Gilles Moar, Guardian of Tradition

Every time I go to Manawan, I go to visit my friend Gilles Moar, a key figure in the village, whom I’ve known in Kahnawaké, the first pow wow I attended in Quebec.

I met him behind the bleachers before the start of the inter-tribal competition dances on a hot day. And I was immediately seduced by his laughing eyes and his beautiful speech, whose musical sounds sounded like old French.
I had immediately noticed the “r” rolling under the tongue, one of the characteristics of the atikamekw as I later learned.

He was then wearing a magnificent red regalia¹traditional native costume with a beading of white flowers on his chest, a warrior’s shield decorated with eagle feathers in his hand, and finely worked bark ornaments.
We had exchanged our contact information without

knowing that it was the prelude to a long common adventure, punctuated by encounters in the field and dialogues during the interminable Quebec winters.

Like every weekend, the house is always full. “Ckina”, as Gilles’ grandmother had nicknamed her, gently mocking her insatiable curiosity, swings on the rocking chair while watching television.

His wife Mireille, his many children and grandchildren are busy in the kitchen. Mireille has had five children and has twenty-five grandchildren, several of whom still live in the family home.

The smell of coffee crosses the corridor and everyone settles down one after the other behind the table.

Three generations of forces of nature. The Atikamekws are generally tall and sturdy. Dressed in a T-shirt with the word “warrior” on it, Masko, barely a year old, pounds the drum under the amused gaze of the family.

The Atikamekws are an endearing people who perpetuate their ancestral traditions. Originally nomadic, they are now considered semi-nomadic, as they still depend on the territory’s resources to live, and adjust their activities to the seasons of the year. In their midst, we live in the present moment, we are in this permanent absorption of perceptions that are indifferent in an urban environment.

There is laughter, exchanges of glances… to the rhythm of life, of this “impermanent permanence” that crosses the lake with a wave and bursts of laughter. It is necessary to speak about the Atikamekw “joie de vivre” that I met during my stays, this state of mind that expresses so

well the strength of their resilience; a thumb of nose at all the trials endured by their people for more than a century and a half…

While living among them, I realized that laughter was a dynamic in its own right. In fact, it is a a principle that is carefully nurtured by all members of the community. Humor is a constant, but sometimes the voice becomes a whisper to express past suffering.

The little death of the soul in the “water of fire”, Gilles sadly recounts it from time to time. A few snippets of a stolen past fall from his lips like a violence that he has to exorcise once again … Alcoholism is a problem on Aboriginal reserves, and no, there is no genetic factor to it, as certain clichés have so often made it sound. On the other hand, there are the consequences of colonization…

A very familiar story already in my ears, the story of residential schools and of children torn from their families, kidnapped while playing in the yard without their parents’ knowledge ; a bundle of post-traumatic stress and its echo in a few generations to come.

The same thing happened in Manawan. The shame of losing her identity, her honour, and her long hair – a “sacred” attribute in their beliefs – cut off upon entering the residential school; Ckina experienced this…

But there are other topics vaguely evoked in the community that are vaguely evoked for fear of seeing the ghosts wake up, because the missionaries²https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/special/2018/10/pretres-pedophiles-oblats-innus-atikamekws/have branded the souls of many of them with a hot iron; these events which call into question these “stories” which one tells them to erase their beliefs.

Gilles, for his part, still remembers the candy that the man in the black cassock held out to him with one hand and the pair of scissors in the other. He “remembers everything,” he murmurs, his eyes in the wave and then suddenly falls silent. The memory remains like an unspoken word on all the lips of the elders, a few drowned fragments of

bitterness between two silences. Yes, it will take time, a long time to erase the wrinkles on the surface of the soul. There are so many things we would like to forget…

During the National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women and Girls in 2014 and 2015, many testimonies broke the silence. Other rumors were added, lifting the veil on all the disappearances of children in hospitals during the Sixties Scoop carried out by the government as a policy of integration.

The assimilation policy of Aboriginal cultures in Canada has proven to be as cruel as eradication, a fact that is now unquestionably revealed and openly denounced by the government. Towards the recognition of a genocide ? “Canadian [colonial] genocide” as described by the ENFADA report.³National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls

In recent years, many sharing circles have been set up to defuse suffering; a tradition familiar to Aboriginal people that is gradually leading them on the road to healing, even if much remains to be done…

Here, the true healers of the evil of societies are the elders. Those who get involved in the tradition do so not only for themselves, but to restore that continuity that has been lost.

Gilles was born in La Tuque, in Mauricie.
– There, when I was young, we used to take the seaplane to go to the hospital,” he says, sipping his coffee..

Like all natives who went through residential schools, he too has had a long journey of doubt and letting go. When he left residential school, he lost his bearings, taking a taste for the wanderings of white people in a society, whose cultural codes he did not understand, and his fall was brutal.

He remembers walking long hours on the ice with his sled and his dog, his axe in his hand – an essential tool for survival – wondering how he was going to get by, how he was going to live differently? Then one day, as he was walking in the forest, he got the trigger…

– There was a bear a few meters away from me, a dancing bear,” Gilles tells me as he stood up to describe this exceptional encounter.

