3. Capturing who we were: heroic postures in tragic circumstances

To rebel requires that elusive virtue – moral courage. The person with moral courage defies the crowd, stands up as a solitary individual, shuns the intoxicating embrace of comradeship, and is disobedient to authority, even at the risk of his own life, for a higher principle – and with moral courage comes persecution.

Chris Hedges (2015, p. 59)

When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.

Tecumseh

The role of subjective Essipiunnuat action during the Salmon War is explicated through autobiographical stories that clearly suggest collective agency, conscious and organised resistance, and a consolidated pledge to transform imposed situations and norms perceived as leading to group annihilation. Yet, what characterises the memories of those who were involved as the war progressed? What are the overriding images, representations and ethical components?

This chapter reports on the group’s past-self associated with the course of war as revealed in autobiographical memories. Stories are abundant in resources that display self and identity (Markus and Nurius, 1986), and have the potential to disclose dimensions of the storytellers’ agentive and epistemic selves; how they create positions and exhibit their social identities (Schiffrin, 1996). People’s self-representations from the war thus offer a great opportunity to capture their self-images at different stages.

The ‘self ’ remains fundamentally one’s memory of oneself (Klein, 2001). The conception of individual as well as collective past-self consists, then, of ‘who we believe we were’ (Greer, 1999). Markus and Nurius have defined the concept of the ‘past-self ’ as a subset of the universe of a ‘group-self ’ associated with an experience, event or situation, and what emerged from it at the time. This past-self thus remains highly normative in the present, and explicit of current circumstances. Their research (1986) shows how it represents the agent’s enduring concerns and perceptions, and the actions that gave rise to these concerns. Since self-narrative feeds into cultural memory and information is received through stories, we are somehow the stories we were told and that we tell.

A central characteristic of these past-self conceptions as reproduced is, however, that they are modelled by a deep-seated care for the maintenance of a positive sense of self-integrity. This desire is presented as the overall modelling factor of autobiographical memories (Fein and Spencer, 1997). In fact, previous research confirms a good/bad duality within the self; the good self/selves tend to be remembered warmly, while the bad self/selves tend to be just as soon overlooked and forgotten (Markus and Nurius, 1986). Self-representations in stories allow the exhumation of the subjacent and the social modes of production of these images, including the core component of social order and control that fed their manufacture and determined the formations of collective identity (Klapp, 1969).

As Kappeler explains in The Pornography of Representation (1986), modes of self-representation are inseparable from social forms of control. Representations have a continued existence in reality as objects of exchange; and moreover, they have a genesis in material production. Self-representations are, then, not only insightful about their producer but also of the past and current symbolic territories and social environments of their genitors. She suggests that self-representations in memory stories offer opportunities to grapple with their mode of production, including internalised orders and regulations institutionalising their fabrication (p. 3).

Foucault (1973) has highlighted how the mechanisms of social control and the operation of internalised norms determine one’s self-perceptions of ‘what one can, is able or prone to do, or is likely to do’. Yet, collective action and shared behaviours often aim at the transformation of such standards and are thus located beyond existing norms and ordered social relations. Consequently, group actions, especially in the context of rebellion and uprising, must also be considered as a materialisation of new rules, and represent attempts to transform existing norms (Della Porta and Diani, 2006, pp. 12–13).

Collective actions involve the surfacing of emergent norms very specific to the moment of action; they often grow out of the sociohistorical circumstances generated by social movement and a commitment to normative changes. These observable occurrences engender perceptions of unanimity of purpose and uniformity of behaviour, one of their functions being to enhance micro-mobilisation, solidarity, commitment and the solidification of collective identity (Scott and Marshall, 2005, p. 186; Hunt and Benford, 2008, p. 433).

Any investigation of earlier self-conceptions cannot ignore the fact that opposition to past social orders tends to fall into oblivion. This is also relevant for the current order, which is another powerful filter (Markus and Nurius, 1986; Conway, 2000). The potent effects of any command to forget emanating from figures of authority should never be underestimated. Current normative order tends to leave in the shadow dimensions of the past that are opposed to it or that question its legitimacy. The social order and its main agents are thus also inhabited by entrenched concerns, with the need to uphold a positive self-image involving an arsenal of psychological mechanisms used. These are also deployed in order to maintain them as figures of authority (D’Argembeau and Vanderlinden, 2008). In this sense, remembrance, and particularly that which counters a desire to forget, can be perceived as subversive, a source of uncertainty and an issue of power; it reactivates representations and sets of norms that have the potential to re-evaluate the current order and demonstrate discontinuities and inconsistencies. Significantly, it tends meanwhile to produce parrhesia, in the sense of speaking truth to power. Situating stories in the context of their social production provides access to shadowed figures and elements that have been forgotten.

Figures of the Essipiunnuat’s past-self associated with the Salmon War, and aspects of its fabric, are here portrayed through three main modes of self-representation in autobiographical stories from the course of the war: the evocative dimensions of individual self-portraits, the dominant and normative characters contained in inter-individual depictions and in-group imageries and representations of the collective.

Self-portraits: narrating one’s performance

A person’s self-identity, as composed of unique traits and chiefly achieved through inter-individual differentiation and motives of protecting or enhancing the person psychologically, is central to autobiographical memories (Brewer and Gardner, 1996). Individuals’ self-portraits are thus crucial material for accessing a group’s past-self. This section exposes the most valued traits of individual past depictions during the main episodes of the war, including the linkages between elements of personal role descriptions, residues of social location contained in the background of self-portraits, and the self-narration of emotions.

Configurations of commitment

Autobiographical stories are generally characterised by one’s self-depictions as the action develops (Conway, 2000, p. 25). A distinguishing feature of self-role descriptions is their evaluation and ordering in function of measures of commitment as an emergent norm specific to the course of war. Four main posturings emerge from the self-role depictions: commanders, warriors, supporters and the uncommitted. These roles vary according to the degree of involvement in and commitment to the war. Commitment consists of

The concept of commitment refers to a person’s willingness to carry out the requirements of a pattern of social action because he or she sees it as stemming from his or her fundamental nature as a person. The specific context of war would be exceptionally fertile for the generation of normative reflux from repressed referential and emergent norms, which are unique and sharply contrast with general societal standards (Kanter, 1972). In addition, these norms exert a powerful influence on behaviours. They create a momentary conformity to unique normative standards that develop spontaneously in this context (Forsyth, 2010). Such circumstances of collective action, contention and rebellion favour the eruption of re-identification dynamics and the rewriting of social roles (Friedman, 2004).

The centrality of participation and commitment is patent in recollections of the Salmon War. An understanding of individual commitment can be gained through considering the importance of the sovereignty movement’s existence, particularly during the uprising when standards of behaviours were clearly being transformed. Stories report commitment as an emerging norm that shaped people’s self-representations. This is understandable since the movement’s nucleus of power in time of rebellion remains the larger function of the individual’s dispositions, interests and worldview. These become linked to the goals, ideology and internal requirements of the movement as an organised collective; it was entirely dependent on whether people would leave or remain with the cause and commit to its aims.

Commanders and the promise of commitment

The command to commit and members’ receptivity to it, as a prerequisite for the movement’s success, dominated the self-portraits. This is particularly true of self-defined commanders, and testimonies illustrate well that the leaders’ decisions, actions and self-confidence in wartime were inextricably linked to people’s trust and support.¹

Stories also reveal an ‘us’ that explicitly represents a category of actors whose primary function is associated with obeying group requirements, as well as promoting a similar hierarchy among followers.² This role includes self-representation as an agent within the movement, as an initiator of the event. It includes self-attributed access to ancient knowledge about sui generis collective rights and obligations inherited from direct encounters with Essipiunnuat Elders, including a particular awareness of inherent Innu ancestral rights and historical consciousness justifying the transgression of the state order, despite its momentous consequences.³

Those self-portraying as leaders in the war are connected to images of direct confrontation with state agents and resistance to alleged illegitimate state intervention. This involved taking direct responsibility to protect collective interests and rights and being at the forefront of resistance through self-directed action at the risk of their lives.⁴

Self-confidence is also associated with this role, explained through deep connections with an indigeneity that would render them exceptionally impermeable to Euroquébécois intimidation.⁵ The commander is a source of authority in war, able to turn situations to the advantage of the group and to influence his enemies. To be a leader would require being psychologically decolonised and freed from internalised negative self-conceptions as an ‘Indian’. The commander is, then, in a position to escort his group towards its own liberation, his self-knowledge allowing him to closely understand what is going on with his fellows and to model accomplished forms of agency. Leaders tend to present themselves as the masterminds of the war, endowed with maximum self-control based on greater self-knowledge. Only some forms of disgrace allegedly justified their expression of rage, anger and revenge, as the performance of a ‘higher duty’.

Self-control is a core element of being a good commander; the capacity to put the self at the service of the highest collective interest. This self-attributed ‘highest reason’ is used in some narrations to internally justify the exclusion of ‘extremist’ elements and those leaders who were not flexible enough in negotiation with governments. In fact, the stories told also show that power struggles were raging among some leaders of the group.

It is mainly people who were in positions of power during the war who paint self-portraits of themselves as ‘commanders’ – such as, for example, the chief, the councillors, or band council administrators. Their role is described as a function of a collective purpose that requires the people’s constant assent. They describe a self that must be mastered in order to accomplish its highest social obligations and display unsurpassable degrees of commitment. On the other hand, they require the same level of commitment from others. They call for mimesis and conformity of all selves with the imperative of respecting internal order. Cultural self-awareness, a sense of the deep-seated ancestral normative, as well as the highest consciousness of collective ends to be pursued, are presented in stories as being a precondition to captain. Above all, to be a commander implies a capacity to act upon this knowledge to carry out direct, authoritative, rebellious and perilous actions, often in transgression of exogenous orders. Indeed, they are expected to have the competence to direct other members of the movement as well as maintaining consistency among the cell of commanders.

Warriors: the art of self-sacrifice

Another category concerns people’s self-identification as ‘warriors’. They portray themselves in fusion with the group and their accomplishments as central to the making of the rebellion. Their depictions generally comprise joint actions in perilous circumstances leading to serious physical wounds.⁶ They also pose as defenders of the Essipiunnuat in circumstances where, for example, they look after the elderly who might be mistreated, or when there are vulnerable children who need protection.

Eager claims of making the greatest sacrifices to defend the symbolic and ‘sacred net’ are predominant in the stories of self-identified warriors. They describe their actions as being free of the constraints of death. Their behaviours are presented in contrast with the attitude of the colonised and ‘pacified Indian’, allegedly characterising the past generation. Stories report the temperament of warriors as distinguished by a renewed volition for violent self-sacrifice.⁷

Warriors also portray themselves as acting as a decision-making nucleus. In perilous circumstances, those who were less experienced claim to have modelled their behaviour on that of the commanders ‘at whatever cost’ (Ivan, chapter 2, ref.5; Karl, chapter. 2, ref. 6). They manifest intractable recalcitrance towards exogenous control and symbols of authority. This spirit of revolt often translated into insurrectionist acts, such as a spontaneous assault on the government agents or their vehicle.⁸

Descriptions of non-compliance with exogenous forces does indeed prove their disobedience, but also the absence of influence of these potencies over their interiority. Such rebelliousness is well illustrated by someone who was in his early 20s at the time. Wildlife agents captured him and tried to push him to the edge in an attempt to get him to talk. As he says: ‘They were shouting at me to obey; I decided I would not.’ In the story of his action at sea, for example, he stresses his absolute ‘rebellion’ towards the ‘authorities’ and his faithfulness in being a ‘free hunter’.⁹

Warriors’ self-portraits are overwhelmingly typified by joint actions in hazardous circumstances. These measures generally incurred physical suffering to protect ‘sanctified’ objects. The performances they describe exemplify complete loyalty to inner regulations and a break with the exogenous order.

