21110.1177/1474474013487485Cultural GeographiesDesbiens and Rivard
2013
Article
From passive to active dialogue?
Aboriginal lands, development
and métissage in Québec, Canada
cultural geographies
2014, Vol 21(1) 99­–114
© The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/1474474013487485
cgj.sagepub.com
Caroline Desbiens
Université Laval, Canada
Étienne Rivard
Université Laval, Canada
Abstract
Over the last decade, northern Québec (Canada) has been the stage of tremendous changes
regarding the active role played by Aboriginal peoples in matters of planning and territorial
development. This gradual rise, if incomplete, of the Aboriginal agency greatly impacts, as we shall
argue here, on the identities and territorialities of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities,
through new policies, legislation, treaty processes, institutions (public or private) devoted to
development, territorial governance or the increasing number of cross-cultural partnerships and
investments. The goal of this paper is to offer a critical portrait of the recent changes affecting
the relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities in northern Québec, and
discuss the limits of the cross-cultural dialogue in which they are engaged. This argument is an
attempt to show how development and planning are rich grounds for understanding the state and
the economy as ontological. It will be illustrated through the recent emergence of the Québec
government’s Plan Nord (‘Northern Plan’), an ambitious program of development, and the treaty
process involving three Innu First Nations in the regions of Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean and CôteNord. Conceived of as a dynamic form of cross-cultural dialogue shaped by power relations, the
concept of métissage (hybridity) grounds our analysis and highlights the challenges of multicultural
territorial planning. If Québec is presently engaging in a renewed cross-cultural dialogue with First
Nations, the final result of this dialogue, however, remains uncertain.
Keywords
aboriginality, cross-cultural dialogue, hybridity, interethnic development, métissage, ontology,
planning, territoriality
Corresponding author:
Caroline Desbiens, Department of Geography, Université Laval, Abitibi-Price Building, Room 3185, 2405, de la Terrasse
St., Québec G1V 0A6, Canada.
Email: [email protected]
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cultural geographies 21(1)
Over the last decade, northern Québec (Canada) has been the stage of tremendous changes
regarding the active role played by Aboriginal peoples1 in matters of planning and territorial development. This gradual rise, if incomplete, of Aboriginal agency greatly impacts the
identities and territorialities of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities, through
treaty process, new policies (especially in forestry), institutions (public or private) devoted to
development, territorial governance or the increasing number of cross-cultural partnerships and
investments.2
Our main objective in this paper is to offer a critical portrait of the recent changes affecting the
relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities in northern Québec, and discuss the
limits of the cross-cultural dialogue in which they are engaged. Conceived of as a dynamic form of
cross-cultural dialogue shaped by power relations, the concept of cultural métissage proves to be a
very useful tool for our analysis. We specifically aim to better understand the threads that weave
together métissage, power relations, identity and space in a context of territorial development and
planning. How each partner engages in these exchanges is determined by a set of values, meanings
and references that, together, form not only ways of being in the world but also the very worlds in
which groups and individuals envision the possibility of being. Development and planning are an
especially rich ground for understanding the state and the economy as ontological. Our appeal to
ontology is meant to problematize the production of culture and difference which lies at the centre
of territorial planning and development.3
We shall illustrate our argument using two cases studies: the emergence in 2008 of the Québec
government’s Plan Nord (‘Northern Plan’), an all-embracing and ambitious program of development beyond the northern boundary of what would constitute the non-Aboriginal (in majority)
ecumene; and the current treaty process involving three Innu First Nations in the regions of
Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean and Côte-Nord. Our analysis is based on a diversity of data and methods: we draw on media, academic and government sources concerning these planning processes,
as well as on our field experiences and research collaborations with the communities concerned.
While the spatial, historical and cultural contexts of these two cases studies only partly overlap,
they provide rich perspectives on many facets of métissage. But first, let us better define what
we mean by the notions of ontology and cultural métissage and discuss their relevance for territorial planning.
Territorial ontology as geographical location: North-South
dynamics in Québec
The notion of ontology we deploy in this article is anchored in the cultural and historical geography of Québec. The specifics of Québec’s geography create a context where the demographic
and industrial heart of the province is concentrated on a very small portion of its space.
Historically, Aboriginal peoples made extensive use of the entirety of the territory, establishing
travel and trade routes that spanned wide distances from the shores of the St-Lawrence river into
the geographical center of the peninsula, and beyond. By contrast, colonial settlement was
focused primarily in the Laurentian valley. Located on the North shore of the St-Lawrence, the
cities of Québec (founded in 1608), Trois-Rivières (1634) and Montréal (1642) were envisioned
as ‘bridge heads’ (têtes de pont) meant to support the settlement and densification of the space
they spanned. In the 19th and 20th centuries, agricultural settlement spread to the northern
fringes of the St-Lawrence valley but was halted by the environmental conditions that, beyond
the 48th parallel, were less or not favourable to farming. Other economic activities – notably fur
trading and forestry – also channelled the non-aboriginal population inland but did not always
Desbiens and Rivard
101
support permanent settlement to the extent that agriculture did. In the 20th century, mining
would eventually give rise to a number of non-aboriginal villages (among them Matagami,
Fermont, Chibougamau and Schefferville) and the hydroelectric development of the La Grande
river brought the creation of Radisson, which is a white enclave in the Cree territory of Eeyou
Istchee.4 Notwithstanding the presence of these mixed settlements, northern Québec remains
majoritarily populated by aboriginal peoples with nine Cree communities in the northwest
region, 14 Inuit communities in the subarctic, one Naskapi south of the Ungava Bay and nine
Innu villages distributed across the northeast and North Shore regions. One of the dominant
traits of this demographic distribution across the province is that the bulk of the eurodescendant
population of Québec is located in the urban centers of the St-Lawrence region while its northern
regions are, to a great extent, populated by aboriginal peoples.5
This cultural geography has a far-reaching influence on territorial planning in northern Québec.
