Benoît Thisselmagan, the passion of “Innu-Aitun”

When Mike Paul and Dany left for the hunt, I joined Benoît in the cottage and we sat down behind the kitchen table.

In conversation, I learned that he was born in Maliotenam, “Mani-utenam” in Innu-aimun¹Maliotenam or Mani-utenam in Innu-aimun (“City of Mary”), Innu reserve in the Sept-Rivières Regional County Municipality., a reserve created in 1949 east of Seven Islands, on the northern coast of the Saint Lawrence.

– Today I live in Alma²https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alma,_Quebec, where I work as a janitor.

Alma is a small town in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region³https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saguenay%E2%80%93Lac-Saint-Jean, located east of the lake.

He stopped talking to fill the kettle and put it on the old cast-iron stove. He has the quiet strength of people who live in contact with nature. All his movements are measured, unhurried.

Benoît is first and foremost a specialist in the Innu tradition, a “guardian of knowledge” as he says himself. He makes “teueikan” (pronounced teweikan), these traditional sacred drums, whose vibrations inspire respect in all Aboriginal nations.

In Innu, it is called “Katutuat Teueikanat”, which means “He who makes drums⁵We also say “kateueikanitshesht” to designate a drum maker.This special drum, which is said to be invested with spiritual power, is made of caribou skin stretched over a birch frame⁶We say “shitashkunakanu teueikan».

And its particular resonance comes from caribou fetal bones attached to a string in the middle of the skin; small bones, which Benedict has replaced with duck feather tails. The teueikan framework is usually painted with a red stripe, the color of life and the hunt.

– A sacred color, because it puts you in touch with the ally of the dream world,” he tells me.

In the past, all families would gather in the summertime. As winter approached, they left, split into small clans on their hunting grounds. It is during this season, that the drum took all its importance…

– The teueikan is essential for us. It is the inseparable link between the spirit of the caribou and our people. It has ensured our survival for three millennia! Benoît starts by approaching the stove where a kettle is simmering.
– I learned how to make it by watching a TV show. Six years ago…

I thought sadly of the irony of the “cargo cult”, in the sense that a contemporary media was giving back to a First People⁷https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Nations, one of their thousand-year-old techniques that had previously been banned and confiscated.

He lets some time pass,
– I love the drum, he said enthusiastically, I have always been fascinated by the sound it makes and then I had some lessons.
He lets a time pass,
– Out of respect, I don’t play it. The drum is sacred… It is the elders who have the right to play it,” he continues, before adding,
– In the past, an elder had to dream about it to have the right to play it. Today, drummers don’t have this knowledge, otherwise they wouldn’t play it this way. They compete in singing, which is not part of our tradition.

Benoît approaches the spout of the steaming kettle to his cup and pours himself some water. While stirring the soluble coffee granules with his spoon, he tells me that he was placed in a Quebec foster home at the age of four, when his father died.

– I stayed there until I was nineteen. Like many Aboriginal people, I experienced systemic racism⁸https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism in school. There was no violence, but I had no real friends. I wasn’t talked to. I felt like an outsider among the other kids all through school,” he says gravely, raising the cup to his lips.
After a silence, he continues,
– Many elders were separated from their families when they were still children. They were placed in residential schools, from kindergarten until they came of age…
I listen to his testimony without interrupting him, his meaningful words break the silence like a stumbling block

The splitting of families led to a loss of values and individualism.
Today, in the heart of the reserves, in a social fabric gangrenous by history and social problems, young people become parents at sixteen, seventeen years old. And Mashteuiatsh is no exception to the rule…

– I live in Alma, because I don’t want to live on the reserve so I don’t fall back into drugs, he declares firmly, an addiction he experienced as a young man.

Benoît remains unmoved. Nothing can destabilize them. He, like most of the natives, is proud to have assumed

the burden of centuries of colonization with the stamina of their forebears; the energy of nomadic hunters capable of stalking prey over long distances…

– Drugs circulate on the reserve, amphetamines brought by street gangs from outside.

According to him, the majority of people on the reserve have addiction problems, both young and old. He knows the process well, a wound resulting from colonization, intergenerational. Most of the elders who went to residential schools came out broken, and fell into substance abuse. Obviously, the consequences on mental and physical health are enormous, both on a personal and family level; post-traumatic stress, violence, psychosis. These dramas that take place behind the drawn curtains of the houses, are unfortunately part of the daily life on the reserve.

A silence passes.

