Escape to Atikamekw Territory

Text & Photos : Ninka North

On the road to Manawan…

At the exit of Saint Michel des Saints, after a few kilometers of asphalt road, a sandy track plunges into the heart of thousands of hectares of boreal forest for more than eighty kilometers to reach the Manawan reserve. The appellation of origin designated a place where the eggs of migratory birds were collected, a site where several Atikamekw families had settled before the creation of the reserve in 1906. In Lanaudière, Manawan is both in Quebec and Nitaskinan¹.

Nitaskinan, “our land” in the Atikamekw language, covers most of the Mauricie region and extends to neighbouring regions, a territory covering some eighty thousand square kilometers.

The Atikamekw Nation declared its ancestral rights and sovereignty over its territory in Haute-Mauricie in 2014 and claimed exclusive title to it in 2018.

Nitaskinan map

As we drive along the forest trail, I try to imagine the incredible journey of the first men on these virgin lands at the end of the ice age. Having left Siberia fifteen thousand years ago, they had crossed Beringia² to hunt mammoths and caribou and were trapped on the frozen lands of Alaska for two millennia before spreading out across the plains. Before the arrival of the Whites, there were no borders or reserves. Space was not defined and all these lands represented a huge hunting territory that the tribes traveled freely.

Our escapades in Manawan have always been epic. My companion and I took the logging road several times with an old Chevrolet pick-up, without air conditioning in the heat of summer, windows open, eating dust but happy to be in the heart of the boreal forest, despite our frequent breakdowns.

You can’t do the logging road without a good all-terrain vehicle… The trail is chaotic and the vehicles cross it at high speed, flying sand and gravel, the only way to stay on course without being too shaken up. During one of our trips, the gas tank was half detached, dragging on the ground and we had to be even more ingenious to fix it.

It only lasted about ten kilometers and we were stuck for a good hour on the side of the road, waiting for the bushes where we expected to see a moose.
It’s time to breathe the forest, to feel its fragrances and its mystery…
A 4×4 flies the dust and parks suddenly near us, a head wearing a cap goes through the window and smiles at us :

“Need help?

The next minute, a resident of the reserve stands in front of us and after some usual jokes, he stretches a rope to tow us to the entrance of the village. During our visits to the community, we have always been able to count on the solidarity of our partners and kindness of the people crossing the road to Manawan, a common trait of the Atikamekws. But here, mutual aid is a code of survival of the northern regions, it is even a basic element of the traditions.

We finally arrive at our destination at the exit of a bend. The reserve covers eight hundred hectares with in its heart the lake Métabeskéga³ staked out on the southern shore and its heights of several hundred wooden houses, with a small gas station, a supermarket, an inn and an arena. As on all reserves, the buildings lined up along the roadside are owned by the government and are exempt from housing taxes. Imposing pick-up trucks park in front of palisades faded by the rigors of winter, children play in the street and watch us go by.

Decoration similar to other reserves. Life is austere here, lightened by the superfluity and futility of urban daily life, but the richness of Manawan, if it escapes at first glance, is unique. There is the immense lake that rises on the horizon in the morning mists and the forest imbued with mystery, this wilderness with which one finally feels close.

Then there is silence. It is with this perception that we know that we are far from the city, finally delivered from permanent swarming of sounds that crosses space.

Wandering dogs stroll along the roadside. Some of them look like big white wolves. None of them are aggressive. They are not abused because respect for animals is the order of things. In the small community, vehicles slow down as they pass. Integrated into the daily life of the reserve, the dogs wander around the camps during the annual powwows and blend into the scenery.

Land of the ancestors…

“We don’t own the land
It’s the land that owns us,
whisper the “elders”…”

Native American thought differs greatly from that of Westerners. The territory has no exact boundaries, the territory is Nitaskinan, the land of the ancestors, where one is born. It is a sacred notion, inviolable in the unconscious of the indigenous people, because “we do not sell the air we breathe, nor the water of the rivers”⁴, as Chief Seattle⁵declared to Isaac Stevens, when the White people wanted to buy their land. Owning things is nothing if you don’t own your life… “You realize very quickly what is essential in nature”. It is in this state of mind that the Atikamekw have survived through time, faithful to their way of life and their age-old traditions that respect the environment; an authenticity that testifies to their strength of character and their resilience.

