The predicted extinction of the woodland caribou will also cause the disappearance of a central milestone in the culture of the Innu, who maintain an ancestral relationship with this emblematic species of the Quebec territory. The documentary Atikᵘ, guardian of the territory therefore gives a voice to those whose identity is linked to it, while we are still waiting for the Legault government to announce a plan to avoid making this deer a ghost of the forest.
Even if it is at the heart of the point put forward by directors Guillaume Langlois and Nicolas Lévesque, the woodland caribou was almost absent from the documentary. Although they were guided by territory guardian Jean-Luc Kanapé, they had to wait until the very last day of winter filming in the Pipmuacan territory to finally see a small group of barely seven caribou.
It must be said that the deer is more threatened than ever in this region exploited by the forestry industry, where the Legault government has already rejected a protected area project which had been developed in order to preserve forest areas essential to the preservation of the herd. This included barely 225 animals, at best, during the most recent inventory, carried out in 2020 over a territory of more than 28,000 km2. “The population is in an extremely precarious state and its capacity for self-sufficiency is unlikely under current conditions,” the government experts concluded.
“It is absurd to still allow logging on this territory, and once again, it is the First Nations who will pay the price with their relationship to the territory and their culture. It seems to me that that’s enough,” says Guillaume Langlois.
Jean-Luc Kanapé, central character in this documentary filmed mainly in the territory of Pipmuacan, located on the North Shore, northeast of Lake Saint-Jean, agrees with this, noting the destruction that continues in this vast space natural. He also predicts the worst for the future: “If there are no protection efforts, this will be the next herd to suffer the same fate as the caribou of Gaspésie, Charlevoix and Val-d ‘Gold,’ he sums up.
In the cases of Charlevoix and Val-d’Or, the last animals were placed in captivity in order to avoid their disappearance, but there is currently no plan to release them. In the case of Gaspésie, the situation of the herd is so critical that the government tried last year, in vain, to give birth to new fawns by placing females in temporary captivity.
“It’s really sad to see this. It makes me think of our history, the history of the First Nations. We were in the forest, we lived from the forest. Today, they have placed us in communities, in reserves,” illustrates Jean-Luc Kanapé at the start of the documentary, flying over the Charlevoix caribou enclosure. “Here, the caribou will die little by little. There is nothing natural anymore. It’s a prison. They had their sentence. »
Culture in danger
This guardian of the territory, who monitors the evolution of the Pipmuacan herd day after day, also insists on the need to protect the habitat of this deer, considered an indicator of the health of the forest, but also as a crucial element of its identity. “We must protect it today for future generations. If the caribou disappears, it is a part of our culture that will disappear,” he summarizes, surrounded by his daughter and grandson.
However, everything is currently pointing towards this extinction, while industrial development is eating away at the last old forests of the province and the paths traced by foresters are becoming veritable highways for predators, who can thus go and kill the animals which still survive there.
In this context, Guillaume Langlois and Nicolas Lévesque directly criticize the Legault government, but also those who, over the years, have never implemented a strategy to save the woodland caribou in Quebec. Promised since 2019, the CAQ “strategy” was to be tabled before the end of 2023. It was finally postponed once again. It is impossible at the moment to know when a plan can be implemented and if it will be sufficient to curb the declines observed in different regions.
While in Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean last week, the Minister of the Economy, Pierre Fitzgibbon, insisted on the need to preserve jobs in the forestry industry. “I want to protect the caribou and wetlands, but I also want Quebec not to become poorer,” he said, quoted by The Daily.
The two directors deplore this discourse, which excludes, according to them, the very legitimate discourse of the First Nations. “As filmmakers, we wanted to hear the point of view of the Innu, which allows us to emphasize their perspective and the importance of this animal, but which is completely obstructed by the industry and the place taken by its lobby », argues Guillaume Langlois.
Beyond this deer, whose protection would preserve the habitat of several other species and carbon sinks essential to fight against the climate crisis, Nicolas Lévesque hopes that the documentary encourages us to think about our relationship to the natural spaces that exist still in Quebec. “We have to take an interest in our territory and the people with whom we share it, to think about what we want to leave behind us. »