Introduction

Locating the Essipiunnuat

Or in Québec, the Essipit First Nation has developed its tourism and commercial fishery industries, thereby creating local jobs and partnerships with both the private sector and neighboring municipalities.

Statement by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Crown-First Nations Gathering, 24 January 2012

The white man’s law kills the Indian.
William-Mathieu Mark

The group name for the ‘Essipiunnuat’ is composed of the Innu-aimun¹ idioms esh (shell), shipu (river) and innuat (humans), signifying ‘Humans of the Shell River’. These terms are most likely as old as the occupation of the land by the Innu-aimun speakers. The Essipiunnuat named the Esh Shipu river ‘Essesipi’ or ‘Essechipitch’. Notes written by missionaries in the mid 17th century report that local people used the term ‘Esseigiou’ or ‘Esseignou’ to define the same river as the one identified by explorers in the early 17th century (Champlain, 1615; Bélanger, 1946, p. 8; Frenette, 1996, p. 11). The Essipiunnuat are also known as Unipek Innuat, which means ‘Humans of the Sea’, for their historical and extensive seal- and whale-hunting activities, and because some of them stayed at a winter gathering place on the coast (Pipunapi, or ‘Winter camp’).

The Esh Shipu River (now called the Escoumins River) is located in the western part of Nitassinan, the Innu homeland, or area of eastern Québec, just to the east of the confluence of the Saguenay River and the St Laurence. It is situated near the Bay of Les Escoumins, 40 kilometres north east of Tadoussac and 420 kilometres north east of Montreal. The term ‘Essipiunnuat’ (or ‘Essipit’,² to give it its French version) refers today to 794 ‘Indians’,³ locally called ‘members’, who compose the Essipit Innu First Nation.

Figure 1. Present-day Innu locations, taken from Rémi Savard, La forêt vive: récits fondateurs du peuple innu, Boréal, Montréal, figure 1, p. 20.

On-reserve Essipiunnuat live in a reserved area of 213.7 acres that was created in 1892 as per the provisions of Canada’s federal Indian Act.⁴ The ‘reserve’ is now generally referred to as Essipit.⁵ The Essipit reserve covers an area of 1.10 square kilometres, with a population density of 272.4 per square kilometre (Statistics Canada, 2017). As a consequence of colonisation, more or less all Essipiunnuat speak French as their first language, the remaining tiny minority of Innu-aimun speakers (who also speak French as their second language) being composed of migrants from other communities such as Pessamit (Pessamiunnuat) or Mashteuiastsh (Pekuakamiulnuatsh).

On paper, Essipiunnuat governance is based on its general assembly of members, usually held four times a year. In accordance with custom (within the parameters of the Indian Act), the assembly names a chief⁶ and three councillors in order to form the band council.⁷ However, if it is judged that the band council does not comply with the requirement of the Indian Act, the minister can still legally discharge it. The issue of Innu self-governance, together with the topics of Innu tipenitamun (ancestral sovereignty as responsibility)⁸ and uetshit takuaimatishun (self-determination, literally ‘propelling and directing our own canoe’)⁹ remain unresolved and have long been complex issues between First Peoples and the Canadian Crown, as well as within the community itself.

Erasure, colonial fictions and the ‘good Indians’

Contemporary Essipit has been depicted in the media and existing literature by business journalists, government officials, bureaucrats, external researchers, national and international reporters, and marketing strategists as a ‘success story’, and as a model for other First Peoples in Canada. Essipit’s tourism and commercial fishery industries were even praised in a 2012 speech by former conservative prime minister Stephen Harper.¹⁰ Essipit is generally associated with and known for the form of collective organisation it has developed over the last 40 years. As reported by Charest, the former leaders (1979–2016) call it the ‘communitarian system’, or the ‘Essipiunnuat philosophy of community development’, which is geared towards ‘job creation and self-reliance’. Yet, in spite of the strengths of the local regime and the achievements of the council in the last four decades, these images tend to be one-dimensional and not include long-standing internal criticisms.

External representations of the group are overwhelmingly based on conversations with male ‘managers’ and ‘leaders’, people in positions of authority, and people who can exert political and economic control over any members of the group who might express dissenting views. For instance, Charest’s assertion that this ‘communitarian system’ is ‘widely chosen and approved, independent of the constraints imposed by the two levels of government’ (2009, p. 16) minimises the internal democratic deficit within the community (the systematic exclusion of dissidents and off-reserve members as well as the marginalisation of Elders). It also fails to acknowledge the advanced assimilation of the community into the dominant bureaucratic rational and neoliberal culture as well as the band administration’s absorption of the state’s definition and colonial grammar. Like other external researchers, Charest, in spite of his experience and reputation for thoroughness and integrity, had hardly any access to alternative views on Essipiunnuat development, or could not report it, particularly the aspects relating to democratic and participative governance or criticism of the regime from an Innu point of view, and epistemology.

Another example of an external representation of Essipit comes from a French journalist, Évelyne Simonnet, who wrote in the early 1980s that Essipit ‘triumphed over their third world condition and sense of shame’ and metamorphosed into an exemplary ‘financially successful, self-reliant, fully employed’ collectivity (Simmonet, 1982). Essipit’s greatest achievement, according to Simonnet (1982), was said to be the adaptation of ‘indigenous values’ to ‘modernity’.

This fictionalisation of the Essipiunnuat condition as having overcome colonialism and ‘progressed’, and the over-valorisation of its leadership, appear ubiquitous in the literature. Even if they are plainly often commissioned, and are promotional or friendly, these texts and the images of the community they portray are characterised by a tendency to overrate the power of economic development, paid jobs, material wealth and bureaucracy to free a society from profoundly complex traumas, various forms of unaddressed intra-family injuries and a sense of indignity. If there is evidence demonstrating the correlation between the Essipit autonomist movement, leadership, the communitarian system, and a significant decline in the historical marginalisation that has plagued the group, no facts or data show the impact of such actions on the group’s psychological condition and its relation to the past and Innu cultural identity. Authors unanimously assume, almost as a mathematical formula, that poverty brings shame and that to accumulate material goods is a valuable source of pride.

