Rykko Bellemare, a multifaceted Atikamekw artist

Singer, drummer and producer of the group Northern Voices, Rykko Bellemare is an accomplished artist recognized for his many performances, including that of an award-winning actor for his «Sianouk» role in the Chloé Leriche film “Avant les rues”¹https://www.spira.quebec/film/157-avant-les-rues.html.

For many years, he has led a paradoxal existence, experimenting with contemporary urban life and the more traditional life of Wemotaci reserve in the middle of the Haute-Mauricie forests.

Wemotaci, which in Atikamekw means “mountain from which to observe”, is bordered by the Tapiskwan Sipi River, named Saint-Maurice by the settlers.

This is a mythical place in the history of trappers, as Jean-Baptiste Perrault established the first fur trading post here in 1806. The reserve came into being following the division of 233,000 acres between the Atikamekws, Algonquins and Wabanaquis²Abénaquis in 1851. Today, it is mainly populated by descendants of the first Atikamekw families (1,318 inhabitants).

Rykko speaks impeccable French with that beautiful Atikamekw accent you hear ringing out in Haute Mauricie. As he begins to speak, the sounds of the land cut through the silence like an invitation to travel. Atikamekws have that secret… The freshness of real speech, simple and direct.

There’s a gravity in his voice that I didn’t expect to find in him, something that wasn’t there when we met in Manawan a few years ago. But time has passed and Rykko has become a father…

He tells me that he spent part of his primary school years in Quebec City, following his mother who was studying there, and his high school years in Trois Rivières.

– I went back and forth between city life and the community,” he begins.

The motivation to create a drumming group came early, when he was a traditional dancer, but he owes it in part to his brother. He takes a breath, and launches into the story,

– It all started here in Wemotaci. I was dancing on the drum and at one point I got close to it. I found it impressive. My little brother, who was also a dancer, was also fascinated.

He told me about the “Wemotaci Singers”, a local band that used to play in the community. Motivated, Rykko took part in drumming workshops at school and practiced.

Then everything changed one day at a competitive pow wow in Wendake, Huron territory, where he and his brother won prizes.

– We bought a drum together. We brought it back to our community and presented it to our family and friends. Because for us, it’s alive, it’s clean, it’s alive, it’s part of our daily lives. The sound of the drum is the heart of nature, of Mother Earth,” he says respectfully.

His brother, who dreams of setting up a drumming group, finally convinces him. The two of them set off with a group of youngsters, inviting veterans to join them in founding Northern Voices. One of them, Manawan elder Gilles Moar, passed on some of his knowledge.

– At the time, the group had a name like ‘Young Boys’, a teenage thing,” he recalls.

Rykko took the reins of Northern Voices and became its manager by force of circumstance. The band quickly became a success, but things went wrong after a few years. With so many hats to choose from, not to mention acting, he eventually suffered a severe depression, a “burn-out”. He gradually withdrew from the group and from pow wows.

– But I’ll be back on the dance floor,” he admits.

Rykko won an award for his role – “Sianouk” – in the film “Avant les rues”, and was thrust into the limelight overnight. In those years, the idea of becoming an actor had never crossed his mind. But fate had decided otherwise…

He had never taken an audiovisual course or internship, but became an actor in the blink of an eye after Chloé Leriche visited his community in 2015. Landing during a rehearsal with a cameraman, she had him audition in front of her drumming group.

– Of course, I’d done monologues and scenes I’d seen on TV for fun, but there was no preparation for that…” he murmurs. Acting in front of other people, that wasn’t easy…
Chloé liked what she saw.
– Wearing the role of “Shawnouk” for thirty-one days was a wonderful challenge.

But embodying the character proved to be a difficult process, especially as the drama brought to the screen was drawn from a real-life experience of someone close to her.

– I sank into the character’s skin for the next two or three years.

It was a painful catharsis that brought down his motivation as an actor,” he explains gravely.

Rykko is now afraid of being asked to play dark roles, pointing to a native filmography, or one that involves them, too often inclined to put difficult social subjects on screen.

– Remembering hurts,” he adds.

I nod silently. His words are reminiscent of the media outpouring that followed the discovery of residential school abuse and rekindled the wounds. While exposing the intergenerational traumas of colonization is essential, it is not without consequences. The dramas portrayed on screen are part of a history that has not been erased, a history that survives in the memory of the “elders” and upsets the youngest, like an invisible, tenacious imprint.

I know that in the heart of this small community so far removed from the world, alcohol and disenchanted dreams have blackened the eyes of chemical ecstasy, that the young are prey to trafficking as in every “reserve”

“reserve” where the poisons of the West infiltrate.

But it’s the usual refrain, a pattern too often repeated in the media, denigrating the changes experienced by these communities, which have opened up to the world with the arrival of the Internet and education. Because twenty years ago, the web and social networking emerged as the most terrifying machine for transforming consciousness in even the most remote communities.

Despite all the benefits of this revolution, no one thought at the time that the connection to the modern world and its utopias would further erode the fragile bond between humans and Nature…

Natives have not escaped this process; Rykko witnessed the arrival of the Internet in communities during his teenage years.

– Families were able to reach each other from one end of the planet to the other,” he says calmly. Information was circulating… It was the elders who saw their way of life change at that moment. I was already urbanized. But today, people have wifi in their camps.

He pauses and whispers,

– My people are also adapting and changing…

With the emergence of new generations of artists and university graduates, a cultural reappropriation is taking place that is erasing the amnesia of colonial times. Pow wows are part of this process, because in the 90s, aboriginals were not allowed to celebrate their ceremonies, nor to show any facet of their culture in Canada, except in the West.

– We’ve kept our mother tongue, one of the most vibrant languages in Quebec,” he says proudly.