Supporters

Some interviewees were supportive of the movement, yet in their descriptions of their situations, it is clear they could not do more or do it openly. This group manifests a degree of commitment but its members do not present themselves as warriors, mainly because of their age, gender, position or status in the community. Instead, their stories come under a ‘supporters’ category.

One self-narration, for example, visibly illustrates a strong desire to self-identify and to be perceived as a warrior. It looks like an attempt to justify why this was not the case. In a sense, this testimony clarifies the frontiers between being a warrior and a supporter. Because of his innocence and self-ignorance, mainly attributable to his young age, this individual lacked one of the core characteristics of a warrior – that is, the ability to commit entirely through conscious self-sacrifice. Interestingly, he then tries to compensate for the impracticality of being an integral warrior through diverse techniques such as embellishing his only significant action during the war, and overstressing the dramatic context of war in parallel with his own vulnerability, and his undeniable courage despite his young age (Neal, ch. 2, ref. 6). Thirty years after the event, people will still tend to conform to their past-self from the time of the war.

In addition, the individual in question demonstrates how his actions in the war stemmed from undeviating compliance to an order given by the commanders. In his attempt to absorb the qualities of a warrior, he describes meticulously the significance of his actions in maintaining the group integrity. He speaks profusely about the sacredness of the net, but also portrays himself in detail in relation to it. Significantly, he attests that his actions are the quintessence of a supporter’s commitment.

According to the stories, women were confined to the role of supporters. First of all, salmon fishing was ‘a guy thing’. Then, as one woman mentioned, ‘We, the wives, we did not go to the front. It was too dangerous for us and anyway we had to stay with the kids. That being said, we were taking care of our warriors and were very supportive of the whole movement’ (Esther, Ch.4, ref. 5). Newly married, Esther constructed her role as the model wife supporting her husband, totally embracing his struggle – the highest form of commitment for a woman during a war.

Another person could only be a supporter due to his job. As described at length, his position in the community prevented him from engaging as much as he wished as a warrior in contentious initiatives. As he explains, his role already had ‘its utility for the community, in particular to maintain control and prevent homicide’ (Maxence, chapter 2, ref. 2) His demonstration of commitment thus also meant he had to accept not being a warrior but taking the role the group requested of him.

In another interesting case the commanders supposedly asked a supporter, clandestinely, to play the role of external informant for the movement.¹⁰ This person infiltrated the anti-Indian movement in order to influence and moderate ‘the most extremist agents among the Euroquébécois’ (Maxence, chapter 2, ref. 3). As a non-member of the group at that time, or a non-status Indian in accordance with the Indian Act, he was more of a secret supporter. He used his non-membership, and the distrust it produced, for the benefit of the movement. His support was useful because it was secret and his commitment went as far as it could.

Supporters’ self-portraits are characterised by a strong and unquestioned inner commitment to the movement, albeit a restricted one. Their self-perception translates into stories of compensation, of mythologising one’s actions, an over-identification with warriors’ deeds and commitment, as well as diverse rhetorical strategies to maintain a positive self-image and to prove allegiance.

Uncommitted

People conspicuously comment on non-participatory members at the fringe of the group who ‘stayed at home, not supporting us directly’ (Ernest, chapter 2, ref. 13). The stories portray non-engagement in the context of the war as transgressive, if not a betrayal. As autobiographical stories tend to be strongly self-advantageous, self-perceptions of these non-participatory interviewees often feature justifications or silence. One, for instance, said he ‘remembered nothing’; others flatly refused to be interviewed or accepted uneasily. The reasons behind these refusals and silences can contribute to contextualising forgetfulness.

Among those who agreed to be interviewed, Alyha, for example, affirmed that the unfolding of events is for her a memory blank: ‘maybe it was more striking for others … But in my case, this event means absolutely nothing to me … I’ve never heard of the Salmon War’ (chapter 2, ref. 1). Justin, who was in a position of power at the time of the interview, was in his early 20s during the war. At first he claimed not to ‘remember much about the war’ because of his age (Justin, chapter 2, ref. 2 and 3). Off the record, he shamefacedly admitted to having partied a lot with his friends, including many Euroquébécois, during this period of his life. As he subsequently confessed, he spent all his spare time at the tavern and furtively justified not participating because of his drug and alcohol use. He now identifies himself as a radical indigenist. Yet his memories do not chime with this image. He said at the end of the interview that the Salmon War is something that should be forgotten.

Tshak’s testimony also helps our understanding of aspects of non-commitment. At first, he did not participate but then became a warrior, which allows him to speak more freely about his period of neutrality. He remembers that at first he was afraid that engaging directly would mean automatically losing his job; he was already suffering from the stigma of being an Indian at work (chapter 2, ref. 5).¹¹ After being mistreated at work, despite his neutrality, and understanding that as an Indian he was ‘never right anyway’, he decided to engage completely in the war. After embracing his indigeneity, he left his job, came back to Essipit and was involved in the movement:

Social pressures weighed on people, discouraging them from identifying as Indian, and conditioning them not to engage with their group. There was a price to be paid if they supported the group and were perceived as Indian. For many, engaging in war meant jeopardising their only source of income. As the experience of Pishimnapeo illuminates, apparent non-participation in the war sometimes masked less apparent engagement, such as fulfilling the responsibility of feeding one’s extended family (Pishimnapeo, chapter 2, ref. 5).

That said, not participating in the war remains something the self-portraits tend to gloss over. Non-participation therefore clearly broke a command to commit, was considered conduct that endangered the staying power of the movement and needed to be outlawed. It is presented as seditious, condemnable or shameful. Explanations and justifications for non-participation consist mostly of invoking social positions that heavily contextualise the role, some being perceived as more acceptable than others (sustaining the family, for example, as opposed to alcoholism, fear or the shame of being identified as Indian). Clearly, the emerging norm of commitment, and the conformity of individual self-portraits with it, are pivotal in any discussion of the remembrance and forgetting of the event.

Staging oneself: the social backdrops

The normative predominance of commitment in the specific context of war is evident in the self-portraits; characters are shaped in accordance with the potential for commitment that they represent. Moreover, characters commonly come from positions that are used to contextualise self-roles, or from social backgrounds from which they construct positions (Schiffrin, 1996). But what do people’s self-portraits display about the social determinants of their production?

As commitment concerns the attachment of the self to the requirement of social relations (Kanter, 1968, p. 502), the comprehension of attachments to and identification with a group would then be crucial in understanding individual dedication to group purposes. In this sense, the social backgrounds of the self-portraits offer rich insights for contextualising narrators’ constraints and the social settings of their actions. Noticeably, two social centrifugal forces to commitment emerge in the self-narrations: an ideological component about dual cultural identification, and an economic dimension concerning the group’s dependency on external subsidies.

Dual referentiality

Self-portraits reveal a phenomenon of dual referentiality through an explicit relationship with the worlds of ‘Indians’ and ‘Euroquébécois/whites’. A group of reference, one whose perspective is assumed by the actor, is activated by agents when evaluating their own qualities, circumstances, attitudes, values and behaviours (Shibutani, 1954; Thompson and Hickey, 2005). Stories clearly report the existence of two of these sources of reference among those involved as the war ran its course.

Until 1984, Canada’s assimilation policy required that if an Innu woman married a Euroquébécois and had children with them she and the children would have their Indian status taken away.¹² Conversely, when a Euroquébécois woman married an Innu man, she would be given Indian status. Esther, for example, had just acquired Indian status through her marriage at the start of the Salmon War (Esther, chapter 2, ref. 9). Since 1945, almost all Innu men had married Euroquébécois women, and most of the time these men were away from the reserve for economic reasons. Yet all the Innu women who had married Euroquébécois men from surrounding villages had had to leave the reserve. As a consequence, the women from the reserve were anchored within a Euroquébécois referential and were apparently transmitting their conceptions to their children. During the war, in 1980–1, all Essipiunnuat families were, therefore, significantly related in one way or another to Euroquébécois families, especially to those in Les Escoumins but in the surrounding villages as well.

Situations of war generally imply in-group crystallisation of common societal and cultural attributes and the emergence of inter-group polarisations and antinomies (Hamilton, 1991, p. 12; Bhatt, 1999). Indeed, the event engendered a series of inner micro-fragmentations. For example, the intensification of inter-group feuds deeply affected the relationships Innu people had with family members by marriage:

As links with the people of Escoumins were significant for all of those taking part, these associations appear frequently in self-portraits as a background to individual action. If these landscapes are closely examined, two main ways of belonging to the group are revealed: cultural and legal. One person, for example, as a ‘status Indian’, was a member of the group. Yet, as he says, culturally he was mostly tied to the other side. With his Innu father being away for work, since ‘there was nothing on the reserve’, his mother had sent him to his grandmother in a surrounding township (Adam, chapter 2, ref. 3–4). In essence, the Salmon War was, for him, an introduction to a reference group to which he legally belonged, but did not rely on culturally.

In contrast to this, some who did not have Indian status felt this double referentiality intensely as they did not ‘ legally’ belong to the group, yet had grown up on the reserve and felt culturally Innu. They were well aware of the tensions.¹³ Karl, for example, defined himself as a member of the reserve and engaged in the war, despite the fact that his mother (and he himself ) did not legally belong to the group. Maxence’s¹⁴ self-portrait also has this dual belonging as a preponderant background.¹⁵

The existence of two groups of reference among the Essipiunnuat during the war is a dominant feature that surfaces as a background in almost all the self-portraits. As for other bands that have been subject to Canadian assimilation policies, the Essipiunnuat‘s absorption of Euroquébécois cultural referents must be regarded as correlating with the circumstances created to prepare their planned ‘assimilation into the dominant, non-Indian society’ (Tobias, 1976). If the residential school was one of the devices that propelled this absorption, state regulation of intermarriages was another. It consisted mainly of the use of Euroquébécois women as assimilative devices, and the destruction of the intergenerational and cultural bridges that Innu women had built.

This dual referentiality, as a result of advanced absorption of the Euroquébécois social imaginary, the antinomies it entails, and the existence of the settler society as a point of reference, definitively increased the price of committing to one group. It placed narrators in front of heartbreaking dilemmas, which demanded that they be in tandem with or choose between a dual attachment that became problematic as the war raged, and amplified the internal demand for allegiance.

Economic dependencies: ‘We had large families to feed’

Other aspects of the social background, often associated with cultural alienation and dualism, concern the economic condition of the group, its poverty and dependence on external subsidies. More than half of the people interviewed, who were old enough to work at the outbreak of the war, were working for either a lumber company in the forest, a mining company in the north or a local business or institution in a nearby Euroquébécois village.

In all their self-portraits, identifying as being ‘on the Indian side’ had implications for them at their places of work. Maxence’s story, for instance, expresses the intense discomfort people faced at work when they identified as Indian during the war.¹⁶ Ernest relays how people had to go back to their workplace day after day, even when the conflict was going on, since there was ‘no way to earn a living’ on their reserve (Ernest, chapter 2, ref. 6).

