2. The sources of war: colonialism and the emergence of collective agency

When we revolt it’s not for a particular culture. We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe.

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

And after a while, better no talk … they were killing them …
You heard of how it was functioning, didn’t you?
Pishimnapeo

It changes or we die.

Victor, Essipiunnu

Autobiographical memories of the Salmon War (1980–1) provide ample reports concerning the causes of this major event. These stories are marked by a delineation between the objective conditions (or ‘external determinants’) and the actions of the group itself as determinants. The target here is thus to access initially the common script pertaining to circumstances of the war and then disentangle discernments of agency and capacity to act. It will then be possible to extricate what has been embedded in people’s memories as exogenous historical determinants of the Salmon War and highlight the historical consciousness or past role played by people and the group and its modalities.

A crucial component of people’s interpretation of sociohistorical circumstances remains their experience previous to the war and their generational unit or shared experiences. We know that age differences, generational consciousness and access to collective memories markedly influence people’s view of the world (Mannheim, 1952, pp. 304, 328); they shape their hermeneutics of what caused the event. ‘Event’ is understood here in the Foucauldian sense of a crystallisation of past occurrences, with a historical singularity acquired through a particular process. The emergence of an event is firmly attached to the valorisation of its content and a virtualisation that prevents it from sinking into oblivion.¹

The goal here is to collect in stories the multifaceted historical actors that culminated in the Salmon War by reconstituting, beyond the mere facts, the web of discourses, powers, strategies and practices that caused it. It will then be easier to comprehend the role attributed to collective agency in the uprising, as contained in people’s memories, and its potential mystification and re-writing over time to serve a diversity of actors and interests.

A hand strangling us: external determinants

Essipiunnuat in their stories discussed a range of origins, causes, circumstances or agents that contributed to the war breaking out. Sources that were considered external, that did not originate from their own group nor were a result of their own actions and yet were determinant in the igniting of the Salmon War, surfaced in the testimonies. This results in four common elements: Canadian colonialism and colonial violence; the politics and postures of Québec state actors; Euroquébécois-Escouminois representation of and hegemony over the Essipiunnuat; and the existence of organised local anti-Innu militancy.

Constitutional colonialism: the Canadian apartheid

Colonialism is fundamentally about domination and the exercise of control of one people over another. Widely associated with the pursuit of material benefit and access to resources, colonialism has nevertheless a deep-seated psychological dimension. Historically, it has involved the dominant group employing a panoply of tactics to legitimise its hegemony and exploitation, to fabricate consent, mask the reality of dispossession and to seek absolution. Colonialism thus entails strategies of assimilation for increased absorption by the colonised of the colonist’s imaginary and prevailing culture, including its selective memory and ‘essentialist’ representations of the subjugated. The quest for legitimating supremacy has previously led to the dominant group making violent attempts to destroy the memories and cultural repositories of the people who are the object of their actions, aiming ultimately, in the logic of absolute control, to annihilate the past in order to transform usurpation into unlimited legitimacy through rewriting.

The colonisation of First Peoples in Canada involved experiences of uprooting, of disconnection, as well as physical and cultural deterritorialisation in order to secure complete conquest and prevent endogenous resurgence. This was mainly achieved through obliterating First Peoples’ cultural foundations, memory and epistemology through an overreaching policy of forgetting and of commanding to forget. These sociohistorical circumstances are reflected in views about the core determinant of the Salmon War, including colonialism, dispossession, domination, violence and decline in auto-referentiality.

The link between the war and colonialism is most significant for the older people taking part, yet it is also mentioned by younger contributors. Those aged over 40 at the time they told their story linked the occurrence of the war with the harsh conditions of the 1950s, as well as the tragic social circumstances of the 1920s which their grandparents had told them of. The stories also report on the conditions endured by the Essipiunnuat in the 1970s, together with earlier phenomena experienced collectively, including the group’s forced sedentarisation, interpreted as an infringement of their self-determination (uetshit takuaimatishun) and ancestral sovereignty (Innu tipenitamun).

The group’s historical experience of injustice has been compared to that of the ‘Acadians’, who were first despoiled of the land where they lived, then deported to New England and the 13 colonies by the British. The Essipiunnuat experienced profound injustice and had politics imposed on them, characterised by the ‘conqueror’s cruel and arbitrary absolutism, which framed their collective fate and condition of homelessness’:

The growing displacement of the group from the 1830s and subjugation to the authority of the Crown from the 1890s, represented locally by government agents, resulted in the Essipiunnuat being disabused of their local autonomy and sovereignty. Being excluded from administrative decisions that concerned their own governance, they had no choice but to use bribery and collaboration as a way of dealing with the state:

Mentions of the mounting disempowerment of the group and its suppression come with assertions about the dispossession of the ancestral domain. This amplified usurpation of ancestral hunting territories and gathering sites by corporations, the Catholic Church and local Euroquébécois, causing sweeping marginalisation, is seen as another characteristic of the group experience of colonialism: ‘They took everything away from us. When they needed something, they took the Indians and … pushed them back … Then they had no place left; they took the better spots’ (Pishimnapeo, chapter 1, ref. 7).

From the mid 20th century, the usurpation of Essipiunnuat territories took the form of an increased denial of inherent indigenous sovereignty. Such refutation ultimately resulted in the group being persecuted when practising their traditional subsistence activities. From the 1940s onwards, the Innu language (Innu–aimun) was systematically banned and the state and church considered the Essipiunnuat to be subject to Québec laws and culture. In addition to the large areas that had been given over to lumber companies since the mid 1850s,² the remaining ancestral domain was taken over and monopolised by businesses and corporations who transformed it into private fishing and hunting clubs. It then became illegal and ‘prohibited’ for the Essipiunnuat to access these various spaces. The deterritorialisation of the Innu was then reaching its peak.³

Associated with rising state control and deterritorialisation is the increased feeling of being trapped. Testimonies reveal the establishment of a ‘colonial terror’ that has caused collective neuroses. In effect, a ‘fear factor’ became deeply ingrained within the Essipiunnuat. The engagement in the Salmon War is seen as the exteriorisation of this internal repression. With augmented coloniality, being ‘Indian’ became more painful all the time; being identified as seditious became very costly.⁴

The post-sedentarisation generation began to experience a climate in which everything that was ‘Indian’ had to be hidden and repressed.⁵ This climate of fear was particularly present in the forest where people hunted, trapped and fished as their ancestors had done. Even if convinced of their rights as Innu, people who took part in the war mentioned that their fathers were immobilised by fears that prevented them from practising ancestral livelihood activities, including fishing and hunting.⁶

From sedentarisation on, there was intense pressure on the Essipiunnuat to put aside their indigenous heritage, to not speak their language and to disown their culture and customs. Forced assimilation into the dominant culture was to produce a form of collective paralysis in the face of repression.⁷ Discomfort in identifying as ‘Innu’ was reinforced by constant experiences with segregation. Feelings of being rejected from mainstream Euroquébécois society on a racial basis is at the core of the older people’s inventory of experience.

People remember being ‘frightened to say we are Indian’ from first starting primary school (Riel, chapter 1, ref. 10). In effect, they confess to the experience of a climate of war from the very moment they were crossing the borders of their reserve. Mentions of Essipiunnuat cultural referents in times before the Salmon War are deeply linked in autobiographical stories with negative and often traumatic experiences.⁸

The ruptures in intergenerational transmission, the distancing from ancestral practices and decreased identification with the reference group, among others, are seen as determining the group’s condition in the year preceding the war. A cultural collapse can be clearly discerned associated with successive events and collective experiences of colonialism. Interlocutors depict the Essipiunnuat in the late 1970s as being at a point of cultural self-annihilation, completely assimilated into and similar to the local Euroquébécois. A younger individual acknowledges, for example, not identifying as ‘montagnais’ or ‘innu’ prior to their experience of the Salmon War.⁹

Older people’s testimonies highlight the post-World War Two ruptures in the intergenerational transmission of Innu culture in Essipit, something that is best illustrated by the disappearance of the language in the space of one generation.¹⁰ People put the cultural collapse of the Essipiunnuat within the wider context of the Canadian Crown’s projects and efforts to end indigenous cultural continuity. For example, some interviewees narrate evidences of self-identification as ‘Innu’ and defence of the Innu language as being met with harassment, humiliation and exclusion.¹¹

Moreover, disconnection with cultural memory and the weakening of Essipiunnuat’s cultural identity is purportedly correlated in stories with an outburst of in-group conflicts and amplified disempowerment: ‘terrible squabbles within and between families.’ Increased distancing from Innu culture and referents is thus associated with the erosion of the ‘intangible unité de corps, all the families together as one’ that had characterised the group internal social order until the 40s.¹²

In the years preceding the Salmon War, people’s accounts highlight intense inter-familial disputes, mainly between the Ross and the Moreau families around issues pertaining mostly to the distribution of hunting grounds that had previously been shared among them. Effectively, the death of the two main family headmen had supposedly propelled a spiral of conflict that was principally about the possibility or not of selling Essipiunnuat ancestral territories and bequeathing them to Euroquébécois sons- and brothers-in-law.¹³

In the end, a growing distance from Innu cultural referents was to affect the way the Essipiunnuat perceived their rights and the sources of those rights. Knowledge of ‘Innu ancestral sovereignty’ (Innu tipenitamun), had been transmitted orally from generation to generation. This concept of Innu normativity and laws pertaining to the Earth was still predominant among the pre-World War Two generation, who spoke Innu-aimun fluently and were in constant contact with Innu from other bands, although more intensively so with the Pessamiunnuat.¹⁴

But the decline of Innu culture among the Essipiunnuat was to change their views on the nature and intrinsic value of their rights, its sui generis definition, and also the imperative of defending it. Cultural decline thus came with tensions within and between families, between those ready to defend Innu collective rights and those seeing them only through the prism of their personal and material interests.

The stories thus suggest a direct correlation between Essipiunnuat detachment and ancestral philosophy as contained in the oral tradition and the internal expansion of capitalist ideology, materialism and individualism. This is associated with intra-group conflicts, collective weakening and a decreased capacity for resistance. That said, people identify their experience of colonialism as an inescapable dimension of the group’s situation on the eve of the Salmon War – an essential determinant in the production of that event.

Québec’s politics of sovereignty

The politics and posturing of the Québec state, led at that time by the nationalist Québécois Party, are also identified as a major factor in the fomenting of the Salmon War. In fact, the Québec government is now widely regarded as the primary actor responsible for provoking the war, and for creating the general situation of unrest that existed at the time.

If the Canadian state (or the ‘Crown’) is identified as the prime agent of Essipiunnuat colonisation, the Québec government is depicted in stories as colonialist in asserting sovereignty over the Innu and as having triggered the war.¹⁵ From 1975 and therefore Prior to the Salmon War, Innu groups, represented by the Conseil Attikamekw-Montagnais (CAM), had been undertaking negotiations with Québec and Ottawa over the recognition of inherent Innu sovereignty and self-determination, and the modalities of their operation. Meanwhile, the Québec government, led by the Parti Québécois, was itself engaged in seeking national sovereignty for the Euroquébécois people from the Canadian Crown. The Salmon War, therefore, occurred in this context of competing claims to national sovereignty and independence.

For decades, Innu groups had denounced the negation of their ancestral right to fish salmon and the private and exclusive appropriation of the best rivers by corporations and business. In the late 1970s, such incidents were increasing as the Innu were contesting the private ownership of rivers along the coast of the Québec northern shore and mainstream society’s increasing denial of the existence of Innu tipenitamun. Growing pressure was being exerted on the Québec government by First Peoples in a context where Québec was modifying its policies, abolishing commercial licences and delegating power to regional authorities called zones d’exploitation contrôlées (known as ZEC), composed of locals, to manage riverine ecosystems.

When it took power in 1980, the Parti Québécois decided, without consulting indigenous groups and without their consent, to put in place new administrative devices in order to assert authority over the rivers and salmon fishing. Until then, the Essipiunnuat had been spreading their nets in the sea in front of the reserve. Some family headmen had permission to use nets under Québec commercial licences. The salmon that were caught were generally distributed among the families. The ZEC system had been established on the Esh Shipu River in 1979, and a local committee for the management of the Esh Shipu was named Comité d’aménagement de la rivière à saumon des Escoumins (CARSE). No Essipiunnu was invited to join the committee.

In the mid 1970s some of the fishermen from Les Escoumins still had commercial licences and were spreading their nets all around the mouth of the river. But in 1980, new government regulations forced people who had fished the river for years to abandon their activities, and many felt resentful. Meanwhile, under Québec licence, Essipiunnuat families were still spreading nets in the sea in front of the reserve. But as the government was abolishing all licences, it was also cancelling their rights to spread their nets. Central to the Salmon War was the experience of Innu fisherman, Ernest, who went to fish in an area at the tip of the Escoumins dock, just outside the borders of the reserve, in a place where Euroquébécois fishermen were no longer fishing. When he was pressured to stop his activities, the band council called a general assembly of the Essipiunnuat and the decision was made to turn the net into a ‘community net’. It was at this point that salmon fishing became a symbol of the struggle for Innu sovereignty.