They also imply, more questionably, that Essipiunnuat values and their ‘similarity’ to those of modern Euroquébécois, ‘without feather or tent’, to use Bernier’s (2003) title, might be the most important explanation for their accomplishments, followed by their ‘exceptional’ leaders. With descriptions such as ‘intelligent’, ‘visionary’, ‘idealist’, ‘free from social conformism’ and ‘capability’ in terms of controlling their group, authors have nothing but praise for Essipit leaders’ qualities as the cornerstone of the group’s ‘mastery of its own success’. One American author compares their deeds to the achievements of Gandhi or Rosa Parks in contributing to social change, which is no small comparison.¹¹

The growing cult of personality of leaders and their centrality in the local public discourse, and of the former general manager in particular, is best illustrated by a 2016 edition of the band council journal, in which the ‘remarkable achievements’ of the retiring leader are abundantly praised. The edition includes comments from the well-known Euroquébécois anthropologist Serge Bouchard, and the Québec Liberal Party minister of Aboriginal affairs, Geoffrey Kelly, as well as former consultants hired by Georges. The legacy of the general manager was finely crafted, including a speech of praise for his deeds given by Kelly at the Québec national legislative assembly.¹² It appears to be the culmination of a preoccupation with the myth-making process at the core of the increasingly anti-democratic regime that had developed during the last three decades. This claimed that the group’s present success could be traced back to one root cause only, the ‘greatness’ of the general manager.

In the last decade, forestry engineers, who were partly sponsored by the band administration, conducted research on the Essipiunnuat ‘preoccupations, values and aspirations’, which also leans towards a depiction of Essipit as a model.¹³ Another book, by Girard and Brisson (2014), with a preface by the Essipit former chief negotiator, is openly in favour of the current project of a modern treaty being promoted by the administration. Funded in part by the Essipit band council,¹⁴ the book presents a simplified interpretation of the relations between the French and British colonial authorities and the Innu. The preface is characterised by a discourse on the benefits brought by colonisers, absolving them from their deeds of dispossession and their violations of Innu tipenitamun. It tends to justify the fiction of a ‘shared’ sovereignty dating back to Samuel de Champlain, albeit to the advantage of the European conception of the state as contained in the contemporary project of a modern treaty widely criticised for extinguishing indigenous ancestral sovereignty.

Such a discourse of absolution, reproducing central themes of the colonial imaginary, serves to feed the Euroquébécois mythology that they would bear less responsibility for colonialism than the English and the Canadians, one long promoted by nationalists, particularly within the context of ‘Québécois de souche’s national project’. This therefore continues to keep invisible ‘what national discourses consistently aim to erase’ (Burelle, 2019, p. 172). The Essipit representative is reconducting here a one-dimensional and Euroquébécois interpretation at the expense of Innu oral and legal traditions.¹⁵ This type of narrative has been supported by a variety of communication strategies and publications to legitimise the signing of extinguishment clauses included in agreements resulting from the comprehensive land claims process.¹⁶ It aims at fabricating an Innu consent to the surrender and abandonment of Innu tipenitamun as a foundation interlaced with the Earth, and as rooted and conceived in their oral tradition. All publications relating to Essipit, in particular those emanating from the band administration’s communication branch, are aligned with the official discourse of the band council, promoting the signature of an agreement with the state. Complete control over the group’s external image, including through social media, is maintained by just a handful of the band administrators.¹⁷

In 2016, Bouchard, an omnipresent public figure in Québec, was hired by the band council to write a history of the Innu, with a particular focus on Essipit.¹⁸ This resulted in a very popular yet problematic book called The Laughing People: A Tribute to my Innu friends (2017).¹⁹ The manuscript, funded by the Essipit band council and commissioned by its former general manager, was widely promoted by the Essipit communication branch responsible for treaty negotiations. It was strategically presented to the Innu people as a ‘gift’ from both Bouchard and Essipit.²⁰ Are Bouchard and his book part of a communication strategy to protect the band council and its former Director General from criticism, as well as to legitimise Essipit’s signing of a modern treaty? What is clear is that it effectively serves to reinforce Essipit’s image as Innu, in particular through associating it with the Ekuanitshinnuat, as well as proposing the community as a ‘model’ to be followed by others. The book, although well-written and entertaining, remains stale because it is clearly a tool to manipulate the Innu, who are asked to swallow a political strategy rooted in the anecdotes of the famous anthropologist and his flattery of local leaders. It draws a romantic veil which helps, consciously or not, to control local interpretations, and to silence and erase further internal critical voices, diverting attention from the harsh truths of the leaders’ relationship with their own past. Both this and the Girard and Brisson book are examples of ‘mercenary work’ which give overwhelming power to authority in the production of group stories, and a unified interpretation. These projects are also led by Euroquébécois, who, in spite of their openness and good relations with local managers, tend to frame Innu history through the lens of Québec national history and trauma, a perspective that is also favoured by both Innu and Euroquébécois Essipit band administrators. In Julie Burelle’s view, ‘settler-colonial societies have long depended on a rewriting of history to legitimise their existence’, which leads to a failure to ‘unsettle Québec’s settler-colonial past’ and contribute to perpetuating ‘settler-colonial domination in the present’. According to Burelle, Bouchard’s discourse and performances are determined by ‘his desire to be made innocent of his settler-colonial complicity’ (2019, p. 81). She adds that his ‘poetic license with history’ would allow him to ‘champion Indigenous people and simultaneously use them to affirm whites’ innocence’ (2019), p. 83.

Figure 2. 2016–17 marketing campaign, taken from https://wwwgrenier.qc.ca/nouvelles/7949/vacances-essipit-devoile-as-nouvelle-identite-visuelle (accessed 20 May 2015).