Life on the reserve was inherently precarious and the need to go elsewhere for work resulted in the majority of the men being away all the time, and, hence, relatively disconnected from local affairs (Pishimnapeo, chapter 2, ref. 1–3). Since the early 20th century, the group had effectively been economically marginalised (Mailhot, 1996). Other indigenous groups throughout the region also shared this situation. As early as the 1940s, indigenist militants such as Jules Sioui and William Commanda had denounced the disastrous impact on local groups of authorities having intensified assimilative strategies, which consisted of ‘treating the Indian in such manner that all the Indians abandon their reserves or gradually become extinct due to the impossibility of earning a living’ (Sioui, n.d., quoted in Shewell, 1999). It could be said therefore that the Crown had effectively designed this dependency in addition to having specifically conceived the reserve and the band council to subsequently dissolve into the surrounding municipalities (Ross-Tremblay and Hamidi, 2019, p. 265).

The economic social background on the reserve in the 1980s, revealed in the stories, illustrates the ultimate consequences of such procedures. Broadly, economic marginalisation resulted in dependence on Euroquébécois society and fostered assimilation. In the context of war, this dependence meant the primary group of reference paid a greater price for their loyalty, since it jeopardised people’s only source of income. Being forced to integrate into Euroquébécois society meant that these men had to face the stigma of identifying and being identified as Indian. Their absence from home also decreased their influence within their families and in the community in general, engendering ruptures in transmission that resulted in even greater absorption into Euroquébécois culture and its representations of ‘Indians’.

The self-portraits that emerge from the stories suggest that the sense of commitment, as a requirement of social relations in war, faced two centrifugal forces. These constraints, apparently inherent in the group’s social settings, emerge simultaneously as a colonial legacy and a sociohistorical determinant of group life. Yet, they also appear as the main elements against which the most committed fought. As the movement rebelled against the state’s attempts to extinguish Innu rights and the historical state policy of ‘effect[ing] assimilation through coercive and dogmatic means’ (Shewell 1999, p. 234), it was also struggling within itself with forces discouraging self-identification as Indian, thus increasing the sacrifice involved in commitment and subtly normalising collective self-annihilation. Underlying the collective rejection of a colonial status, an internal struggle was raging against the admission, to use Fanon’s (1959) words, that the group’s ‘misfortunes proceeded directly from its racial and cultural characteristics’ – the insidious and underlying colonial myth that Indians as an ‘inferior and decadent race’ should vanish (pp. 42–5).

Emotional undertow

In the autobiographical stories, people paint their characters and the social landscape within which they were functioning but they also present their emotions quite openly. Since there is a clear emotional dimension, together with a legal, political and economic basis, to cultural domination, should be a routine aspect of analysing social movements (Howard, 1995). Greater attention to emotion builds ‘thicker descriptions of social movements’ and better understanding of their micro-foundations (Goodwin, Jasper and Polleta, 2008, p. 424).

The study of emotions illuminates key facets of the deployment of collective identities, including advances and setbacks of mobilisation and commitment as well as in-group impacts of counter responses from the movement’s opponents (Duperré, 2008; Hunt and Benford, 2008, p. 449). Previous research hints at the existence of vital yet ‘tricky to catch’ figures of collective agency that can only be assessed by considering a wide scope of emotions, including embarrassment, humiliation and other related feelings, such as shame linked to rejection or a sense of failure or inadequacy (Scheff, 1988, p. 96). The relationship between emotions and self-identity remains crucial; the emotional aspects of life stories link past experiences to the continuously developing sense of self (Fivush, 1994).

Yet autobiographical accounts tend to be self-advantageous, and as a result are likely to leave out any feelings of shame (Scheff, 1988, p. 96). Shame tends to be slyly forgotten. As a primary social emotion, mainly fed by threats to the social bond, it remains, however, a barometer of social order, control and perceived transgressions to collective identity. The consideration and contrasting of positive emotions (‘that tend to be remembered vividly’) and negative emotions (‘soon to be forgotten’) contained in personal accounts is essential to a fuller understanding of the representation of oneself in the past and of areas of shared experiences.

The thrill of an uprising

Personal accounts contain positive feelings; yet these tend to be shared only among the most committed actors. Positive feelings are associated with collective agency and impulses of rebellion, together with assertion of indigeneity. People also report feeling astonished and surprised to witness such a collective uprising. In general, contributors were profoundly affected by the great sense of self-respect expressed in the unfolding of events, in particular by some people’s readiness to make sacrifices when resisting. Stories also report the experience of an aesthetic sense of beauty in observing ‘the development of the whole movement, the unification of the people, the incredible extent to which people were coming together, the warriors’ readiness to die for the cause and to see things through to the end’ (Raoul, chapter 2, ref. 1 and 17). Sensations of ‘joy and pride’ are coupled with an awareness of the deployment of resistance, that the group they belonged to was ‘standing up to their oppressors’ (Pierre, chapter 2, ref. 8).

Various speakers fondly remembered the highly positive feelings arising from the intensification of comradeship in the course of war. They felt the strong spirit of camaraderie and the ‘one for all and all for one’ mentality was ‘the most positive feeling they have ever experienced in their lives’ (Raoul, chapter 2, ref. 24). People acknowledged an unusual feeling of solidarity and in-group complicity. This is also related to the exhilarating perception of the immense power and sense of potency associated with being in the movement, and with observing the defiant and brave attitude of the older warriors in tragic circumstances (Adam, chapter 2, ref. 4). This sense of empowerment was even more intense among the leaders; one remembers experiencing a distinctive and unrivalled feeling of power when he became aware that people were mobilised and were validating his authority as a leader (Mesnak, chapter 2, ref. 9).

Another set of emotions pertains to the transcendence of fear. It is well known that such a phenomenon is observable in the context of normative reemergence (Riis, 1998). During certain episodes, when their lives were in danger, various people said they felt a sense of release from the fear of death, or had witnessed others do so in similar situations. Riel, for example, heard bullets whistling through the air near him. Yet he recalls not thinking of his own death. As he says, ‘they could have shot me with a 12-calibre rifle and I would not have bothered. It would not have meant anything to me … absolutely nothing. No, I was ready to die right there, on the wharf ’ (Riel, chapter 2, ref. 2).

This is not all. Interviewees report the experience of a zealous desire to sacrifice, to ‘do whatever it takes’ for the ‘benefit of the entire group’. Karl explains his pleasure at offering one’s life in simple compliance, as a warrior, with an implicit ethical code among the Essipiunnuat according to which ‘one never bows his head in front of a threat, never obeys fear’. Instead, one must ‘give everything [one] can’ (Karl, chapter 2, ref. 7).

However, people do also report the awareness that this feeling of omnipotence was shaped by exceptional circumstances and situations. Édouard, for example, thinks it was essential to balance the fact that ‘we effectively felt very strong’ with the one that ‘we thought we were strong’ (chapter 2, ref. 3). He suggests that the specific context of the Salmon War led the group to overestimate its force and to underestimate the painful backlash that was to follow.

The miseries of reaction

The pleasures of collective agency were shared chiefly among a very small number of actors, particularly the most committed characters and, beyond that circle, those who most asserted their indigeneity. The emotions of those who identified less with the indigenous movement are closer to uneasiness, and they share feelings of insecurity, rejection and shame. However, the personal accounts do reveal the importance of negative emotions such as insecurity, terror, humiliation, rage, hatred and stress, felt by all. As these feelings were widely shared, they are, for the most part, associated with the effects of reaction. They highlight the hostile responses to the movement, the backlash following indigenous resistance and the self-assertion of sovereignty.

As in the case of similar resistance movements, the deployment of collective identity generated a counter response from opponents to the movement (Hunt and Benford, 2008, p. 448). Effectively, the Essipiunnuat uprising immediately encountered renewed attempts from the Québec state, as well as from local villagers, to reassert their power and to institute control. When not silenced or forgotten, the painful miseries of these reactions loom larger than the pleasures invoked previously in the memory of all interviewees and group members.

The Salmon War is connected in local memory with more negative than positive emotions; the memories contain some good moments, but these were entwined in episodes that were ‘very hard to live through’ (Mesnak, chapter 2, ref. 3), and the people who experienced them ‘have been trying to forget the whole thing since’ (Ernest, chapter 2, ref. 8). For many, the experience of the war was traumatic. The indigenous side was the most deeply wounded, ‘inside themselves, for each individual. Some of them were deeply injured’ (Maxence, chapter 2, ref. 17). Esther shares this evaluation. ‘It happened 30 years ago and I can still smell it’, she says. In her view, the emotional cost of the event was devastatingly high, and it marked people’s lives forever. Even in the memory of those who were most committed, the event brings back negative feelings such as terror, fear, stress and tiredness (Esther, chapter 2, ref. 1–7).

Participants correlated their gloomy feelings with being repressed by the state and the locals, and the violence and intimidation that came from the Euroquébécois in general (Adam, chapter 2, ref. 3). As one example out of many, Pierre vividly recalls the emotional situations produced by the provincial police force’s unexpected and massive intervention on the reserve:

Likewise, Ivan’s memories of the event are dominated by the terror he felt when the Québec agents kidnapped him. They pulled him by the hair onto their boats and took him away to sea. At the mercy of three wildlife agents, he thought they were going to beat him to death (Ivan, chapter 2, ref. 3). Moreover, the magnitude of the state response to their resistance left a deep impression. In some episodes, the small group faced a Québec government helicopter that descended to within 15 to 20 feet above them. In other situations, large and well-equipped government boats charged at Essipiunnuat fishing boats. ‘It was very imposing’, remembers Ivan (Ivan, chapter 2, ref. 1).

These moments of confrontation with the authorities provoked feelings of terror, particularly among the women whose husbands were at risk. As soon as the men left home, the women felt great anxiety. As Esther recalls, ‘each time the phone rang, we thought something had happened’. She says she will never forget her feelings in the war, especially when she was convinced that a homicide was close to taking place (chapter 2, ref. 2 and 9). Some also recall their terror when they heard gunshots. They knew that their husbands, or fathers in the case of the children, were out there. Elizabeth, who was a child during the war, remembers clearly hearing the sounds of gunshots, terrified, while sitting on her mother’s knee. ‘I remember the smells of that exact moment’, she says (Elisabeth, chapter 2, ref. 2).

However, it is the intimidation, racism and aggressiveness of the local Euroquébécois that appears to be the greatest source of negative feeling. One of the most emotionally charged episodes remains the attempts, by the people of Escoumins, to assist the state and repress the ‘Indian uprising’. People present at the wharf remember ‘as if it was yesterday’ their apprehension at seeing the ‘white’ population arriving to ‘settle the Indian case’. As Ernest says, ‘it was a huge thing for us. For my part, I never want to live through such an experience again’ (chapter 2, ref. 2). Karl was reduced to tears during his interview, 30 years after the event, when he recalled the episode during which he was mistreated.¹⁷

Intimidation in the workplace looms large in many recollections. These highly emotional episodes clearly forged the collective memory of the group. Those who experienced it were afraid that ‘terrible things happened’ (Pierre, chapter 2, ref. 4). Tshak, for example, says ‘It was hell for me’, as he was working as an attendant at his brother-in-law’s gas station. He was harassed and hustled at his workplace for more than three weeks. In expectation of a ‘real attack’, he carried a weapon in his pocket in order to defend himself (chapters 2–8, ref. 1). The rhetoric of the reaction consisted of disseminating the idea that ‘since they are savages, they should be forbidden to earn a living from white companies’ (Tshak, chapter 2, ref. 8).

The experiences of lumbermen, who continued working despite the war, are compelling in this respect. For them, the situation was especially tough. They were a small group of Essipiunnuat, isolated far off in the forest with an overwhelming majority of hostile Euroquébécois. The war continued in the workers’ camp.¹⁸ Broadly, all those who were identified as Indians, or their allies, were subjected to intimidation and associated feelings of tension. In this climate, people who were identified as Indians, regardless of whether they were committed to the cause or not, were all stigmatised and held responsible for the actions of the movement. Some remain scarred to this day by these degradations. According to Tshak, at least 25 per cent of the Euroquébécois were openly racist and supportive of the reactionary faction and its discriminatory views (chapter 2, ref. 2).