People on CARSE then submitted a complaint to the Québec government, which responded by sending its agents to seize the net. The Essipiunnuat were convinced, however, of the legitimacy of their actions and their right to fish (Riel, chapter 1, ref. 1).¹⁶ By setting nets in spite of Québec’s abolition of commercial salmon fishing, Essipit was affirming that its ancestral rights could not be usurped by the Québec state. Québec, on the other hand, took a hard stance and negated Essipiunnuat ancestral rights beyond the borders of the reserve. Ancestral Innu sovereignty was clearly asserted, and Québec sovereignty was challenged. At the same time, the local Euroquébécois of Les Escoumins were seeing the Essipiunnuat engaged in an activity that they themselves were henceforth prohibited from engaging in.¹⁷

The government succeeded in seizing the Essipiunnuat’s net, but was then faced with resistance and an equally hard stance. The state officials decided to negotiate an agreement with Essipit concerning the fishing activities, and in the summer of 1980 a verbal agreement was concluded, with which both parties were initially content. The Innu spread their nets again, but it was not long before one of their watchmen noticed wildlife agents trying to furtively take it away. The agents succeeded in doing so and left. This mobilised the community into action and more than a dozen men went to intercept the agents on the road as they were on their way back to their headquarters in the neighbouring town of Forestville. They stopped the agents’ car and a violent altercation occurred, with the protesters bringing the net back to Essipit.

It is at this point that the event entered its contentious phase and ‘the smoke started’. The sudden and unexplained abrogation of the agreement with Essipit is seen as the ‘igniting powder’.¹⁸ People’s memories of the Salmon War are mainly comprised of the subsequent confrontations with Québec and its agents. That said, however, the change in the position of Québec, after the negotiations with the minister and the mayor of Les Escoumins, does find some explanation in the stories.

It is alleged that Québec played a populist card and was receptive to local discontentment in Les Escoumins, as well as disregarding the Essipiunnuat and their rights. The repression of a small ‘Indian’ minority was indeed more popular in public opinion in Québec at that time than any defence or recognition of indigenous rights would have been. Québec’s analysis of the situation would therefore have led it to a decision to please the Euroquébécois, and appease their anger, instead of recognising any indigenous rights.¹⁹

In fact, it is likely that the Québec government believed that the Essipiunnuat would not resist and that the question of indigenous rights would be settled forever; it would be an easy victory, ‘Indian revolt’ would be suppressed and Québec would take over the rivers. The government strategy was therefore to have the local population putting pressure directly on the group, so that the state would not have to intervene:

The events in Essipit occurred at a time when the Québec government was concerned generally with the indigenous contestations about salmon fishing and the management of their respective riverine systems across Québec. At the time, the government was trying to develop close ties with the local Euroquébécois associations who managed the salmon rivers. This was particularly true in Les Escoumins, where locally born and resident minister of leisure, fishing and hunting for Québec, Lucien Lessard, who was responsible for the rivers and their management, had links with CARSE members. These close links are generally invoked as the main reason behind Québec’s change of direction regarding Essipit and important for gaining an understanding of the reason why the Innu salmon fishing issue came so to the fore.²⁰

Québec was in a situation where the state could not intervene directly to crush indigenous resistance but was prepared to do so indirectly at a time when resistance was at its peak in all Innu communities in a general movement to reappropriate their riverine systems. Former participants in the war perceive this in the same way: Québec and its police mobilised the local population to attain their objective of crushing the ‘Indian revolt’. People share the view that it was as if the government and the police wanted the local population to solve their problems at the local level (Riel, chapter 1, ref. 4).²¹ Stories suggest that the strategy adopted by the government here was to mobilise the local population against the ‘Indians’ so that they could crush Essipit resistance without the official intervention of Québec.²²

This all resulted, in 1981, in the direct intervention of more than two hundred local villagers who walked on to the reserve and up to the dock in order to stop Essipiunnuat fishing activities. There were violent confrontations, and this episode is remembered as the heart of the Salmon War. The intervention of between 200 and 400 individuals, according to the different testimonies, from Les Escoumins and the surrounding villages, would have been, to a large degree, coordinated from Québec. Thus, there is the perception that the event degenerated into violence and a war as a consequence of the machinations of Lessard, who favoured the direct intervention of the local population to repress Innu resistance. The minister recruited individuals from Les Escoumins who could mobilise and organise a hostile crowd, in order to lead them to the dock. The policies and actions of the Québec government, particularly of the leisure, hunting and fishing ministry, remain therefore, a central determining feature of the Salmon War within the context of Essipiunnuat autobiographical memories.

The local Euroquébécois: nationalism and racism

A third external source of the Salmon War that people identified concerns the local Euroquébécois population of Les Escoumins. The Euroquébécois’ conceptualisation of ‘Indians’, and the attitude and actions they had adopted towards their Essipiunnuat neighbours since their first occupation of the banks of the Esh Shipu in the early 1820s and the creation of the ‘lumber town’ (wood entrepreneurs, land speculators and priests) are described as reasons for its occurrence. The Euroquébécois social imaginary would have contained negative depictions of ‘Indians’, as well as assumptions pertaining to First Peoples’ ancestral sovereignties that would have an impact on their receptiveness to Essipiunnuat claims and their interpretation of Innu intentions.

Interviewees describe the episodes of 1980–1 as being a continuation of pre-existing tensions whose origins go back to the creation of the settler town. It is alleged, for example, that the town was actually established on an ancient Essipiunnuat gathering site on top of graves. Tensions between the Essipiunnuat and local villages are thus rooted in the colonisation process, and existed and were felt long before the Salmon War.²³ The creation of Les Escoumins had resulted in the Innu being displaced, without their consent, from their ancient sites located around what is today known as the Bay of Les Escoumins, to the current area of the reserve. This has been neither forgotten nor forgiven among older Essipiunnuat; for them, the creation of the town remains a misfortune and reminder of their displacement and dispossession.²⁴

The attitudes of the local Euroquébécois towards the Essipiunnuat, and their general conceptions of ‘Indians’ and how these representations have developed over time, have had an impact on the course of the events. Stories imply some Euroquébécois posturing that is distinguished by their denial of the Essipiunnuat as an indigenous group and a widespread hostility to the rights claims. The antagonism between the two groups is widely presented as a racial issue, and has been fed by the villagers’ racism towards the ‘Indians’ (Esther, chapter 1, ref. 2).

Thus the spreading of the salmon net by the Essipiunnuat offered an occasion for the local population to express an already existing racial hatred and jealousy of the ‘Indians’; the net merely reactivated old hostilities. Essipiunnuat experiences from early childhood confirm the existence of deeply rooted racist attitudes towards them, transmitted from generation to generation, which were reinforced through the practices of the local institutions.²⁵ Such prejudices would be translated into Essipiunnuat claims not being accepted, widespread insensitivity to First Peoples’ sociohistorical circumstances in general, and in particular to their messages and attempts to inform the public about their rights. This resulted ultimately in a sustained ignorance of Essipiunnuat reality, in order to protect their own representation of the ‘Indian’ entrenched in their cultural and national discourses. A rising Innu discourse portraying Euroquébécois as colonialists collides with Euroquébécois collective self-conceptions that they themselves were victims of history²⁶ and that they themselves had been ‘colonised’ under Canadian rules.²⁷

The intransigence of the local Euroquébécois is best explained in terms of their inheritance of an inability to understand due to the culture and colonised/colonialist heritage handed down through the generations, who lived in what was known as New France. As one person mentions, it was while repeatedly trying to explain to them the purpose of the Essipiunnuat rebellion that he realised they had a mental blockage.²⁸ Others say the locals’ attitude hardened from the very moment the salmon net was spread, and a major shift in their treatment of the Essipiunnuat, even among those who had been friends, contributed to the exacerbation of the confrontation.²⁹ An increase in the intransigence, and the stigmatisation of everything associated with being ‘Indian’, was witnessed.³⁰ Indians were declared guilty of a panoply of issues, and some local Euroquébécois leaders publicly condemned them.

This phenomenon of deep-rooted prejudice is not foreign to the construction of a Euroquébécois nationhood founded on an ideology that places the ‘Indian’ in the sphere of a being to exclude, not only because he is ‘primitive’ but because he is dangerous and someone to be frightened of. The need for the Euroquébécois to affirm themselves in opposition to others can be traced back to a fear of being perceived as coming from an inferior culture and being incapable of civilisation. Such a posture could be explained by an internalisation of the policies subsequent to the Durham report from 1839, produced by the British Crown following the repression of the Patriot’s movement. It recommended compulsory assimilation into the dominant English culture. One hypothesis is that it led to what could be called the ‘Durham syndrome’³¹ among the Euroquébécois as a result of their internalisation over time of the idea that they are inferior to the English people because they are, it is said, ‘mixed’ with the Indians and therefore an ‘inferior race’.

Analyses of the construction of images and stereotypes of ‘Indians’ demonstrate how the Euroquébécois are compelled to assert that they are not ‘primitive’ and that it is the Indians who are. Recent research tends to validate this critical analysis of Euroquébécois representations of the ‘Indian’ (Burelle, 2019; Cornellier, 2015; Leroux, 2019), and the strong tendency of Euroquébécois discourse to negate and attempt to delegitimise the inherent sovereignty of First Peoples, as it competes with Euroquébécois sovereignty. This radical critique of Euroquébécois culture is important, since Essipiunnuat share to different degrees the perspective of the Euroquébécois. This is due to internalised racism and advanced forms of psychological colonialism. Because of Québec’s long-term cultural hegemony, the Essipiunnuat are also affected by the ‘Durham Syndrome’. The ‘inferior Indian’ is still needed as cement for Euroquébécois self-conception, and as a diversionary tactic so that a positive self-image can be maintained in spite of an often unrecognised colonial bias.

The affirmation of a strong, proud, free and non-supine Indian tends to be perceived as an attack on the frail foundations of Euroquébécois self-narrative and legitimacy, while also generating repulsion and envy. According to Redekop, the fact that indigenous assertion of independence and the quest for autonomy create insecurity among the Euroquébécois, and tend to be perceived as a threat, would reveal that Euroquébécois–indigenous relations are characterised by the existence of a hegemonic structure of violence. The phenomenon is best illustrated by the forms of violence inflicted on First Peoples during the infamous Oka Crisis in 1990,³² and the extent to which the aggression expressed towards ‘Indians’ is deeply related to Euroquébécois’ cultural identity and plays a critical role in their sense of self (Redekop, 2005).

Essipiunnuat’s testimonies also report the phenomenon of the Euroquébécois’ intense jealousy towards First Peoples. This is often invoked as the ‘real origin’ of the Euroquébécois’ tough local opposition to Innu rights, an attitude with its own logic which preceded the salmon conflict. Such envy is said to have subordinate, subliminal roots that would always have manifested in correlation with any advantages given to, or expressions of specificity by, the Essipiunnuat as ‘indigenous’ or ‘Indian’. It is as if an ‘Indian’ should not have any advantages or be ‘better’ than a Euroquébécois. Such a gain would be felt as an injustice which destabilised their sense of self and made them vulnerable.³³

This social phenomenon was noticed by the older Essipiunnuat generations. It is explained by the fact that the ‘Indian’ is not accepted, but perceived as not truly human. As described by one of the interviewees, the best analogy of the way the Innu are represented within the Euroquébécois social imagination is the case of the ‘n word’ in American supremacist ideology. Whatever the strengths and qualities of character of Essipiunnuat individuals, they are said to vanish when these persons are identified as ‘Indians’.³⁴

Another attitude observed among the local Euroquébécois corresponds to them taking a kind of sadistic pleasure in hating ‘Indians’. If the stories report a generalised ignorance about First People’s human condition and a lack of information among the locals, a tendency to be pleased by discourses denigrating the Essipiunnuat was also mentioned.³⁵ The theme of manipulation is also repeated in some of the descriptions. Interviewees affirm that due to the negative representations of ‘Indians’, the manipulation of the local Euroquébécois was easier when it came to questions of indigenous sovereignty and rights. Their cultural imaginary, the intrinsic disapprobation of ‘Indians’, coupled with being insecure in their own self-image, seems to have led them to be not only more receptive to anti-Indian rhetoric, but more easily mobilised by any local driving forces that were anti-Indian.