Essipiunnuat who dared to criticise Euroquébécois hired by the band and imbued with the Québec imaginary and selective memory, and who were at times taking decisions related to Innu culture and symbols, found themselves accused of being discriminatory towards Euroquébécois and even of being ‘racists’ and not ‘liking the whites’. As an example of stratagems employed to maintain control over the Essipit’s representations of the past, in 2008 the previous band general manager, Georges, had hired historian Pierre Frenette to write the group’s history at the same time as I was carrying out research for my PhD.²¹ Meanwhile, Georges warned me that my research ‘would upset some people’. The phenomenon of the band administration and their leaders hiring research professionals from various disciplines was described as ‘mercenary’ (Garneau, quoted in Charest, 2005, pp. 13–14). According to Charest, the transfer of knowledge for remuneration would greatly impact on the production of local knowledge in communities:

The administration’s depiction of the community is best illustrated by its 2016–17 marketing campaign, conducted on behalf of the corporate branch of the band council. It demonstrates how indigeneity has been commodified and how ‘Innu’ has been used as a brand.²² The campaign continues to market Vacances Essipit, a branch of the band Enterprises, as a tourist destination. What may seem innocent enough – even funny and engaging at first – powerfully illustrates the misappropriation of the term ‘Innu’, as well as a typical pattern of colonial erasure and rewriting.²³

External accounts of the community often portray it as having come into existence only when the former leaders took office 40 years ago. It is as if there is an absence of a group ‘self ’ before that time (Simonnet, 1982; Anderson, 1999; Bernier, 2003; Gaudreau, 2006; White, 2008; Charest, 2008; Luc, 2009; St-Georges, 2009; Beaudoin et al., 2012; Bouchard, 2017). This repetitive discourse, which is reasserted in contemporary imagery, deserved further investigation. It also echoes the colonial fiction of the group’s absence of history before the creation of the reserve. But if these proofs do not exist, it is because no researcher has been able to give voice to the Essipiunnuat themselves. None of the previous research has examined the full spectrum of community life. Too often it has neglected a particular age group, aspect of social status, or has lacked the scope to look at the emotional health of the people, their self-perception or relationship with their past.

The overwhelmingly positive external view of the Essipiunnuat as presented in previous research calls for a deeper, internal, independent and critical perspective, based on people’s experience, cultural memory²⁴ and stories. Such an approach would show that financial prosperity does little to erase the memory of misery or trauma; shame and self-hatred can take surprising forms when we attempt to banish them. Such circumstances are likely to generate internal tyranny actualising suffering and subjective amnesia (a desire to forget as well as an inner command to forget), and severe intergenerational consequences. No matter how deep a truth is buried, it will always seep out. The Elders we met repeated over and over again the importance of facing the truth and looking back at the past as a prerequisite for effective decolonisation. Although it might seem desirable to forget and escape the story of ‘why’, we can seldom achieve this. Forgetting acts like a drug that momentarily comforts but does the user little or no good in the longer term.

Catching oblivion: a genealogy of amnesia

In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limits it discovers in itself – a limit where minds meet, and in meeting, begin to exist. Rebellious thought, therefore, cannot dispense with memory: it is a perpetual state of tension. In studying its actions and its results, we shall have to say, each time, whether it remains faithful to its first noble promise, or if, through indolence or folly, it forgets its original purpose and plunges into a mire of tyranny or servitude.

Albert Camus, The Rebel

At its outset, this research, which began as a PhD at the University of Geneva, was about documenting Innu historical resistance to colonialism and endogenous conceptions of a right to self-determination in the face of internal colonialism in Canada. The project was based on the assumption that the best way to prevent the genocide of vulnerable micro-groups was to empower them to defend themselves and their ancestral domain. As the project developed, it became clearer that I could test this most effectively by studying the experience of my own community (Essipit).

Like many Essipiunnuat of my generation, I had been forced to live most of my life off-reserve but I had maintained my connections there.²⁵ My mother’s community membership was re-established in the 1980s, just like mine, after the Canadian parliament passed Bill C-31, which partly changed the practice of women being excluded based on marital status in accordance with the Indian Act.²⁶

On returning to live full time on the reserve in 2006, I observed that my lack of knowledge about the group’s past was widely shared by members of my generation, whether or not they had lived off-reserve. It seemed to me that this cultural disconnection was the first problem that needed to be tackled if the Crown were to be prevented from further violating the ancestral normative order. How could people resist the invalidation of their ancestral conception of sovereignty, the limitations to their freedom, and the commodification of their culture if they themselves were ignorant of what needed protecting? What are the links between the cultural genocide experienced by the Essipiunnuat and the idea that our sui generis conception of Innu tipenitemun as sovereignty, responsibility and freedom does not exist? Cultural oblivion, brought about in part by genocidal policies internally reproduced, means that groups affected are more likely to relinquish rights and surrender Assi and ancestral lands.

In 2007, some of the older Essipiunnuat informed me of an event that occurred in the 1980s – of which I had vague childhood memories – called the Salmon War. My interlocutors, including Elders, considered this event to be the most important in the history of the group and the most significant in their own lives; a pivotal moment that supposedly reinvigorated and empowered them. The leaders, in particular, depicted it as the genesis of all the subsequent developments that had been undertaken by the community. My preliminary investigations into the Salmon War revealed an event which pointed to a wider story of resistance by First Peoples to policies of extinguishment, and an assertion of sovereignty. This led to the decision to re-orient my PhD as a community-based and participative oral history of the Salmon War and to document how my own community dealt with the forces of colonialism in the 1980s. The account of resistance and empowerment would be valuable for other vulnerable groups facing similar situations. My principal contacts at that time were leaders and other individuals in positions of power in the community (at the band council where I worked as a negotiation advisor from 2007 to 2009) who fed my assumption that the Salmon War was mainly an experience of collective self-empowerment.

However, tripartite conversations with Jeremy Krikler and Colin Samson, my PhD supervisors at the University of Essex, led me to the realisation that there were other voices and perceptions of the community, and its systems and past that might be being overlooked. My own need for acceptance following time away from the group had made me vulnerable to indoctrination and inclined to an essentialised and mythologised Essipiunnuat memory that tended to legitimise the current social order. This was to be a cornerstone of the research project: psychological colonialism had made us relatively blind and deaf to the cultural treasure to which we are heirs and I could hardly ignore the state of our inner condition or fail to investigate why it came about.