All those ‘going outside the reserve’ thus repeatedly faced their fears generated by wickedness, sadism, humiliation, threats and bullying, especially in Escoumins. They had to be constantly ‘on guard’ (Raoul, chapter 2, ref. 25). What interviewees state was harder to bear remains the collective stigmatisation of the Indians and their direct experience with racism. As Ernest says, ‘to be called savage the way we were … it hurts’ (chapter 2, ref. 12). ‘We swallowed a lot of foolish words, all the Indians were “a bunch of profiteers”,’ remembers one person who was still a teenager at the time (Adam, chapter 2, ref. 10). This racial humiliation was indiscriminately and routinely directed towards people of all ages, including children.¹⁹

People were torn as they were under a lot of pressure to take a side, and even families were severely divided (Maxence, chapter 2, ref. 7). The reaction reverberated within the group. From the moment they decided to assert their rights, there was a lot of pressure, even within the reserve, and from their own families: ‘there was racism everywhere. We faced racism daily, even within the reserve’ (Mestenapeo, chapter 2, ref. 4 and 5). It was a great challenge encountering overwhelming racism outside the reserve, but it ‘was ... hardest of all’ within it (Ernest, chapter 2, ref. 5).

People associate their experiences of humiliation and intimidation, or being made to feel it was ‘shameful to be Indian’, and being punished for it, with the explosions of rage and fury that followed. This intimate relationship between emotion and violence, and the infernal ‘spiral of shame and rage’, is a well-known dynamic in destructive conflicts (Scheff and Retzinger, 1991). One interviewee, for example, associates his greatest moment of wrath and loss of control with a racist attack on his elderly uncle (Sam, chapter 2, ref. 7). Another recalls how the intervention of the Québec authorities by merely stepping on to reserve territory provoked in him a ‘blast of hatred’; it was perceived as a symbolic offence that revived reminiscences of collective abuses and historical wounds (Pierre, chapter 2, ref. 2). Tshak asserts that as the war progressed it generated ‘a deep and lasting rage’ in him. He traces his feelings back to the Euroquébécois’ denial²⁰ of their rights and the wilful blindness of the historical injustices committed against them.²¹

Analysis of the most significant emotions highlights two fundamental phenomena that occurred in the war. These give access to the social sources of their production – an uprising and a reaction, respectively. In the end, if the positive emotions,²² primarily related to the process of uprising, appear to be restricted to only a fraction of the members, the negative ones²³ tend to be shared by a greater number. Such emotions were experienced by all interviewees and were shared not only by those who identified themselves as Indians in the war, but also by those whom others identified as Indians or of being on the Indians’ side. The course of the war, among the great majority of people who experienced it, is predominantly associated with negative emotions; these conclusively overwhelm the positive ones. Thus, the self-narration of emotions reveals that the process of uprising, of collective agency and assertion were the source of intense and positive feelings in the group, but this was principally among those who were most committed. The negative emotions are all related to the reactions to Innu resistance, self-assertion and the commitment to indigeneity; the emotional traumas were shared extensively among all group members.

Finally, when characters, social backgrounds and emotions in self-portraits are studied, a group past-self is revealed, characterised by a profound commitment to and assertion of indigeneity, which resists the historical and actualised forces seeking its complete destruction. Furthermore, a collective consciousness is born out of the knowledge that uprising and assertion of indigeneity brings with severe punishment, and that, ultimately, being indigenous can be tragically painful. This is a determinant of cultural oblivion and a barrier to remembrance and intergenerational transmission.

Inter-individual depictions: narrating others’ gestures

Interviewees’ representation of others in their accounts is also essential in investigating the group’s past-self. Released from the strict bonds of maintaining a positive self-image, these representations offer crucial complementary information; one’s social identity remains, in fact, attached to the constellation of its composing relational and collective self.

It is assumed here that the individual self is composed of dyadic relationships and that it is chiefly manufactured by assimilating with others (Brewer and Gardner, 1996). Individuals are not only inclined to conform to others’ behaviours, but also to copying their interiority (Readopt, 2003). Social representations have an immense impact on individual lives and provide first-hand material for exhuming collective past-self conceptions. Even a cursory glance at these representations in the stories illustrates the central place that is given to heroic actions.

Heroic characters become symbolic representations in people’s stories. As Chatterji (1986) proposes, the concept of the hero-as-self can make visible how speakers, who cannot narrate their experiences from their own point of view, recite heroic gestures in order to absorb heroism. The identification between the narrator and his narration of heroism allows him to share it and its typical qualities of protection, bravery and self-sacrifice in unique circumstances. Inter-individual depictions in descriptions of the course of war are predominantly characterised, in their contents and forms, by the exaltation of heroic achievements.

An aesthetic approach helps to connect with ‘more sensuous and perhaps more tangible, yet equally important forms of insights’ (Bleiker, 2009) that might give access to the social composition of the Essipiunnuat representations and the social fabric of their memory. Halbwachs highlighted long ago how a set of images that is transmitted, received, absorbed and widely shared within a given group echo the presence of a collective memory (Halbwachs, 1950, p. 54; Rimé and Christophe, 2001, p. 131). Communalities in these inter-individual representations are therefore rich material; they provide access to elements of a past and shared sense of ‘we’-ness in order to disinter, from the collective drama of the course of the war, commonly remembered figures of heroes and villains, shared contexts and stages of their actions, and the normative quintessence of these myths (Klapp, 1969, quoted in Hunt and Benford, 2008, p. 437).

Heroism

Inter-individual representations are dominated by descriptions of outstanding acts of courage and sacrifice in perilous circumstances, for the defence of the whole group and, at times, of all First Peoples. The presence of icons is reported, and actors and actions are commonly remembered and valued. Accordingly, heroism, and tributes to it, constitute the overriding scheme of inter-individual accounts; and reallocations towards the perception of self as an interchangeable exemplar of heroism are clearly observed (Turner et al., 1987, p. 50). Heroism thus remains a critical attribute of the group’s past-self in war.

Perilous circumstances

As demonstrated earlier, people interpret the Salmon War uprising as a collective resistance to government attempts to annihilate them. They interpret it as a battle in a war that has been raging for more than a century against the Crown and its project to assimilate them through uprooting their Innu sovereignty (Innu tipenitamun) and undermining their self-determination (uetshit takuaimatishun).

Individually, the unfolding of war often put people in catastrophic situations where they were forced to flee or to act from positions of extreme weakness. The principle scenes in the background of inter-individual depictions are mainly related, but not limited to, the following hazardous episodes:

The course of events, with contention at its heart, was described as like being condemned to fight enemies both externally (Mesnak, chapter 3, ref. 4) and internally (Mestenapeo, chapter 2, ref. 9). The unfolding of war was represented as hell (Tshak, chapter 2, ref. 7), as a place where there was nothing joyful (Karl, chapter 2, ref. 2), where there was only sorrow and disappointment on every side (Maxence, chapter 2, ref. 4 and 12). The course of war is described overall as a collective drama, with people forced to face overwhelming hostility (Adam, chapter 2, ref. 5), be involved in many clashes, and be prey to one of ‘two lions grumbling and near to pouncing’ (Raoul, chapter 2, ref. 3). Representations of individuals and of their actions are impregnated with sorrow, with hazardous settings and circumstances, and a sense of danger affecting each individual and the whole group.

Longing for sacrifice

Stories strongly emphasise the warriors in action portraying their behaviours as transcending fear, embodying courage and a sense of self-sacrifice that translates to self-annihilation as a conscious choice. Approximately 25 to 30 of those who were engaged in the uprising were allegedly ready to put their lives on the line as they faced some two hundred Euroquébécois (Karl, chapter 2, ref. 9).²⁴ Resolved to resist hostilities fearlessly (Riel, chapter 2, ref. 3), the most steadfast warriors preferred ‘to die in the waters of the sea’²⁵ than surrender and consent to the extinguishment of their rights (Raoul, chapter 2, ref. 3). All the interviewees fondly remember the sense of sacrifice displayed by the most committed.²⁶

Those warriors are described as benefactors, not just to the group but also to the wider world. In the catastrophic context of the war, they are presented as the only people that could be relied on, since they ‘feared absolutely nothing and were the first on the firing line’ (Pierre, chapter 2, ref. 6). The most admired warriors are depicted as disregarding their physical safety, as if they had forgotten about their body and were ready to face anything (Raoul, chapter 2, ref. 22). The most fundamentalist, often called the ‘old radicals’ or those ‘who did not budge’, are described as having their rights tattooed on their hearts, armed with weapons and ready for self-annihilation (Esther, chapter 2, ref. 11; Riel, chapter 2, ref. 5). The discourse is presented as a categorical refusal, an absolute non-acceptance of any violation of their indigenous rights. They would rather die than allow such infringements:

The warriors’ readiness for self-sacrifice, contextualised by the tragic circumstances and the at times death-defying situations, are highly valued in the stories. The purpose behind the warriors’ actions also has a role to play in such admiration.

For the good of all

People’s descriptions of the group’s objectives have already been set out. In the case of stories pertaining to the course of the war, actors are portrayed as concretising these fundamental goals, which is to say deploying multi-faceted actions destined to protect the integrity of the group and its allies. Representations are mostly dominated by the actions in defence of the salmon net (Raoul, chapter 2, ref. 5 and 8). The net was a symbol that embodied the communitarian-indigenous principle – that is, the communitarian and indigenous axiology and culture of the group, and the collective capacity for self-sufficiency. External attempts to seize the net were perceived as an attack on the integrity of the group whose customs were ‘ready to be extinguished’ (Riel, chapters 2, 4 and 7, ref. 4). Fundamentally, the tireless, even desperate, defence of the net against the external interventions meant protecting the life of the group. All sacrificial actions are described as motivated by moral values ‘deeply anchored in the head’ (Raoul, chapter 2, ref. 16) and oriented towards the good of the community (Riel, chapter 2, ref. 3). The actors were reportedly overtly defending indigenous principles and presenting their rights as deeply connected with and even belonging to all First Peoples; they have come to define their struggle and uprising as global and on behalf of all indigenous groups (Mestenapeo, chapter 2, ref. 7 and 9).

Inter-individual depictions are clearly typified by heroism. Actors are repeatedly represented as possessing a sense of sacrifice in tragic circumstances, and deploying courageous actions for the good of all. These representations embody the quintessence of commitment, dedication and loyalty. The veneration of heroism and the glorification of warriors, present throughout the stories, are normatively charged and exceedingly informative of past ‘we’-ness, including its manufacture. At their most fundamental, they echo a call for radical investments in a collective battle for the preservation of extended indigenous selfhood. A closer look at the shared memories of the significant actors best illustrates the central role played by heroism in memory stories; they constitute to some extent elements of an iconography of the Salmon War among the Essipiunnuat.

The theatre of revolt

In effect, the stories contain representations of personages, their actions and contexts being clearly remembered and valued by everyone interviewed. To some extent, each narrator describes and comments on these individuals, and evaluates their actions and contribution to the overall struggle. These images are icons in the sense that they correspond to sanctified personages that celebrate ethical attributes and postures in specific contexts. Their stories plainly express forms of veneration that generate identification, and reactivate tellers’ indignation and a spirit of revolt when they recall them.

