I really like the recent advertisement from the Government of Quebec which features the 11 aboriginal nations here. Directed by the Mohawk filmmaker Sonia Bonspille Boileau, the ad, very beautiful, affirms that “between nations, it is better to know each other”. In conclusion, addressing the Quebec nation, a young Aboriginal woman said softly: “Now you see us, and it’s the beginning of something. Let’s hope so.
According to a Léger poll conducted in 2020, 73% of Quebecers have a good opinion of First Nations. However, 45% of respondents consider that relations between non-Aboriginal Quebecers and First Nations are bad. We would like it to work, we can conclude, but we see that it is not easy.
Already in 1979, in his book Destinies of America, the anthropologist Rémi Savard noted the discomfort. “The bottom line,” he wrote, “is that our relationship with the Native has always been and remains the most troubled part of us. […]. It is important, he continued, to admit “that our own difference requires an equally clear and precise recognition of theirs.”
I find these poll results and this epigraph from Savard in Quebecers and Aboriginals (Boréal, 2023, 280 pages), a collective work under the direction of historian François-Olivier Dorais and political scientist Geneviève Nootens.
The major question posed by this work is the following: “How, then, can the historical narrative of Quebec as a minority nation and as a dominant society in the space of its borders be articulated with the construction by the First Nations of their own( s) historiography(ies)? »
Do we no longer forget or render invisible the Aboriginal peoples by writing the history of Quebec through their full integration into the national narrative, through parallel histories, their own — the 10 First Nations and the Inuit do not have the same history — and ours, or through nested stories, in dialogue?
Quebeckers may have believed, for example, that it was enough to replace exclusion with inclusion to demonstrate their concern for justice. The Aboriginal peoples, in this logic, accede to the status of full-fledged Quebecers. However, it is not that simple.
Ghislain Picard, Chief of the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador, refuses this solution. “I am, let it be said, neither Canadian nor Quebecer. I am Innu. It would therefore be doing violence to him to integrate him by force into the Quebec nation for the sake of recognition.
Quebec separatists, in the same way, do not want to be said to be Canadians, even if they demand, in all fairness, recognition of their rights as citizens by Canada.
Moreover, as the anthropologist Gilles Bibeau notes, even if Picard is neither Quebecer nor Canadian, “this does not prevent us from considering that the Innu people to whom [il] belongs has fully participated in the construction of Quebec”. So he must have a place in this story.
Historian Brian Gettler, who rightly points out that the key events in history are not the same for Quebecers and for the various Aboriginal nations, therefore suggests writing separate histories, while insisting on the need for dialogue .
The Innu poet Marie-Andrée Gill, convinced that “collaboration is essential” between each other, enthusiastically pleads for a “national history of Quebec [qui] truly includes First Nations history”. She says she is surprised by the attachment of the Aboriginal peoples of Quebec to Canada and their opposition to Quebec sovereignty, when she sees “so many possibilities, potential alliances” between Quebec and the First Nations.
The highlight of this collective work is the interview with the sociologist and historian Denys Delâge, led by François-Olivier Dorais. For Delâge, the history of the relationship between Quebecers and Aboriginals is both a colonial history made up of power struggles, to the detriment of the latter, and a human history rich in cultural encounters.
The European borrowings from the Aboriginal peoples are numerous and allowed the colonists to develop a healthy critique of their culture of origin. The Aboriginal peoples, adds Delâge, “also took a lot from European settlers,” especially writing and religious music.
To write the history of these relationships, explains the historian, is to recognize these healthy interactions, but also to assume “responsibility for a heritage and a memory of injustices committed against Aboriginal people”, while avoiding the sterile adversarial mode. “It is important to do, to write, to tell the story of all of us”, concludes Delâge. I like the “all of us”, which says unity in diversity.
Columnist (Presence Info, Game), essayist and poet, Louis Cornellier teaches literature in college.