Anti-Indian militancy: planning repression

The meeting of various ‘anti-Indian’ social agents in Les Escoumins and neighbouring villages, with support elsewhere in the province, is reported to be another external component contributing to the Salmon War. Anti-Indian militancy, by all accounts, helped to convert a generalised dissatisfaction and reactionary mood into fierce repression and anti-Indian action. Such an organised militancy contributed to influencing local public opinion in accordance with the specific intentions of a range of interest groups such as racial supremacists, provincial politicians, local businesses and ecologists. Early negotiations by the Essipiunnuat with CARSE, aiming to effect a kind of reconciliation before the war, gave them a taste of the type of hostility they were to face.³⁶

An anti-Indian fishing group, led by CARSE, was formed with the objective of removing the community salmon net spread by the Essipiunnuat. CARSE comprised diverse groups such as ecologists, fishermen and local business owners (Riel, chapter 1, ref. 1). A double dynamic was observable among CARSE members (Justin, chapter 1, ref. 2–6). On one hand, there were those with a genuine concern for the preservation of the salmon population in the river (Maxence, chapter 1, ref. 2).³⁷ On the other, the conservation interests often veiled entrenched prejudice, attitudes of racism and/or jealousy in relation to Essipiunnuat rights.³⁸ People report the existence of some familial clans in Les Escoumins, reputed to harbour substantial anti-Innu sentiments, each of them with their own ‘loud speakers’. Some individuals from these clans would purportedly compose a cell that was active before and during the war in disseminating anti-Indian rhetoric.³⁹

These forces were indeed seeking direct confrontation with the ‘Indians’, but were acting mainly behind the scenes as motivators or ‘boosters’ to direct, guide and coordinate the reaction to Essipiunnuat resistance.⁴⁰ They were poised to plan direct action against the group in order to seize the net ‘when they saw that the wildlife agents were unable to do anything, or did not want to do anything’ (Maxence, chapter 1, ref. 5–6).

The role of local business leaders in fomenting anti-Indian militancy is also reported. The Essipiunnuat’s efforts to initiate socioeconomic development during the late 1970s had fuelled misunderstandings between the locals and Essipit. There was a cognitive dissonance between representations of the ‘Indians’ that had been imposed on the Essipiunnuat for decades and their increased self-definition and self-assurance. Jealousy, which had ancient roots, was reinvigorated by the socioeconomic developments, which provoked an angry reaction from the Escouminois.⁴¹

Since the mid 1970s, the Essipiunnuat had been proposing initiatives with the intention of accelerating economic development on the reserve. As documented previously, they were also pursuing increased autonomy. This provoked opposition in Les Escoumins, particularly among some of the businesses that were losing out to the communitarian enterprises that had been established on the reserve.⁴² Essipit was seeking to revive and diversify its economy and was attempting to develop other projects and initiatives, such as a community centre for young people. As a result, there was growing competition between the local merchants and Essipit’s communitarian socioeconomic developments (some small cottages for holiday rentals, for example, and a bar). So, if for Essipit salmon fishing was a highly symbolic and fundamental issue pertaining to principles and rights, in Les Escoumins it was, above all, a question of potential income for local entrepreneurs.⁴³ By various means, Essipit was slowly increasing its economic development, but on a communitarian basis. The local business community therefore, indeed saw the ‘Indians’ as potential competitors who would exert a negative impact on their profits.

On the ground, Essipiunnuat affirmation through fishing rights was intruding upon the local Euroquébécois sense of self, but it was also raising questions about the restoration of the river that was predominantly being driven by economic interests. The village had experienced significant economic difficulties since the closure of the local mill, and local Euroquébécois entrepreneurs, very active in CARSE, had developed a business model through which the revitalisation of the salmon population in the river (seeded with salmon smolt in order to increase spawning runs) would attract sport fishermen and generally improve the local economy, moving it way from subsistence and primary industry towards a more tourism-based economy. Some had even built small lodges in order to exploit this anticipated tourist traffic. These people were therefore active members of the CARSE, in the expectation of gaining from the revival of the river.⁴⁴

A nucleus of individuals was openly seeking a war with the ‘Indians’ (Pierre, chapter 1, ref. 6)⁴⁵ and were ready to reward those who would engage against them.⁴⁶ Such anti-Indian militancy, together with Canadian colonialism, the actions of the Québec government and the local Euroquébécois idea of ‘Indians’, is regarded as a crucial element in the making of the Salmon War.

Hope in our hands: faces of group agency

Participants⁴⁷ correlate their own subjectivity with the occurrence of the Salmon War. Manifestations of agency are reported in the stories and interpreted as having nourished the outbreak of the war. Those interviewed undoubtedly grant a central role to their own individual actions in the war, and the confluence of them with shared views and actions. Four leading components emerge from the stories as having made up its underlying factors: acts of reference to a common past, and collective experiences and memories; the surfacing of and belonging to an internal movement; the existence of common objectives; and the participative development of strategies.

A growing consciousness

Stories pertaining to the genesis of the Salmon War are impregnated with references to the group’s past and its historical circumstances. They also reveal a role played by images of the group and their influence on people’s motivations, choices and assessments of their condition just before the war. Collective memories remain powerful resources for collective action; they offer points of reference (Blühdorn, 2006) that contribute to ‘reactivat[ing] the sources of rules and practices’ (Savard, 2004, p. 112). They are thus central to the establishment of cultural identity and its defence:

People speak openly for example, about their concerns on the eve of war that they might be repeating the mistakes of the past, and on the other hand of the importance of ensuring the continuity of cultural norms. Their stories expose common themes in this auto-referentialisation: attitudes that hint at a historical consciousness shared by those taking part, and at images of the group and its situation in the frame of historical time. In the early 1980s, these mnemonic practices, concerned ways of relating to the group imaginary that undeniably fuelled motivation and inspired commitment and a sense of shared purpose. Connections to a commonly remembered past influenced Essipiunnuat’s perceptions and actions, and they deserve closer attention.

In the context of the Salmon War, the past is often used as a point of reference concerning the nature of collective indigenous rights. Awareness and defence of these rights are presented as inseparable from the oral tradition and cultural memory that carries them from generation to generation. People articulate their views about Innu sovereignty based on the teachings they received from their parents, grandparents and ancestors. Access to this knowledge, widely based on collective remembrance and intergenerational transmission, is conditional on an accurate conceptualisation of Innu tipenitamun. Indeed, the acquisition of such data, and the historical consciousness it carries, is a prerequisite for resistance and non-consent to its extinguishment.⁴⁸

For the older people particularly, but not only for them, any representations of Innu laws and normativity pertaining to ancestral territories clearly arise from a unique cultural frame of reference widely shared by First Peoples, especially those of the larger Algonquian family. They defend a vision of indigenous ancestral sovereignty articulated around respect for Assi (‘the Earth’). This is generally represented in stories as an obligation to protect the earth for present and future generations, and as the source of an indigenous way of life based on responsibility, freedom and self-reliance.

According to participants, there was a sense during the war that only the defence of Innu sovereignty (Innu tipenitamun) might allow continuous self-determination (uetshit takuaimatishun) and guarantee the continuity of modes of auto-subsistence that knowledge of innu-aitun makes possible.⁴⁹ This food self-sufficiency, in particular, remains at the core of Essipiunnuat self-conception, even among some individuals in their thirties, and remains a central theme of intergenerational dealings.⁵⁰

Intergenerational transmission of knowledge about Innu tipenitamun was invoked as a source for action. Indeed, collective memory of past agency,⁵¹ non-submissiveness and resistance to attempts to extinguish their rights were noticeably actualised at the moment of engaging in the struggle.⁵² This is well illustrated, for example, by a story of resistance to the Crown that many people recalled. It concerns the manner in which their great grandfathers had prevented government intrusion into the reserve in order to protect their grandchildren from being recruited and enrolled in the Canadian army.⁵³ Resistance to authority is thus portrayed as a part of the Essipiunnuat’s inventory of experience that was in people’s minds at the time of the war.

Some older people argue that the 1980s uprising was no more than a continuation of the resistance carried out over several generations.⁵⁴ Such a position tends to assume that resistance and rebellion is now inherent in the group’s self-concept and that there is an association between identifying as ‘Indian’ or Essipiunnuat and experiencing aggression. Personal accounts contain manifold allusions to incidences of aggression by authorities that narrators from all age groups witnessed in their childhood.⁵⁵ These aspects of individual and common memories appear to have been central in the manifestations of collective subjectivity and social consciousness at the time of the war.

Older people’s stories expose quite clearly the existence of a historical consciousness specific to the Essipiunnuat. The Salmon War, they maintain, remains an episode in a wider war. The events, and group agency, must be located within the wider framework of the historical indigenous people’s struggles all over the continent. Their stories suggest that it was through contact with other indigenous groups that the historical consciousness of the Essipiunnuat was extended and kept intact.

Relations between First Peoples are important to interviewees. They are presented as having enriched the Essipiunnuat inventory of experience and enlarged their historical consciousness. For example, people frequently refer to the inspiring actions of Wendat, Jules Sioui, and Anishinaabe, William Commanda,⁵⁶ who met various members of the group in the early 20th century (and more intensively during the World War Two period) in his attempts to mobilise indigenous bands all over Canada in a liberation movement to assert their unceded sovereignty. The Essipiunnuat rebellion of 1980–1 is presented as a continuation of Sioui’s militancy and his project.⁵⁷

This contact with other First Peoples and personalities influenced people’s image of their own group. Moreover, it fed the collective memory of the Essipiunnuat, particularly in relation to the nature and source of their ancestral sovereignty, but also to the legitimacy of that, and the obligation to defend it. One person, for example, remembers feeling empowered when witnessing the radicalism of the Mohawks during meetings with the government.⁵⁸

Collective and cultural memory at the confluence of the connections between First Peoples, and intergenerational transmission prior to the war, explain why the Salmon War was framed as part of a wider war. The intersection of autobiographical memories shows how the remembered past, or historical consciousness, had a galvanising effect on those taking part in terms of rebelling to safeguard their lives.

Innu tipenitamun: a movement for ancestral sovereignty

The existence of a movement among the Essipiunnuat is singled out in the interviews as a major factor in the group’s interpretation of its circumstances. Specific social phenomena are suggested that favoured the emergence and growing influence of a movement within the community; a force that contributed extensively to the manifestation of collective agency and to the role of the group in helping to trigger the war. These observable trends principally concern a dynamic of radicalisation within the group, its internal organisation in preparation for conflict, the relatively spontaneous mobilisation of a majority of Essipiunnuat, and the perception of increased capacity for action and collective self-reliance (also called ‘autodynamisation’). Together, these elements led to the birth and materialisation of a movement of assertion.

The ‘true’ warriors

The terms ‘radicals’, ‘radicalism’ and ‘radicalisation’ are used frequently in people’s descriptions, either in self-portrayal, in presenting the psychological characteristics or ideologies of fellow Essipiunnuat, or simply to depict what they had observed going on within the group.⁵⁹ Interviewees report precise observations about a number of individuals who had become very intransigent in deciding to change the group’s circumstances by attacking the root causes. There are particular mentions of a core of ‘true warriors’ who were ready to adopt ‘any means necessary’, including the use of military devices and the possibility of self-annihilation, in defence of ‘Indians’ rights’.⁶⁰

It is alleged that this cell of radicals was intergenerational and inter-familial (based on an alliance between the Ross and Moreau families). It was composed of four or five individuals in their early thirties, recently graduated from university, who decided to radicalise the whole group in order to establish (or reestablish, according to the point of view) a new ‘indigenist-communitarian’ system. They had grown up in the socioeconomic hardship of Essipit in the 1950s and ’60s. Some of them had travelled internationally and encountered revolutionary ideas. Others had participated in Innu inter-band meetings and wider gatherings of First Peoples, had felt common grievances and were convinced that the time had come ‘to strike’ in order to ‘wake the people up’.⁶¹

The other part of the cell was composed of ‘old runners’, men who were over 40, and psychologically profoundly repressed. They had ‘hidden’ their Innu self, and the ancestral practices associated with it, as a shameful illness. For many of them, the war was a first ‘coming out’ as ‘Montagnais’, with their decision to assume and assert their indigeneity. The occurrence of war transformed some of them into highly stubborn, radical and belligerent indigenist militants who had decided to honour their identity.⁶² Indeed, they all shared grievances, as well as the assumption that the Canadian and Québécois governments were planning the extinguishment of inherent indigenous sovereignty in Essipit. They foresaw the occurrence of a new tragic episode in the history of displacement, dispossession and being lied to in order to obtain their surrender and consent to the cession of ancestral lands. These radicals therefore decided to ensure that these past tragedies would not be repeated; they were engaged in protecting their collective rights, inseparable to the life of the group, and in peril of their lives. One warrior, for example, remembers being possessed by a fundamental motivation to refuse to see this history repeated.⁶³

Increased coordination

The stories report increased efforts at in-group organisation, in coordinating militant activities and in channelling and directing emerging social forces through existing and new social orders. Leadership was apparently exercised by the band council and its main administrators at that time. It was done primarily through addressing the Essipiunnuat directly on the common issues at stake and preferred solutions, but also through stimulating reflection on strategies and tactics as well as encouraging participation.⁶⁴ It is suggested that members of the council and its administrators were ready to take a tough stance about their rights with the authorities, yet they wanted also to ensure that they had the support of members in order to move forward.⁶⁵

To achieve its goal, the council, anticipating an imminent confrontation, wanted to unite the group. Those who took part remember the meetings vividly, reporting that they had a tremendous impact on the group’s political unification, the dissemination of a revolutionary spirit and the creation of a nucleus of ‘warriors’.⁶⁶

The council and its newly created committee then turned to the general assembly of Essipiunnuat to get maximum support from all members. People recall being deeply moved at some of the meetings:

The importance of intergenerational cooperation in structuring collective action is also reported. Informal yet influential forms of ‘coaching’ were practised by the older fighters on the young. The younger leaders, for example, were constantly seeking advice from the older members, including those who were too old to physically engage directly in the struggle. Their support took the form of ‘telling [leaders] stories from the past, often contradicting what the government was saying’.⁶⁷ Young adults also took part, old enough to engage in direct action but inexperienced; the intensity and unusual nature of the situation pushed them to rely on older fighters for guidance.⁶⁸ Those who were under 18, and only observers, reported being ‘carried away by a collective wave’; the group ‘swallowed’ them.⁶⁹

Mobilising members

As mentioned above, the leading faction wanted to ensure that they had members’ maximum support and participation and, hence, they placed a great emphasis on mobilisation. Accordingly, various tactics were put into operation. These attempts to boost Essipiunnuat support are reported as being a ‘propellant’ of the movement towards contention. And it is said that these efforts did indeed receive spontaneous support from most members, but the hypothesis cannot be ignored that the cell wanted the war in order to gain authority and dominance.