In this sense, crystallisations of collective memory and the existence of a certain aesthetic of rebellion are revealed; an exaltation of seditiousness with an explicit awareness of its tragic component. These images deserve a closer look as they are systems of communication and messages, and ingredients of social mythologisation (Barthes, 1957, p. 181). As entities that irrupted after an emotionally charged event, episode or situation, they are adapted to a given order or system and have the power to make visible arrangements (Baudrillard, 1968). Development of such images is essentially modulated by the social sharing of emotions; their spread serves the continuous interest of the group in distributing, extending and updating its database with new individual emotional scenarios. In that sense, they are memorised prototypes of behaviours and emotional scripts (Rimé and Christopher, 1997). As these narrated icons contain standards, their normative charge can be best assessed when put in contrast with their polarities – that is, undesirable behaviours and transgressions.

Icons of insurgence: the model to reproduce

Some representations are at the core of people’s stories mainly through descriptions of actors, their actions and their contextualisation. These images, central to the collective memory, appear highly normative. They provide information about the group’s past-self and how it standardised in the course of the Salmon War. These excerpts also help to counter the unified dimension that actors formerly and currently in authority tend to shape through a master narrative, giving them a preponderant role. Some shared elements of memory and common themes follow; they are derived entirely from individuals’ own perspectives and stories. To make it easier for the reader they are presented here as short compositions, drawn from excerpts but with some minor stylistic adaptations.

Uncle Arthur

He was known affectionately as Uncle Arthur and he was in his late 80s during the war. He was disabled and in bad health; he walked with a cane. His age prevented him from getting involved in the hostilities and engaging in any fighting. Yet, he knew there were fights. At some point, people – those fighting at the wharf and others in the community – heard gunshots. Québec agents had just intervened and there were battles by the wharf. They heard gunshots and fled – that was because of Uncle Arthur. He was too handicapped and old to reach the wharf so he went out with his gun. He then took three shots with his high calibre rifle. He was upset and aggressive. For such an old man to shoot with a 12-calibre, he must have wanted to participate a lot. The scene astonished people. His message was clear: if he could have, he would have joined the fight. For the group, that was an awakening (Adam, chapter 2, ref. 9; Sam, chapter 2, ref. 9; Mesnak, chapter 2, ref. 6; Raoul, chapter 2, ref. 18; Maxence, chapter 2. ref. 5).

Mathias

A well-known episode of the Salmon War involved the Québec agents seizing the community net, leaving with it, and then being intercepted on Highway 138 on their way back to their headquarters in Forestville. This is when an altercation occurred between Mathias and a police agent named Leblanc. The net was in the back of the agents’ truck. Mathias arrived. He told Leblanc (the policeman) to get out of the truck, that he was in the wrong and that they just wanted to get their net and go back to their community. Mathias told them it was not their net and that they should not touch it since it was sacred. Leblanc, however, refused. He was in the back of the truck. His arms were crossed. Then, Mathias came closer. He told him that, if he thinks he is God, then he would see that he can’t do this. He told him he should get out. The agent put his hand on his gun. Mathias took the agent by his feet and threw him on the ground. Leblanc could not touch anything. The people took the net and went back to the reserve. Mathias is known to be as strong as a bear. When he got upset during the war, he was uncontrollable. He got so offended and aggressive during the war that it was in the interests of the group to restrain his involvement. Mathias had an indigenous consciousness. He is a hunter and a fisherman. He is in love with the land. He is devoted to nature. He was one of the first to decide not to hide and to claim his rights (Ivan, chapter 2, ref. 10; Sam, chapter 2, ref. 3–5; Esther, chapter 2, ref. 7 and 14).

Jean-Paul

One of the worst episodes of the war was when hundreds of people from Les Escoumins invaded the wharf in order to repress the Indian revolt. At some point, the situation degenerated. The Euroquébécois, much greater in number, became hostile and aggressive. There was an Amerindian police officer at the wharf. He was not from Essipit but was sent by a regional Amerindian police organisation to protect the Essipiunnuat in case of any violence. His name was Jean-Paul Nuatshish. He was a huge but calm man, 6 feet 5 inches and 350–400 pounds. He was muscular, afraid of nothing, and laughed all the time. Jean-Paul came with his car into the middle of the hostile crowd. People in the crowd decided to push him and his car into the sea. At some point, there were a dozen people around his car. They started to push it and succeeded in tilting it. Then, he took hold of his gun. His windows were open. He told them he did not mind, since he would float back. Everything calmed down. The Essipiunnuat were about 30 people, and the Euroquébécois about 250. To witness Jean-Paul’s stoicism in the face of danger made people feel stronger than all their opponents. It showed their assailants that they would not give up, even if they were tiny in number. It showed them that the Indians were not going to obey them at any price but would instead spread their net repeatedly, whatever they did (Napeo, chapter 2, ref. 2; Raoul, chapter 2, ref. 5 and 6).

Pierre

Pierre was a formidable warrior in various episodes of the Salmon War. He was ready to die at any time. When the police taunted the Indians on the reserve, Pierre took a big rock and was ready to knock down the agents. When provoked, Pierre could be dangerous, especially when he had stones in his hands. The police then saw that the Indians were taking a stand. During the Highway 138 episode, it was Pierre who stopped the truck. He stood alone, on the yellow line, with his 12-calibre gun. He stopped the truck and told them that the Indians were in their homeland and that nobody would ever prevent them from fishing salmon in the river. He told them that this land did not belong only to the ‘whites’, that Indians had rights and that they would defend them with their lives. Then he took a piece of rock. He hit the hood of the truck and the windows with it. There were four police agents in it. He asked them to get out of the truck. He called them ‘chicken-hearted’. He told them that their reign of terror was over. He was shouting ‘We are Indians!’ Later, during the main episode at the wharf, Pierre arrived with his gun. It was dramatic. He was ready to shoot them. Pierre’s radicalism, his bursts of anger and his fierce assertions ignited the consciousness of many who witnessed them (Mesnak, chapter 2, ref. 6; Mestenapeo, chapter 2, ref. 7; Sam, chapter 2, ref. 2; Adam, chapter 2, ref. 1 and 4; Esther, chapter 2, ref. 7; Raoul, chapter 2, ref. 8).

Mestenapeo

Some people at the wharf saw a boat on the sea. Mestenapeo was in it. There was also another boat with police agents in it. They had weapons. They were trying to cut a community net. Mestenapeo launched at them with the boat he used to hunt seal. The agents cut everything and left with the net. Then, alone with his boat, Mestenapeo went after them. After a lot of tracking, agents pulled out their guns and pointed them at him. Mestenapeo threatened them with his fists. Even unarmed, Mestenapeo scared them. Mestenapeo’s attitude, in this episode, captures a mentality very specific to those days (Esther, chapter 2, ref. 4; Maxence, chapter 2, ref. 3; Raoul, chapter 2, ref. 7 and 25; Ivan, chapter 2, ref. 6).

Paul

Paul Ross Jr, alias Ti-Paul, was the kind of man whom nothing could scare. When the crowd of Euroquébécois arrived at the wharf, he was hit violently by a man called the ‘Kiss-à-Bonhomme’. His assailant was a man of 6 feet 4 inches and 400 pounds. Ti-Paul was beaten with a crowbar. He was bleeding profusely. He had received a blow from the crowbar right in his face. He got up on his feet. He told people around him not to worry, to let him go. He would get his revenge one day or another. Ti-Paul was very upset over the Salmon War. If everybody had Ti-Paul’s views, the Salmon War would have been bigger and more violent (Sam, chapter 2, ref. 6; Raoul, chapter 2, ref. 5 and 7; Napeo, chapter 2, ref. 2; Esther, chapter 2, ref. 13).

Marcel

Marcel, Paul’s second son, was such an interesting character. He was always the first on the frontline. He was full of confidence and sure of his people’s capacity to win. When something happened, he followed through. Whether upset or not, he was a comic, laughing and swearing all the time. In the course of the war, he was as brave as seven men. On the sea, he charged at the police agents with his boat and the agents charged back at him. He was fearless. Marcel was seen facing up to three officers, who were armed with guns and machetes, on the sea. He was threatening them with oars, challenging them to come closer (Pierre, chapter 2, ref. 5; Napeo, chapter 2, ref. 2; Ivan, chapter 2, ref. 4).

Romeo

Uncle Romeo, alias Meo, did great things during the Salmon War. Known as a pious man and a pacifist, he was firmly committed to the defence of the community. Romeo, who was not expected to engage in battle, was one of the first to commit. He faced adversity bravely. He shouted loudly. When he realised that his son had been captured by agents, pulling him by the hair onto their boat, he wanted to jump into the sea to go and save him. Then Meo searched for weapons in his truck; but fortunately, his gun was not behind the seat of his car as usual. He was a quiet and good man but if he was panicking, he could be dangerous (Sam, chapter 2, ref. 8 and 9; Ernest, chapter 2, ref. 12; Ivan, chapter 2, ref. 1).

Ti-Nours

André Ross, alias Ti-Nours (Little Bear), greatly asserted his Innu identity during the war. As an orator, he yelled and roared. He shouted at police officers. He commanded them to stop, said that they were not allowed to confiscate the net. At one point, he was seen in front of Uncle Arthur’s house, where the community drugstore is currently located. It was raining heavily. He was with people from the community. They were all outside, standing by the road. Then, there was Ti-Nours, shirtless in the middle of the road. He was waving his arms. He was speaking intensively and excitedly; he was speaking to his people. He was telling them they are Indians. He was telling them they have rights. He was encouraging them to seize their highest duties as indigenous people. He incited them with all his heart to revolt (Édouard, chapter 2, ref. 2; Adam, chapter 2, ref. 1).

Ivan

Ivan was grabbed by police officers. While on the sea, as he tried to protect the net, the police boat was trapped in the net. Ivan was then kidnapped by the officers, who took him further out to sea. Watching the episode from the shore, people began to panic. The officers were armed. Ivan had tried to drill their boat. People were worried. They knew Ivan had a rebellious temperament (Ernest, chapter 2, ref. 2; Pierre, chapter 2, ref. 1; Pierre, chapter 2, ref. 6).²⁷

Neal

Neal was a teenager during the war. He was there when the Euroquébécois attacked his people at the wharf. Since he was small, he was asked to take the net and go down under the wharf in order to hide it. The Euroquébécois, who came to destroy the net, couldn’t get hold of it. That was risky. It was dark under the wharf. The sea was rising. Neal went down through a small hole between the rocks, under the wharf. He hid the net and neither the authorities nor the population could seize it (Esther, chapter 2, ref 5; Tshak, chapter 2, ref. 7).

Transgressions: the model to avoid

The story of the Salmon War also contains some villains. The behaviour of certain people was not described admiringly but instead openly perceived as reprehensible. Images of transgressions contribute even more towards locating the sanctum of the group-self associated with the course of the war. As mentioned above, self-portraits have a propensity to be self-advantageous (and show only one side of the story). Other stories, while also stressing more the circumstantial modalities of social norms, let slip images about what not to do.²⁸ Three main forms of transgressive behaviour emerged: irrationality, hypocrisy and, predictably, non-commitment and its justifications based on a rhetoric of shame, cowardice and longing for material benefits.

Irrationality

Some actors and their behaviour were depicted as too uncompromising, too radical, too uncontrollable, too emotional, too violent or insubordinate to any authority, or not acting in accordance with ‘how things work’ (Sam, chapter 2, ref. 8). Some conduct was described as counterproductive to the strategic interests of the group. Excesses of violence, of temerity and spontaneous displays of emotion are all characteristics associated with folly and exorbitance, endangering order within the group. In some cases, they also justify modes of control and domination.