In spite of the fact that the region is a historical and cultural homeland for its aboriginal population
and that local aboriginal governance is firmly established, comprehensive policies about northern
development largely continue to originate from southern institutions; a legacy of Québec (and
Canada’s) colonial past. One of the impacts of this colonial legacy is that models of territorial
development are elaborated in abstract space: northern Québec continues to be envisioned as an
empty expanse of land. With the roads, infrastructures and built environment that they generate,
contemporary extractive activities are imagined to be ‘opening’ such abstract space. This frontier
vision was affirmed by former Premier Jean Charest himself when he declared that the long-term
goal of his Plan Nord was to ‘Push back the limits of our last great Northern frontier.’6 Against the
constantly reiterated ‘geosymbol’7 of the north as an unbuilt – and therefore uninhabited – space,
local and aboriginal subjectivities express again and again the plenitude of the landscape: toponyms, graves, portages, gathering sites, travel routes, animal and human migration paths are only
some of the geographical entities that structure these territories. The imagining of the north as
abstract or representing a frontier makes no sense to those who regularly interact with this territory;
the idea of an empty north can only express the territorial ontology of a subject who is external to
it. In this paper, our analysis stems from the premise that an exogenous territorial ontology of the
North as an abstract rather than lived geography remains dominant in the global planning strategy
that is being proposed for northern Québec. Furthermore, by maintaining its dominance, this territorial ontology also seeks to expand.
Métissage, territoriality, and development
Despite the ‘cultural turn’8 and the recent rise of culture and ethnicity in development thinking,9
the use of the concept of cultural métissage (or hybridity) remains relatively marginal in development and planning studies. More often, it relates to the mixing, real or contemplated, of different
economic approaches (capitalistic and non-capitalistic approaches alike), or the intermingling of
various types of economic systems – be they market, state or custom driven economies – all of
which belong to distinctive ‘cultural realms.’ 10
Postcolonial literature has certainly shaped our contemporary conception of métissage by
revealing how identities are continuously negotiated through processes of cultural exchange, culture being understood here in a broad sense, with its symbolic dimension, of course, but also with
its political and material (or economical) ones. Such negotiation gives birth to a ‘third space’ where
ambivalence and cross-cultural abilities are conducive of new socio-cultural categories and where
identity and hegemonic ideas face resistance.11 Considering the recent and expanding body of literature focusing on the cultural dimension of development and planning, conceiving of métissage
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as a process of identity that is also related to territorial dynamics opens promising avenues for the
field. Arturo Escobar’s vision of postdevelopment falls within this definition of métissage. For the
Colombian anthropologist, hybridity is a convenient tool for developing an alternative way to the
hegemonic nature of western development.12
The level of resistance to hegemonic figures of culture and identity – or the degree of cultural
exchange or merging – resulting from processes of métissage greatly depends upon the geographical and socio-cultural context within which these processes occur. If métissage suggests the creation of ‘something new’ arising in-between cultures, such a new reality is not necessarily located
half-way from both the cultural realms it generates from.13 Most episodes of métissages between
Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples in Canada’s past proved to be very partial forms of cultural
merging. It appears from those métissages that Aboriginal peoples had often had to largely compromise on their beliefs and ways, and to adopt those of Eurocanadians, while maintaining a separate sense of identity. This reality certainly had a great deal to do with the fact that colonial
authorities long conceived of métissage as a way of ‘civilizing’ (meaning ‘assimilating’) the ‘primitive Indians.’14 With such a heavy colonial load, it is not surprising that First Nations became
highly suspicious of the term.15 Such imbalance in the cultural exchange between Aboriginal and
non-Aboriginal people is still very much common today, as we shall argue further. As French
scholars Laplantine and Nouss would argue, métissage is much less about cultural merging and
cohesion than about confrontation and dialogue,16 suggesting how crucial power relations are for
the process and its results.
With this in mind, we find it useful to conceive of métissage as the product of (inter)cultural
dialogue forged by power relations.17 To say that such dialogue is sensitive to power is to recognize that interlocutors might not have the same voice in the process. It seems appropriate, thus, to
distinguish dialogues that are ‘passive’ from those that are more ‘active.’ By passive crosscultural dialogues, we mean those processes of cultural exchange based on highly asymmetrical
power relations, one group being more authoritative than the other, which tends to silence the
minority group. This has often been the case in relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal
peoples throughout the course of Canadian history, where the views of the latter have generally
been placed in the forefront, while the former have rarely been viewed as proper interlocutors;
that is, people whose perspectives are considered to be of any value. There would have been no
dialogue at all were not Aboriginal people forced into speaking (or ‘mimicking’ as Bhabha would
probably have it), at least partly, the language of non-Aboriginals, proving themselves to be in an
‘active’ mode in their interactions with Eurocanadians.18 Some critics have argued that this is
mostly what they do, for example, when using the courts (non-aboriginally instituted) in order to
define the nature of their specific rights as Aboriginal peoples and create a new balance of power
in their relation to Canada’s mainstream society.19 The signing of territorial agreements – starting
with the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement (JBNQA) in 1975 – exemplifies this bind.20
Although it opened up a space for active cross-cultural dialogue, the JBNQA was crafted, for the
most part, in the language of southern Québec’s legal and governmental institutions. This comes
as no surprise since it was spearheaded by the building of a gigantic hydroelectric complex (La
Grande) which played a key role, both symbolic and economic, in the decolonization and affirmation of Québécois identity.21 Ultimately, although these exchanges may seem one-sided at first
glance – ‘acculturation’ being the sword of Damocles hanging over Native heads – Aboriginal
people do participate in the creation of ‘something new,’ challenging indirectly (‘resisting’) hegemonic definition of indigeneity.22
What distinguishes active forms of cross-cultural dialogues from passive ones lies not so much
with the dynamics of power per se, than with the recognition, if partial, of Aboriginal peoples as
Desbiens and Rivard
103
proper interlocutors. Non-Aboriginal factions generally keep the upper hand in both forms of dialogues. Contrary to passive forms, however, active dialogues are based on wilfull two-way cultural
negotiations. Such negotiations can take place on political ground – through treaty process or
appropriate policies – or in the economic arena. Instead of denying the multiplicity of cultural
realms and ontologies, active dialogues attempt to recognize them and to take them into account in
the spirit of respect for all parties’ cultural distinctiveness. The degree of recognition depends upon
the nature of power relations between the parties involved. The fact that non-Aboriginal recognition of Native legitimacy is needed for dialogue to be ‘activated’ is a strong indication of the power
relations at stake.