The focus of my research shifted towards investigating the relationship of the group to its past, the intergenerational implications of this, and the reasons for it, rather than an exploration of the past itself. It switched from being an oral history project/sociology of local development to a mnemohistory focusing on the production of amnesia.²⁷ This new approach was to require a challenging level of self-reflection, since I was still working at the time as a negotiation advisor for the band council.²⁸ The discoveries I made and the obstacles I met on the road to truth-telling and rememorisation were to become precious data in the documentation of a multifaceted example of cultural oblivion.²⁹

The privation of cultural memory among the youth as a phenomenon was clearly impacting on our cultural identity as Essipiunnuat, but above all it was jeopardising the cultural continuity of the group. How can First People resist attempts to extinguish their ancestral sovereignty if younger members have relatively little idea that this legal order even exists? What were the sources of self-ignorance and a far-reaching amnesia about the group past, despite a clear willingness and need to know? Part of the response to this enigmatic rupture of transmission, symbolised by ignorance of the Salmon War, had to be sought partially in the previous generation and their silence. For this earlier generation, especially those who had participated in the Salmon War, the event had been a pivotal point in their lives and the group’s memory. Mnemonic practices pertaining to the event would be rich material for shedding light on this intergenerational concern.

Preliminary investigation revealed powerful experiences of cultural revitalisation and the re-emergence of an Innu conceptions among the group at the time of the Salmon War. Yet on closer examination there was an uneasiness about the event, about the past and also about the current condition of the group. A complex code of silence was revealed during the first meetings with those taking part, that from the very beginning revealed evidence of strong systemic and political barriers to remembering, and of forms of in-group control in the present that were casting a shadow over the past. Indeed, there was a tendency among a majority of interlocutors to assume that the community had ‘no past’ before the Salmon War; stories about the group were more or less entirely articulated in accordance with the chronology set by the current regime, particularly its former general manager. A first look at the stories also echoes some profound and intriguing silences.

The fundamental enigma in Thou Shalt Forget concerns the phenomenon of cultural oblivion, its sources, mode of production and effects, as experienced by the Essipiunnuat. It is assumed here that the weighty effects of cultural genocide and its impact of intergenerational trauma, breaks in cultural transmission related to experience of the Residential Schools, the absorption of Québec nationalist mythologies, and the advanced internalisation of the Crown representations of the Indian-as-object (that was to be internally redesigned as ‘simulated Indian’ or ‘simulacrum of indigeneity’) are all determining features of the current condition of the group. A trend towards moving away from what is ‘Innu’ – a propensity to abandon it, to step away or disconnect from it, with collateral effects such as cultural anaemia, was observed among the younger generation. The existence of a discourse on the invalidity of Innu knowledge as a point of reference was noticeable among this group too, as revealed by the interviews and in conversations that occurred mainly between 2007 and 2012 with 15 Essipiunnuat aged between 25 and 38 years old.³⁰ As will be shown later, in addition to these conversations with the youngest, which helped to identify the extent of the phenomenon of forgetfulness, were added in a second phase more formal interviews with thirty people from previous generations (of which 20 who agreed to be recorded).

A journey in truth-hunting: intergenerational silence, discontinuity and amnesia

Research on young Essipiunnuat mnemonic practices shows evidence of an advanced form of collective memory loss and enigmatic absence of Essipiunnu memory in self-identity. This is best illustrated by the near-complete ignorance among my generation about the Salmon War, a pivotal episode in the lives of generations of Essipiunnuat (that is, for their parents and grandparents). One young Essipiunnu, for example, who was five when the war started, had never been told anything about it:

Right up to the present day however, strong emotions are associated with the war. Most commonly, the youngest interviewees would say that they knew something serious happened, but did not know what. This is unsurprising, since almost all those who took part in the war come across as confused or uneasy in the interviews, saying that it was the most significant experience of their life but that this was the first time they had talked about it. Thus, there is evidence of a shared silence about the recent past, captivating in its intergenerational scope and effect.

If the impetus to study the phenomenon of cultural oblivion came from these early encounters with young people of my generation, all with family ties of one kind or other, it is through interviews and the close study of the previous generation’s stories that it is possible to posit a theory about why collective memory loss happened and what the parameters of it are. Breaks in intergenerational transmission of cultural memory, seemingly reaching their peak with the current generation, appear to be the apex of a wider social and historical process of cultural discontinuity experienced by the group over time, which has accelerated in the last century and recent decades (Speck, 1915; Laforest, 1983; Mailhot, 1996; Frenette, 2010, Garneau 2015).³²

In this context, the task consists of tracing back the genealogy of this apparent cultural oblivion and its ‘lineage’ (to use Foucault’s expression) in order to determine the factors that have led to the current situation. More specifically, the work: ‘seek[s] answers to the questions how and why “we” forget, inquiring into those moments and acts of interruption or disruption that are production of oblivion, as well as those that serve to maintain oblivion, such as silence, omission and repetition’ (Plate, 2016).

To that end, I had numerous conversations with Essipiunnuat men and women. Yet the book is principally based on the close examination of autobiographical memories of the Salmon War retained by 20 Essipiunnuat who were aged over 38 at the time of the meetings. This allows for a better understanding of this generation’s relationship to its Essipiunnuat past and heritage, through individuals’ preferences regarding silence, remembering or transmitting. The close study of this generation’s mnemonic practices is crucial to shedding light on the group’s current cultural condition. This includes the social and historical determinants, as well as the desire for remembrance or oblivion, of its will to continue or to disappear. We return to this later.

People’s stories also help us to better understand how cultural oblivion is generated, what the determining factors are, and the main interests in its production (without turning a blind eye to the crucial issue, for many communities, of the role of internal power and the effects on the entire group of the psychological colonialism experienced by the leaders). The social relevance of cultural oblivion is highlighted in large part by its effects on subsequent generations, who are unable to access a collective inventory of experiences and cultural referents. The younger interviewees, each in their own way, voiced concerns about this and its impact on their lives. Conversations with them over the past decade have revealed an intense need to access norms and Innu stories, laws and ceremonies. The majority wanted to know the truth about the past. But they also told of psychological distress – identity crises, stress, anxiety, alcoholism, drug addiction, depression, suicidal thoughts, homicidal thoughts and self-loathing. Along with this went an inability to identify the sources of their negative feelings. One wonders whether the privation of cultural knowledge and memory could be directly related to the psychological phenomena they describe.