Mestenapeo, for example, remembers meeting some partisans who were ‘seeing red, had rocks in their hands that needed to be taken away’ (chapter 2, ref. 6). Ivan recalls, when being kidnapped by officials out at sea, that his brother had to control his father who was panicking and therefore putting them in jeopardy: ‘He wanted to jump into the cold water to get me back on shore. He was repeatedly asking “where is my gun? Where is my gun?”’ According to Ivan, it was better that his father could not find his gun since it would have done ‘more harm than good’ (Ivan, chapter 2, ref. 7). One person who was serving as the policeman for the community recounts that he did not take any chances at that moment and removed the guns from some people whom he could not rely on, those who ‘were too angry’ (Raoul, chapter 2, ref. 13). Irrationality and its control are thus presented as rooted in emotional distress and resulting in cognitive deficiency and inadequate conduct in the very specific context of the uprising. Interestingly, irrationality is at times used as a rhetorical strategy to demonstrate the highest reason, and as a tool for the disqualification of opponents within the context of the internal power struggles between leaders.

Hypokrisis and the simulation of indigeneity

Hypokrisis is another character trait represented negatively in stories. Etymologically, the term means ‘acting on the stage, to pretend’ (Harper, n.d.). Although it has a positive connotation when used in reference to theatrical acting, the term is pejorative when qualifying the action of a person in political contexts or in situations of leadership. Furthermore, to be two-faced, and to hide personal interests while advocating the public good, was interpreted in ancient Greece as unsuitable for politicians (Morwood and Taylor, 2002). In contemporary usage, it generally refers to insincerity and is concerned with ‘people as they pretend to be’ (Higgleton and Seaton, 1995, p. 54).

This conception of hypokrisis largely echoes what is denounced as a transgression in the Essipiunnuat stories; it matches a fundamental criticism of some leaders. One leader is accused, for example, in the stories, of speaking publicly of indigenous rights when being entirely ignorant of them. He is blamed for dishonesty, of ‘playing the Indian’ but ‘not truly feeling it’ (Mestenapeo, chapter 2, ref. 8). If this attitude allows him to cosy up to the state (Riel, chapter 2, ref. 4), his over-simulation of sameness²⁹ with the dominant culture is double-edged. One will ultimately lean more towards compromise on inherent indigenous freedoms if one doesn’t value them or know nutshimit (life in the forest); or be more likely to sell these rights and, more significantly, to allow the commodification of the ancestral domain and Innu symbols.

This two-faced trait among some of the leaders is even identified as the greatest source of division within the group after the war. The devaluation of honesty was acknowledged, by some narrators, as the moment ‘when our problems started’ (Mestenapeo, chapter 2, ref. 4 and 5). Those who were traditionalists felt cheated, betrayed and used by some of the leaders and their acolytes. They accused them of having negotiated behind their backs, of changing what had already been negotiated and of playing the sameness card in order to reach an agreement and gain other advantages (concentration of their power, or accumulation of money, for example). Ultimately, these acts were justified on the basis that some people were too honest to do politics, even regarding Innu tipenitamun on Assi which some of the older folk perceive as non-negotiable and sacred (Mestenapeo, chapter 2, ref. 4 and 5).³⁰

Non-commitment: spectres of shame and fear

Predictably, non-commitment is depicted negatively in inter-individual representations, and it tends to be more severely condemned when it is known to be motivated by feelings of shame about being an Indian and justified by a neoliberal rationale. This primary social emotion is perceived as a sign of disloyalty and it was not expressed at all in any of the self-portraits. Some, who appeared ‘ashamed of having been shameful’, refused to participate in the research. Thus, shame is hard to access; it is concealed and, as previous research has confirmed, often mixed with guilt and embarrassment (Tangney et al., 1996; Wurmser, 1987). However, it remains a central emotion experienced by a fraction of the members and a powerful determinant of silence and oblivion that deserves a closer look.

Some people, who are now proud of being Essipiunnuat, were allegedly associating with racists at the time and were not willing to be identified as Indian. Cowardice or fear at losing friends or their jobs, or of being ostracised by their in-laws goes some way to explaining their attitudes. Some were heavily conditioned to not feel proud of their community, while others simply did not feel Indian inside (Sam, chapter 2, ref. 9). The feeling of shame remains, therefore, one of the greatest challenges that the movement had to overcome.³¹

Capitalism, antimonies and the erosion of Innu norms

‘Capitalism’, defined as the request by some that the means of production should remain privately owned and for the purpose of profit through the mastering and exploitation of Assi (Earth) and living beings, including the Innu (humans), is another trait that stands out from the representations for its negativity. The case of a commercial angler from the community, who was allegedly pushing for the commercialisation of salmon fishing, was noticed (Raoul, chapter 2, ref. 19). He is described as being strongly influenced by his wife, a Euroquébécois, who, like other members of her family, loved money more than anything else. She would tell her husband things like, ‘they should give you all the salmon, it is not for them to fish, and it is you that should fish everything’ (Sam, chapter 2, ref. 4). For her, it would only be about money, and she is presented as completely uncaring about the group’s struggle. The woman and her husband saw the movement as ‘removing the bread from their mouths’ and that it ‘did not suit his interests’. They were therefore not communitarians and that was allegedly the main reason for their non-participation (Raoul, chapter 2, ref. 19).

This attitude is presented as being a threat to the whole movement because there was a risk no one would fight for it. Supporting commercial fishing on the basis of collective indigenous rights was presented as antinomian to the indigenous-communitarian philosophy promoted by the movement and operationalised through the fishing activities and the distribution of the salmon. A predominance of capitalist ideology, including ideas of individual property and the commercialisation of animals, would accordingly have meant the crash of the movement and its fall into oblivion (Sam, chapter 2, ref. 4 and 10). Irrationality, hypocrisy and non-commitment (when motivated by shame or capitalism) are therefore the main elements of transgression that emerge from people’s accounts.

Past-selves in war: aesthetics of uprising

Representations of people in the stories suggest an aesthetic of revolt and ethical attributes specific to the course of the Salmon War. The event, presented as a drama, has its own icons, heroes and collective idols, as well as its ‘villains’ who inform on transgressive behaviours. In this sense, an aesthetic approach to the Salmon War offers ‘other types of insight and engenders new understandings’ (Bleiker, 2009, p. 6). The access to greater genuineness requires the recognition of the ‘philosophic importance of art, which asserts itself against all attempts to rationalise it away’ (Gadamer, 1989, p. xiii). What, then, can we exhume from these commonly remembered icons, myths or representations? What do they tell us about an Essipiunnuat past-self in war?

People often explicitly express their admiration for the individuals they describe. They seem to venerate specific attitudes, behaviours, qualities and ethics, as deployed in precise circumstances. These images are not only emotionally charged and widely remembered, but also substantively normative. Stories are invaluable sources of norms and laws.³² What is expressed in these descriptions are mainly the superior ways of performing in a context of insurrection. Each in their manner – the people, their actions and contexts depicted – communicates crucial aspects of the group aesthetics and past-self in war.

Old Arthur’s behaviour, for example, was frequently reported. Through his way of being, this elderly and disabled man seemed to capture, in people’s memories, the whole condition of the group. Handicapped, vulnerable and worn by history and time, he demonstrated his indignation authoritatively by firing his weapon. He laid bare that power in circumstances where everything seemed finished and impossible.

Mestenapeo’s recklessness on the sea, his direct actions and violent confrontation with the state officers evoke the group’s unceded sovereignty and the illegitimacy of the provincial authority and laws over the Innu. His actions also evoke the certainty, inherited from generation to generation, that the Innu want their rights but know they need to be actively defended. The indignation of Matthias is a reminder that dignity exists; his uncontrollable rage signified that the dishonouring of Essipiunnuat sense of self would meet with wrath, but also total resistance. Pierre’s fierce revolt expresses a sense of urgency and of being profoundly threatened by state intervention and racism, as well as the imperative to halt these aggressions. He symbolised the ‘ Indian’ who cannot be dominated, the uncontrollable one who will always prefer death to the absence of freedom. Jean-Paul reminds the group that they are part of a wider and strong people. If these groups have remained stoic, despite historical attempts at destabilisation, there is yet tremendous strength hidden beneath the apparent calm; the bear is still alive. Paul’s situation, for his part, captures the violence of external aggression, the bloody repression following the assertion of indigeneity. He embodies the traumas of history but also a collective capacity for resilience. This shows that memory of humiliation, in spite of silence, can explain a profound longing for revenge over time.

Marcel embodies the hunter-warrior, the autonomous actor with an unfailing optimism in the most dramatic situations, who has a persistent joie de vivre that allows the warrior to keep his head above water and protects him from the temptations of fatalism. Young Ivan seems to embody pure rebellion, a radical opposition to authority and stubbornness in defending the collective at the risk of one’s life. Romeo reminds the group to not be fooled by the appearance of the peaceful Indian. He teaches about not underestimating people’s sentiments with regard to their rights and their willingness to defend them, especially when children are at risk. The spontaneity of Ti-Nours personifies the emergence of the collective, the uninhibited, irrepressible and integral assertion of indigeneity against all who seek its domination, repression, or association with shame and oblivion. Neal personifies how the future of the group and its integral defence rests on the commitment of the youth, on their respect for the Elders and a willingness to direct their actions in accordance with the most pressing needs of the group.

On the other side, in the recollections of the drama of war, transgressions appear to play the role of tricksters, of ways not to be. They should not be imitated but lessons should be learned from them. Irrational behaviours tend to be used by those in situations of power to justify modes of control. Hypocrisy for short-term gain tends to delegitimise power and leadership in the long run. Non-commitment is openly condemned, in particular when motivated not only by non-identification with the group and the shame of indigeneity but also by material accumulation. The representations of transgressive characters and behaviours, in interactions with situations and circumstances, clearly reveal the contours of a past-self associated with the course of war as well as the complex and less accessible determinants of oblivion.

These common scripts and judgements are highly normative since they reveal in the end intrinsic schemes of rationality, values and choices. They demonstrate internal modes of legitimating control over rationalism, ‘true’ Innu principles, and acceptable and unacceptable behaviours and their justification. The aesthetics of uprising is therefore characterised by a concern with demonstrating and articulating the revolt as rational, authentic, self-referential and universal. Such stories are inherently subversive; they offer testimony of a historical consciousness and an acute awareness of past wounds as well as exalting absolute rebelliousness against any forms of domination that can, when reactivated, help to formulate radical evaluations and critiques in the present.

Images of the group: gazing at ourselves

Essipiunnuat stories contain images and representations of the group as a whole, including in-group relationships, which contribute to illuminating other aspects of a collective past-self associated with the unfolding of the Salmon War. Images of society at a certain time can provide information about the social consciousness of individuals and commonly held worldviews. The collective self is mainly composed of group membership and implies contrasts between the group to which one belongs, that is, the in-group, and relevant out-groups. Indeed, a collective self would mainly be associated with the motive of protecting or enhancing the in-group; its priority over individual or interpersonal identities is very significant since it can ‘alter spontaneous judgements of similarity and self-descriptions’ (Brewer and Gardner, 1996). An inquiry into Essipiunnuat past-self in war requires a closer look at in-group/ out-group differentiation as well as in-group members’ bonds derived from common identification with the group (Sedikides and Brewer, 2001).

Three main elements surface in representations of the collective. The first concerns the existence of an in-group power dependent on the quality of the links maintained between members. The second pertains to the continuation of an authentic bond between the Essipiunnuat and other indigenous groups, resulting in it being characterised by indigeneity. A third image of the group associates the course of war with an intensification of inner conflict and, running parallel to the struggles with outsiders, an internal struggle for dignity within the group itself against internalised racism in particular.