Despite their differences, passive and active cross-cultural dialogues have in common the fact
that they bring cultures into contact and, in so doing, have the potential of modifying Aboriginal
and non-Aboriginal territorialities. Territoriality is both the process by which a people appropriates space and creates territory through their identity markers, and the process by which they
define, at least partially, their sense of belonging in relation to that territory. In short, it is the
relationship between a people’s sense of identity and their sense of place. ‘Otherness’ – interaction with distinct aboriginal cultures for example – constitutes the keystone of such territorial
and identity building.23 So defined, territoriality appears as a very dynamic and transactional
reality. Territorial development and planning emerge, thus, as a suitable socio-spatial stage
where métissages can be engendered, voluntarily or not, and identities be reinvented in order to
open up some room for Aboriginal realities. On this stage, the state and the economic models it
puts forth are in themselves ontological and subject to negotiation. We turn to our case studies to
assess the degree of passive and active métissage of the planning approaches that are presently
being deployed in northern Quebec.
The Plan Nord: recognition within a southern territorial ontology
The latest and most comprehensive installment of (would be) cross-cultural territorial planning
in Québec is the Plan Nord (Northern Plan), which was launched by Jean Charest’s Liberal
government in September 2008.24 Following the financial crisis that began in 2007, the Plan
Nord is part of a five-point strategy to sustain growth in Québec and reposition the province
within the global economy by developing the ‘mining, energy and tourism potential in the
North, in partnership with the northern communities concerned, including the First Nations and
Inuit.’25 The geographical area covered by the Plan Nord comprises the whole of Québec
located North of the 49th parallel and accounts for nearly 72 percent of the province’s land
base; in all, 63 communities are located in this area, 31 Aboriginal and 32 non-Aboriginal (see
Figure 1).26 At the time of its announcement in 2008, the Plan Nord seemed full of good intentions in its attempt to articulate a participatory vision of northern development that would
include the needs and aspirations of all the parties, from local First Nations, Inuit and nonAboriginal communities to industry, education and environmental actors: ‘The Plan Nord is
primarily a vision that will be defined with the main stakeholders concerned, and also a vast
development project for Québec as a whole.’27 In its effort to define this vision, the Charest
government created a ‘Partners’ discussion table’ made up of representatives from municipalities; Aboriginal nations; economic, environmental, educational and research organizations; as
well as government departments and agencies concerned with the project. Another discussion
table was created for the Aboriginal partners, namely Inuit, Cree (Eeyouch), Naskapi and Innu.
All of these working groups met at various times to share the results of their discussions. As
stated in the original working document:
104
Figure 1. Area covered by the Plan Nord.
cultural geographies 21(1)
Source: reproduced with permission from the Ministère des Ressources et de la Faune, Gouvernement du Québec,
<http://plannord.gouv.qc.ca/english/documents/area-covered.pdf>.
Desbiens and Rivard
105
This process to draft the Plan Nord results primarily from the need to establish a partnership linking local
communities, the government and other stakeholders. It is based on the values of respect, awareness and
openness. The partners – First Nations, Inuit, municipalities, civil society and the business sector – will
work together with the government to define new opportunities for the generations to come. Together, they
will define a project bearing promise for the future, a source of pride for the whole of Québec society.28
After a consultation period, the Liberal government released a more detailed plan in May
2011. The public debate that has been ongoing since is too complex to survey here. Worthy of
note is the fact that the Cree and Inuit political leadership expressed support of the plan (at least
when it was launched) while the Innus, who nevertheless wish to play an active role in territorial
development, have expressed reservations regarding the framework and modalities of the Plan
Nord. Some leaders have stressed the unevenness of the treaty process across this vast territory:
while the Cree, Inuit and Naskapis reached agreements in 1975 and 1978 – namely, the JBNQA
and Northeastern Québec Agreement – no similar accord has yet been reached on the Nitassinan
(Innu land).29 The result of this unevenness is that Aboriginal nations do not come to the negotiation table as fully equal partners. This is only one aspect of the difficult terrain that the Plan Nord
is venturing into. If the government indeed initiated a dialogue with the different partners of
northern development in Québec, it is worth asking whether this dialogue occurred in an ‘active’
or ‘passive’ mode.
Seen in the historical context of interethnic planning in northern Québec, the Plan Nord seesaws
between a western territorial ontology and a new – as of yet largely unscripted – understanding of
people and place in this region. Embedded in that territorial ontology are also specific ideas about
national identity and resources. The 20th century witnessed the rise of a Francophone political and
economic elite meaning that the Québécois see themselves since as the chief actors of territorial
development across the province; with, of course, much help from global investment. What is
important to note is that their political and economic upper hand is also maintained through an
essentialist cultural claim to the land. This cultural claim has been reiterated each and every time a
new phase of northern economic development is about to begin. The Plan Nord is no exception:
when Jean Charest announced the initiative back in 2008, his discourse rested on a long tradition
of merging natural resources and the national community when it comes to projecting the interests
of southern Québec into the Aboriginal North. Speaking about the region and its deep attraction for
the south, he asserted: ‘Not only is it in our home, it is inside us.’