In the tradition of his ancestors, this meeting was of a shamanic nature. It was charged with meaning, responding to the quest for inner vision that had been underway for months. It was this strong moment that gave him the inspiration to perform sacred dances, he explains to me, some of which, like the rain dance, are private.

Just like the forest, animals are bearers of the knowledge of the elders, the knowledge of the initiating mother earth, and it is these symbolic figures that we find in the dances: hunting or fighting postures borrowed from the animals, rhythms of the seasons and the elements.

The dances are often the fruit of observations of the animal world and their interpretation. The stories describe extraordinary encounters, always initiatory… In animism, nature and the elements, as well as animals, are guides responsible for transmitting signs and teachings.

Among the Algonquins, the clans are linked to a totem animal. The bear is that of the atikamekw.

– It is by going back to my origins” he says, marking a stop, by searching for my heritage that I began to rebuild myself”.

One day, Gilles took out his drum and made it resound. Even if this gesture seems insignificant, it has taken on a whole new dimension in the community. By putting tradition back in the spotlight, he piqued the curiosity of the younger ones and very quickly other members of his community joined him.

– At first, the people of Manawan didn’t agree with this initiative, but that didn’t stop us,” he says with a smile.

His son Daveen was the first to take an interest in drumming, then came Gordie, his nephew, and Kent, his son-in-law. After a few months, others wanted to buy a drum, and things quickly got going.

– There was this famous audio tape that I played over and over again; drums from another nation.That was the trigger,” he says.

The event prompted the team to train and create their own style of singing. That’s how the Black Bear, the drummer band that Daveen is now the leader of, was founded in the year 2000,” he adds proudly.
He lets a silence pass, and says in a cheerful voice
– The first time they played was at the Lauzon outfitter, then they performed in the Algonquin community of Maniwaki Kitigan Zibi in the Outaouais region and improved over time.

The community then took the next step by inaugurating its first pow wow in 2006, an important date that marked the 100th anniversary of the reserve.

– In 2007, there were ten of us, now there are more than thirty, Gilles says.

With the energy that characterizes him, he began to walk the first pow wows in Quebec, transmitting his dynamism and pride to the communities in the dances he performed with his regalia and beaded finery during the winter.

– In the 1970s through the 1980s, pow wows were more like village festivals. There were canoe races, rifle and archery, and tribal competitions. At that time the tradition was lost, dance ceremonies were forbidden.

Popular for the efforts he lavished around him, Gilles Moar was one of the first to get involved in the tradition, a path that generates hope for the new generations, allowing

them to reclaim their identity and pride in belonging to a unique culture.

– Dancing, he repeats, is to express one’s tradition.

The facial or body paintings have a ritual meaning. The motifs have a symbolic value adapted to cultural or sacred events, ceremonies, dances as well as to activities such as hunting or war.

In some powwows, Gilles wears the eagle bone whistle wrapped in a blue and red ribbon on his chest, a sacred instrument evoking the voice of Wakan Tanka – The Creator – which is also used in the sun dance; a rite a rite performed over several days to which foreigners are rarely admitted.

Alignment is a term that reflects particularly well the state of mind of people who are learning to drum, the “tewehikan” as it is called in the Atikamekw tradition.

It is a clean being who is entitled to all honors. The drum straightens. It is a fact. Therapy and sharing that makes you stronger, more authentic. By its symbolic figure of circle, it unites and acts as an initiatory guide.

At traditional pow wows, ceremonial drums are brought out, large drums that are sacred. They are placed on two crossed wooden supports,

under an awning, facing the dance area, near the lodge of the masters of ceremony.

In the center of the arena, there is always a pillar, mast that acts as an “axis mundis“⁴https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_mundi around which the participants dance. Six to eight “drummers” sit around these big drums and beat it in rhythm. Their songs accompany the sacred dances of the dancers and the healing rituals that will take place during the pow wow.

To beat the drum is to unite with the beatings of Mother Earth and to begin healing… And this dynamic is extremely solemn as beliefs are deeply rooted.

Animism is a culture common to all first peoples, it is the ancestral basis of all religions. Both prayer and dance are not entertainment, they are charged with a strong spiritual connotation and command the respect of all.

Among the atikamekws, the transmission of knowledge is carried out through oral tradition but also through

experience in the field under the watchful eye of the elders. Gilles, who also acts as master of ceremonies in some pow wows, taught the beginnings of the tradition to Tony-Dylan Tcatciaw, a young atikamekw who is now a firefighter in La Tuque.

The initiation often took place in the forest, as is the custom, a natural site favoring contact with the elements. It is in this place, a must for all Amerindians, that he made her repeat the postures of the different traditional dances, by transmitting the respective symbolism.

– In the past, Gilles tells me, “the man sits at the back of the canoe to steer, and the woman at the front with her oar. But today, the power relationship between the two sexes has changed. Money has broken the steering,” he adds in a resigned voice.

