The seventh season | The Press

One of the first things I learned about the Atikamekw was that they don’t have four seasons, but six. In addition to the four seasons that we all know, there is also a pre-winter and a pre-spring. You know that period we just got out of? The one where the slush furnishes the sidewalks, the cold rain, the beginning of the sugaring off, the obligatory passage towards the buds, the sun and the spring heat? Not crazy, huh? Two mini-seasons that find their place perfectly within the well-known quartet.

However, the Atikamekw reality is not just the seasons of the earth. There is also another, imposed one: the logging season which normally begins at the end of May each year.

Since last February, several Atikamekw territory chiefs have set up an awareness camp on the dirt road that connects Manawan to Saint-Michel-des-Saints, the nearest town. A large dirt road that never ceases to see trucks filled with wood. They are more and more numerous. This week, there are about twenty chefs out of a possible 32. Their families are also present. The territory is everyone’s business. A few days ago, Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chief Na’moks also moved to the 60 kilometer side of the long road. A similar battle, by different nations, against the encroachment on the territory and the exploitation of the resource, from one end of the country to the other.

The Atikamewks are tired of seeing their territory trampled on, life slipping through their fingers. Their culture too. A culture embedded in a land that they inhabit, that they know, that they have lived for millennia.

Notcimik means “forest” in the Atikamekw language. It also means “where I come from”. But what will remain of these identity roots if everything is slowly destroyed? This is the question asked by many elders, women and territory chiefs.

The fed up of the Atikamekw is not new. In 2014, they unilaterally declared their sovereignty over their territory. They tried the strong method by blocking railways, forest roads then the soft method by creating joint committees, submitted to consultations, drafted agreements, demanded a moratorium which they finally gave themselves . The Atikamekw have, to this day, still not regained real control of the territory which has seen them grow since time immemorial.

Between the family of Henri Dubé who accuses the Scierie St-Michel of having opened a road on his maple grove without his consent and the elder Jo Ottawa who says he is exasperated by the tactics and constant pressure exerted by the companies, the ranks are growing. , support is growing, and the Atikamekw are making themselves heard.

The Atikamekw are patient. This is one of the lessons I learned from their contact. They live a little more to the rhythm of the land and its seasons than we do in the South. They take the time to do things, to observe, to learn the territory.

Old Edmond Dubé used to tell me about all that birch has to offer when he was alive. He told me not to step on these plants, that these were good for headaches. The things you don’t learn from books, but which are invaluable. The learning of a lifetime. Things that are passed down from generation to generation like precious secrets. Secrets too long kept silent by the sound of bulldozers or harvesters.

I was looking at a map developed by the University of Maryland that shows tree cover loss through 2019 across America. A great tool that Indigenous Spaces shared in one of its many articles on the subject. My focus took place on the Atikamekw territory, then expanded to all of Quebec. It’s red. Not everywhere, but it’s 40% red, I would say. Where there are trees. More in some areas. Looking at all this, I remembered my ecology professor telling us: “You know, the trees you see on the side of the highways that look like they say the forest is full behind them, it’s an adornment, a deception. Trees have only been left on the edge to make it appear that the forest behind is strong and lush. The truth is that as the crow flies, there isn’t much left. This card is a bit like that. We break up in the North, we leave a little in the South, we break up in the West and we leave a little in the East, and we start again a little further. Green here and there and diffused red through it, like a wound that won’t heal.