Charest was using a well-worn rhetorical figure in which an emotional connection to place is
evoked in order to legitimate the appropriation of resources: throughout the colonial history of
Canada, the conjuring and subsequent naturalization of such a bond have supported the ‘resettling’
of aboriginal space.30 Charest’s formulation is but one example of the Québécois impulse to affirm
territorial belonging not just in the spaces that have historically constituted their cultural ecumene,
but across the entirety of the province, including the Aboriginal north. Québec’s cultural and historical geographies reveal great diversity in the conceptualization of a bond between people and
land, but this multiculturalism seems radically reduced in the Plan Nord. Notwithstanding the
plan’s participatory framework, the ‘us’ that Premier Charest invokes in his discourse relies on a
passive form of cultural métissage.
This was apparent during a meeting of the partners’ tables (which one of us had the opportunity
to attend): one Innu representative made a statement where he alluded to a cultural boundary
between the Québécois and the Innus by referring to ‘you’ and ‘us.’ He was quickly put in his
place by the then Aboriginal Affairs Minister and by the Minister responsible for the Plan Nord
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(who was also Vice-Premier of the province). Both expressed their moral outrage that this individual would remove the Innus from the collective ‘we’ that had been invited to the discussion
table. The forced inclusion of an Aboriginal group into the Québécois national voice is a strong
example of passive métissage: as this example shows, one group is more authoritative than the
other, which lends it the capacity to silence the minority group. This particularly salient instance
of such a silencing should not, however, divert our attention from the fact that the erasure of
aboriginal ontologies may also be structurally embedded in the very process of territorial planning that claims to give space to these subjectivities via partnerships and co-management. Here
Gayatri Spivak’s question seems relevant to ask: Can the subaltern speak?31 That is, can the multiplicity of territorial ontologies find expression in the terms laid out by a planning process that
originates from southern institutions?
Cultural transfers may not yet fully be a two-way street as it pertains to North-South relations
in Québec, and – for many observers – the Plan Nord does not go far enough in creating a circular
exchange. Instead, we seem to be witnessing what geographer Louis-Edmond Hamelin has referred
to as a ‘Southerning’ (septentrionalization) of northern Québec, although he himself supports the
Plan Nord. More than 30 years ago, these questions were already at the heart of his landmark book
Canadian Nordicity, where he explored the idea that the North is a moving space.32 He proposed
that the degree of ‘nordicity’ (his own neologism) of a community was not linked solely to its geographical location but, rather, to its connectivity with economic centers and integration into the
world system. By introducing the idea that the North was a fluctuating space (northerness decreased
as access and connectivity increased), Hamelin stressed how market forces were transforming
local subjectivities. Later in his work, the question kept coming back: For whose advantage were
these transformations taking place? There is no straightforward answer to that question and the
danger of locking Aboriginal peoples in the past or outside the modern economy is real. Still,
Hamelin was adamant about the importance not only of preserving Aboriginal territorialities and
subjectivities but – more importantly – of expanding them to the South. But, as noted by Hamelin
himself, such a reversal in language, approach and appropriation – the northerning of the South
instead of the other way around – is far from being achieved in Québec. Instead, the North continues to be seen as a natural extension of southern Québec.33 In the next section, we will look at
another model of territorial métissage that is unfolding in Québec before moving to our
conclusion.
Recognizing and shaping interethnic territorialities: the Innu
First Nations in Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean and Côte-Nord
In July 2000, the Federal and Québec governments and three Innu First Nations jointly announced
the reaching of an Agreement in principle of General Nature (APGN), opening the door for the
negotiation of a final agreement.34 The signing of the APGN is the result of nearly 30 years of
negotiation under the Federal Comprehensive Claims program, which aims at settling of Aboriginal
rights and title for Inuit and First Nations who have never been granted treaty benefits. The territorial extent of the APGN overlaps two administrative regions of the Province of Québec, the
Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean and Côte-Nord, the northern sections of which are part of the Plan Nord
(see Figure 2).
Conforming to the model established by the JBNQA, the APGN relies upon a crucial notion,
that of co-management. Co-management is broadly defined as ‘the sharing of power and responsibility between the government and local resource users,’ or as ‘systems that enable a sharing of
decision-making power, responsibility and risk between government and stakeholders.’35 Although
Desbiens and Rivard
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Figure 2. L’Entente de principe d’ordre general.
Source: reproduced with permission from the Secrétariat aux affaires autochtones, Ministère du Conseil exécutif, Gouvernement du Québec, <http://www.versuntraite.com/documentation/publications/Carte_Innus-Quebec.pdf>.
the nature of Aboriginal participation and control may vary in time and space, co-management
engenders new forms of governance where Aboriginal people are no longer perceived as obstacles
to, but rather as genuine partners in development.36 If APGN displays traditional forms of shared
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management with local non-Aboriginal communities – in fisheries or wildlife management, for
instance – it also recognizes Aboriginal peoples’ shared responsibilities in mining, forestry or in
hydroelectric development. Those new realms of responsibility suggest a dynamic definition of
indigeneity, one that is not exclusively bound to its traditional dimensions. Ultimately, this specific
form of territorial regime is built upon a strategy that endorses spatial overlaps, an approach that is
at odds with the colonial segregationist model upon which, for example, the Indian reserve system
was enacted.
The notion and practice of co-management has faced its part of critiques over the years.37
Despite its focus on the integration of Aboriginal people in development, co-management too often
subsumes, its critics argue, Aboriginal voices to an unnecessary bureaucracy that keeps institutional authority in the hands of non-Aboriginals.38 Although co-management appears as a form of
active cross-cultural dialogue where Aboriginal people are considered to be legitimate interlocutors, in practice, it often fails to live up to its own promise to empower Aboriginal peoples.