Interviewees recall that they used to share a common perception that something deeply fundamental to them was going to be taken away: ‘It was spontaneous, we defended what we had.’ The analogy of being dispossessed of a cherished element of heritage was used: ‘it was as if you are a child, that your great grandfather had given you a canoe and that is the only thing you received from him. And then, someone comes and says “that’s not yours, it has never been yours.”’ Added to this perception of things being taken away is the reading that ‘all your rights as Innu were in the balance’, that their very existence as Innu was at stake and they were almost forced to resist.⁷⁰

Accounts also mention that the perception of injustice in the present had awakened a sleeping volcano of emotions over past wrongs, a fury or overflow of rancour. This is where the leadership might have played a crucial role, in adopting a more confrontational attitude than previous generations and less tolerance of unfairness.⁷¹ Attempts to mobilise the Essipiunnuat were, therefore, meeting with positive responses for various reasons. Interviews suggest that the racialisation of the conflict would have been fuelled by the Essipiunnuat increasingly identifying with their group while it was increasingly being stigmatised externally.⁷²

Increased contention, for the Essipiunnuat, would make belonging simultaneously to the two reference groups (‘Innu’ and ‘Euroquébécois’), instituted by years of assimilation and intermarriages, untenable. As individuals were confronted with abandoning one of their groups of reference, it forged the group closer to its Innu referents. Some individuals then engaged actively in the movement, or became ‘warriors’, in order to validate their cultural identity as Innu.⁷³ The complete lack of receptiveness of Euroquébécois to the Essipiunnuat claims resulted in a general impression in the group that they were facing a wall of negation that could only possibly be overcome by being willing to defend themselves and resist.⁷⁴

Amplified collective autodynamisation

As already stated, the group had developed an embryonic sense of its own power in the late 1970s, symbolised by initiatives promoting socio-economic development. Contact with other First Peoples was also growing, in parallel with the idea that these were sovereign ‘people’ with a right to self-determination, with points of support both in the ancestral legal order and in international law. A generation of new graduates, recently re-engaged in their community, had also decided to bring about change. Even decades of colonialism, bureaucratic absolutism and economic marginalisation had not dampened the group’s feeling that they could transform their condition.

These various elements contributed to a decline of the in-group sense of surplus powerlessness. Effectively, interviewees report a downturn in the acceptance of the status quo, of the belief that change cannot happen, of apathy and the unwillingness to struggle for greater control and influence. People recognised the increased internal autodynamisation⁷⁵ of the group already taking place in the years preceding the Salmon War.

Autodynamisation is a term closely related to what the Innu refer to as uetshit takuaimatishun, which can be translated as propelling and orienting/steering your own canoe, or doing things by yourself. In fact, stories clearly reveal the emergence of a conviction within the group that Innu tipenitamun (ancestral sovereignty) can only be auto-operationalised (uetshit takuaimatishun).

A direct link is identified between the uprising and a new perception propelled by a feeling that ‘we were a big gang ... Well, we were starting to see ourselves as a big gang’ (Édouard, chapter 1, ref. 1). The falling away of surplus powerlessness is well expressed in intense descriptions of affirmation and the declaration of an absence of fear:

The group’s self-esteem would thus have resulted in what was previously called the ‘end of toleration’ towards any forms of abuse or symbolic domination. Elements of past abuse (forced sedentarisation, residential schooling, and so on) were very vivid in people’s memories and resulted in spontaneous assertions that ‘we won’t be displaced anymore, we are at home here’. Individuals were marked by their strong embracing of indigeneity, especially the youngest:

Overall, people perceived the emergence of a movement of affirmation as the main current propelling the Essipiunnuat into war and revolt. This movement, with its own identified and converging sources and dynamics, would result in a multidimensional resistance and collective self-assertion of Innu sovereignty opposing multilateral attempts to extinguish it.

Unity of purpose

If the very composition of the group and its internal dynamics were instrumental in causing the war, the existence of clear and commonly consented to objectives reportedly played a major role in leading the group towards resistance and war; these common objectives are considered to be a primary source of the uprising. People often reflect on the purpose of the group’s involvement in the war and on their interpretations of what they were pursuing. They indicate common objectives, understood in the military sense of clearly defined, decisive and attainable goals towards which their actions were directed.⁷⁶

These common grounds for action are acknowledged as the third significant component that contributed to the making of the war. These objectives were recognised as widely shared and mainly self-defined, as well as based on a common perception of the collective condition and needs in a sociohistorical context on the eve of the Salmon War. Some discussion of these intentions helps to shed light on the development of group agency, and helps to clarify the group’s interpretation of its role and actions in the unfolding of events.

Self-conservation

The conservation of Innu sovereignty (Innu tipenitamun) as responsibility towards the Innu ancestral domain is widely described as a principal objective and the motivation for people becoming involved in the war. To defend the year-round freedom to fish and hunt for subsistence, which is deeply related to people’s identity, is presented as an imperative in preserving the group and its symbolic ability to sustain itself.

One interviewee, for example, maintained that ‘we understood at that time that we were fighting ardently to conserve an existing right; a right to subsistence’ (Esther, chapter 1, ref. 1). For another, these rights were deeply related to the ‘indigeneity’ of the group: ‘for me it was clear. I was defending my rights as indigenous; above all, the net.’ (Ivan, chapter 1, ref. 1). The salmon net was, in fact, the symbol of this entitlement to fish for subsistence. Effectively, ancestral activities related to food and nourishment remain at the heart of Innu claims, a core objective of the movement. The right that was being defended, and the underlying potential subsistence that it entailed, was widely perceived as profoundly inalienable.⁷⁷

One of the fundamental objectives was to resist further reduction of the group’s inherent collective rights and any attempts to extinguish Innu tipenitamun; it was about the responsibility to preserve the traditional base of the group’s self-conservation and its very life for future generations. The issues at stake in getting involved in the movement went beyond the mere issue of salmon and ancestral fishing rights on the Esh Shipu; it was about resisting attempts to ultimately extinguish Innu tipenitamun on Innu Assi or the ancestral domain through the long-term processes of dispossession, deterritorialisation and therefore, programmed strangulation.⁷⁸ Yet stories told by interviewees also imply that people’s actions were interpreted as going beyond the simple defence of Essipiunnuat interests and embracing a greater struggle for the protection of principles shared by all First Peoples; they were defending at a local level a principle common to all.⁷⁹

Self-respect

As demonstrated earlier, it was difficult to assume an Innu identity in the years preceding the Salmon War. Various factors were involved in this harsh fact, and the situation had persisted for a long time. It is best expressed by the absence of the Innu language’s transmission due to its general devalorisation, as summed up by, ‘If you want to speak Indian, if you want to be an Indian, go to Pessamit!’ So this collective self-assertion was implying the fact of assuming indigeneity, and, therefore, the reversibility of elements of self-image in order to gain self-respect:

This experience of internalising negative representations was widely shared among other indigenous groups disturbed by the effects of colonialism. The assertion of sovereignty and self-determination clearly transcended Essipit’s border and was conceived as a pan-indigenist requirement of collective dignity; the movement of affirmation ‘was pertinent to almost everything; it was a means of getting value, to assert ourselves as human, as a people’ (Raoul, chapter 1, ref. 6).

Recognition

The stories are full of references to the experience of harassment during the practice of ancestral activities of hunting and fishing. Québec had been pressuring ‘Indians’ to cease their ancestral activities, particularly in the years preceding the war. The state wanted them to comply with regulations pertaining to hunting, fishing and trapping, and therefore to restrict and\or abandon their traditional practices. Many Essipiunnuat were brought to court by wildlife agents for illegal hunting activities, had their equipment (guns, canoe, engines, and so on) seized, and were often ordered to pay significant penalties. Many Essipiunnuat hunters traced the cause of these disagreements back to the absence of any recognition of inherent Innu rights.⁸⁰

To not be harassed in their ancestral domain and to have their rights recognised were thus important objectives for many people in the context of a group whose traditional practices were significantly repressed. For the older generation especially, ‘it was mainly to confirm that we had rights, to have confirmed rights that we considered ours.’ The goal was to have their rights, if not their legal order, recognised and respected in order to avoid further uncertainty and the fear of being repressed in their traditional activities.⁸¹ This contextualisation helps in part to understand the post-Salmon War reception for state recognition and internal quarrels about an Innu evaluation of signed agreements.⁸²

Reterritorialisation

From the mid 19th century, the Essipiunnuat had been continuously marginalised. This resulted in their sedentarisation and the creation of a reserve in 1892, in which they were restricted to occupying a mere 0.5 km². They allegedly no longer had any rights over their ancestral domain, which cover an area of approximately 5,000 km² located between the Saguenay and the Porneuf Rivers. This forced deterritorialisation had a tremendous impact on the Essipiunnuat way of life. Among other impacts, economic marginalisation was far-reaching due to their greatly restricted access to ancestral territories and their wealth, as well as an intense ‘discomfort’ while practising ancestral subsistence activities. The leaders soon realised that 0.5 km² was too tiny a space for their group and its growing aspirations for economic autonomy.

Reterritorialisation, then, became a group objective, meaning its people could reconnect with the lands, asserting Innu sovereignty over the ancestral domain, and enjoy the freedom to practise ancestral activities and ways of being. This small group perceived the need to achieve the goal of reoccupying a territory that had never been ceded and on which the ancient Innu normativity, inseparable from the land itself, still existed. The movement’s claim was that it had a say, if not the power ‘to give consent’, in any significant projects on the ancestral domain. It is important to remember that at that time, the Québec government and local Euroquébécois were not considering any rights for the Innu outside of the reserve’s borders. ⁸³

In the context of First Peoples’ claims that were rising in parallel to Québec’s involvement in major industrial projects on indigenous ancestral lands (hydro, mining, forestry and so on), the Québec government was greatly interested in seeing these claims extinguished. It was therefore developing a rhetorical response to indigenous claims saying that Indians did not have any rights regarding the Québec domain. For the leading group in Essipit, ‘it was to demonstrate that indigenous rights existed outside the reserve, on all our homeland’.⁸⁴

A succinct examination of people’s subjectivity gives clear insights into the deeply rooted reasons for their involvement, and why they wanted to fight, and were ready to give their lives for the cause. The assertion and defence of the ancient Innu normative order or sovereignty comes to the fore as the unifying factor behind their diverse objectives. Despite some variances, mainly in relation to participants’ situations and postures during the war (gender, past experiences, current needs, role in the movement, generation, and so on), stories report a unity of purpose in the clearly defined, decisive and attainable goal of defending indigenous freedom and its symbols.

From strategies to direct action

Those who took part discuss at length the practices or strategies designed before and during the war to achieve the above-mentioned objectives. They consider the thought processes, planning of actions and preferred means of realising their objectives as a central manifestation of group agency and an essential motivation for the war. The term ‘strategy’, in its etymological sense, implies leadership and command; its study also reveals information about its multifaceted agents and how they are interrelated. Strategy can be defined as ‘a comprehensive way to try to pursue political ends, including the threat or actual use of force, in a dialectic of wills’ (Heuser, 2010, p. 39). Since conflicts involve at least two interacting sides, strategy is thus characterised by its adaptability in the deployment of means.

Figure 10. March of First Peoples in support of Essipiunnuat during the Salmon War. CBC/Radio-Canada Archives, 1981.

Four main themes concerning strategies are predominant in the interviewees’ accounts of the war. Mainly, they concern the steps taken to unite the wills of indigenous groups, the multilateral attempts to pressure the state/s, direct action or the unilateral assertion of Innu tipenitamun, and the use of the salmon as a symbol.

The unification of indigenous wills

A priority for the council was to get maximum support among the Essipiunnuat. The council’s guiding idea was ‘to have a strong majority ... before going ahead ... since if you don’t have it, you go nowhere’ (Sam, chapter 1, ref. 6). Group communication and participatory decision-making appear to have been a favoured approach to internal unification. Some leaders were going from door to door to encourage members to engage actively in the uprising.⁸⁵ There is a clear perception among interviewees of having been involved at every level of the decision-making process before and during the Salmon War.