Over ninety percent of Atikamekws in the community speak their mother tongue fluently, and 3.4% speak French.

– Do our Western values conflict with yours?
– I’m very chameleonic. That’s why I don’t judge either side. I don’t really judge Western values, but I give more importance to my native values,” he says gravely.

Right from the start of the process, colonization had a major impact on Aboriginal peoples. In the early 19th century, the logging industry and Quebec’s growing population threatened their ancestral territories and activities. Whereupon, the First Nations obtained a small portion of their ancestral territories, lands reserved exclusively for them under the Indian Act, and financial compensation.

Note that a First Nation was relocated whether or not there was a treaty or consent… Hence the dilemma of unceded lands still claimed by Aboriginal nations.

There are twenty-two reserves in Quebec, and 3,394 in Canada, for six hundred First Nations, administered by a band council. The first reserve, Sillery, was created by the colony of New France in 1637.

– Is the word “reserve” still appropriate? I asked, with the term’s colonial connotations in mind.
– Absolutely, it should be abolished,” he says vehemently. It evokes something sheltered, set aside until it’s useful. It’s shocking,” he murmurs, pejoratively.

Rykko lets a silence pass, then resumes briskly,

– All over the world, there is some recognition by governments of indigenous peoples, as in New Zealand, but none in Quebec for their First Nations.

Rykko was probably referring to the reconciliation process begun in 1970, and to cultural revitalization initiatives such as the funding of language-immersion elementary school among the Maoris in 1990. But there, as elsewhere, land claims were still the order of the day…

– When they cut our timber,” Rykko continued, “we don’t even make 1% profit, yet the logging companies continue to refresh the wood, taking out our money, without any compensation. There have been blockades for this… The planned logging, carried out without their knowledge, is generating anger and resentment in the community.
The nation has even mobilized to open a negotiating table…

Last March, blockades took place on Forest Road 25, near Wemotaci, where symbolic pillars defending the territory had been placed at several points along the road. The nation has even mobilized to open a negotiating table… Last March, blockades took place on Forest Road 25, near Wemotaci, where symbolic pillars defending the territory had been placed at several points along the road.

Given the frequently repeated abuses, the need to establish rules is proving increasingly essential in the eyes of the community.
– Are there going to be Nitaskinan guardians? I asked.
– Yes, these projects are underway and will take a long time to set up. Young people from our nation will be trained…

However, this initiative could prove to be a double-edged sword, as I pointed out to him in the light of an announcement from ArcelorMittal that I had read about a few months earlier. The mining company, one of the main players in the industrialization of native territories, had already hired three Nitassinan (Innu territory) guardians from the Uashat mak Mani-utenam band council to watch over traditional Innu territory. Red-washing technique or not, it went without saying that one could question the “unfailing transparency of business giants” with regard to their environmental impact…

Rykko, however, had never heard of it.
In the silence that follows, I sense the weariness of communities struggling with claims that drag on and on.

An administrative slowness which could nevertheless make the Aboriginals smile, if we remembered “indian’s time”³all will happen when it is meant to, this unflattering term, literally everything will arrive at the right time, this undefined time… which the colonists had attributed to their customs when they arrived on their territories…

Now we have “Western time” and its tragic race for development…

This summer of 2023 marks a decisive turning point in the process known as “climate warming”, which has been making headlines for over thirty years now. As early as March, northern Quebec was hit by fires of formidable proportions. Canada was greatly affected from east to west. Fires reddened the skies in the northwest and British Columbia, ravaging forests in the Squamish and Donnie Creek territories. Communities were deported, homes burned… Smog fell on Montreal, and in New York, smoke carried by northerly winds turned the sky orange.

SOPFEU counted 563 forest fires in intensive zones, representing 1.296 million hectares of burnt forest. In northern zones, more than 3.723 million hectares burned this year… A colossal loss when you consider that the boreal forest is a carbon sink for the entire planet, a fragile system whose regeneration is uncertain, and is exacerbated by global warming, which is extremely worrying for the years to come.

– With the fires that have been spreading since early spring, what’s the state of the boreal forest? I asked.
– It’s not too bad in our area, but a lot of land has been destroyed.

– We’ve only got two years to collect the wood, by which time it will have rotted away. The supposed deal of the eighties, I think, is coming to an end this year, but there’s no benefit from logging…

Despite the jobs on offer, the community is fighting to get a percentage,” says Rykko, who raised the issue with Grand Chief Christian Awawish and shared his concerns.

But there were other environmental concerns on the agenda on which opinions were divided.

Like many reserves located in the heart of large territories, Wemotaci is close to mines and logging operations. There are two mines, one a copper mine one a copper mine – the Wabash zone – and the other a mica mine on Lac Letondal, forty kilometers from the community. Knowing that these two sectors provide jobs in these almost deserted regions, I wondered about their possible environmental impact, without knowing if I would be able to broach the subject, since such questions are just as many drops of oil on the fire in each community. But I took a chance,

__

– How are the mining projects coming along? I slipped into the conversation.

– It’s far from a conspiracy, but Quebec has mining projects,” Rykko retorted sharply.
What’s going to happen if we don’t find an alternative or a plan B after the two years of timber harvesting?

The future is full of uncertainties. What is the solution for a future bartered by development projects at a time of alarming climate change? Would we again ignore the impact of the forest fires that will return to Quebec next spring, I wondered, echoing Rykko’s doubts.

– As Atikamekw, are we going to adhere to these projects, and if we do adhere, do we have any plans to host structures? he said by way of epilogue.
The community’s concerns were gaining ground, but despite the government’s answers, what I did know was that in November 2023, it was already 60°C in Latin America in springtime…

The fires that smouldered under the snow and ashes resumed in February 2024, and others have already broken out in Alberta…