Traditional Essipiunnu cultural values, such as respect, care for others and self-sufficiency are sometimes depicted in discourses as having been lost. Indigeneity is at times linked with weaker racial genetics, inherent health problems, and psychological deficiencies, inclinations to excess, sexual deviance and substance abuse, not only expressing a distance but also a desire to distance. It is not unusual to hear young people speak of ‘Indians’ as ‘others’, essentialising indigeneity, producing negative representations, and even making racist statements against Innu (the phenomenon of internal racism as denounced by certain Elders in my conversations with them). More generally, identification as ‘Indian’ tends to depend on circumstances; a malaise more often replaces moments of pride in expressing an indigenous self. Feelings of non-authenticity, inconsistency and uneasiness, of having an Indian ‘card’ to play but nothing else, are common. In 2010, a 23-year-old woman from the community informed a French tourist asking about the history of her people that he should look elsewhere, since there were ‘no Indians here any more’.

Young Essipiunnuat are far from being alone in being disconnected from a cultural memory and heritage that ought to be theirs. It is a phenomenon experienced by other groups that have been subject to the Canadian and Québécois colonial projects. It is therefore important, although painful, to turn an honest gaze on what is going on in the reserve, not to engage in blame or a smear campaign, but to unveil deeper and often invisible layers of knowledge and experience.

Concerns about the growing intergenerational gap, and weakening cultural identity and collective continuity, have been growing themes of interest in academia worldwide in recent decades. Collective memory loss and its relation to the past, including the discourse on indigeneity, has also become a source of anxiety for the neighbouring Euroquébécois.³³ Although society is not the focus of this study, it has had and continues to have an important influence on contemporary Essipiunnuat society and other First Peoples of the Québec-Labrador Peninsula (who have by various stratagems been ‘Frenchified’), and is therefore referred to sporadically in the text, as it has the potential to make visible the blind spots of the descendant peoples who have settled, over the last 400 years, on the Innu ancestral territories.

Many thinkers have identified this epidemic of forgetfulness as the chief challenge for the continuity of what once was called the ‘New World’. In this sense, the Essipiunnuat’s experience of cultural oblivion extends beyond the borders of a 0.8 km² reserve and the fewer than 300 people living on it, and has a far wider relevance. Yet, the academic arena appears to be struggling with the issue. In this context, the crucial role of indigenous researchers should remain that of voicing problems as formulated by those experiencing them, without minimising their own experience as a source of knowledge.

The phantasm of forgetting: the story of a colonial illusion

Man is like a salmon, salmon always goes up the river where he was born, this is the real mystery. Wherever a man goes, he never forgets where he comes from. Whatever mileage travelled, the number of cities crossed, no matter how long it takes to find a destination, he never forgets his origins.

Rita Mestokosho, Eshi Uapataman Nukum

When ushâshamek (Atlantic salmon) is about three years old, it leaves the river where it was born for its first long journey of thousands of kilometres. The salmon then returns to its native brook, to the exact location of its birth, and repeats the spawning cycle. The Innu poet Rita Mestokosho says in one of her poems that man is like a salmon, since ‘he never forgets where he comes from’.³⁴ Forgetfulness is thus far from absolute. Individuals and groups remain forever connected to the conditions of their beginnings; their deeds, choices and self-representations can never be detached entirely from their own origin in spite of the dams that might prevent them from accessing these spaces. This is well illustrated by Nietzsche’s description of the self-designed superhuman’s relation to his past, resentfully unable to silence the voices of his past selves; the reminiscences of past will, choices, contentment, deeds and beliefs remain forever connected to the terms of his own birth. Freed from everything he did not choose, he remains the slave of his memory, tied to everything that has made him what he now is (Nietzsche, 1885).

The relationship that a collectivity entertains with the past, what is retained, valued, celebrated or forgotten, is evocative of a fundamental dimension of its current condition, of its symbolic needs, as well as the self-perception of its social and wider historical circumstances. This genealogy of oblivion traces back the lineage of an individual, generational and/or collective propensity to overshadow figures of its experience. Attempts to forget are highly normative and can consist in critical judgements about the self, with major impacts on one’s self-identity. To trace back the genealogy of a memory gap, the social, psychological and historical formations of oblivion about specific events pave the way for the discovery of decisive and influential yet unrecognised subjectivities that have shaped its production, including determining commands to forget and the corollary desire to forget in the realm of power.

Autobiographical memories and their intersections give access to common memories and histories, and to the social purposes on which they ultimately depend (Thompson, 2017).³⁵ Ways of relating to the past and mnemonic practices are relevant to investigation, and life stories and autobiographical memories are now widely recognised as valued material. People’s stories offer self-portraits, collective past selves, cultural postures and communalities. The power of stories and their contents in individual lives are the benchmark of their values and norms. Telling and recounting are to sacralise, normalise and standardise; the process generates identities.

Individual readings of group agency contained in personal accounts can be highly informative of the generational and/or trans-group dimensions of collective subjectivity; such narrations have the power to make visible the cultural memory of the narrator used as a resource for the self. Autobiographical stories of a past event give access to the critical experience knowledge of a similar type that forges the social group. The central role of memory of common experience (of ‘inventory of experience’) in the epistemological formation of a generational unit is a good example: ‘The inventory of experience, which is absorbed … from the environment in early youth, often becomes the historically oldest stratum of consciousness, which tends to stabilize itself as the natural view of the world [for each particular generation]’ (Mannheim, 1952, pp. 304, 328).

Scrutinising narrations of sociohistorical situations and events can help to investigate micro-groups’ relation to their past and to their present and future. It can report on the formation of past generations, their understanding of themselves, and the genuine conception of their values and prejudices. It offers views on how old emotions of the past are brought forward in the present and make visible the new contexts to which they are applied (Hakemulder, 2000, p. 87). What narrators ‘want to transmit’ is evocative of current individualities but also of group self-conceptions and the selves one could become, would like to become, or are afraid of becoming; it informs on the cognitive manifestation of enduring goals, aspirations, motives, fears and threats. Ultimately it illustrates the correlations between current self-conceptions and motivations for the maintenance of its normative basics (Cross and Markus, 1994; Markus and Nurius, 1986, p. 954). Autobiographical memory stories shed light on the current self-schemas of narrators, on their organisation of past experiences, and their recognition and interpretation of their social environment. Self-conceptions revealed in narration remain impregnated with cultural contexts and immediate social circumstances, and any assessment of them can be richly informative of communalities and common cultural and social schemes (Markus et al., 1985; Markus and Kunda, 1986).