That’s how the indigenous people express themselves, with these allusions that the very first time confused them. The metaphor, the pictorial word is their own. They have kept this access to the dream, to the initiatory discourse.

At home, relations between the two sexes are balanced. Strong and determined, atikamekw women take charge of the education of children and home life, and are actively involved in the community. Gilles recounted how his daughter spotted a moose early in the morning on the other side of the lake and how after a long canoe chase with him and his brother Daveen, she ended up killing him with a rifle shot.

– With a single shot, she proudly confirms. Too sensitive to participate in the hunt, Gilles is not opposed to it, however, because it is part of their heritage.

– We are not warriors, he says, but a people of hunter-gatherers, former nomads who have been perpetuating these symbolic gestures since the dawn of time.Gilles pauses for a moment, silence accentuating the weight of his words, because to speak of his tradition is not nothing, it is to pay homage to the Ancients, to this genesis that sticks to their skin like one of those unalterable truths. Colonization has not taken this away from them.

– In our customs, we don’t abandon the corpses of moose on the side of the road after having torn off their antlers to make trophies. The animals are killed with this consciousness, we use all their parts edible or not, bones, teeth, skin or nerves… Everything is based on an ancestral utilitarian or decorative know-how. The sinews produce an extremely strong thread used in the making of traditional ornaments and jewelry.

Even though Gilles no longer hunts, he remembers very well those moments of stalking in the heart of the forest, those incredible moments of survival where adrenaline whips the blood while sharpening the senses. All hunters know this, this heightened perception in the effort…

– What weapon did you use for hunting?
– A rifle model 30,06. In summer, you can use the scope.
He lets a silence pass,
then resumes,
– In the old days, we didn’t have cabins, he continues in a calm voice. We made log cabins, something rudimentary. There was just an opening, a hole for the fire. It allowed us to make the boucan⁵to grill the meat in winter, he said, moving his chair closer to the table.
– In the summer, we lived in teepees, wigwams⁶https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigwam made from bark, before the arrival of cotton.
– When we went hunting, we hunted in gangs of ten people, ten hunters, Gilles murmurs.
He pauses and glances out the window at the lake.
– We would go to our cabin, a traditional hunting site. We would stay there for a week, he said gravely.
– When it happened ?
– In 1970, 72, we would go by ski-doo. We would walk in the woods all day, following the tracks of the moose.

The evocation makes his eyes shine.
– When we had killed it, we would say prayers of thanks and then leave it there for a day or a night before sharing it among ourselves. We would leave the legs, the backbone, and the head after having butchered it, and we would bring back the hide.

Then after a while,
– Sometimes it’s easier to get to a moose in the winter winter because it’s sensitive to the cold. In summer, it’s hard to get close to it.

A “ravage” is the name of residence of the herd, he specifies, his camp, the animals remain near the water in summer, but in winter, they are found in the mountain, in their ravage. In the spring, they want to change places, look for a new camp near the lake.

The moose is a herbivore that, in the summer, feeds mainly on aquatic plants found in bodies of water and natural springs – a significant source of minerals. In winter, its diet consists of balsam fir buds and hardwood twigs. When the trees are shedding their leaves, one may come across maple trunks whose bark has been exposed by their incisors.

During the rutting season, which begins at the same time, the males rub their velvet-less antlers on the tree trunks and confront each other by crossing their antler. Their plume can reach two meters in size. It’s an animal feared by motorists because in collisions, it swings its full weight onto the vehicle, violently impacting the windshield and passenger compartment.

Hunting and fishing still provide a significant part of the food resources of the commune. But to make bulk purchases, the supermarket is not enough, you have to go to the Wallmart of Joliette, the most accessible “town” with the forest road.

Even if they have adopted a way of life similar to ours in food consumption, we must recognize to the native, this deep respect for the environment with which they live in symbiosis.

They still use ancestral technologies without impact on nature. And ecology remains an innate notion for them, inscribed in tradition as one of its sacred foundations, even if the contemporary way of life here, as elsewhere, has given rise to an open-air garbage dump at the edge of the village.

In addition to his great knowledge of medicinal plants and life in the forest, Gilles carves and works with wood,

creating imposing animal works all year round. Bear-faced totem poles stand side by side with current beadwork and feather ornaments, and it is not uncommon to see a carved eagle hovering in the workshop above a ceremonial drum and other traditional objects.

An important element of traditional medicine, white birch bark (Betula papyrifera, wikwasatikw in Atikamekw) is the basis of an ancestral know-how, allowing it to make a multitude of objects such as baskets, snowshoes, drum frames and jewelry. As for her daughter Jenny, she makes beautiful earrings with porcupine points.

Gilles cherishes the hope that one day, his community will have a cultural center to exhibit his works and a reception structure for ski-doos amateurs; wishes that will perhaps be fulfilled when the asphalt will cover the forest road as long as the eagles, the messengers of Tshishe Manitu⁷the Great Spirit, the Creator, still want to fly over this beautiful wildlife reserve…