In order to get maximum internal support, the council organised a number of general assemblies of all the Essipiunnuat, to whom it was firmly asserted that ‘everybody must attend’. So a strategy was also employed which implied at the very least that absence or non-participation regarding the council’s objectives would have negative consequences for those involved. Eliminating dissent was the aim (Sam, chapter 1, ref. 2). A central cause of dissidence identified was the fear of disrupting relations with white friends or relatives. For the leaders, Essipiunnuat collaboration with the external rival was, then, a fact to counter.⁸⁶

In parallel with efforts to rally all Essipiunnuat to the cause, another endeavour was to obtain maximum support from as many indigenous groups as possible through diplomacy. As one individual says, the potential for support was huge, since Essipit’s battle was about the defence of a wider, shared inherent legal order.⁸⁷

However, before the war began, Essipit had also been involved in the Conseil Attikamekw-Montagnais (CAM), a tribal council that included a dozen communities. It was responsible for negotiating directly with Québec and Canada on issues pertaining to indigenous sovereignty and the modalities of implementing their self-determination. CAM meetings offered opportunities for leaders and individuals from diverse communities to meet for exchanges and to develop platforms on common grievances and needs. In particular, it allowed a new generation of Essipiunnuat leaders to establish a network and extend diplomacy. The role of indigenous diplomacy in the Essipiunnuat strategy during the Salmon War was well planned.⁸⁸ Leaders strategised to get trans-indigenous support specifically in order to reinforce Essipit positions towards the Euroquébécois and the authorities.⁸⁹

Pressuring the states

Essipit had been in negotiation with governments through the CAM; it wanted to carry maximum weight at the negotiation table in order to exert pressure. The council adopted a strategy to force the governments to recognise the existence of Innu tipenitamun by auto-operationalising through asserting ancestral sovereignty and practising collective self-determination. The idea was to compel Québec to sit at the negotiation table with Essipit and accept its position. The leaders had been strategising, waiting for the best time to act.⁹⁰

An element of their strategy remained the bringing of their cause to the attention of the media. They planned to catch the public’s attention and to focus it upon the situation at Essipit, and then influence the interpretation of it. The idea was to alert other indigenous groups to the situation, but also to communicate their position to the Essipiunnuat and to the Québec government, through the media. This coverage would also facilitate internal mobilisation. Above all, the strategy aimed to give a clear message to the government about the seriousness of their claims.⁹¹

Direct action

Direct action was allegedly the key strategy in preparations for the war. The aim was to defend inherent sovereignty, achieve self-determination and force governments and local populations to respect them. This approach highlights the philosophy behind the movement at that time, which was that a right to self-determination can only be directly self-operationalised.⁹² This is illustrated, for example, by the widely remembered episode of the ferry blockade as an automatic response to Québec’s unilateral decision to seize the Essipiunnuat’s nets. The council and its special war committee then decided to block the ferry dock in order to exercise maximum pressure on the Québec government.⁹³ The first blockade, with the tension it generated, is reported as the beginning of the ‘true’ war.⁹⁴

Figure 11. Indigenous leaders pulling Essipit’s ‘symbolic net’. CBC/Radio-Canada Archives, 1981.

This episode was the first to gain media attention for Essipit. A closer look at the unfolding of events suggests that the Essipiunnuat’s acts of rebellion influenced and had a mimetic effect on other communities, especially the Innu groups of the northern shore (Pessamit, Ekuanitshit, Nutashkuan, the people of Listuguj, and others). The Essipiunnuat insurrection spread. Those involved at that time and the media all mention a Montagnais revolt or the beginning of a national insurrection.⁹⁵

Salmon as a symbol

Another key strategic element was the use of the salmon as a symbol. As the group wanted to force the Québec government to negotiate directly with them, the leaders conceived a stratagem of transferring a private net, belonging to an Essipiunnu (Ernest), and spreading it outside the border of the reserve land, at the tip of the dock. The Québec wildlife department, on behalf of the state, would then intervene to confiscate the net. The decision was carefully made to set it in a fishing area they had originally occupied, but from which they had been dispossessed with the creation of the reserve. A Euroquébécois family had a licence to fish in this area but their patriarch had died and his sons did not fish anymore. Essipiunnuat leaders saw a window of opportunity to reassert inherent Innu rights beyond the borders of the 0.5 km² of the reserve. A set up was therefore put in place to allow the net to be seized.⁹⁶

Indeed, older people had been told by their grandparents since childhood that ‘Essipiunnuat used to fish there before’. Stories therefore suggest a greater role for Essipiunnuat subjectivity in the causes of the Salmon War – or the intention to provoke and create a major event. One person clearly remembers that they ‘wanted to piss them off; wake them up!’ In parallel to this, the tactic was to ensure that government intervention would face strong resistance. One individual summarises how that opposition was achieved:

In fact, each Essipiunnuat family did receive salmon from the community net, sometimes up to five times in the subsequent seasons. Such a practice was perceived as being deep-seatedly Innu and communitarian. These simple actions were not only concretising the auto-operationalisation process but were also introducing the communitarian principle directly into their daily life. More than anything, it boosted the understanding that the net belonged to everybody, and that the distribution of the salmon that had been collectively fished opened doors to direct encounters between leaders and members.⁹⁷

Beyond a common resistance to colonialism and external attempts to extinguish their rights, people were keen to stress a core difference between their actions and those of the Mi’gmaq of Listuguj who had entered into a conflict with the Québec state in 1981.⁹⁸ The Québec provincial police had intervened violently to stop their salmon fishing activities, but in contrast to the Mi’gmaq fisherman of Listuguj, who were ‘taking the salmon and selling them’ (Mestenapeo, chapter 1, ref. 4), the Essipiunnuat had chosen to distribute the catches in accordance with the communitarian principle that these actions served to nurture the base of a wider ‘communitarian system’.⁹⁹

The choice of using salmon as a symbol was made deliberately; salmon had had great significance in Innu culture over thousands of years, from the very beginning. The largest summertime gatherings and trans-band meetings and ceremonies were organised at the time of the return of the salmon to the river in July. Interviewees suggest that salmon were still, in the late 1970s, a cornerstone of Essipiunnuat culture and way of life. It was a food of great nutritional value but it was also redolent of fond childhood memories and associated with a sense of family sharing and celebration. Salmon thus runs very deep in the group memory; accounts of the war contain invocations of the salmon’s beauty, its taste, its smell. People relate salmon to their childhood, to their fathers coming back with catches, to taking care of the net during the short fishing season from around mid July to the beginning of August.

The salmon symbolism also echoes the dispossession the Innu have experienced through the usurpation of the freedom to fish, culminating in complete prohibition by the eve of the Salmon War. In a way, for the Innu, the history of the abduction and negation of the right to fish salmon is the quintessence of their colonisation, the usurpation of their sovereignty and self-determination, and the decline of their capacity for self-sufficiency. In this context, the action of the Québec government with its response to the Essipiunnuat direct action touched a nerve, even in the late 1970s, ‘It was our childhood they were taking away from us. You don’t have it anymore; it takes away memories from your childhood. And there is no continuity.’¹⁰⁰

The stories therefore evidence how people see the roles of designing and operationalising strategies as central to the making of that major event; it highlights the intentionality, as collective agents, of creating situations and opportunities for transforming internal and external circumstances.

Conclusion

The purpose of this chapter has been to assess the causes of the Salmon War according to Essipiunnuat memories, and to identify and reclaim self-perceptions of the group’s condition and agency, mainly through using the concept of the ‘event’ as a crystallisation of historical determinants. The method of divining this consisted of disentangling from the story exogenous sociohistorical determinants versus the group itself and its agency as a determinant of the event. The scheme consisted of accessing elements of the group’s reading of its condition at the moment the war began, together with the role it attributed to itself in contributing to its development. Colonialism, the politics of the Québec government, the social imaginary of the local Euroquébécois, as well as organised anti-Indian militancy, have been identified as the four main external determinants of the Salmon War. The confluence of these elements would have imposed on the group the dilemma of self-annihilation or war. The group’s historical consciousness, its internal dynamics characterised by the emergence within it of a sovereignty movement, together with a clear collective objective and the operationalisation of strategies, have been identified as the four main significant internal determinants. The uniting of these internal and external phenomena and circumstances would nurture the group agency in the context of a growing perception of a stifling hegemony; which is to say, its commitment to war. This, at least, is how the origins of the war are related today and how that major event is mainly remembered.

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1 For further information on Foucault’s conception of the ‘event’, see Revel (2009), pp. 49–53.

2 It is pertinent to mention that the increasing number of marriages involving Euroquébécois women coming to live on the reserve has led to a particular type of racism within families as well as an increased Euroquébécois perspective when educating children. This subject is highly taboo but arose in the stories. Even though this inner racism has varied widely among families, the testimonies still mention specific families where mothers have zealously applied their duty to ‘whitewash’ their children and to fulfil the mission, encouraged by political and religious authorities, to ‘désauvager’ (civilise) the reserve.

3 ‘At the time, they were selling us a licence as a non-Indian (Euroquébécois) but in fact you couldn’t fish all the same. It was all private clubs. It was something, you had no rights! You were taking a licence and indeed, you couldn’t fish, you had access nowhere. And our ancestral territory was exactly there. We, our fathers, had always hunted there, by the Moreau River and around. We had always been travelling there. And it became a private club; we were suddenly told “No”. They build a road and block our access. That’s how it happened.’ (Édouard, ch. 1, ref. 2)

4 ‘My father used to say that before, “you never heard of Indians”. It was hidden, it was as if they (the past generation) didn’t want to have a problem with them [Euroquébécois]; that was the psychology at that time. And after a while, better no talk … they were killing them … You heard of how it was functioning, didn’t you?’ (Pishimnapeo, ch. 1, ref. 10)

5 ‘We didn’t talk really about it with each other [about the ancestral territories]. We knew that we needed it and that our lands, they weren’t ours anymore … That’s where we were ... and my dad had a big family and needed to be employed … if he had raised claims, he wouldn’t have been allowed to work, he would have been boycotted.’ (Pishimnapeo, ch. 1, ref. 4)

6 ‘In my father’s times … they were saying all the time “We have the right”, but they didn’t know the “law”… No, they were frightened, they were afraid. No, they didn’t go. Because once, my father, he was sitting in our house and he said: “A steak, that would be good wouldn’t it?” And pointing at the mountain meanwhile, he said, “The steak is on the mountain over there”. He was talking of a moose. That’s how he was talking, my father.’ (Edouard, ch. 1, ref. 4)

7 ‘And it was … the effect of the “white society”’. We had been subjugated to them for a long while. That was the federal policy. If you want to be an Indian, you won’t work; you won’t have access to professions, the right to nothing.’ (Sam, ch. 1, ref. 3)

8 ‘It is because, me, I started to be at war from the moment I began to leave, to leave the reserve. During our youth, we were refused entry to a hotel, we didn’t have the right to enter. What do we call that – segregation? That was it. Where they knew us, around here, we were refused, we couldn’t go there. Me, it started there, I’ve always had a “fall back” since then. They were showing us things you know… “We were friends”, but we didn’t have a right … That’s why … We were always rejected this way. That is rejection.’ (Édouard, ch. 1, ref. 2)

9 ‘Before the war, I had the impression that the reserve was a quarter of Les Escoumins. There was no difference. Older people were perhaps seeing differences since they had other experiences, but for me ... we were going to school with people from Les Escoumins, doing sports, you know! We did everything with people from Les Escoumins. There was nothing on the reserve. Really nothing.’ (Adam, ch. 1, ref. 6)

10 ‘And after I have reflected on all that, I’m still asking myself: “Why didn’t he talk to us in Indian [Innu aimun language]?” He talked Indian perfectly, my dad … Uncle Joseph, too; they met and talked Indian only, yes!’ (Pishimnapeo, ch. 1, ref. 11)

11 ‘We have even lost our language [in Essipit] It is very sad, but it’s because we were forbidden to speak Montagnais [Innu aimun]: “You stay in Les Escoumins; you don’t stay in Betsiamites [Pessamit]. If you want to speak, go to Betsiamites!”’ (Sam, ch. 1, ref. 3)

12 ‘I can tell you, it was all the families together as one … They were meeting. There was yelling, but the family spirit was present. And oop! It disappeared suddenly … Just in our family, the argument between Uncle X and Uncle Y … him, it was all about the “token”; anything to make money. And he did not care whether it was on the back of his brother or not.’ (Mestenapeo, ch. 1, ref. 7)

13 ‘Within the reserve, there was a lot of squabbling even at the level of hunting territories … There were brawls. My grandfather Ross passed away, and the Moreau, it went badly for them too. It was not going well and the families became very divided. Some of them had started to sell themselves … Because until then, nobody had to pay the state for using the small hunting grounds we still had. Historically, familial grounds belonged to the whole group, to the reserve; to the Ross and Moreau families who were, in fact, just one family. But the politics took over our ancient ways.’ (Mestenapeo, ch. 1, ref. 6)

14 Pessamit (formerly Betsiamites, or Bersimis, and Papinachois) is an Innu community (or ‘First Nation’) located along the north shore of the St Lawrence River at the mouth of the Pessamit River, located 107 km east of Essipit and 50 km south west of Baie-Comeau: see http://www. pessamit.ca. In 1860 the canton of Les Escoumins was officially created (Létourneau, 1985, p. 43). The following year the Betsiamites reserve was created, aimed at isolating the Innu from all contact with ‘white’ people; according to the Church, ‘civilization kills the Indians (Frenette, 1995, p. 26). At that time, some 40 Essipiunnuat were still residing in Essipit. In 1862, the Oblates moved their mission to Pessamit and the original government plan to displace all Innu to Pessamit was taking form – half of Essipiunnuat families moved to Pessamit, provoking a demographic collapse of Essipiunnuat (Mailhot and Vincent, 1979). Only 10 families remained in Essipit (Mailhot and Vincent, 1979, p. 36; Laforest, 1983, p. 4; Boudreault, 1994, p. 29; and Charest, 2009, p. 18.), a number reduced to 8 in 1864 and 6 in 1878; they seemingly migrated to Pessamit (Frenette, 1996, p. 33). People’s autobiographical stories confirm that their grandparents had extensive relations with Pessamiunnuat, were travelling to Pessamit by canoe up the coast, and that Essipiunnuat and Pessamiunnuat were very close culturally and shared common views on their history and rights as Innu. Oral testimonies also mentioned continued attempts by authorities and priests to displace Innu from Essipit to Pessamit, presented as the ‘capital of the Indians’. Some interviewees mention the fact that Essipiunnuat who wanted to speak Innu-aimun faced racism and were told to go to Pessamit if they wanted to be Indian and speak Innu-amun. People also fondly remember the Pessaminnuat being supportive of the Essipiunnuat during the Salmon War.