Co-management, critics say, must first be conceived for what it is: a compromise between
Aboriginal rights to self-government and the sovereignty of the Crown.39 Not only does the latter
prevail over the former, it can be said that a two-way cultural métissage in which non-Aboriginal
territorialities would become permeable to Aboriginal cultures is in no way a prerequisite to comanagement. In fact, as Howitt and Suchet-Person point out, one can conceive of co-management
as a way ‘to discipline indigenous peoples and their domains to bring them within the compass of
mainstream management pratices.’40 The concept of co-management, as the authors’s argument
goes on, is actually rooted in an Eurocentric ontology, which envisions a clear separation between
society and nature, emphasizing the control of the latter by the former.41 The concept then is contrary to a more relational ontology – closer to Aboriginal ways of being-in-place and sense of
identity – and prove to be a serious limitation to the emergence of an active form of cross-cultural
dialogue.42 Whether they apply or not to the APGN, which is still being negotiated into a final
agreement, these critiques are a reminder of the power relations against which any type of crosscultural dialogues stands.43
Despite the fact that the notion of co-management is nothing new, it is worth stressing the fact
that the APGN is the first treaty process to occur in Québec’s contemporary history on a land
where the population is predominantly non-Aboriginal (over 95% in fact). Such a demographic
situation raises challenges never really faced before. Thus, it will not come as a surprise to anyone
that the local non-Aboriginal population’s approval of the agreement is far from guaranteed. Ever
since it was made public in 2000, the APGN has had to face a wave of concerns and opposition
from the non-Aboriginal local communities, a movement that peaked in the spring of 2003, forcing the Québec government into launching a parliamentary commission on the topic.44 The commission helped identify the major concerns that sparked local (non-Aboriginal) opposition: the
sense that the agreement had been negotiated in secret by the parties without consulting them,
and, following from that, the land and its resources would be unevenly granted at their own
expense. Even though opposition has faded since then, its main concerns are enduring and a certain degree of suspicion remains. In peripheral regions like Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean and CôteNord, which have their share of socio-economic problems – a diminishing and aging population
coupled with steadily growing unemployment rates and a huge dependence on multinational companies – local control over land and resources has been a recurrent topic of discord for many years
between locals and the Provincial government. The Aboriginal question is only one element,
although significant, in a broader complex of apprehensions. The economic and demographic
context within which this treaty process occurs, of course, feeds a sense of inequality that is felt
by non-Aboriginal people.
Desbiens and Rivard
109
In spite of the widespread non-Aboriginal suspicion regarding the agreement in principle, an
uncommon willingness among regional decision makers to include Innu people in development
and planning has been gaining momentum lately. This is particularly true in the Saguenay-LacSaint-Jean region where one of the three Innu Nations who signed the agreement, the First Nation
of Mashteuiatsh (Pekuakamiulnuatsh), is located. The APGN, and the Aboriginal rights it aims to
settle, have increasingly been cited by decision makers as the rationale for such openness, suggesting the agreement has, even though it is not final yet, ‘enforcing-like’ capacity. We have also seen
a fair number of concrete actions in this region towards Aboriginal inclusion, starting with the
creation of an Innu seat at the Conférence régionale des élus (CRÉ), the regional forum for development.45 As an example of this official collaboration, the CRÉ and Innu council produced, in
2008, a joint perspective on Québec’s new forestry policy (to be implemented in Spring 2013),
which stresses the role the Aboriginal community should play in the regional logging industry and
in promoting sustainable development. In the same vein, most of the four Regional county municipalities (Municipalités régionales de comté, MRC, which are administrative groupings of municipalities responsible for planning) have been supportive of the agreement, in most cases as early as
2000, even before the height of the public frenzy of opposition. Overall, this context is potentially
favorable to the emergence of new territorial policies and collaborative cross-cultural planning and
development. There have been some examples of that in the last few years: 1) the signing in
January 2010 of an agreement between the Mashteuiatsh Innu council and the MRC Domaine-duRoy (south-west of Lake Saint-Jean) and Maria-Chapdeleine (north of Lake Saint-Jean) for a partnership in small-scale hydroelectric production; 2) the inclusion in 2009 of the Innu council in la
Société d’énergie du Lac-Saint-Jean, a company dedicated to the promotion and development of
energy sources; 3) or the creation of l’Agence de développement des communautés forestières ilnu
et jeannoise in 2009, a multicultural non-profit organization the mission of which is to improve
sustainability in local communities (Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal alike) highly depending on
logging resources.
Economic context – more than a newfound understanding of Innu culture and territoriality per
se – might explain the difference in attitudes between decision makers and the regional population
as a whole towards the treaty process. In a time of globalization and search for market specification and high economic value, the Aboriginal ‘nature’ of the land might be crucial to future development. The image of an ancestral, traditional, and ecological Indian certainly constitutes a
valuable selling feature in a world economy in which ecotourism and ‘green markets’ are gaining
supremacy.46 It would be difficult for non-Aboriginal organizations to take advantage of such a
territorial resource without the involvement and collaboration of Aboriginal peoples and the full
recognition of their rights, especially if sustainability is seriously considered. In better defining
the nature and application of these rights, the APGN represents a potential source of regional
dialogue on the local economy and the role to be played by the Innus in development. A key
incentive to the decision makers’ openness to an Aboriginal contribution to development is certainly the 250,000 cubic meters of lumber set aside by the agreement for the sole use of the Innu
First Nation. This amount may seem to count for little in the total harvesting potential of the
region, which was considered, in 2008, to be around 7.5 million cubic meters annually according
to the Quebec Department of Natural Resources. But considering the fact that most of this potential is exploited by national and multinational logging companies and not by local communities,
these volumes of wood set aside for the Innus constitute capital for economic partnerships between
them and local non-Aboriginals, a fact that has not gone unnoticed by development and planning
officials. Another important factor in this official receptiveness to Aboriginal inclusion in planning is perhaps the fact that the Pekuakamiulnuatsh’s visions of development do not seem to go
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against the grain of mainstream perspectives. Despite having distinctive views over development
(notably in terms of sustainability and territoriality), Innu people appear to endorse, for a great
part, the ‘hegemonic’ vision of economic development only they want to better control its implementation in their ancestral territories.