I feel the solitude of these places of exile contaminated by the malaise and poisons of modern life. I swallow my cup of tea without taking my eyes off the window behind which the sun’s rays seep in. I remain silent, thinking of the cynicism with which the displacement and the forced sedentarization of nomadic people took place on sites representing only a reduced percentage of their ancestral lands⁹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancestral_domain; a “skin of sorrow” drowned in tears…

– Have you kept the spirituality of your ancestors ?
– I was brought up with Christian values, but I returned to animist beliefs when I was twenty-one.Those who practice indigenous spirituality are in the minority.
He lets a silence pass,
– There are few among the elders,” he adds, “but there is a resurgence of interest in the tradition among the younger people. It represents a healing

It’s this sense of hope that motivates him to promote and share traditional knowledge, a dynamic he takes very seriously.

– I try to share what the elders have shown me to ensure the transmission. So that this knowledge is not lost. It is my father, my brother and the elders of the community who transmitted the tradition to me…
– It must be perpetuated,” he says.
– It’s always been that way with the Aboriginal people.

There has always been continuity, the timeless passage of this principle of identity and sacredness that follows the destiny of peoples in spite of the dominant powers. The cultural losses are great, but the tradition has been preserved orally, the elders have transmitted it to the West to escape the missionaries. On the other hand, our language is being lost, the young people no longer speak it.

I approach the window. The mists have dissipated on the lake, the sun is shining brightly.
We leave the cottage. Benoît leads me under a tree to show me the tools he made to work the skins.

– It was Gordon Moar, an elder from Mashteuiatsh who taught me the practice and shaping of the bones. He is a hunter and trapper who knew the nomadic life, he adds.Is he the one who taught you the tanning process?

Benoît nods and signals me to follow him. We walk a few meters, unintentionally trampling the myriad of mushrooms growing around the cabin. From a canvas bag with moose legs sticking out, Benoît takes out a hide and spreads it on a tree trunk.

With a sharp bone, he begins the process by scraping away the hair and surface layer with a sure hand. It takes some dexterity and strength to perform this repetitive gesture. I see him sweating under the effort.

– They are made of moose or caribou bone,” he tells, pointing to them.

This age-old practice of making smoothing tools from

deer ribs was already familiar to Neanderthal¹⁰https://www.nbcnews.com/sciencemain/neanderthals-polished-hides-tools-made-deer-ribs-6c10900427hunter-gatherers.

After hours of scraping, Benoît takes a break, before getting back to work. This time, he attacks the inner layer of the skin, uncovering threads of whitish flesh and fat with the help of a moose femur split in two lengthwise.

It is hot. I see his face flooded with sweat from the effort and smell the slightly rancid odor of the fat sliding on the ground. Flies swarming around us. We are in reality, the true reality where things and places have smells, where repulsion rubs shoulders with the wild beauty of the world.

“The first one at the top is a bone
from the original’s hind leg, which
is used to scrape the flesh from the
skin, to remove the residues of meat
and fat”, Benoît teaches me.

The second is used to scrape the hair of
the original like a razor. And the third one
is a rib of original sharpened to be cutting
in order to scrape the hair and to expose
the skin. As for the fourth, it is used to
scrape the skin of the beaver to expose the
carcass of the beaver.

Benoît turns his head and starts me,

– After that, we’ll soak the skin in soapy water, then dry it and stretch it on a frame. In the process, we will also use a brain slurry to soften the skin on its inner side and stretch it to break the fiber.

I look up at the azure sky without a cloud in sight, sunlight falling on the skulls of moose and bear hanging from the trunk of a tree.

– How would you define your relationship with animals?
– There is a communication that takes place between the animals and the hunters. In our traditions, for example, when hunting wolves, the hunter asks the wolf’s spirit for permission to kill it. If this happens, it is because the spirit of the wolf has accepted it. It is the same for other animals, there is this contact, this respect.

Moreover, after the hunt, we honor their spirit by attaching their skull on the tree of respect, he says by pointing me to the big pine tree behind us.

As in all ancestral societies, the tree is a major element on which many beliefs are based. Among the Buryats¹¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buryats of Siberia, for example, we still hang pieces of cloth on a tree symbolizing prayers, the “barisaa”¹²https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wish_tree.

– Are there still medicine men, “shamans”?
– There have always been medicine men, elders who have kept the old knowledge, even during colonization.
– I guess that the term shaman has a negative connotation today… I said.
– We don’t talk about shamans, that’s a term from the western culture, in our regions, we talk about “spiritual guide”…

In North America, we practice “healing”, holistic and spiritual healing… We do not speak of shamanism. Contrary to the media hype, this term escapes the majority of the natives I met during my report, and is a purely western mythology. When I looked into the matter, I discovered that this state of mind derived from the prejudices of colonization.

In 1880, the Indian Act prohibited traditional healing ceremonies, and it was not until 1950 that they were revived.

Neo-shamanism and New-Age having appropriated a large number of healing rituals such as purification by sage smoke, the sweet lodge or dreaming techniques. This perspective has led traditional healers to use the term “healer” rather than “shaman”, thus avoiding the connotations associated with spiritualism and witchcraft...

