mi'kmaw people for 30 years, and her work is an important source of information about historic Mi'kmaw culture. Her meticulous analysis, attention to detail, creative genius, and sensitivity have earned her the respect of Mi'kmaw specialists such as linguist Bernie Francis, who lent his expertise to Tracking Doctor Lonecloud. Ruth Holmes Whitehead became aware of Jerry Lonecloud in 1972 when she began working with the collections and records of the Nova Scotia Museum, much of which had been acquired during the tenure of Harry Piers, curator from 1899 to 1940. She was also on hand when photos by Clara Dennis were donated to the museum in 1973, a collection of black and white images of Mi'kmaw people, including portraits of Lonecloud. Research on the book really began in 1992 when her colleague Trudy Sable took her to look at the Clara Dennis material in the Nova Scotia Archives. They spent months transcribing notebooks containing Lonecloud's memoir, recorded by Clara Dennis in pencil in children's scribblers. A consultant to the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Whitehead has curated numerous exhibitions and written many articles and monographs. Among her popular books are Micmac Quillwork, Stories from the Six Worlds: Micmac Legends, and The Old Man Told Us: Excerpts from Micmac History, 1500-1950.

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