Mashteuiatsh

Community

4:50 min. - This community is located in the interior, near lac St-Jean. It is a natural crossroads for many Quebec nations.

Transcription

Alain Nepton - The dimensions of this lake are interesting, about 30 by 50 km. It flows into the Saguenay, then joins the Saint-Laurence River. And it's fresh water... like the Saint-Laurence, it's fresh water. This reserve was founded in 1856. The Montagnais gathered at the points in the summer to scape from the mosquitoes, and fish. This point is interesting because it had a lot of fish, landlocked salmon and pike. It's also interesting to highlight the reason the reserve was created. The goal was to encourage the Indians to become sedentary... You must remember that the Montagnais were nomads, they were always hunting and moving around the land. At that time, the Federal Government was looking for ways to help the Indians benefit from civilization through agriculture. And seeing as the land all around the lake was good for agriculture, they figured that if they opened up a reserve, if they set aside land for the Indians, they might be convinced to take up agriculture. So they created the reserve in 1856. They divided the land into agricultural plots, just like those you can see in any village in Québec. And they waited for the Indians to show some interest before giving away plots of land to anyone who wanted them, they gave plots of land to all the Montagnais. But the Montagnais left to go into the bush. They didn't stay because, in reality, people actually lived further inland, where they hunted and carried out all kinds of activities. They came here to spend the summer. Their residence, if you can call it that, was really in the bush, not here. It was too cold to spend the winter here, people went into the bush, further inland. So it was mostly un-inhabited. However, at this time, there were also Natives living further south of the Saint-Laurence River, the Abenaki, the Malecites, who had been disturbed by colonization in the southern part of Québec. They had been disturbed by the wars of independence, the American War of Independence, the arrival of the Loyalists in Québec. And all this resulted in the fact that these Natives were more or less displaced. They didn't really know where to go. But some of them heard that land was available in Lac St-Jean. And we think, we're still looking for proof, but it's a story that's passed around. We think that the missionaries and federal government agents put support measures in place to bring those people here to settle down. They brought Malecites and Abenaki to settle here, to serve as examples for the Montagnais, as a concrete example: see, this is how you can settle here and live off the land. And possibly to incite the Montagnais to become sedentary, work a 40-hour week. All kinds of people became interested in this territory. They built cottages, came here on vacation, to hunt and fish for sport, until almost the entire territory was overrun. They had private clubs, many, many different things. And that brought conflicts between our people, who hunted in the bush, and vacationers or sport hunters. Then, people asked the band council to find a way to rectify the situation. One of the ways we found was to set up what we call territorial services, territorial agents. As far as I know, territorial agents are a first in Canada. I haven't heard of anything similar elsewhere. We use the word "territorial agent". Actually, they're band council representatives. They have a costume, a uniform, they wear band council tags. And their principal role is to oversee traditional activities. There were a lot of people in the bush, non-Natives in the forest along with our people. We were often confronted by that fact. The role of these agents was to meet with Natives and non-Natives, to see what kind of conflicts were occurring. It's often a misreading of each other's rights and practices. And we, the territorial agent's role, is to see to it that people respect. If they don't respect the regulations, the code of behaviour, for example if they behave badly, we warn them: you're going to have problems. We won't defend you, we won't take care of you, we'll ignore you. We established that in 1987. But the idea started in 1985. You can't live in the past. You have to be inspired by what they did and look towards the future.


1 Comment

Micheline-Guylaine Cleary 10 years, 8 months ago

Kuei ! SUPERBE !!! BEAU SITE MERCI


(*) Field mandatory





or

2 Related Video to Mashteuiatsh

1 Related word or expression

shakapueumishkueu
beaver roasted on a stick



Top of page