Social research, to have value and relevance, must be useful to people themselves and should rely as much as possible on their cosmogony (Smith, 1999). Oral history and its methods, and the value that is placed in people’s stories and epistemologies, coupled with a detailed study of mnemonic practices, have long proved their usefulness for reviewing official discourse, interpretations and unified dimensions about the past, its narration and sources. It allows for the reaccessing of cultural identification, the spreading of interpretative nets, and easier investigation of current needs, interests and self-perceptions. It offers a space to reinstate points of reference, counter psychological colonialism and reactivate, from the people’s own stories, ‘the sources of rules and practices that have enabled a group to reproduce in a hostile environment’ (Savard, 2004). At its core, this project is a call for research to transcend academia and engage wider audiences to overcome epistemological ghettos and the replication of imposed categories at the service of internal tyrannies. From the beginning, my work aimed to access and make heard people’s voices; to optimally generate a confluence of personal, family and community stories into a wider common script entirely nourished by them.

Throughout the research I wished to present people’s perspectives faithfully. I wanted to detail their insights into decoding the shadows of our memories and our blind spots. Their words and intuition are intrinsic to the value of this book.

I have tried my best to bring together Essipiunnuat knowledge and stories, and the tools of social sciences, to conduct research ‘in a good way’, as Elder Albert Marshall suggested, and I hope that my vision of this book being ‘for the benefit of all’ but especially those who need it most (quoted in Integrative science, 2017) will be an enduring one.

Readings of the stories

The study of autobiographical memories assumes that storytelling reflects the ways in which people’s experiences are articulated and how their understanding of life and the world, and of themselves within it, is constructed. Focusing on an uprising, and how such an experience is described in people’s stories, was therefore a prerequisite to learning something about those who took part in the Salmon War and the dams between them, their memories and their children’s generation. The study of personal testimonies, brief life stories and conversations in relation to the event allows for an understanding of the way in which the Essipiunnuat experienced their fate, how they have coped with it and what they make of it now. They are presented as they were narrated and organised in accordance with the predominant themes and topics. People’s stories went through four main readings.

The first reading consists of identifying what people perceive as the sources of the Salmon War, its main determinants, and all the elements that have contributed to its production. The analysis led towards categorising what those taking part identify as the ‘objective condition’ or the external causes, and then moves towards the ‘subjective condition’ and collective agency as a determinant. A second reading is about picking out elements relating to self-representations (self-portraits, depictions of others and representations of the group) in the course of the action. The goal here is to access aspects of the group past-self associated with the event and distil its normative charge. A third reading is conducted through the lens of the changes people associate with their experience of the war. The last reading is about searching in the stories, and mnemonic practices, for content evocative of the present time and current condition of the group, including the production of cultural oblivion.

About this book

The first chapter contains some theoretical reflections on cultural oblivion as well as background information (mostly from documentary sources) about the Essipiunnuat and the Salmon War. Chapter 2 identifies the central elements that have contributed to the occurrence of the Salmon War, according to those taking part. These went beyond their own subjectivity. The chapter covers colonialism, the games of Québec government politics, the mentality of the local Euroquébécois of Les Escoumins township, and the actions of radical anti-Essipiunnuat militants. Group agency was identified as a central determinant of the event. This expression of collective subjectivity is associated with references to a common inventory of past experience, the appearance of a movement of affirmation, and the existence of shared objectives that were operationalised through specific and chosen strategies articulated from a symbolic representation of the salmon.

The next chapter examines elements of the group past-self (or elements of the group’s past self-identity) associated with the event that were exhumed from people’s autobiographical memories. People’s self-portraits are evocative of communalities in characters conforming to an emergent norm of commitment (commanders, warriors and supporters), of social background (dual cultural identification, economic dependencies) as well as shared emotions (the pleasures of uprising, the suffering of the subsequent reaction). Representations of others are dominated by the description of ten specific people (idols) who are represented in heroic postures (perilous circumstances, longing for sacrifice, for the good of all) revealing clear common ethical attributes (iconographies) placed in contrast with images of transgressions (irrationality, hypocrisy, non-commitment). Representations of the group (power of solidarity, indigeneity, dignity) confirm features of a group past-self whose aesthetics display characteristics of strength and rebelliousness.

Chapter 4 presents the transformations people associate with the occurrence of war. These accounts suggest four common perceptions of a remodelling of their relational system (fractionation, associations), important alterations of self-identity (indigenisation, cultural reidentification), collective self-empowerment (self-legitimacy, autodynamisation and increased knowledge) and new forms of governmentality (internal re-ordination, perceptions of authoritarianism). The Salmon War is presented as a pivotal moment, resulting in a collective revival, followed by the formation of a post-war regime (albeit on a small scale) exerting political, economical and psychological control – and the emergence of a unified historical interpretation.

The final chapter demonstrates what is revealed about the current condition of the group from looking at how those who shared their stories relate to their past. Studying the stories identifies various ‘dams’ that distance people from their memories of the war, such as interference from subsequent events (the 1982 agreements, bill C31, the unemployment fare crisis), and other phenomena that contribute to a logic of forgetting (traumas, protection of relations, interests in denial, bureaucratic will to ignorance, erasure and rewriting). However, it also identifies elements of resistance to the vectors of oblivion (emotional reflux, normative charge, reminiscences). A close examination of people’s relationship with their past provides background for their current nostalgia (community gathering, Innu way of life, spirit of resistance), social criticism (relations with states, commodification of ancestral sovereignty, monocracy) as well as their views on the current cultural condition of the group (views of reality, need for standards, models to reproduce and avoid). Lastly, it exposes a shared vision regarding the imperative of intergenerational transmission, including what should be transmitted and the best ways to transmit them in order to secure Essipiunnuat cultural continuity in the face of cultural exhaustion. Reflections on the process of investigating one’s own community’s relation to the past and some keys for researchers to understanding such experience are also explored.