15 ‘It is the government first who did all this shit; it is them who triggered the whole thing in fact. …’ (Tshak, ch. 1, ref. 5)

16 ‘The Salmon War, it started with the story of the communitarian net spread at the dock. The net had been sold to Essipit by Donald Tremblay, a non-indigenous person. Old Édouard Cyril, he was the first to have this net. He sold it to Donald. And we spread a net there. What happened is that some non-indigenous complained to Québec wildlife agents, saying that we were spreading our nets right in the river … and that we were blocking the salmon’s migratory course. But it wasn’t the case at all. So we were at the dock and the agent came to try to take off our net. It didn’t work since people were entirely opposed to their actions. We told them: “We have a right to fish here, it’s an ancestral right, we have no problem, and we weren’t hurting the river at all.”’ (Riel, ch. 1, ref. 1)

17 ‘It was a net spread on the basis that we were claiming rights that had belonged to us before but that had been transformed into a more commercial basis. There was a commercial net and we were surrounded. There were nets all around, there was not just us who were fishing. And then it was abandoned.’ (Mestenapeo, ch. 1, ref. 2)

18 ‘There were discussions with the mayor of Les Escoumins. But before these discussions we had met with the assistant deputy minister and the minister of fisheries who was also in charge of indigenous rights. So it was negotiated [the agreement], and accepted by the government ... but then it fell apart. We were spreading the net at the dock. We had an agreement. The Amerindian police had brought a large 23-foot canoe … And we were guarding the net, since we had an agreement with the government; we had had talks. So I was keeping the net. At one moment I realised that wildlife agents were at the dock to take off our net … I was alone in my boat. I told the agents: “you won’t leave with the net”. … The agreement was signed. So that is when they came to steal the net. What happened? They were saying the agreement was not finalised, but we had agreed. When you’re dealing with ministers, assistant deputy minister, what is the problem? You ask yourself the question. But they hadn’t respected their agreement. So it turned into smoke.’ (Mestenapeo, ch. 1, ref. 2 and 4)

19 ‘The political game was tough. Yes, political manoeuvrings played a major role. At that time, it was much politicised. It was all about politics ... The government preferred to have 2,000 people going to vote for them. So they said “Essipit? Go to hell! We will walk with the politics. Might they put more pressure? Look, we will go on the side of the 2,000; they will make pressure ... The 250 who are in Essipit, we will let them go, let them deal with their own troubles.”’ (Riel, ch. 1, ref. 8)

20 ‘It was not to quibble for the fun of quibbling. It has nothing to do with the fact of saying “ten or fifteen salmon a year”. Salmon was a pretext, that’s for sure. But we need to reflect on the triggering element behind all that. You know, the discussions with CARSE, the discussion with the MLCP [Leisure, Hunting and Fishing Provincial Ministry] at the time,… Lucien Lessard was the minister in charge at that period, a guy from Bergeronnes [a neighbouring town to Les Escoumins]. You know, there was something …’ (Adam, ch. 2, ref. 3) ‘We were by the dock at that period. People of Les Escoumins were at Pointe-à-la-Croix and were watching with their telescope what was going on. I think it was all put together ... by the minister. ... If it had been controlled at the very least, local people would have never been allowed to come here, they should have been allowed. But the minister must have organised, with some villagers ... He had chosen all the same people who were able to ...’ (Tshak, ch. 1, ref. 4)

21 ‘It felt as if they had said: You can remove them from there by any means; catch them – us we don’t want to go.’ (Riel, ch. 1, ref. 4)

22 ‘We must say that there was a lot of Québec governmental manipulation ... There were negotiations with CAM in regards to the Mingan, the Natashquan River, a lot of things all at once pertaining to the salmon river as well as with the Mi’gmaq, in Listuguj. There were lots of eddies. Everything was moving at the same time. We should also say that the deputy minister of leisure at that period was Lucien Lessard; a guy from Grandes-Bergeronnes, so it’s very close ... He tried ... Strategically, they tried ... to have the job done by the local population. “Crush these bastards!” And I have lived it on the dock, and everywhere, in the incidents of war, because we were really at war then, locally [with Les Escoumins]. [We had] no protection from Québec police, and everybody went up! And the community met here at the dock ... there were harsh confrontations. It was wanted. It was the MLCP and the whole thing ... and no Québec police. It was wanted, 200 of them came on the dock. The orders were coming from up there, the order ... Commanded ... well, it was something like, “All right, we won’t go right now. Settle this!” It was deliberate.’ (Sam, ch. 1, ref. 1 and 11).

23 As Maxence says, ‘I remember. I knew that there was a tension from the beginning. At that time, I wasn’t “indigenous”, I wasn’t an “Indian”, and I wasn’t recognised as such. So I knew that there were tensions.’ (Maxence, ch. 1, ref. 1). These tensions were felt even more intensively by those who had family ties in both Essipit and Les Escoumins. Indeed, in 1985, the Canadian government changed elements of the Indian Act pertaining to ‘Indian status’; so some women recovered an ‘Indian status’ they had lost when they married non-Indians. So at the moment of the war, some people weren’t members of the band despite their family ties with the group on their mother’s side, as in the case of Maxence. The children of these women were integrated on the ‘band list’ of Indian status in 1985 and became ‘Indian’.

24 ‘If we go further in history, we weren’t a reserve … Yes, we had been bought. If you look at the process, we weren’t here. We were at Pointe-à-la-Croix, and we were all around. Well, before, we were moving around; going everywhere we wanted to, so … what they told us [the ancestors or ‘tshenu’] is that the Indians were there, at Pointe-à-la-Croix, and all over. Just take Charles Bélanger, “the” very old settler Charles Bélanger. There were indigenous people who were living there where the drugstore is currently located; where the house is, you had a shop. And before, there were indigenous people there. Up until then, we were more than 40 families there; we were many Indians!’ (Mestenapeo, ch. 1, ref. 1)

25 ‘The racists will always be the racists ... I can tell you that when they came to the dock, there were really a lot of racists. Intimidation, attempts to inflict pain on us … They have always been that way. We became used to it. You build yourself a kind of shell. So you have your armour, you talk to them, but at the bottom, you know … All the time, all the time, all the time … It is deep within them. They are educated this way at school by their teachers, at home by their parents … At school, we didn’t pay for our pencils. You know “You Indians, you don’t pay anything”. Take the candies and shut up ... you know.’ (Raoul, ch. 1, ref. 7–8)

26 Especially since the nationalists had lost a referendum on Québec independence in 1980.

27 If their circumstances as a colonised people created a need to have an ‘inferior Indian’ who was, in turn, subordinate to them, their position as a colonialist imposed on them the unsustainable need of a ‘non-existent’ Indian. This approach is predominant in the narrative on the sources of the war. As Justin explains, a characteristic of the Escouminois-Euroquébécois representation of the Essipiunnuat is that ‘they think that everything is free for us, that we don’t pay taxes and anything, all based on prejudice and ignorance of our real condition, especially when we go out from the reserve.’ As he states, it is impossible for them to understand Essipiunnuat circumstances because of their representation of the ‘Indian’ and the place this representation plays in their identity. For them the phenomenon of assertive Essipiunnuat affirmation was confusing. As Justin says, ‘That’s what people don’t understand. And I think they will never understand; the local villagers, I mean. I don’t mean that they may understand one day … but we are in 2010 and they still don’t understand, and they are now the only ones against us … It is maybe jealousy of what we have but it is maybe more about that they would have preferred us to stay on unemployment insurance benefits, as our condition at a certain time, just being intoxicated all the time! It would have been easier for them thereafter to say that we do nothing and that we are cowards. In my experience, they had a prejudice from the beginning. Indeed, we have started empowering ourselves. In my view, it bothers them a lot. Thirty years ago, there wasn’t much on the reserve.’ (Justin, ch. 1, ref. 2–6)

28 ‘They didn’t understand. It was as if colonisation was deep in their genes ... You know, the English, they had been good at it, and the French have had their part of it in the story; “evangelisation”, it is rooted deep in them, and everything that it entails. And then we [the indigenous] say, “It will stop, it has to stop.” That’s how it happened. It was hard for them to understand. You know, they were very used to it, from generation to generation ... you don’t know who is the master, when you’re not at home’ (Pishimnapeo, ch. 1, ref. 7)

29 ‘They have a wall. They don’t respect anything. It is racism. It is racism, jealousy, envy. It is all these things that took over. I had a lot of friends at that period. As the war was coming, oop! No more friends. There were no more friends, then I was a “fucking savage” and this and that, and even if I was trying hard to tell them, they couldn’t hear.’ (Tshak, ch. 1, ref. 6)

30 ‘It is to their advantage and they criticise anyway; they are never happy. We would have given them the moon, and they still wouldn’t have been happy. By any means, an Indian, whatever he does or doesn’t do, they demean him the same. They are therefore all the time against him: “They don’t pay taxes; they either don’t do this or that”. It is part of them and it is anchored. It has always been so … this is why. Whether you do something or not, they bear you a grudge.’ (Édouard, ch. 1, ref. 5)

31 See Ross-Tremblay (2016), La souveraineté comme responsabilité; Burelle (2019).

32 The event remembered as the Oka Crisis occurred in 1990 when Mohawks resisted land speculators’ attempts, supported by local Euroquébécois politicians, to build a golf course over Mohawk ancestral lands, including a cemetery. It led to violent confrontations between Mohawk warriors and the Québec police, as well as the Canadian army, which was finally called in to suppress the resistance. There was a wave of racism against ‘Indians’ during the episode. A Québec police officer died during the strife. For more information, see Obomsawin (1996).

33 ‘Their jealousy, it is about our rights, our privileges; because we were expressing our indigenous identity. It touched their identity. Yes, it has always been the case, as long as I can remember.’ (Pierre, ch. 1, ref. 1)

34 ‘Me, I’ve always said that it was about jealousy. The older people were saying the same. They don’t accept the Indian! What was it for them? A “n.”, a little one. Yet, we were all men.’ (Pierre, ch. 1, ref. 7)

35 ‘There are many ... who were manipulated and who just followed others. When it comes to “Indians”, the whites, they are easily manipulated by some people … often; there are many things they ignore … When we talk of lands, and territories … One needs to open one’s eyes, but it doesn’t always work this way. They have a tendency … as if it was a pleasure for them.’ (Karl, ch. 1, ref. 10)

36 As Ivan explains: ‘It’s a politics event. The government got involved in that and I don’t know why. That’s the only reason that I see why it happened. The CARSE used this as a means to put pressure on us, since they were saying that we were destroying the river. In my opinion, that is the only reason.’ (Ivan, ch. 1, ref. 3) Essipiunnuat attempts to reach an agreement on the management of the Esh Shipu River and to collaborate were rejected and their rights claims met with a shower of insults about their complete illegitimacy (Sam, ch. 1, ref. 1 and 5). As soon as the Essipiunnuat decided to assert their Innu tipenitamun through conducting community fishing, the CARSE accused them publicly of destroying the project to revitalise the salmon population of the river, ongoing since 1977; CARSE then sent a request directly to Lessard’s office and that of the local deputy (member of the Québec parliament) to intervene and crush Innu activities. There was a clear matrix of relationships between government officials and the CARSE, which was largely composed of personal friends of the minister. Considering Québec’s actions in relation to Essipiunnuat fishing in the light of these dealings, the stories present CARSE lobbying in the province and the favourable response and aggressive postures of Minister Lessard as essential evidence which would explain why the situation degenerated.