Conclusion
There should be no doubt about the fact that Aboriginal people and governments remain committed
to an active form of cross-cultural dialogue in Québec. As opposed to the situation in the 1970s for
instance, no head of government today would ever think about announcing such a complex and
far-reaching program of development as the Plan Nord without mentioning the importance of
engaging in it alongside First Nation and Inuit peoples. For that matter, the Provincial government
project in northern Québec has been explicit in depicting Aboriginal peoples as legitimate partners
in development. Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal partnership has also been a leitmotiv in treaty negotiation on Innu First Nations ancestral lands and, lately, in regional planning, at least in the SaguenayLac-Saint-Jean region. More than ever, then, Aboriginal peoples seem to have a say in matter of
land planning in northern Québec. Active cross-cultural dialogues and métissages have become a
goal to be attained in crafting Québec’s future.
The sometimes shallow depth of such métissages is, however, a reminder of the rooted imbalance that shapes power relations in northern Québec. In this era of transnational mobility and
globalization (to which undoubtedly Québec’s northern spaces of development belong), there is a
strong emerging consensus that all cultures are the result of cultural métissages. Such association
of ideas between contemporary economic dynamics and cultural exchanges is somewhat questionable for it poses métissage as unproblematic, as a ‘natural state’ serving the established order
of things; that of capital accumulation. A critical approach to métissage is then mandatory in order
to stress that métissage is neither good nor bad, but simply an ongoing process of cultural exchange
shaped by power relations. So defined, the concept of cultural métissage reminds us that, at the
end of the day, Aboriginal peoples get the biggest share in risk, not in control. The plan of action
the South is proposing to Northerners reveals a fundamental contradiction in development thinking in Québec. While the industrialized/urbanized center of the province is advocating a ‘sustainable’ vision of development based on local, community controlled means of production and
consumption, the economic development models that are being implemented in peripheral/
Aboriginal regions continue to replace community-driven economies with distant means of production. The present food and housing crisis in the North are two examples of this trend and of its
disastrous consequences.47 Aboriginal peoples are generally instigators in dialogue, taking the
first steps – if not traveling the whole distance – towards non-Aboriginals, which is best exemplified by many communities embracing the tenets of an economy that is driven by foreign markets,
at the expense of their long established socially and regionally-grounded economies. Those
Aboriginal communities have certainly won their ‘legitimacy’ from a dominant non-Aboriginal
and neoliberal point of view. The question here is not whether this Native endorsement of dominant economic models is or is not the right choice for such communities, but rather if there is any
concern on the part of non-Aboriginals to foster alternative visions of economic development
when they engage in processes of co-management.
Historically, territorial planning in boreal Québec has called for a deep integration by the local
Aboriginal population of the dominant group’s territoriality, even though huge tracks of this area is
populated in majority by Inuit and First Nations people. Unfortunately, practices of co-management have not always amended this situation. For the years to come, the challenge then in northern
Desbiens and Rivard
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Québec is to sustain and nourish a networked regionalism that is anchored in Aboriginal seats of
government and feeds a development thinking that focuses on the ‘integrity of the North’ before
pursuing the integrity of Québec. If indigenous peoples have indeed, and for many years, been
engaged in a process of cultural métissage with outsiders, how do we go about ‘northerning’ and
indigenizing mainstream Québec and Canada? As the population of Québec stands on the threshold
of another massive phase of capital expansion into the North under the guises of the Plan Nord – or
however the current or future governments will refer to it – the success of this enterprise may
depend on abandoning passive forms of cultural métissage to enter fully into an active cross-fertilization of territorial ontologies across the space of the province.
Acknowledgements
We are deeply indebted to Emilie Cameron, Sarah de Leeuw, Susan Ruddick and the anonymous referees for
their thoughtful and extremely useful comments. We are, of course, entirely responsible for any errors that
remain.
Funding
This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number
410-2010-2715].
Notes
1. In Canada, the term ‘Aboriginal peoples’ includes the First Nations (or ‘Indians’ according to the Indian
Act of 1876 that mainly defines, up to now, who is entitled or not to this ethnocultural label), Inuit and
Métis (a new people resulting from historical contacts and métissages between Eurocanadians and First
Nations and/or Inuit). The collective rights of those peoples are officially recognized by Canada’s Constitutional Act of 1982. This paper deals only with some Québec First Nations.
2. Although we use the terms ‘Aboriginal’ and ‘non-Aboriginal’ throughout this paper, we wish to stress
that they imply a fixity that certainly does not reflect the complexity of the people, places and identities they are meant to designate. Pertaining to the former, our use refers to communities and groups of
people that, from a legal point of view, have fallen either within the purview of the Indian Act and/or
of the colonial policies enacted by the Canadian and Québec state. The term ‘non-Aboriginal’ refers to
the demographic majority in Québec, which encompasses a variety of cultural backgrounds: French and
English as well as other immigrants from different international origins.