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1 Innu-aimun is a language belonging to the wider Algonquian linguistic family. There are approximately 11,000 Innu-aimun speakers.

2 Before 1867, the Essipiunnuat were commonly called ‘savages’, and later ‘Indians’. Anthropologists of the 20th century, such as Frank G. Speck, also identified Essipiunnuat as descendants of the former Tadoussac-Escoumains Band. From the creation of the reserve (1892) until the 1950s, the group was called ‘Indians of Les Escoumins’. The name then became ‘Montagnais of Les Escoumins’ until, more recently, it was changed to what is considered to be the ‘traditional name’ of the people in this region: ‘Essipiunnuat’, this being the name used by Innu-aimun speakers.

3 Until 2014, the number of band members was 429. The recent McIvor decision of the Canadian Supreme Court boosted the demography of the group to 211 living on-reserve and 583 living off-reserve). See Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/Mobile/Nations/profile_essipit-eng.html, consulted Dec. 2018. More than 70% of the population live outside of the reserve. External Essipiunnuat so far have no right to run for leadership positions, no possibility of voting in elections, and cannot attend general assemblies.

4 A 2017 decision by the Specific Claims Tribunal (Essipit Innu First Nation v. Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada) ruled in favour of the Essipiunnuat regarding the insufficiency of the lands allocated to them upon the creation of the reserve. As per the decision, Honorable Johanne Mainville stated that: ‘the Claimant should be compensated by the Respondent for the different between the 230 acres that were originally planned and the 97 acres that were granted, that is, for the portion situated in Block A and Lot 11 of Range A, and for the loss of use of this difference, with interest.’

5 Today, Essipit Band Council positions the group’s ancestral domain between La Malbaie River and Porneuf River, on the St Laurence River’s northern shore. Their occupation is concentrated grosso modo in the hydrographical basin of the Esh Shipu, in a region between the St Marguerite River and the Porneuf River, including the Lake Emmuraillé run-off, Lake à la Croix and Lake des Coeurs. Due to a way of life formerly determined by seasonal migration, occupation of the ‘Innu homeland’ was much different from what it is now. That said, some band members do not accept these contemporary borders and continue to assert that their ancestral domain extends, in accordance with ancient alliance and relations, to the territories formerly occupied for thousands of years by peoples of the wider Algonquian family and the Innu in particular. Whether or not the band council, instead of the traditional guardians (called kupaniesh in Essipit), has authority over ancestral lands and family territories is a major issue in Essipit, as it is for most of the First Peoples in Canada. The band council being a colonial device, it is argued by a large proportion of people who have maintained strong ties with Innu ancestral domain that the band administration only has authority within the reserve and that ancestral lands beyond these borders should be taken care of by traditional family guardians.

6 Known Essipiunnuat chiefs are Léon Dominique (before 1834); Joseph Moreau (1834); Paul Ross (1904); Jos-Pierre Moreau (1926–46); Joseph Ross (1950–57); Laurent Ross (1957–79); Denis Ross (1979–2012); and Martin Dufour (2012–). For further reflections on Innu modes of governance and traditional decision-making, see Leacock (1997).

7 The band council has no roots in Indigenous philosophy, traditional modes of governance or decision-making. It is a colonial structure that was imposed on the First Nations in Canada, as defined by the Indian Act, in replacement of traditional forms of governance. It was designed to support assimilation and facilitate the cession of land and extinguishing of ancestral sovereignty. A major criticism of the band council system is that, even if the chief and councillors are elected by the members, the council is only accountable to the minister of indigenous and northern affairs. For further reflections on the band council system, listen to Radio-Canada (2019), ‘La légitimité des conseils de bande remise en question’, Emission Médium Large (in French), https://ici-radio-canada.ca/premiere/emissions/medium-large/segments/entrevue/101853/conseil-bande-autochtone-premieres-nations-pipeline-gazoduc (accessed on 19 Jan. 2019) and see Imai (2007).

8 See Gendreau (2016), pp. 34–5.

9 Uetshit takuaimatishun is interpreted here as collective self-regulation and effective self-determination. It literally signifies ‘propelling and directing our own canoe’, stated here as self-governance. As an informant from Pessamit mentioned, several interpretations might be made in the Innu language. ‘My own translation is that the expression means our own autonomy over ourselves. I prefer this interpretation since it includes self-control, self-knowledge, within the limits we must give ourselves, the feelings we may have towards others … to summarise, I believe it is about what we want for ourselves … It might appear a very poetic definition yet this is the very beauty of the Innu language that we can transform it in accordance with what we want to express. It offers the opportunity to incorporate in one expression a quantity of meanings equivalent to what other languages would require a whole sentence to express’. Dana, Pessamit, 2008. As another informant reports, ‘It can be understood as what we want for ourselves, and do for it, collectively’. Kevin, Matimekush, 2005.

10 See Harper (2012).

11 See Luc (2009).

12 See Tipatshimun, fall 2016 edition.

13 The band council supported some research, conducted by forestry engineers, on Essipiunnuat values and the concept of ‘indigenous forestry’. The community is presented as a model throughout the study. See St-Georges (2009) and Beaudoin et al. (2012).

14 As for other publications funded and supported by the band council, Girard and Brisson’s book reinforces the Petapen grouping’s promotion of a modern treaty and its legitimation in the eyes of other Innu communities. As the anthropologist Émile Duchesne observes in his review, ‘the authors’ conclusion as well as the overall development of the book are placed in support – conscious or not – of the Petapan group’s strategy. The heart of the facts brought into the book and the general observation refer more to the communities represented by this grouping. It would have been better to limit the content of the book to these communities or to broaden the scope to include more the strategies and political demands of other Innu communities’ (2016).

15 The mythology of good relations and lasting alliances between the French and the Innu, as well as the fiction of a shared sovereignty, are often used by Québec nationalists to erase their own posture as settlers. Also, there is evidence in Innu oral tradition that the alliance mentioned in Sylvain Ross’s preface to Girard and Brisson’s book was purely strategic and violated shortly after being made. For more balanced interpretations see Chrétien et al. (2009). For a critical perspective on Québec’s representations of the past and First Peoples’ sovereignty, see Burelle (2019). On Québec’s commemoration of Champlain as a nation-building practice, see Leroux (2010).

