Text & Photos : Ninka North
Image of colonial past
When I came to see the boreal forest and saw its dilapidated state, I wondered what had become of the “garden’s keepers”, those mythical nomadic hunters who once stalked the hordes of caribou in the northern wilderness.
The image of a colonial past, alas, emerges from the battered pages of history, like the Hollywood clichés of propaganda westerns. The dynamics of colonization can be summed up in three words: conquest-assimilation-exploitation.
This process ended up ruining the planet in the space of a few centuries, through a system based on the enrichment of an elite, with the unconditional support of a “Holy Cross” whitening the darkness it brought with it…
One of my Atikamekw friends told me one day that before the arrival of the black robes, they did not know the word “sin”…
They followed the spiritual teachings and these were inscribed in the book of life, in this forest that taught them the living words, the “animated” words.…
With the assimilation, the paradigm shift has ruined traditional values, implying perspectives of exploitation contrary to their beliefs, among which the inviolability of the Earth, and of natural elements such as water and air, principles that are part of their identity.
A struggle between progressives and traditionalists
The traditionalists represent a minority at the moment. But valuing culture and tradition is not so obvious for young natives who live in the precariousness of employment on reserves.
New technologies are invading the family homes, abandoning nature and questioning the ancestral way of life. And if “welfare” barely provides enough to live on, most of the activity is centred around deforestation and administrative structures – just a few hundred jobs, or even less – because in these regions, there are no other development sectors except for the forestry companies and the mining operations located nearby.
There is a struggle between progressive and traditionalists on the reserves, similar to those in the international political arena. Whether we like it or not, we have entered the era of the Anthropocene1time when human activities modify geology and ecosystems where development is synonymous with environmental threats and species extinction.
Talking about ecology and environmental problems to people who have been disinherited for several centuries, and whose sector of activity was set up by the colonial system, is to add fuel to the fire… Because even today, the reality of these families crammed into insalubrious houses, marked by intergenerational traumas and cultural amnesia, is rough.
The investigation I conducted quickly revealed the reality of peoples oppressed for several centuries, a reality sown with intergenerational traumas and cultural amnesia2see the thesis of anthropologist Pierrot Ross Tremblay https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/as/2020-v44-n3-as06115/1078189ar.
Assimilation is an established fact. It continues today in a more subtle way, because it is no longer undergone but accepted as a necessary evolution by new generations and native decision-makers who have had access to higher education.
But these communities are today exposed to a terrible dilemma, that of being instrumentalized to become the main actors in the destruction of the boreal forest and large-scale mining, not to mention oil exploitation. Deforestation continues at an insane rate, clear-cutting methodically destroys the territories without any control; the last report, the Coulombe report, was carried out in 2004, leaving optimal room for maneuver for forestry…
The impact of the over-exploitation of the northern territories leaves little hope for the future. In addition to a number of Canadian pipelines carrying thousands of tons of oil and gas, the administration of President Joe Biden has approved the Willow Oil Project3https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/biden-administration-approves-willow-oil-project-alaska-2023-03-13. What’s more, the Keystone pipeline project that Donald Trump wants to relaunch between the United States and Canada will also pose new environmental and health problems, even if some of native leaders see it as a great opportunity…
When one knows the traditions of these initially nomadic peoples and their beliefs attached to the protection of nature, one wonders about this paradox; without omitting to note the cynicism of the organizations that save them from the inescapable unemployment that is rampant in the reserves.
In this conjecture, several of my interviews with members of communities in northern Quebec, remained unanswered, despite the fact that they are strongly involved in the tradition, and say they are concerned by the massive deforestation of their territory. Today, we can worry about this indigenous sovereignty of the unceded territories, knowing that this term puts forward economic arrangements that are not unanimous and question the future of the next generations…