Their history, like that of all Aboriginal people, is eventful. Between 1670 and 1680, smallpox wreaked havoc, decimating most of the population. Under the repeated assaults of the Iroquois, the families of survivors left their land but their descendants resettled there some twenty years later. In 1774, the Hudson’s Bay Company⁶opened its first trading posts and set up the first commercial exchanges.

In 1806, the Indians’ law⁷ changed them from semi-nomadic to sedentary in the reserves. The forestry companies created in the region in 1830 begin to employ them. many years before. The railroad, the installation of dams on the basins of the Maurice River and the arrival of foreign labor will gradually upset their way of life and create a rupture in the cultural transmission. The process of assimilation⁸ that took place drastically during the 20th century prevented them from practicing their religions and customs. Families are broken up, children placed in Catholic boarding schools where they are evangelized, stripped of their language and culture. Polygamy⁹ is declared illegal in favor of marriage and children are baptized.

This whole period of colonization leaves deep stigmas that will be spread over several generations, which prompted Justin Trudeau’s¹⁰ government to set up a reconciliation process with First Nations in 2015, a process questioned by the exploitation of a pipeline in British Columbia¹¹and the systemic racism against aboriginal people denounced after the tragic death of Joyce Echaquan in 2020¹².This drama, which caused public outrage, led to the formulation of the “Joyce Principle”¹³.

Despite all the media hype surrounding these tragedies, racism and systemic discrimination have still not been officially recognized in Quebec. In March 2023, Marjolaine Étienne, President of Quebec Native Women (QNW) accompanied by Ghislain Picard, Chief of the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador and Sipi Flamand, Chief of the community of Manawan, presented a petition to the National Assembly to obtain concrete actions from the government and the adoption of the Joyce Principle. The government refused to table the motion¹⁴.

Statement of the Joyce Principle :

"The Joyce Principle aims to guarantee all Aboriginal people the right to equitable access, without discrimination, to all health and social services,
and the right to enjoy the highest attainable standard of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health. Joyce's Principle necessarily requires
the recognition of and respect for Indigenous traditional and living knowledge and wisdom in relation to health."

Today, the municipality has a population of 2.208inhabitants¹⁵ with a Catholic majority, a spirituality¹⁶ often combined with indigenous beliefs. Opinions on religion are mixed and many of them are now reconnecting with their ancestral culture. Even if evangelization¹⁷ left terrible marks on the elders during their time at the residential school, the presence of a chapel on the lakeshore – Saint-Jean-de-Brébeuf – bears witness to their history and their links with the Jesuit missionaries. Its choir, decorated with a birch bark teepee and a lectern, was built in the pure Aboriginal style by the inhabitants.

For a long time nicknamed “Têtes de boule” by the whites because of a round cap applied to the heads of newborns, they took back in 1972 the name “Atikamekw” initially attributed to the whitefish.

Here, French is spoken, but especially Nehiromowin Atikamekw, a living language of the “Anicnape anishnabe” (Algonquin) linguistic family recognized as a dialect of Cree. Transmitted as a mother tongue, it is written with a Latin alphabet consisting of fifteen letters. It is a polysynthetic language¹⁸ composed of many morphemes¹⁹, which is considered to be one of the oldest. The words, very long, can express a whole sentence in other languages. Although there is only one Atikamekw language, phonetic variants exist within the three respective communities of the nation: Obedjiwan and Wemotaci in Mauricie, and Manawan in Lanaudière.

The Atikamekw reserve created in 1853, “Coocoocache”²⁰– owl – was deserted in 1932 during the construction of the hydroelectric Rapide Blanc dam.

Far from the clichés they are usually subjected to, the inhabitants of the reserves do not live apart from the modern world and are for the most part hyper-connected. The Atikamekw are no exception to the rule…

Here, young and old communicate with family and friends through social networks, exchanging with other nations the headlines and rumours of the day. It could be said that, like the drum, the net represents a wonderful echo chamber where sharing, an essential notion to tradition, is practiced on a daily basis. The community lives at the crossroads of information and the great hunting territory that surrounds it, without changing the traditions that are in tune with the rhythm of the seasons. At the first contact, the spontaneity and kindness of the inhabitants is appealing but very quickly, the picture darkens and we discover the vulnerability of the community.