Walking around the cottage, I come face to face with the moose head that Benoît had cut off; the animal that Mike and Dany Paul had tracked down a few days earlier.

– In the past, when a moose was killed, a big banquet was held and the whole animal was eaten.

This notion of vital principle is at the heart of the beliefs of the Innu people, who do not kill for pleasure but for their subsistence, and reside in lands far from the large urban distribution centers. The Innu attach great importance to this aspect of things because it is linked to their conception of the world, which is spiritual. In animist cultures, we imbibe the spirit of the animal, its energy by consuming it, and this concept of respect attached to the spirits is essential.

In the course of the conversation, I learn that Benoît is an activist committed to the protection of his territory.
When this word is uttered, the smile tightens and the expression darkens.One does not joke with territorial questions ! This notion is specific to all the natives because it is linked to their identity. The natives and their land are inseparable. It is a sacred heritage.

– What does “territory” mean to you?
– The territory is Nitassinan, our territory, the territory of our ancestors. Without them and their knowledge, we would not have survived…

The natives often speak of the “forest”, of this forest to which they have been connected since childhood, the one where their ancestors grew up and where they received their teachings.

Moreover, in these northern lands, many families¹³We find this ritual among the Atikamekw Nehirowisiwok called “return to the earth of the placenta, otepihawson in Atikamekw language”are still attached to a specific tree, at the foot of which the placenta of a young mother is buried; a ritual performed after childbirth.

– Do you define yourself as an environmental activist?
Benoît nods.
– Yes, I am an environmental activist. I oppose the council’s actions who intervenes in an abusive way on our territory and makes decisions without consulting the whole community, he says before grabbing his laptop.

He shows me a video where I see him handcuffed to a cable car cabin at the top of Ouiatchouan Falls, in the village of Val-Jalbert. He and four other activists are part of the “Front de libération de la Ouiatchouan”¹⁴https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/697884/quatre-accuses-plaident-coupables opposed to the construction of a sixteen-megawatt mini-hydroelectric plant 1, a project of the Société de l’énergie communautaire du Lac-Saint-Jean. The offence earned him media coverage, and a fine when he left court last March, but he doesn’t give up.

– The problem is with the democratically elected Aboriginal Chiefs, who are elected according to the colonial model…

The designated band councils follow the directives of the governing powers, not the ancestral model of governance, he specifies. And as in any power structure, there are the usual excesses such as benefits and advantages granted

to the family circle, friends and sympathizers.

– It is a system far removed from the original model of the circle,” Benoit laments, “the symbol of spiritual unity of the communities.

A few minutes later, he tells me that he participated in a roadblock on a logging road to protest against deforestation in Lac St. Jean in the North. This was approved in September. This is a great victory because for years, the moratoriums requested by the Aboriginal nations have followed one another at a frantic pace. And many of them are openly rejected, despite the ecological and environmental issues directly involved.

– What does the term “sovereignty” really mean when it is put forward by the nations and their band councils? I asked.Usurpation of native sovereignty,” he answered categorically.
Benoit looked at me without blinking. Then the next minute, he throws me,
– The term “self-government” has no relation to the reality of things. It is a matter that was brought about by the Whites. It doesn’t fit in with our vision of Nitassinan.

I thought about the Wet’suwet’en struggle against the Coastal GasLink pipeline in northern British Columbia1 and asked him,
– Who were the spiritual leaders of your nation in the past?
– It was usually the elders who had the most knowledge.
Their selection was generated by experience and knowledge, and had to be approved by the circle – the community.

– Do you think it is possible to stop the deforestation of the boreal forest?
– If the natives unite, we can stop it… he says firmly.
I furtively cross his eyes. I feel more than hope in his voice, I feel the perspective that everything is still possible. On the other hand, it is useless to hope for a gesture from the powers that be in the face of the planetary emergency. The band councils will not move… How could it be otherwise, since they have a contract of 400,000 m3 to cut the wood, in partnership with the Ministry of Forests.

– Has reconciliation taken place?
– No, not really. Promises have not been kept, nothing has been done to stop the misery and poverty of First

Nations. But there is a healing process underway…
The process that Benoît refers to in passing is a phenomenon that has been growing in every nation for the past ten years, a collective dynamic to recover ancestral traditions. Knowing who you are, finding your roots and the pride of belonging to the First Peoples…

– What are the expectations of the Innu people for the future?
– Self-determination.
Innu culture and identity cannot be harmonized with the capitalist model that has played and still plays a role in extinction and assimilation in many parts of the world, he explained to me in the next few minutes. This was nonsense in their eyes.
– The Innu nation is a society capable of self-determination in the rhythm of the seasons, he added firmly.

– And what would be your message for the generations to come? I asked him as an epilogue.
– To “Return to the traditions”…