16 For critical perspective on the land claim negotiation process in Canada as a continuation of colonialism, see Samson (2014; 2016); Samson and Cassell (2012); Diabo (2012); Pasternak (2016; 2017); Schulte-Tenckhoff (2000).

17 In 2016, the communication division of the band requested that its members communicate with the council before adding any information pertaining to Essipit on Wikipedia, for example.

18 See Bouchard (2016) and Conseil des Innus Essipit, Rapport annuel (2016). For a critique of Bouchard’s discourse on Québec history and relations to First Peoples, see Burelle (2019) pp. 57, 70–1, 74, 79–82.

19 Bouchard and Lévesque (2017).

20 It is publicly known that Serge Bouchard is a long-time friend of Georges, whom he praised in a local newspaper in 2016 as a ‘great man’ to whom he has ‘never been able to say no’, see http://innu-essipit.com/fichiers/3457/Montage%20final.pdf (accessed 10 Jan. 2019).

21 Sadly, Frenette passed away a year into his research.

22 For extensive reflections on the commodification of ‘indigeneity’, see: Manit (2017), pp. 135–58; Adese (2012).

23 Developed by a well-known Québec marketing firm hired by the band council called Les dompteurs de souris, the campaign makes use of the word ‘Innu’ to promote Essipit enterprises. In the advertising, the term ‘Innu’ is linked with ‘bliable’ to form the neologism ‘Innubliable’. In French, ‘inoubliable’ means ‘unforgettable’. One advertisement features a tourist being so aroused by the outstanding beauty of the nature in the area that she is having an orgasm as she pours her coffee. If of relative aesthetic value, this use of the term ‘Innu’ remains problematic as it concerns the name of a whole people who are absent from the representation. ‘Innu’, which is a shortened term for ‘Innuat’ in the Innu-aimun language, means the ‘humans’. The term is not only denatured but is reduced to a mere selling strategy, a branding. While promising lasting memories for tourists, the slogan achieves the internal erasure of the term ‘Innu’, by twisting its meaning in French. All too poignantly, the term ‘Innu’ becomes ‘What cannot not be forgotten’.

24 Cultural memory is defined by Assmann and Holscher as ‘all knowledge that directs behaviour and experience in the interactive framework of a society and one that obtains through generations in repeated societal practice and initiation’ (1988).

25 For some elements of my autobiographical memoire, see Ross-Tremblay (2015), no. 5, pp. 214–31. I returned to live permanently in the community in 2006 with my wife, children and parents.

26 For more information on the topic, see Canada., Erasmus and Dussault (1996). G., & Dussault, R. (1996). Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Ottawa: The Commission; Palmater, P. (2019), ‘Canada continues to deny sex equality to First Nation woman and children’, Rabble.ca, (consulted January 23, 2019).

27 It was to become my PhD thesis, completed in 2012: ‘A Genealogy of Amnesia: Memory and Forgetfulness in Essipiunnuat’s Narratives of the Salmon War (1980–1).

28 I stopped working for the negotiation sector of the band council at the end of 2009. At the same time, I volunteered to write a strategic vision for the cultural sector, which was submitted a month later. It was entitled Pour nos pères et nos enfants: occuper le territoire de la mémoire et du rêve [For our fathers and children: to occupy the territories of memory and dream]

29 Meanwhile, I undertook a journey of personal healing and cultural empowerment, through nutshimit (‘life in the forest’). These long periods of time alone in the bush (generally two weeks) became indispensable in order to investigate in myself the phenomena that I wanted to understand in and with my people. This proximity to the earth, to oneself and elders’ teachings was the antidote to being overwhelmed or devoured by the complex social phenomenon I was trying to understand within the reserve. Rooting myself epistemologically more deeply brought an important phase of psychological decolonisation; I was then able to take a more insightful look at the deeper, and often fiercely hidden, causes of our human condition as Essipiunnuat, and better assess our relationship to colonial institutions and culture.

30 I belong to this generation and I suffer, to varying degrees, from the same psychological and cultural phenomena experienced by other young Essipiunnuat. It is sometimes difficult to see the social phenomena that we are facing ourselves, especially cultural oblivion, because we are overwhelmed daily by the enigma we are trying to solve. That being so, the present research aims to shed light on the inner aspects of psychological colonialism based on the valuable knowledge of those who undergo it. As Elder Albert Marshall puts it, ‘When you force people to abandon their ways of knowing, their ways of seeing the world, you destroy their spirit and once that spirit is destroyed, it is very, very difficult to embrace anything – academically’ (Albert 2015, p. 17). In order to find balance and overcome the condition of being ‘incomplete’, as find a way to work ‘in a harmonious way’, Elder Albert proposes a way called ‘Two-Eyes Seeing’ or ‘Etuaptmumk’. This approach, that I’ve tried to follow in my research, reinforces the capacity ‘to see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous ways of knowing, and to see from the other eye with the strengths of Western ways of knowing, and to use both of these eyes together’ (Bartlett, Marshall, M., & Marshall, A., 2012, p. 335). On one hand I thus cross-reference people’s views and support and illuminate their rich stories with as many perspectives as possible, from Indigenous and non-Indigenous thinkers, in a transdisciplinary way.

31 The notation of each interview is taken from the classifications assigned by the NVivo software I employed.

32 For example, when American anthropologist Frank G. Speck visited Essipiunnuat around 1915 during one of his field investigations, he met with my ancestor, an Essipiunnu by the name of Old Paun Rus, or Old Paul Ross in English (1825–1920). The man was already in his mid 80s at the time of their meeting. He became one of Speck’s key informants, and is abundantly quoted in his later publications and notes. Speck’s field notes, accessible through the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, testify to the intensity of Essipiunnuat cultural life in 1915.

33 See: Leroux (2019) and Caldwell (2017).

34 Mestokosho, R. (1995), Eshi Uapataman Nukum, Comment je perçois la vie Grand-mère, Beijbom books.

35 See also: Thompson (2017) and the excellent book by Releigh Yow (2005). Clinical sociology has been particularly explicit about the benefits of life-story narrative for sociological investigations. See, e.g., Rebach and Bruhn (2001).