37 ‘What the “whites” were reproaching the Indians for was: “Your net, it hurt the salmon migration, because it caught the genitors right before they enter the river.” That was the problem, according to the non-Indians.’ (Maxence, ch. 1, ref. 2)

38 ‘Villagers didn’t like that we had spread the net there. So it was “The fucking savages! They take everything from us! They steal everything! The land is theirs! The river is theirs!” The war therefore started there.’ (Tshak, ch. 1, ref. 1)

39 ‘It wouldn’t have lasted long … but there was a small cell, the small cell that triggered the village … the S., they are very good at that … the R., not all of them … it was a small gang gathering elements of these families, not just one family, but a small group, it has always been the same. It’s the old ones, they are the worst.’ (Karl, ch. 1, ref. 11). ‘They were addressing the masses, but above all they were “crowd boosters” that I’ve named earlier, the shriller, yellers, who were saying things, all kind of things: … “This bunch of fuckers … you will see, it’s the end of them, they won’t command, they won’t rule with their tiny gang, they won’t resist the village; and their net … it has nothing to do there”’ (Maxence, ch. 1, ref. 5 and 6)

40 As Raoul explained: ‘so it’s at that moment that the people of Les Escoumins, manipulated by a cell of individuals that we call “boosters”, people who were not on the spot and were saying “go ahead, go head, I’ll buy you drinks if you go”. And the worst talkers were not on the spot.’ (Raoul, ch. 1, ref. 6)

41 ‘They hated us, they hated us; through jealousy but not only through jealousy. It was on everything, I believe. And they observed that on the reserve, things were going up. The bowling alley that we had just built and all that, oh boy! And young people of the village, the whites, were all coming on to the reserve. So they said: “How come that we have businesses, and they don’t come in our shops?”; “Indian thieves!”’ (Pierre, ch. 1, ref. 5)

42 ‘Communitarian development had already begun [at the moment of the war]. The community centre was running ... It wasn’t embryonic, it was up and running, and the community centre was going, with the pool tables ... We just had two competitors and they had already closed down ... They had been full of drug dealers, and everything. They had a lot of customers, and they all came to us. It was nicer and more secure for young people. Parents knew that at the CCM [Innu community centre], there was discipline, it was more regulated and we would organise a dance party on Friday, and minibuses ... and there was no alcohol and drugs.’ (Sam, ch. 1, ref. 4)

43 ‘At that time, CARSE was requesting that we stopped fishing so that they could do economic development.’ (Adam, ch. 1, ref. 2)

44 ‘Non-Indians thought they would become rich with that. Some had already built lodges by the river, some cottages by the river. They were planned … They were protecting their goods; well, not so much their goods as their interests. There were many reasons there.’ (Sam, ch. 1, ref. 13)

45 Pierre states that ‘the whites wanted the war so that we come to play their game; what “they” wanted. For us, it was just to have the privilege recognised to spread a communitarian net.’ (Pierre, ch. 1, ref. 6). Essipiunnuat attempts to be co-manager of the river were refused. So, there was no possible agreement between CARSE and Essipit since the non-participation of ‘Indians’ was a matter of principle for the former. According to interviewees, and as discussed earlier, Québec’s and CARSE’s call for the repression of ‘Indian’ activities is seen as a key element in the unfolding of the war. The Essipiunnuat saw the setting of the nets as the start of the war, since it provoked an anti-Essipiunnuat movement. If this movement became widespread in the village, it received additional impetus from a group of local people, allied with a group of inveterate racists and others who considered Essipit economic development to be a threat to their financial interests or to be unwelcome competition for any present or future business affairs. These individuals, allied with the Québec state, considered it in their interest to mobilise the local population against Essipit. By disrupting the native fishery, they could ‘head off’ any impending ‘Indian’ insurgency.

46 According to Tshak, some business owners were involved in mobilising villagers against the Essipiunnuat. The distribution of alcohol was one way of getting local villagers involved in direct action against the Innu (Tshak, ch. 1, ref. 3).

47 The term ‘participant’ is used in the book to mean those who took part in the Salmon War and not those who participated in the research.

48 ‘I knew my grandfather. It wasn’t the same vision [as many people understand it today]. No. It was “their rights”, they were keeping to their rights. They wouldn’t have sold it … They used to tell us stories. Even my father, Uncle Ludger, and my Uncle Joseph Moreau, they used to go all around in canoes. They used to go to Pessamit by canoe, so they were travelling a lot. So, “rights”, you won’t have them anymore, in other words; if we forget that, you won’t have any soon.’ (Mestenapeo, ch. 1, ref. 5)

49 The term Innu-aitun refers to an ‘act, action; custom, way of doing things; culture’ (Innu online dictionary: http://www.innu-aimun.ca/english/dictionary/). In the bureaucratic context of treaty negotiation, the term is used in the limited sense of hunting, fishing and trapping skills. But as mentioned by the late Elder Eli Mestokosho (personal conversation, Ekuanitshit, 2016), ‘Innu-aitun is generally not understood properly’. It would, in fact, be more appropriate to speak of ‘Innu science’, which would include all knowledge, from hunting techniques to old stories, that are central to Innu traditional way of life.

50 ‘Yes, my father, and the old ones, were saying all the time “We have rights!” For the ancestors, that was it. I had learned it. That is how it was. As I said in court once: “That is what is in my head. That is where my own subsistence is; my life is there. When time has come, time has come; it is needed. If I want to eat moose, I go, I take it, or if I want to eat trout.”’ (Édouard, ch. 1, ref. 3).

‘We had also been told … that before, the Indians, it was them who where there, fishing in this area.” (Ernest, ch. 1, ref. 1)

‘When I was young, my grandfather [Joseph Ross], he always had a communitarian net ... In ancient times, Indians fished there for sure. But the Boulianne acquired rights there, so they fished there too. I always used to go with my grandfather and Uncle Pierre. But it was not only my grandfather who fished there; it was the whole community. So, at the time of the negotiations, before the war, I remembered that, and I said, “Christ! We have the right.” But we, we were young, and we were saying: “Fuck off! They won’t crush us any longer.”’ (Sam, ch. 1, ref. 3)

51 See Bosi (1987, pp. 332–3): ‘A collective memory develops from the bonds of family life, school, work, and so on. These bind to the memory of its members, add, unite, differentiate, and begin to fix clean. Living within a group, they suffer the vicissitudes of evolution and depend on its members and their interaction.’

52 ‘Oh no, we have never let them do that! No, the Indian has never consented to his abuse, no. No. No. Essipiunnuat have never let them do that. Except the sages, when there were quibbles, they left. It wasn’t more than that. Because they thought they were idiots.’ (Pierre, ch. 1, ref. 5)

53 ‘Before, there was a barrier at the entrances to the reserve. Nobody used to come in ... I’ve seen the army retrace its steps right here. Oh yes! The barrier, they wouldn’t go through it. Grandfather used to be on the gallery ... and would stay there ... it was ours.’ (Mestenapeo, ch. 1, ref. 5)

54 ‘Young people watched what we did and they started to make claims too. That is where it started.’ (Pishimnapeo, ch. 1, ref. 5)

55 Here is an example of stories of resistance and confrontation with authorities in relation to Essipiunnuat rights: ‘I remember once upon a time, in Forestville. My dad, he respected wildlife agents, but he thought that they were not respecting First Peoples. So he had a bit less respect for them. You know, he used to travel by canoe all the time, with his gun and his fishing rod … He was exercising his rights, eating what he caught; he never poached, or sold anything. That’s how he was taught and he liked it that way. So when altercations happened from time to time with wildlife agents, he thought they were very disrespectful. He was respecting everyone; he was not bothering anyone. So in Forestville, there was a barrier at the ZEC, and it happened that there was a wildlife agent as we arrived. The guy was called the “Scar” by his peers. So he told my father “I wouldn’t mind using my .38 for an Indian!” He was very straightforward, I can say; I was there and I remember. So my father replied, “Don’t miss me with your .38,” he said, “I’m capable of shooting a moose at 1000 feet, so I’m capable of shooting a wildlife agent.” Apart from that, my father was not the kind of man to abuse his rights, but the wildlife agent had to respect his rights. It was as simple as that.’ (Ivan, ch. 1, ref. 4)

56 For a complete description of Sioui’s political stances and actions, see Shewell (1999) and Cyr (n.d.).

57 ‘I was aware of ... claims, I was very young, I was 13 or 14 years old then. Someone came here with my father ... They wanted to make claims over Canada. It was around 1945. There was a movement; my father witnessed these things. He was travelling at that time, he was going with his own money, and we were very poor. A man called Jules Sioui was working on that ... all over Canada. He even did a hunger strike ... I went to meet him at his place later on, before he died at 97 or 98 years old. He said “I attempted to give a start to the claim”. Because it had been a while then that Indians had kept their mouths shut. And you never heard of Indians in this time. Some Indians wanted to speak and others were getting there, but meanwhile they [the governments] were scared of an Indian “renewal”, as in fact was happening. We can say that it [the Salmon War] is rooted in this time, and that then, we entered into the Salmon War… The old man died poor, as did his wife, but others benefited from their actions, for the best. Last time I met him, when he was very old, he said: “I want to pass the torch to others.” But the torch, as he said, others will benefit from it. Good, whatever!’ (Pishimnapeo, ch. 1, ref. 1–3)

58 Large gatherings of First Peoples’ leaders have been, for all generations, important in meeting with other indigenous groups and learning from them. These meetings are often invoked in the stories and are seen as ‘empowering’. For example, as Pishimnapeo recalls, the Mohawks by their radical stance provided an example to the other groups of resistance as opposed to submission: ‘The Mohawks, they were very firm; I’ve seen it in meetings. When it was not to their convenience, they moved back. They were more protesting with authority, when the others accepted the little offered.’ (Pishimnapeo, ch. 1, ref. 4)

59 ‘Radicals’ are here defined as those being willing to tackle the problem facing their community at the ‘root’ (Latin ‘radix’); they are people who ‘support great social, economic or political change’ (‘Radical’, Cambridge Dictionary) and are ready to act accordingly, even at the risk of their own lives.

60 ‘Some of us would have taken up arms … They didn’t need motivation. For them, that was it: “We will defend ourselves. If they come with guns, we will take our guns. Like them, we are able to use guns. We will not use arrows anymore. We are equal to them so we can shoot from near or far, as they do. Our rights, we will defend them and it will go this way. If we don’t succeed, they just have to do as before, they just have to massacre us, it will end there.” Yes, it was very radical.’ (Riel, ch. 2, ref. 2)

61 ‘There was an awakening. I often went to the Attikamekw-Montagnais Council and saw things, I saw what was coming, and I became convinced that we needed to “strike” somehow to wake them up … and I’m not talking of the indigenous, but of the Whites … and say “Hey! This is enough, it’s not possible anymore! You won’t crush us this way anymore.” All over the coast, rivers were the property domains of corporations and private clubs. “Indians, you don’t have the right, you can’t fish!” In Sept-Iles, settlers, they were aggressive, you can’t imagine.’ (Sam, ch. 1, ref. 12)

62 ‘It was repressed, they had so much frustration! He, Mestenapeo, he was enraged! It was inconceivable; for him, there was no possibility of negotiation. “They will move to the side!” We saw that on the [Euro]Québécois side, it was hardcore racism or mean jealousy … but for them, for Mestenapeo’s generation (in their 40s and 50s), it was internal repression and there was no more negotiation: “Recede you bunch of jerks, it’s finished! We assume who we are!” You see? It doesn’t really work that way, but that’s how they saw things, they were so frustrated and had experienced so many things … Imagine, they used to hide simply in order to assume their rights. Moose in winter, ducks in spring, all illegal. They were doing it secretly, as poachers! Whereas then, they were assuming it openly for the first time.’ (Sam, ch. 1, ref. 6)

63 ‘Back then they requested an interview, so I told the media: “They won’t treat us as our ancestors ... buy us with small mirrors.” So they asked me why I was saying that. I answered them: “Me, I’m indigenous and I have rights and I care for them. I don’t want to lose them in exchanges for lies, and to experience what happened to my great-grandfather.” They told us beautiful tales when they parked us on the reserve. The federal agents were there and said “step back, savage”. Bastards! At some point, we saw that they were trying to displace us in Pessamit! ... These things happened. (Mestenapeo, ch. 1, ref. 3 and 5) As Édouard also recalls, ‘I would have gone to great lengths, I would have allowed myself to get hurt … for the respect of my rights.’ (Édouard, Ch. 1, ref. 5). Mestenapeo, for his part, was enlivened by the conviction that their ‘rights were part of life’ (Mestenapeo, ch. 1, ref. 3).