The alcohol problems of the elderly, violence against women and the weight of history: the violent ethnocide that had labeled them “savages”²¹. Then there is this word not to be uttered in front of the elders, this word at the origin of a deep and persistent evil. “Residential schools”…

And then, as on many other reserves, there is drug addiction among the youth, the boredom that is fortunately dispelled by the field hockey arena in the winter…But if the uneasiness persists in this small commune nestled in the woods where psychologists follow one another, other sounds prove to be carriers of deliverance.

For among the natives, healing begins around tradition, or more exactly around the “drum”, an apparently banal object, paradoxically capable of overcoming the traumas of colonization.

The tewehikan²² practice is sacred… And this magic drum is much more than that, because it is alive, embodying a being in its own right, it is for them “Grandfather” or “Grandmother”, it is the voice of the ancestors; a tradition forbidden in the time of the missionaries. This return to our roots, which began just over twenty years ago, has breathed new life into indigenous communities. And in Manawan, as on the other reserves of the nation, the drum is struck with incredible spontaneity and energy from a very young age.

Even though they are now integrated into modern life, the majority of the Atikamekw are familiar with traditional medicinal plants and the basics of survival in the forest. Known as the bark people for their canoe making and birch craftsmanship, they are the first people to have practiced the harvest of maple syrup. Still today, the life of the community revolves around six seasons during which all the families share the activities.

There is Sikon, the pre-spring allocated to maple trees, and then Miroskamin – spring – which announces the time to go to the woods with the family, to take care of the maple groves, or to go hunting. It is also the time for scouting, hunting ducks, geese, bustards, fishing and birch bark gathering, as well as working moose hides. All these activities extend to Nipin in the summer.

It is a time of relaxation during which one engages in fishing, the setting up of traditional camps, handicraft activities and the preparation of the pow wow. Takwakin, autumn, is the season of winter preparation, wood gathering and preparation of snowshoes, trapping, moose hunting and white fish²³ fishing, Pitci-pipon, pre-winter is the period of corigone drying, preparation of skins and furs, and Pipon, winter during which we bead our regalias ²⁴for the summer pow wow.

Hunting is an important activity in the community and is regulated by the seasons. Moose hunting is prohibited in the spring, but is practiced in the fall and winter. There are usually four hunters to track and kill the animal and about twenty people who follow on skidoo for the collection of the meat cut on site. All parts of the animal are shared with community members.

Although the natural resource sector provides work, especially wood, the reserve suffers from high unemployment. And the road covered with rock and sand, owned by the logging companies, is far from facilitating travel. Even today, in order to reach Saint-Michel des Saints, being equipped with Jeeps or all-terrain vehicles is indispensable.

The sovereignty of the Atikamekws²⁵ gives them a right to control the cut. And trees can only be felled at a distance of one hundred meters from the lake shore.

But since 2021, massive deforestation has been methodically taking place on Nitaskinan, creating tensions within the community. Following the moratorium of the Atikamekw Council of Manawan and the Council of the Atikamekw Nation on forestry cuttings, Minister Lafrenière went back on their right of review, underlining that it was not a right of veto.

Blokades against deforestation

In 2022, the community of Manawan organized itself at the camp at kilometer 60 to stand guard day and night to protect her forest; a situation that did not improve in 2023, as it was the turn of a Wemotaci family²⁶ to set up blockades²⁷ on a forest road to have their ancestral rights recognized. Quebec responded by appointing a “facilitator”, a strategic advisor to put an end to the “impasse” denounced by Grand Chief Constant Awashish.

The massive exploitation of the boreal forest is an unprecedented ecological disaster. Already denounced by Richard Desjardins in his film “L’erreur boréale”²⁸ released in 1999.

Having ventured on the forest roads climbing north, I know that the reality is much more disastrous than it seems. I have seen rows of trees behind which a chaos of roots and clear-cutting ravaged land spread as far as the eye can see, putting the shores of lakes in danger…

For the past few years, there has been talk of an asphalt road that would replace the forest road and boost the

development of the reserve; a priority, even if one could object that it is the price of the tranquility of this wildlife reserve and its cultural identity that are at stake.

For the preservation of the environment and traditional values are essential for the Atikamekw. It is in this spirit that the tourist office and the Manawan hotel offer the opportunity to experience their way of life in a traditional camp.

