The Prime Minister of Quebec, François Legault, and several of his ministerial subordinates are striving, these days, to utter nationalist nonsense worthy of a high school student who skipped and failed his History 101 course on the origins of the Quebec nation, on the history of Quebec and that of its territory.
As part of its project for a museum of the nation or the history of the Quebec nation, the CAQ government begins our history with Samuel de Champlain and summarizes it to that of French Canadians, under the pretext that indigenous peoples are nations different and external, which have only a negligible relationship with reality and which only deserve a prehistoric mention. The Indigenous people here would therefore have a history of occupation and use of their Nitassinan or Quebec territory several millennia old, but totally different from that of Quebecers — or perhaps even no history at all.
Before Champlain, and therefore the beginning of the colonial period, for our leaders there was only the terra nullius, as the great popist jurists of the Middle Ages considered it, that is to say an immense uninhabited territory belonging to no one. This then is the origin of the Doctrine of Discovery which authorized Christian nations to shamelessly appropriate indigenous territories, treat individuals as slaves and, if necessary, exterminate them.
Supreme pretext also to marginalize them little by little from their lifestyles and their territorial rights and to impose on them until today their entire legal corpus by making them wards of the State.
My Innu mother-in-law (cucumenas), Shunien, must be turning in her grave, she who, around forty years ago, had to snatch a seized bustard from the hands of a wildlife officer who wanted to deprive her of her way of life and her livelihood near his small isolated village of Nutashkuan. This time, the law of the strongest, that of others, resulting from the original legal usurpation, fortunately did not apply. This story still seems to be being written…
According to the historical thinking of our leaders, Aboriginal people were there before, so they are no longer there after. Great museum history lesson for our children.
This spectacle is all the more saddening as it consolidates the apprehensions of the First Nations of Quebec concerning the desire of the Quebec State to recognize in reality the contribution of their people to the construction of a fair modus vivendi, which transcends the common prejudices that have poisoned our mutual relations for several decades. It also constitutes the petticoat that protrudes relative to the recognition by the State of aboriginal titles, ancestral rights and treaty rights clearly identified by the jurisprudence of Canadian courts as well as by international law.
I imagine that this positioning comes from a primary understanding concerning the concept of nation and that of a nation-to-nation relationship as desired by the First Nations. In the very name of this desire to negotiate ancestral rights concerning legal, constitutional, territorial, cultural and other jurisdictions, on the basis of mutual disrespect, we would deduce that the indigenous peoples here — and all newcomers, moreover — are not part of the Quebec nation or its history.
Well, the shortcut is incredible… It would therefore not be possible to belong to both an indigenous nation and the Quebec nation, even if we have shared for decades and until today the same territory, the same struggles and the same story.
The fact of being different nations and being recognized as such in no way endorses the fact that the government of Quebec does not recognize that these nations are also part of the Quebec nation nor certainly their participation in the wealth of our mutual history. Quebec is recognized as a nation by the Canadian government and does not cease to be part of the history of Canada and its confederation, even if this status does not satisfy it.
Quebec has a short memory for having long forgotten its political intention, enshrined by a unanimous motion of the National Assembly, to set up a joint indigenous Quebec parliamentary forum in order to promote multilateral structural relations and integrate indigenous concerns. in its legislative, judicial and public service processes. There is a long way from words to actions.
It is not enough to hastily promote to indigenous communities forced agreements on royalties from Hydro-Québec – which has squandered its surpluses through contracts for the sale of firm energy to the United States in need of hydraulic energy. low price — to glory in our relationship.
I consider that this spectacle is more than disappointing and that it embarrassingly contradicts the history of our nations that I have told to my Innu spouse and to my children and grandchildren who are as proud to be Quebecers as they are Innu.
In this project, the government of Quebec has every interest in working with indigenous organizations to build a syllabus honest, intelligent and respectful of historical realities. It would also be wise to seek advice from knowledgeable historians who are aware of the issues facing our nations.
Niaut.