3. Due to space constraints, our discussion is focused primarily on Québec’s dominant territorial ontology,
namely that of the State and government actors. Readers who are interested in getting a fuller understanding of Aboriginal territorial ontologies in the province are encouraged to consult the following
references: Makivik Corporation, Plan Nunavik, <http://www.makivik.org/building-nunavik/plan-nunavik>; Grand Council of the Crees, Cree Vision of Plan Nord, <http://www.gcc.ca/pdf/Cree-Visionof-Plan-Nord.pdf>; B.Collignon, Knowing Places: The Inuinnait, Landscapes, and the Environment
(Edmonton: CCI Press, 2006); L.-J.Dorais, ‘Terre de l’ombre ou terre d’abondance? Le Nord des Inuit’,
in Daniel Chartier (ed.), Le(s) Nord(s) imaginaire(s) (Montréal: Imaginaire/Nord, 2008), pp. 9–22; J.-P.
Lacasse, Les Innus et le territoire: Innu tipenitamun (Québec: Septentrion, 2004).
4. S.Courville, Le Québec: genèses et mutations du territoire (Québec : Presses de l’Université Laval,
2000); N. Séguin, La conquête du sol au 19e siècle (Québec : Éditions du Boréal Express, 1977); C.
Harris, The Seigneurial System in Early Canada: A Geographical Study (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s
University Press, 1984); G. Duhaime (ed.), Le Nord: habitants et mutations (Québec: Presses de
l’Université Laval, 2001).
5. It must be noted that several aboriginal communities are also located in Quebec’s laurentian region,
including some urban reserves (Kahnawake, Kanesatake, Wendake, Uashat-Maliotenam) as well as a
112
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
1 6.
17.
18.
19.
20.
cultural geographies 21(1)
growing, and multicultural, aboriginal population in cities such as Val d’Or, Montréal or Québec. For
a map and details about Québec Aboriginal communities, see <http://www.autochtones.gouv.qc.ca/
nations/cartes/carte-8x11.pdf>.
A. Robitaille, ‘Charest mise sur le Nord’, Le Devoir, 29 September 2008.
The concept of geosymbol was developed by Joël Bonnemaison to refer to the cultural relationship
that a society maintains with its territory. See J. Bonnemaison, ‘Voyage autour du territoire’, L’Espace
géographique, 10(4), 1981, pp. 249–62.
P. Crang, ‘Cultural Turns and the (Re)constitution of Economic Geography’, in Roger Lee and Jane Wills
(eds), Geographies of Economies (London: Arnold, 1997), pp. 3–15; T. Barnes, ‘Retheorizing Economic
Geography: From the Quantitative Revolution to the “Cultural Turn”’, Annals of the Association of
American Geographers, 91(3), 2001, pp. 546–65; V. Rao and M. Walton (eds), Culture and Public Action
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004).
B. Hettne, ‘Ethnicity and Development: An Elusive Relationship’, in Denis Dwyer and David DrakakisSmith (eds), Ethnicity and Development: Geographical Perspectives (New York: John Wiley & Sons,
1996), p. 16; D. Drakakis-Smith, ‘Ethnicity, Development and … Geography’, in Denis Dwyer and
David Drakakis-Smith (eds), Ethnicity and Development: Geographical Perspectives (New York: John
Wiley & Sons, 1996), pp. 273–82; É. Esoh, ‘L’ingénierie territoriale à l’épreuve de la diversité culturelle:
étude de cas’, in L. Dayan, A. Joyal and S. Lardon (eds), L’ingénierie de territoire à l’épreuve du développement durable (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2011), pp. 97–129.
J.C. Altman, ‘Economic Development and Indigenous Australia: Contestations Over Property, Institutions and Ideology’, The Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 48(3), 2004,
p. 521; B. Coombes, ‘Ecospatial Outcomes of Neoliberal Planning: Habitat Management in Auckland
Region, New Zealand’, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 30, 2003, p. 204; J.K. Gibson-Graham, ‘Surplus Possibilities: Post-Development and Community Economies’, Singapore Journal
of Tropical Geography, 26(1), 2005, pp. 4–26; M. Lockwood and J. Davidson, ‘Environmental Governance and the Hybrid Regime of Australian Natural Resource Management’, Geoforum, 41, 2010, pp.
388–98; M.M. Yang, ‘Putting Global Capitalism in its Place: Economic Hybridity, Bataille, and Ritual
Expenditure’, Current Anthropology, 41(4), 2000, pp. 477–509.
H.K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994).
A. Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1995); A. Escobar, ‘Latin America at a Crossroads: Alternative Modernizations, Post-Liberalism, or Post-Development?’, Cultural Studies, 24(1), 2010, pp. 1–65. See also S.
Schech and J. Haggis, Culture and Development: A Critical Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000).
R. Harris, ‘Development and Hybridity Made Concrete in the Colonies’, Environment and Planning A,
40, 2008, p. 18.
É. Rivard, ‘Colonial Cartography of Canadian Margins: Cultural Encounters and the Idea of Métissage’,
Cartographica, 43(1), 2008, pp. 45–66.
L. Turgeon, Patrimoines métissés : contextes coloniaux et postcoloniaux (Paris: Éditions de la Maison
des sciences de l’homme, 2003).
F. Laplantine and A. Nouss, Le métissage (Paris: Flammarion, 1997), p. 10.
R. Harris, ‘Development and Hybridity’, pp. 15–36. In so doing, we consciously focus upon the process
of cultural exchange, at the expense of the result itself, emphasizing the dynamic and transactional nature
of métissage. See L.Turgeon, Patrimoines métissés.
H.K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture.
T. Alfred, Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto (Toronto: Oxford University
Press, 2009); H. Carlson, Home is the Hunter: The James Bay Cree and their Land (Vancouver:
UBC Press, 2008).
The JBNQA is considered to be the first ‘modern treaty’ in Canada since those signed in the late 19th
century. It deals with the territorial rights of Cree and Inuit Nations. It was followed three years later by
the Northeastern Quebec Agreement (1978) with the Naskapi people. The negotiations that gave birth
Desbiens and Rivard
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
2 6.