The Matakan site is accessible by canoe by crossing Lake Kempt – Opockoteiak sakihikan in Atikamekw – which extends over sixty kilometers with a myriad of peninsulas and bays. Nature packages are offered under the supervision of a guide to spend two nights in a teepee with fir trees and campfire. Activities include fishing net setting initiation and canoe or rabaska – community canoe -trips. No running water, internet or electricity, but rustic conditions that call upon ancestral know-how and way of life in a breathtakingly beautiful setting where the elements reign supreme…

Environmental contamination in progress…

A rush to extract minerals and “claims” is currently taking place in Quebec for the construction of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles.

The impact on Aboriginal communities has not been long in coming, especially Manawan, since “the largest Western graphite mine”²⁹ is located in the heart of Lanaudière…

Despite the prospects of responsible development put forward by the elected officials of the Nation, a pre-agreement was signed in 2018 with Nouveau Monde Graphite³⁰. This open-pit mine project was born on the property he owns in Matawinie four kilometers from Saint-Michel des Saints. The promise of a paved road to Manawan was of course put forward, despite the disastrous environmental consequences of this type of extraction.

After a pre-agreement signature in June 2019, the Atikamekw elected officials are turning back following unfulfilled financial commitments by Nouveau Monde Graphite. After a number of U-turns by elected officials, the project was finally adopted – with the backing of the Ministry of the Environment and the Fight against Climate

Change despite the pit’s³¹ many impacts on the ecosystem, wildlife and people living nearby.

Nouveau Monde Graphite began commercial production in 2023 despite the protest and mobilization of Matawinie Ekoni Aci³², a collective of Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals, Nouveau Monde Graphite began commercial production in 2023.

Today, dust and extremely toxic products – in the order of 100 million tons of mining waste – involving long-lasting acid contamination are discharged annually into groundwater and lakes, including Lac Taureau.

In Manawan, many people are surviving on welfare, with constant job insecurity, the younger generations barely emerging from family intergenerational traumas. Which begs the question: is this plan part of the “Reconciliation announced” or “passive colonization”?

Do indigenous communities have genuine autonomy to “refuse” consultation? Is it an evolutionary opportunity for them to collaborate in the destruction of what they hold most dear?

Onickakw !³³

"The extractivist companies," says Sipi Flamand, for whom making money is the only reason to be here on the planet,
consider the indigenous protector of the environment - of Mother Earth - as a detractor".
And further,
"Our territories are being swallowed up for the benefit of savage capitalism, because of an extractivist 'reconciliation'!"

Soon, those who are the “garden’s keepers” of the planet will no longer have a sanctuary to protect…
“It’s their choice,” some will say.

And the others ?
The others don’t care, they are like us, “the whites”, and buy gleaming tanks that drink the blood of the “big black snakes”³⁴ But since 2022, Sipi Flamand, elected as the new Chief of Manawan, invests himself to make things change and carry the torch for the new generations.

A political analyst specializing in indigenous governance, Sipi is very involved in the decolonization movement. He wrote the dystopian essay “Nikanik e itapian”³⁵ published by Éditions Hannenorak, in which he criticizes the industrial companies³⁶. He also directed the film “Onickakw“³⁷ a moving documentary on the condition of his people.
His traditional name, “Miaskom Sipi”, seems symbolically appropriate to the mission he has given himself since it means “Where two rivers meet”…
I still hope that this mediator, who is well versed in the safeguarding of his tradition and his territory, will resist the steamroller of industrial decision-makers who are never satisfied with the seduction of their “programmed chaos”…

Since the beginning of his mandate, he has been working for more social justice in his community, because despite

all the media hype surrounding the residential school and colonization tragedy, racism and systemic discrimination have still not been officially recognized in Quebec.

In March 2023, Sipi joined Marjolaine Étienne, President of Quebec Native Women (QNW) and Ghislain Picard, Chief of the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador, to table a petition at the National Assembly to obtain concrete actions from the government and the adoption of the Joyce Principle.
As in 2020, the motion was denied³⁸.

In this period of techno-consumerist progress that has nothing to do with “positive evolution”, perhaps it would be good to remember the words of Caesar Newashish³⁹, famous atikamekw designer⁴⁰ of traditional canoes.

«Witamowikok aka wiskat eki otci pakiti-namokw kitaskino, nama wiskat ki otci atawanano, nama wiskat ki otci mecko-tonenano, nama kaie wiskat ki otci pitoc irakonenano Kitaskino.»⁴¹

On the road to Manawan…

Land of the ancestors…

Blokades against deforestation

Environmental contamination in progress…

Onickakw !33“Wake up!”

Onickakw !³³