All our relations: the power of solidarity

A recurring image of the group in war pertains to its inner power. This potency is represented as conditional on being bound to each other in some way. Such linkages and the power generated are remembered with a certain fondness and are widely referenced. It corresponds mainly to a spirit of camaraderie interposing itself into relationships, in diverse circumstances during the war, generating complementarity and producing a feeling of power. These emotions were particularly strong, for example, when people were meeting sporadically at campfires at all hours of the day and night, while taking it in turns to watch or conduct their vigil, or were involved in a battle (Tshak, chapter 2, ref. 5).

Interrelationships characterised by camaraderie in the war are described as secreting a synergy, a contagion that resulted in feelings of empowerment, as if a force was impregnating them all at once, making their individual wills stronger. This phenomenon was compared to a movement or a walk starting, continuing and not stopping (Adam, chapter 2, ref. 4). This cooperation was also observed among in-group categories. Women increasingly supported their husbands (Esther, chapter 2, ref. 12), the youngest intensified their support for the oldest (Ernest, chapter 2, ref. 8; Ivan, chapter 2, ref. 8; Adam, chapter 2, ref. 1), and the very old showed their support for the commanders by telling them ancient stories (Tshak, chapter 2, ref. 7).

The intensification of in-group cooperation in its diverse manifestations is associated with the communitarisation of the movement, or the increased mobilisation of members around the communitarian-indigenist principle.³³ This is the moment of the supposed realisation of the power of a collective principle to gather everyone around its defence. This is when really strong ties between individuals were generated, at the same time as a united community movement (Mesnak, chapter 2, ref. 3). The endurance of the social ties produced would therefore be the central element of micro-group strength: ‘The density of the ties exceeds the strength of number. A tiny group can generate a terrific force. We then saw that it is possible for a dwarf to be really ready to fight to defeat a giant’ (Raoul, chapter 2, ref. 1).

People recall being caught up in the movement and the exceptional unity of wills that was generated (Adam, chapter 2. ref. 3; Mathias, personal communication; Ernest, chapter 2, ref. 9). This concord was reportedly translated into a generalised readiness to fight for the objectives of the movement and a willingness for sacrifice (Ivan, chapter 2, ref. 5; Mesnak, chapter 2, ref. 3). A revealing analogy was proposed between the net and the group’s solidarity as the war developed; people were clinging to the net to prevent its seizure, and its symbolism also helped to keep people together (Adam, chapter 2, ref. 8).

From entrenched indigeneity to simulacrum

The course of the war is often related to a collective reconnection with cultural memory and conceptions, and the moment of identity renewal.³⁴ In fact, the evolution of events is linked to the reintegration of the Essipiunnuat within the scope of indigenous cultural parameters. The group is predominantly represented as Indian, Montagnais or Innu, and its actions are depicted within the wider framework of a combat embracing the indigenous cause as a whole.

The group was supposedly leading a global fight (Mestenapeo, chapter 2, ref. 7). The movement and its actions are explicitly defined as an expression of an indigenist philosophy. The receptivity of other indigenous groups to their actions, and their engagement with the discourse about communitarian principles and collective indigenous rights, was perceived as a validation of their own indigeneity. To receive increased external support from other First Peoples as well as international human rights organisations, and all the Innu chiefs, boosted the group’s sense of belonging to, and its unity with, a wider indigenous grouping (Mesnak, chapter 2, ref. 4).

Eventually, the community came to the forefront of all these conflicts, brought together not just because of the salmon issue but also because of the need to affirm and defend matters around indigenous sovereignty and rights (Mesnak, chapter 2, ref. 5). This led to other indigenous groups and their representatives becoming involved in direct action in Essipit. The primary individuals taking part were greatly moved and remember this activity vividly. On one occasion, a walk took place that included people from outside the community, and which moved down to the wharf (see figure 10). People from the CAM, and outsiders from other reserves were among the supporters (Esther, chapter 2, ref. 9). Pessamit, a neighbouring Innu community, erected a barricade to block the only road that gave access to the region. Interestingly, descriptions of these episodes of inter-group solidarity contain a ‘we’ that is inclusive of all Innu and often of all indigenous peoples. The group agency in war is therefore interpreted, overall, as a defence of ‘all that it means to be indigenous’ (Raoul, chapter 2, ref. 6).

The notion of ‘us’ took on a new internal dimension. Inter-group solidarity and contacts, among the Innu and other First Peoples, reinstated the value of referring to indigenous conceptions under the group self. It therefore visibly produced new self-definitions and reinterpretations of what it meant to be Essipiunnuat. People realised, for example, that to have the heart of a warrior, or a strong sense of team spirit, of one for all and all for one, are distinct aspects of their indigeneity (Raoul, chapter 2, ref. 21; Karl, chapter 2, ref. 4). Overall, the group agency is widely depicted in its outward orientation and its transcontinental resistance to exogenous imperial hostilities.

Inner struggles: the spectres of psychological colonialism

Stories do also report, however, internal division and tensions. Images of the group as united, unanimous and solid in war coexist with representations of it as deeply divided, internally fragmented and weakened by internal feuds. The group is presented as internally unbalanced by the war (Mestenapeo, chapter 2, ref. 6).

The beginning of the war is noticeably coupled with the irruption of the internal fragmentations inherent in collective action. As Sam says, ‘you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs’ (Sam, chapter 2, ref. 4). The assertion of indigeneity and the authority this generated was achieved in the face of great opposition. Within the group, for example, some were opposed to the communitarian net. An ideological conflict is recalled, polarised between communitarian-indigenist and capitalist ideologies, but also along intergenerational lines; others just stayed away from such disagreements. Commanders, warriors and supporters all remember relatives pressuring them to disengage from the movement.

In addition to the for and against divisions, a great in-group disagreement recalled by interviewees concerns the existence of an unbridgeable schism between leaders over the understanding of ‘being Innu’. This particular phenomenon is even understood to be the origin of significant quarrels that surfaced years later in an internal war (Mestenapeo, chapter 2, ref. 2, 3–7).³⁵ It was also represented as an intergenerational conflict between the ‘old radicals’ and the more ‘rational’ and ‘educated’ youth, who were keener to negotiate an agreement with the state and to ‘[use] people’ (Sam, chapter 2, ref. 2).

The Salmon War often took the form of a racial confrontation. It generated noticeable division over racial lines between ‘Indians’ and ‘whites’. Racism against Indians was everywhere, even within the community itself. The group is thus depicted as racially divided, and a demarcation is recalled as the most painful in-group fragmentation (Mestenapeo, chapter 2, ref. 5). The Essipiunnuat are also portrayed as not all having the same aims; some were genuinely engaged in preserving Essipiunnuat dignity as indigenous, while others were desperately eager to gain power by any possible means, including through identifying more as Euroquébécois at times than Innu. In this sense, a central image of the group as the war progressed is its struggle with itself not to reproduce colonial representations and forms of domination, thereby distancing itself from Innu values in order to please external actors and exogenous laws, and losing its dignity (Mestenapeo, chapter 2, ref. 4 and 7).

Conclusion

This examination of the Essipiunnuat’s past-self as associated with the course of the war attempted to access rich stories, a sense of who those taking part believed they were at that time, and to arrive at an overall picture of the group’s self-conception at that time. This was achieved through studying elements of self-representation as contained in the self-portraits and in inter-individual depictions, as well as through images of their group.

The study of self-portraits suggests a past-self characterised by a radical commitment to and assertion of indigeneity, in resistance to the historical and actualised forces seeking its complete destruction. A central emergent norm specific to the context of the war is thus the commitment to micro-group self-defence. Yet, it was also made clear that investments in indigenous self-consciousness, uprising and assertion come, almost inevitably, with severe retributions. The self-portraits ultimately help to demonstrate that committing to defend a distinctive Essipiunnuat identity had tragic consequences.

The analysis of inter-individual depictions proposes the existence of an aesthetic of uprising based on shared memories and articulated around the theme of heroism. Individuals in the war are portrayed as if in a drama, with its heroes and villains. This aesthetic communicates commonly remembered actors who embody, each in their own way, normative features presented as imperative to collective resilience. It also secretes an ethic of life and action, enrolled in a specific group ontology and rooted in an epistemology venerating immanence, the multilateral relationships between humans and all forms of life, as well as overcoming individuality and materiality in the context of revolt.

The examination of the main images of the group in the stories discovered collective heroism coupled with trans-indigenist identification within the wider drama of First People’s experiences of colonialism on Turtle Island. The idea emerged that an integral and collective commitment to asserting indigeneity, and resisting attempts to invalidate inherent ancestral sovereignty (to counter genocide), especially among the Essipiunnuat, depends almost entirely on having the inner strength to fight hostile forces. Above all, in their view, survival seems to rely only on the group itself and on its members and the quality and consistency of the ties between them. Representations of the collective also voice a warning about power struggles and an appetite for authority among certain individuals inclined to duplicity, which could erode the group’s dignity and freedom in the long run.

Finally, these elements combined are vital facets of the Essipiunnuat past-self during the Salmon War. The tragedy of this tiny micro-group in the war is highlighted by the very circumstances of its commitment. To commit and to resist were, in themselves, heroic for such a small entity. However, to be propelled to the forefront of a wider indigenous struggle affected the group in diverse ways. This past-self also contains the consciousness that colonialism, with its policies of divide and conquer, of extermination and institutionalised hatred, and its tragic effects, can only be vanquished by unity and the willingness of the oppressed, and their ability to assume their whole agency. Nobody else can help. Nobody will propel or steer their canoe for them.

The context of the war and its unfolding is essential if we are to explain why members were expected to give so much to it. Some were even willing to sacrifice their lives for the group. Others were ashamed to be identified as Indian or were more concerned with protecting their own income. We should not minimise the mimetic among the Essipiunnuat of Québec nationalist schemes, mythologies and conception of sovereignty, and the reproduction of its colonial imaginary within the group. The past-self we are trying to identify is not only tragic-heroic; it is also confused and awkward. A deep malaise reverberates through it; perhaps the restless demons of what is now called America. Yet, for the Essipiunnuat, this past-self in war echoes its greatest foe, the enemy within that nurtures shame and auto-genocidal tendencies, that identifies indigeneity as being a degenerated form of humanity, as an object and a simulacrum, and professes oblivion; the result of internal policies of erasure, purification and ‘whitening’ that have marked some group members within their families, sometimes from childhood and to varying degrees.

Interestingly, this tragic yet heroic past-self represents the most valued and normative trait of the Innu oral tradition (shared by the wider Algonquian family) that is several thousand years old, exemplified by the epic story of Tshakapesh. The Essipiunnuat past-self associated with the course of the war therefore remains highly normative and correlated to Innu referents despite being silenced, denied or ignored. A core element remains the knowledge that the decision not to forget, but rather to rebel, signifies being transformed, but also haunted, by what was buried and believed to be forgotten.

