The many services that the Church has rendered to our society are well known and incontestable.
Unfortunately, however, we are still in the process of unearthing the dark side of its work. In recent years, this exercise has shed light on sex scandals and, more recently, his involvement in the management of disastrous residential schools.
However, its responsibility also extends to the overwhelming image which, from the very earliest times of New France, has been attached to the Aboriginals. This image initially affected mainly those who were called the Iroquois. Over time, it spread to other groups (or nations).
In the latter case, what happened is of great interest. Here is a summary showing the history of Saguenay (including Lac-Saint-Jean). But I suspect the same scenario has happened elsewhere.
The first settlers who settled in Saguenay from 1838 found themselves grappling with a most hostile environment in which they had to learn to survive. Everything had to be redone or reinvented: eating immediately, surviving the harsh winter, finding accommodation, getting around, finding one’s way, taking care of oneself …
The many testimonies that have been gathered from the immediate descendants of these pioneers all underline the same thing: without the help of the Innu who roamed or inhabited this territory, they would have died or would have been forced to give up and go into exile. As a result, these first inhabitants developed a dependence on the Aboriginals and also an immense recognition coupled with a great admiration. From then on, close relations of friendship and mutual respect took shape, traces of which I myself could note in the corpus of interviews I carried out in the early 1960s with elderly farmers.
A leap in time
Let’s take a leap in time. At the beginning of the year 2000, with the help of a group of students, I conducted a survey on the perception of Aboriginals among Saguenayans aged 20 to 40 years. The result was very clear: the vast majority of respondents had difficulty in saying. What had happened in the meantime?
What happened is mainly the work of the clergy through preaching, teaching, newspapers and various publications, including national history textbooks produced by religious communities (some went as far as show little white impaled children whose mothers were forced to turn the spit until the Indians – Iroquois – found them just right). From the time of the clearing, in the reports they sent to their bishop in Quebec, the first missionary priests sent to Saguenay to investigate the mores of the “Indians” painted a repulsive portrait. In 1851, one of them described the Innu as stupid, treacherous, lying and dissolute people, living like animals among the garbage. Another, in 1862, spoke of their jealousy, their cowardice, their cowardice, their selfishness and their rudeness.
These portraits and others circulated among the Saguenay clergy. An elderly nun whom I interviewed about forty years ago confided to me that members of her community, as well as herself, wondered if the “Savages” were “real people”.
Well-meaning laity followed suit. In some weeklies from the end of the 19th centurye century and the first decades of the XXe century, chroniclers were unleashed. The Aboriginals were fools, ignorant people who had no better reason than the residents of an asylum. We dreamed of the day when the region would be rid of it. The Pointe-Bleue Innu reserve (located near Roberval, now called Mashteuiatsh) was a dark spot in the midst of civilization. It was all “sickening”.
There was consensus on one idea: any educational effort was pointless. We were dealing with a primitive race which, in any case and very fortunately, was doomed to extinction.
Fight stereotypes
I come back to my 2004 survey. When it was completed, I went to present the results to the reserve band council. The members present were not surprised; what I reported corresponded to what they observed on their side. However, they approached the mayor of the city of Saguenay, the notorious Jean Tremblay. They wanted his collaboration to fight the stereotypes they were subjected to.
The meeting was brief (they then told me the story): the mayor severely dismissed them after having profusely insulted them, taking up the range of familiar stereotypes. Their attempt to “raise awareness” ended there.
What would such an investigation reveal today? Has the new generation of Saguenayans inherited the “Indian” from the settlers or the “Indian” from the elites? And what about other regions of Quebec?