64 ‘We had good “headmen”. Good “brains” who talked to us, who organised the group by saying “Look guys, if we don’t want to lose what we have, we need to try to keep it right now.” So they said, “Wake up, let’s all get together and move things!” They said “Some people outside want to bully us.” You know our headmen ... they said “If we don’t resist, we will lose everything. We don’t want to enter into a war, but we have rights and we have to keep defending them in order to protect them. So if we don’t wake up, if we don’t participate, don’t come complaining in 20 years from now saying we had the right but we didn’t fight. It will be your own fault.” It was very clear.’ (Tshak, ch. 1, ref. 8)

65 ‘The council led the combat. It was composed of Ernest and Mestenapeo, who were councillors. You had Bernard who was band manager; and Redgi in the new position of education-economic development agent. But a great majority of the people were with us at that time; because without it, we would never have been through the war.’ (Mesnak, ch. 1, ref. 5)

66 ‘The band council decided to set up a committee and the committee pulled the “trigger”. It started as gunpowder, I would say. We started, we were several, we embarked with the band council, we were 100 per cent with the band council, and the band council with us; “the captains are ready to sink with the boat”. This was how it was for them. They were one with the people.’ (Riel, ch. 1, ref. 6)

67 ‘Uncle David had told me stories; Uncle Arthur too. My father often told me, “Ask Arthur to tell you stories. Go and meet with him, he will tell you.” Or “go and see David, he will tell you”. Because we, the young people, we were wondering. They were our role models, including Toinon when he returned from the forest.’ (Sam, ch. 1, ref. 13)

68 ‘We had never faced such things and bang! It happened. What do you do? You try to follow the older people, the seniors of the reserve; you try to follow in their footsteps a bit. You are 20 and you are in the boat, look! So somehow, I was relying on Marcel’s reaction, he was older than me.’ (Ivan, ch. 1, ref. 4)

69 ‘I didn’t understand I was not catching the meaning of the event; for me it was all new. So, what marked me the most in the war was being the kid, the innocent child who did not understand what was going on but was going with the flow; I wasn’t catching the dimension of the movement but what I did understand, I was getting from the people who were, if I can use the term, “coaching” us.’ (Adam, ch. 1, ref. 1)

70 ‘This is because, if you let them take your rights, what will they do to you then? They will take your net and then say “You don’t have any right to spread a net. You can’t by the dock, you can’t anywhere.” So the only possible thing for us was to resist.’ (Ivan, ch. 1, ref. 3)

71 ‘I had rage in my heart, especially when the [Euro]Québécois were speaking of our rights. I realised that they didn’t care about us, they saw us as savages that they had succeeded in pushing into a small corner of land and that they had locked us away there. As they told our ancestors, they were telling us: “Don’t cross the borders of your reserve. That’s your place, we don’t want to see you go out anymore; here is the fence, if you cross it, you will suffer.” That’s more or less what they were telling us Indians before and during the war. They really wanted us to stay on the reserve and shut up. Play the pacified Indian as before. Our parents were very pacifist, they were tolerant; we, we have been less tolerant.’ (Tshak, ch. 1, ref. 2)

72 ‘Racists, as we say, were saying “Bastards of savages”, you know. For some of them, we were all “stinky savages”. Even if in our reserve, there were a lot of Indians married to non-Indians ... we were all the same.’ (Tshak, ch. 1, ref. 3)

73 ‘I said to myself: “I will be hated, but hated for a good reason! They hate all Indians in any case. I’m an Indian so I’m as hated as the others anyway.” So I participated in the Salmon War.’ (Tshak, ch. 1, ref. 8)

74 ‘My feeling was “why do you invade our land?” I also had a strong feeling of hatred … How can it be, we are almost the only people who defend ourselves. Apart from us, the others, they don’t defend themselves! Some of us had to defend the children, our goods and everything. So we stood up as warriors’ (Pierre, ch. 1, ref. 1)

75 ‘Collective autodynamisation’ corresponds to a ‘therapeutic process ... that brings local people with common interests together in ways that strengthen their collective capacity to improve their socio-economic, political, and psychosocial conditions. It is a politically organising process that enables groups of people to mobilise their resources and take charge of defining their own community’s strengths, weaknesses, strategic vision, and plan for action. It is a process that above all else fosters the conditions necessary for the autodynamisation and collective autodynamisation of individuals and communities to continue on an ever-widening scale. It embodies the power of believing in “ we can”’. (Petersen, 2001)

76 See the definition of ‘Objective’ in the DOD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms.

77 ‘I believed that as Indians, it is essential for us … Because even if they would give us millions, if you can’t fish and hunt, what do you really get at the end? For me, not much. So we kept fighting day after day.’ (Ernest, ch. 1, ref. 6)

78 ‘They wanted to take it from us! [Innu tipenitamun] It is as if I’m your father and I give you a small canoe. Three months later, someone comes and takes it away from you. It is not yours anymore and they say “it is ours, you can’t use it anymore”. And it is your father who gave you the canoe and it’s the neighbours who came to take it. “It is not yours anymore, it has never been yours!” That’s what was happening to us, they came to take away what was ours, things that belong to us, our ancestral territories, hunting grounds, trap lines and everything. It’s the same thing. And then, it’s only someone else who can fish, hunt and go there! Can you imagine? It had happened and it was happening again at the moment of the war. Transmission is done, but on their side, on the side of the most powerful. And because you’re weaker, you have to shut your mouth: “If you don’t want to get hurt, shut up!” You see? “We are stronger than you, you are 10 and we are 1,000.” So who wins? That’s how it worked back then. So as time went by, they took more and more, again and again. Then, instead of 75 per cent, they required 100 per cent. It wasn’t fair at all. So the objective before and during the war was to fight for what had always belonged to us.’ (Tshak, ch. 1, ref. 8)

79 ‘We received support from other indigenous people … from outside; they came here. It was very powerful. A lot of people from other communities came to support us. We received support from Pessamit; they set up blockades on the main road for us but also to Restigouche. So it wasn’t just about salmon … For the people, for us, all Innu, it was about more than salmon. I would say it meant “everything”, it was about our lives. We were claiming our rights, but it meant the very reason why we wanted to fight, and also why we were ready to give our lives for the cause … So it wasn’t just for a little piece of salmon, it was for much more. It meant “everything.”’ (Raoul, ch. 1, ref. 2)

80 ‘We basically didn’t have any right to fish and hunt. To be frank, we were constantly harassed at that period by wildlife agents. The Québec ministry of leisure, hunting and fishing was administrated by Mr Lessard ... who exerted a lot of pressure on indigenous people to stop hunting and fishing; really a lot of pressure. There was harassment for all the communities, in all seasons.’ (Mesnak, ch. 1, ref. 1 and 2)

81 ‘The objective, I knew it. It was to get our rights, for our rights to be recognised. That was it. For sure, at first we were also a bit fearful since we didn’t know whether we had the right or not. I had this in mind when I went to apply to hunt moose in winter. We went there three times. Three times, and it was for three days; they were condemning us to $12,000 penalties. So you remain apprehensive when you see that amount. Do we have a right or not? Back then, I was saying “Take a side!” If we have a right, we have a right. If we don’t have a right, we don’t have a right. And we will be done with that. It would be all set, all concluded.’ (Édouard, ch. 1, ref. 6)

82 See also ch. 5 for the Innu reception of state recognition as genesiac or a stratagem.

83 In a radio interview during the Salmon War, the mayor of Les Escoumins declared that the Innu had no rights outside of the reserve borders. The same rhetoric was voiced by Minister Lessard, see Obomsawin (1984).

84 As Justin remembers, ‘they would have been much less bothered if we had spread the net the other side [on the reserve land], but for us, it was a question of principle and to demonstrate our rights.’ (Justin, ch. 1, ref. 3)

85 ‘“Let’s keep going!” people were saying. How come? It was by talking, communicating all together, organising meetings and talking and talking; discussing and asking ourselves “where do we go?”’ (Sam, ch. 1, ref. 10)

86 ‘Some of us did not come … some of them were too friendly with the “whites” so they couldn’t embark in our boat. It hurt us a lot when we saw that’. (Ernest, ch. 1, ref. 2)

87 ‘We were defending Innu tipenitamun, not just “our” little rights. All the reserves were concerned, Pessamit, Mashteuiastsh, and others. We were claiming the very same rights that all indigenous peoples are claiming today.’ (Mestenapeo, ch. 1, ref. 4)

88 ‘We were in the CAM and we had a lot of contacts, a lot of exchanges with other communities; relations were strengthening. We were already in negotiation with governments, so we had developed solidarities. Before the Salmon War, we had been speaking of the defence of all our hunting and fishing rights. Do you see? So that we were feeling less and less lonely in our struggles, more able to conduct our own wars … In the negotiation [with CAM], we felt like a group, stronger. And then when the Salmon War happened in Essipit … we received a lot of support from other communities. People from all bands, including all the chiefs came … and we had a good strategy. We invited them to conduct an indigenous demonstration, of all the bands and all the chiefs. It was well done, well thought through. And we received a lot of backup from the CAM.’ (Sam, ch. 1, ref. 5)

89 ‘We want to sensitise people and demonstrate to them that we are supported; that it’s not just Essipit that will be conducting the action. So we decided to make a big show so our opponent would calm down and say “Hey … they are supported by all communities! Wait a minute … They are not alone in their small world, they are not just dreamers … they are really moving forward!”’ (Sam, ch. 1, ref. 14)

90 ‘There had been confrontations on the Moisie and Mingan Rivers. The minister had started buying back rivers to solve the problems [with the Innu]. And here we started some negotiation with the municipality. So the timing was good for action to make things move. So we decided to affirm our rights on the territory so the government would be obliged to move.’ (Mesnak, ch. 1, ref. 6)

91 ‘The principle in that [the use of media] was just to demonstrate that we, the Montagnais of Escoumins, in Essipit, we were proud of being Montagnais; that we were in that state of mind and that we wanted to show that nobody would trample over our bodies, on our principles and values, on our indigenous culture … And the government understood. It was a means of appearing on the “map” and from then everything unfolded. The government said, “Essipit, they are serious”. So it wasn’t Essipit, the “quiet” reserve, it was Essipit “they are holding on to their ancestral rights, to their culture, and they want the right to fish salmon”. It accelerated negotiations with governments.’ (Riel, ch. 1, ref. 1 and 5)

92 ‘It was “Right now!” We do it right away, we don’t wait, that’s it. It’s our rights, we protect our rights, and we defend our rights. As long as the government won’t give us a positive response, we stay here and we don’t move and we block the roads; and if they attack us, we will simply fight back.’ (Tshak, ch. 1, ref. 1)

93 ‘The band council, to increase pressure on governments, decided to set up a blockade … It lasted for three days, day and night. So the ferry came but had to return with all the passengers. They came and we didn’t let them cross, they went back on the ferry and the ferry left.’ (Riel, ch. 1, ref. 1)

94 ‘The true war started when we blocked the road, when we set up blockades at the entry of the reserve and at the dock. The ferry couldn’t dock anymore … we cut people’s access to the ferry. So it really degenerated, there were brawls.’ (Tshak, ch. 1, ref. 1)

95 ‘The sequence … Pessamit was putting pressure on, Restigouche also … it was reaching the front pages of the newspapers: “Essipit’ and ‘the Montagnais” are in revolt.’ (Riel, ch. 1, ref. 2)

96 ‘At first, we wanted to have the net seized by the Québec wildlife department. That was what indigenous people wanted. So we wanted them to come and cut the net so that the media would present a complete report, with journalists, the media; Essipit would then be in a position to give its point of view, what was pertaining to their rights.’ (Maxence, ch. 1, ref. 2 and 3)

97 ‘It was communitarian in the sense of “for everybody”. The principle is that it is for all the family, in other words, for all the community; I speak of family because Essipit is a small family.’ (Mestenapeo, ch. 1, ref. 4)
‘We distributed the salmon to everybody; it wasn’t the council doing the job. Two people caught the salmon; there was a list and “oop! It’s your turn; here are your two pounds of salmon.” It was really communitarian.’ (Napeo, ch. 1, ref. 1)

‘Everybody was very happy to eat good fresh salmon. It was really tasty. And it was then, I remember, that we would cut pieces and distribute them to each house.’ (Ernest, ch. 1, ref. 2)

98 See Obomsawin (1984).

99 ‘There were people against this system. I can give you an example. There was a commercial fisherman who said “Let me fish salmon; I will take the commercial salmon fishing, I will take the salmon.” But we told him “No! You are fishing crab! We will not give you everything because you are a commercial fisherman.” We wouldn’t have got very far with this approach. Nobody would have fought for that. So we were becoming aware of being “communitarian indigenists”, I would say … Because the fishing was really communitarian and we distributed the catch. Everybody was involved. Imagine a commercial fisherman saying “come and defend my fishing rights!” It would have all collapsed; it would have faded away, all forgotten: “This is your problem!!” But we were touching on something profoundly communitarian.’ (Sam, ch. 1, ref. 2)

100 Jeanne, ch, 1, ref. 2–4. Interviewees had eaten salmon almost from when they were born. They have a clear memory of its smell while cooking and the different ways of preparing it for eating. With the different ways of preserving it, they were eating salmon all year round. The culinary dimension of salmon is particularly vivid in the memories of the women, maybe since they did not participate in the actual fishing as their husbands, brothers and fathers did.