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1 ‘Such a strong sentiment that people are proud of your actions as leader, it is in wartime and at difficult moments that you feel it. And then we needed to feel, we, the council, that we had the people behind us. Otherwise, you don’t go alone on that path. Above all, in the course of war, I felt that people were behind us in the battle and the movement. The guys, the people, were saying “Go ahead, we are behind you, do what you must do, we support you.” Listen: when everybody is behind you, it undoubtedly helps you to stand and say “Let’s go!” Whatever happens, we are there, and we have our people behind us’ (Mesnak, ch. 2, ref. 9)

2 ‘We had warned people on the reserve. We did not want them to drink even a drop of alcohol. They were allowed to be there, yes, but they must control themselves, and try to control everybody.’ (Mesnak, ch. 2, ref. 2)

3 ‘It started this way. We had always been told that before, we, the Indians, we were here, before Charles Bélanger and the other settlers. So I said: “We will spread the net, and if we are arrested, we will be arrested … Do you understand?” Therefore, Marcel and I spread the net.’ (Ernest, ch. 2, ref. 1)

4 ‘I did not wait. I jumped in a boat and went immediately to the agent’s boat. And I told them right away: “you won’t steal our net”. I started to turn around them with my boat. An agent was pointing his gun at me. I told him: “Just dare to land at the wharf without your gun! Jump in my boat, you chicken-heart. I will settle your case!”’ (Mestenapeo, ch. 2, ref. 7)

5 ‘During the Salmon War, I continued to have a drink in Escoumins township. Nobody bothered me. One guy tried to hassle me. I told him upfront: “Come outside and we will solve this”. Nobody bothered me thereafter. I continued to go dancing when nobody from the community was going.’ (Sam, ch. 2, ref. 1)

6 ‘Our net was spread. I was with the gang … we were all holding the net. Then at some point a squad of whites got there. There were hostile people all around us, all kinds of things were being thrown at us … I still remember the last words of Georges when he said: “Let the net go!” Man! My fingers, the muscles were cut … I was all bleeding ... And then, I received a couple of punches as well.’ (Karl, ch. 2, ref. 1)

7 ‘We had something to defend. From very deep inside, we were ready to go as far as was needed for that purpose. Everything happened very quickly. You did not do it to prove yourself or just to be a hero. In your head, it was an intrinsic response … It happens quickly. You do what you consider to be for the best, ultimately.’ (Ivan, ch. 2, ref. 3)

8 ‘My wife came to me and said “there are police agents in our car park”. I stood up and went out. There were wildlife agents with their cars. It provoked me so deeply … When these things happen, don’t you think of protecting your kids? I went out and it was not funny at all. The guys looked down on us … as if we were criminals. They had probably received orders … I went to them and picked up a rock from the soil. I went to smash their truck’. (Pierre, ch. 2, ref. 1)

9 ‘We were trying to protect the net as much as possible. And … they charged us with their boat to scare us so that we would release the net. Except that Marcel and I, we resisted … [The agent’s boat engine got trapped in the net, close to their boat] I told Marcel to puncture their dinghy but he did not understand. So I said “Pass me the knife, I will untangle the net.” But the agent in front of me understood my trick. He caught me by the hair and pulled me on to their boat. I was trying to catch the agent who had pulled me by the hair and I put his head on the side of the boat. But then the other agent came with his machete, meaning “If you don’t release him, I will strike your head with it …” So finally, they brought me further away from the edge. They requested from me all kinds of information. Yet I did not answer. They said, “We don’t mind, we will stay here all day if you don’t answer”. But I said, “Soon you will get too hungry … and you’re too cowardly anyway.” So they said “You really think so?” We stayed on the sea one more hour or so, but not more. They brought me to the wharf; I disembarked from the boat and returned to my people.’ (Ivan, ch. 2, ref. 1)

10 ‘I had news from the indigenous side from a person. And for the other side, I has ideas to moderate the non-indigenous who were aggressive, who were very resentful and who wanted to cut the net. So I made myself the intermediary. I knew which side I was going to take in case of any degeneration.’ (Maxence, ch. 2, ref. 2 and 3)

11 ‘Me, I was more remote at first because of the job I had, which was as a gas attendant in Escoumins … I could not take one side more than the other. I was not allowed much to go to the other side. I had to be neutral. Even if nobody was neutral, man! When they [the anti-militants] come when I was working, that was it … So I kept my mouth shut because my boss was saying “Shut up Tshak, shut up! Don’t reply to them!” But you know how, sometimes, when it is too much? And it happened one night, it blew up!’ (Tshak, ch. 2, ref. 5)

12 For more information, see the Canadian justice department website at: http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/I-5/page-3.html. For further discussions on the issue pertaining to discrimination against indigenous women in the Indian Act, see Palmater (2011).

13 ‘I was off-reserve, but all the time on the reserve … We were living on Les Oblats Street. We were living right by the reserve. But my mother lost her rights when she married my dad. I was raised on the reserve with my cousin Eddy, Daniel, Ralph and all of them. We were all the time all together with the sons of Uncle David and Laurent Ross. We grew up together … you see … So that when the event happened, we defended our rights.’ (Karl, ch. 2, ref. 8) See also Maxence, ch. 2. ref. 1.

14 Maxence was 28 at the start of the war. He was working, as was the case with many other people at that time, for a lumber company exploiting the surrounding forests. He was not a member of the band at the time, although he regained Indian status in 1985. His mother lost her status when she married a non-Indian person. Yet, even without Indian status, Maxence, and his brother Karl, had strong family and cultural ties with Essipit. In fact, his grandmother was Élise Ross, daughter of Paul Ross II, who was married to Joseph Pierre Moreau. Karl, Maxence’s young brother, describes himself as ‘a non-recognised Indian’.

15 ‘At this time, I was non-indigenous. I was not Indian. I was not recognised as such and I did not know that I would become a member one day. I had been raised on the reserve itself since I spent most of the time at my grandmother Élise and Uncle Arthur’s houses. For sure my choice was somehow already made. But I wanted to be transparent in these situations since I was not Indian, despite the fact that I had family members who were and that the majority of my friends were on the indigenous side. There were people that I respected, however, on the other side.’ (Maxence, ch. 2, ref. 1–3, 4–7)

16 ‘I was chopping wood. I was with Mestenapeo, Marcel Ross, Ernest, Ti-Nours, Pierre and Édouard. Up there, the war continued. Some people came to tell us that they would break our machines … They ordered us to stay in our rooms, not to move from them. They said they would break our timberjack tyres; that they would do other things such as burn our equipment, that all the Indians would lose their jobs.’ (Maxence, ch. 2, ref. 14)

17 ‘The whites arrived from behind us. I remember that very well. I became exceedingly nervous. I was even weeping. We were not old you know … and we had to go through such things! It was serious … I asked myself “why such a war with the village?” I’m still affected … It was my first big experience in life … the Salmon War … when you held the net …’ (Karl, ch. 2, ref. 2–6)

18 ‘Right upon our arrival, they began to assault us … We were forced to return, to leave. We were not respected anymore. We were treated … not as dogs, they were much better treated. They were showing us that we had nothing there … We had to come back. We were unable to be heard. At night times, they would arrive in the camps and start to shout “the damned Indians are here” … all the time. We were just three, Marcel, Ti-Nours and me, and they were 200. There were about 30 of them who used to shout at night and at lunchtime. There were just three of us, you know … not many. Damn, we were hassled. It affected me a lot at that time.’ (Édouard, ch. 2, ref. 1 and 2)

19 ‘They called us “fucking savages”; they belittled us. “You’re not people! You’re less than nothing! You destroy everything!” Yes, yes, yes. “Dirty little Indian”. You know, they were not just swearing at adults, they were offending even the kids. Oh yes, they were really cruel, and gave us such looks; it was astonishing. You know, if they had had guns, they would have killed us. It would have been like during the conquest of the far west of America, they would have killed us all, oh yes.’ (Napeo, ch. 2, ref. 3 and 4)

20 This question of denial was significantly documented in Cohen (2001).

21 ‘That our grandfathers and great grandfathers used to fish, nobody can contradict such evidence. We have been here forever, us Indians. We are speaking of rights that have always been there … So how come we have lost these rights? We don’t have rights anymore because some Euroquébécois, from a tiny village, don’t want us to catch salmon in the river with a net? They had already constrained us to a minuscule 0.5 km². It is not big for a reserve. That is where the source of all our rancour lies.’ (Tshak, ch. 2, ref. 8)

22 The family of positive emotions mentioned in the stories is composed, among others, of pride, self-love, beauty, power and dignity. To contemplate collective mobilisation, solidarity among the group, self-sacrifice and revolt, together with an indomitable spirit of camaraderie, gave people a new sense of beauty and a pride in belonging to the group. As their identification with the group was boosted, they felt increased power. In turn, at times, they were released from their fear of death with the feeling of an acceptance of self-annihilation for group purposes, which, ultimately, provided them with the sense of being free and indomitable. These positive emotions are thus linked principally to their participation in the movement, the experience of camaraderie, the direct defence of indigenous principles, the assertion of their indigeneity, the confrontations with authorities, and the contemplation of the uprising itself.

23 The family of negative feelings, or suffering, is composed of intense stress, terror, humiliation and shame, as well as internal rage and hatred. These negative feelings are mainly associated with situations related to the reaction from the state and its agents, but also, and more significantly, with the actions of the local Euroquébécois. The deeds narrated range through all kinds of intimidation, humiliation and punishment. They include racial violence and threats. Terrorisation in the workplace is remembered particularly painfully, especially when interviewees were captives of hostile and racist crowds. Ultimately, if the experience of racism is remembered with great sadness, narrators admit that the most hurtful was to face anti-Indian discourse within the reserve, especially among family members and in-laws. Inter-group fragmentation has left a bitter taste in everybody’s mouths. Indeed, regardless of whether this came from the authorities or popular reaction, humiliations and the abasement of indigeneity often resulted, for narrators, in uncontrollable outbreaks of wrath, rage and a loss of control.

24 The numbers vary according to different sources (from 200 to 400 people).

25 What Raoul calls ‘waters’ is considered locally as essentially a synonym for death. Water in the St Lawrence River, near Essipit, is slightly above freezing all year long. People falling into the water risk hypothermia if they are in it for more than a couple of minutes.

26 ‘When you see people in the street with guns who are strong and firm, and who are saying “Enough! If you pass, it will be over our dead bodies ... You and your little government truck, it is finished now. Go back to where you came from.’’ I’ve seen people ready to go to war and ready to die. It was extreme but very powerful then. People were armed. It was serious. Everyone was shaking, people were ready to die, ready to fight to the bitter end.’ (Adam, ch. 2,. ref. 3–6)

27 This episode is described at length in Ivan’s self-portrait.

28 In order to restrict the already wide scope of this research, it was decided to exclude the Essipiunnuat representations of the Euroquébécois. They were abundant in the stories, and far more often negative than positive. However, this would be relevant for future research.

29 On this phenomenon, see Samson’s excellent article (2001).

30 This is currently a core contentious issue in the community in terms of the interpretation of the federal government’s ‘comprehensive land claim process’ and the effect of modern treaties on indigenous relationships with the land. The debate concentrates on the issue of extinguishment and the existence of a certainty clause within these contemporary agreements that would legitimise the cession of inherent indigenous sovereignty to the Crown. The Petapen Treaty (Essipit, Mastheuiatsh, Nutakuan), based on the Agreement in Principle of 2003, allegedly involves the extinction of Innu tipenitamun and represents a form of surrender.

31 ‘Once, there was a band councillor with us ... I won’t tell you her name ... She was practically ashamed at being with us. So she just went and sat on the other side of the room when we got in there to start the negotiations. And she was an advisor for the reserve ... So ... that tells you something’ (Mestenapeo, ch. 2, ref. 8)

32 For more information on indigenous legal traditions, the power of stories and their value as sources of laws, see Friedland (2018); Borrows (2016); Episkenew (2009); Friedland and Napoleon (2016a), Friedland and Napoleon (2016b); McAdam (2015).

33 As will be shown in the next chapter, this corresponds to collective self-objectification.

34 This will be analysed at greater length in the next chapter on the transformations associated with the Salmon War.

35 This refers to a conflict that occurred in the early 1990s which will be covered in the final chapter.