27.
2 8.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
3 6.
37.
38.
39.
40.
4 1.
42.
43.
113
to the JBNQA were the result of the interethnic tensions created by encroaching hydroelectric developments in Northern Québec in the early 1970s.
C. Desbiens, Power from the North: Territory, Identity and the Culture of Hydroelectricity in Quebec
(Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013).
Harris, ‘Development and Hybridity’, p. 18; H.A. Feit, ‘Re-cognizing Co-management as Co-governance: Visions and Histories of Conservation at James Bay’, Anthropologica, 47(2), 2005, p. 269.
C. Raffestin, Pour une géographie du pouvoir (Paris: Litec, 1980), p. 145; É. Rivard, ‘“Le Fond de
l’Ouest”: Territoriality, Oral Geographies, and the Métis in the 19th Century Northwest’, in Nicole StOnge, Carolyn Podruchny and Brenda Macdougall (eds), Contours of a People: Metis Family, Mobility,
and History (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 2012), p. 169.
It must be mentioned that Charest’s Liberal government was defeated by the Parti Québécois in September 2012. Premier Pauline Marois has stated, however, that her party would support development in
the North. As this article goes to press, a specific vision and guidelines have not yet been released but a
transitional bureau has been established to ensure continuity in this dossier.
Gouvernement du Québec, Plan Nord Working Document: For a socially responsible and sustainable
form of economic development (Québec: Ressources naturelles et Faune, 2009), p. 7.
Gouvernement du Québec, Plan Nord Working Document, pp. 5 and 24.
Gouvernement du Québec, Plan Nord: A New Horizon to Match New Ambitions, <http://www.plannord.gouv.qc.ca/english/index.asp>. It must be noted that, despite the government’s terminology,
aboriginal peoples are not only stakeholders but ‘rights’ holders in relation to the land and resources
of Northern Quebec.
Gouvernement du Québec, Plan Nord Working Document, p. 3.
Gouvernement du Canada, Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Vol. 2 (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1996).
The idea of a ‘resettlement’ comes from Cole Harris who sought to emphasize that Canada was already
settled, that is fully territorialized, before the European colonial era. See C. Harris, The Resettlement of
British Columbia: Essays on Colonialism and Geographical Change (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997).
G.C. Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds), Marxism and
the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana : University of Illinois Press, 1988), pp. 271–313.
L.-E. Hamelin, Canadian Nordicity: It’s Your North, Too (Montreal: Harvest House, 1979).
L.-E. Hamelin, ‘L’entièreté du Québec: le cas du Nord’, Cahiers de géographie du Québec, 42(115),
1998, pp. 95–110.
There were initially four Innu First Nations to sign this agreement, but one of them, the Pessimit Band,
withdrew in 2004 arguing the APGN would fail to protect their Aboriginal rights.
F. Berkes et al., ‘The Canadian Arctic and the Oceans Act: The Development of Participatory Environmental Research and Management’, Ocean & Coastal Management, 44, 2001, pp. 452–3.
Gouvernement du Canada, Report of the Royal Commission, Vol. 2.
See particularly M.G. Stevenson, ‘The Possibility of Difference: Rethinking Co-Management’, Human
Organization, 65(2), 2006, pp. 167–80.
K.J. Caine et al., ‘Partnerships for Social Change in the Canadian North: Revisiting the Insider–Outsider
Dialectic’, Development and Change, 38(3), 2007, pp. 447–71.
D.C. Natcher, ‘Land Use Research and the Duty to Consult: A Misrepresentation of the Aboriginal Landscape’, Land Use Policy, 18, 2001, p. 120; H.A. Feit, ‘Re-cognizing Co-Management’, pp. 280–2.
R. Howitt and S. Suchet-Person, ‘Rethinking the Building Blocks: Ontological Pluralism and the Idea of
“Management”’, Geografiska Annaler, 88(B3), 2006, p. 332.
Howitt and Suchet-Person, ‘Rethinking the Building Blocks’, p. 324.
See also Escobar, Latin America at a Crossroads, pp. 1–65 and S. Poirier, ‘Change, Resistance, Accommodation and Engagement in Indigenous Contexts: A Comparative (Canada–Australia) Perspective’,
Anthropological Forum, 20(1), 2010, pp. 41–60.
It is also needed to stress the fact that since the Fall of 2010, the treaty process has been postponed to
a date yet to be determined after the Federal government announced it does no longer agree with the
clause of non-extinguishment of Aboriginal rights supported by the APGN. Such a clause is uncommon
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44.
45.
46.
4 7.
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in treaty negotiations in Canada (see the JBNQA, for example). Nonetheless, this situation is another
eloquent illustration of the fundamental role of power in cross-cultural dialogues and how active forms
are by no means smooth processes without, at times, persistent traces of passivity.
This opposition has, at times, brought to the fore old and lasting stereotypes about Native peoples and,
too often, racial and hateful words, especially on radio open-line shows.
This idea of ‘Aboriginal inclusion’ is not shared by all Innus. There have been some, generally coined as
‘traditionalists,’ who suggest that those Native leaders pushing for Innu inclusion in regional development and planning are victims of capitalist and private property contamination. Not surprisingly, some
of them opposed, right from the beginning, to the signing of the APGN under a group called Ukauimau
aimu, ‘the mothers who speak out.’ For further details about those traditionalists, see J. Teoran, ‘Mashteuiatsh: Analyse d’un conflit interne chez les Pekuakamiulnuatsh’, Civilisations, 55(1–2), 2006, pp.
35–51.
S. Krech, The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1999).
C. Knotsch and D. Kinnon, If Not Now… When? Addressing the Ongoing Inuit Housing Crisis in Canada (Ottawa: National Aboriginal Health Organization, 2011), <http://www.naho.ca/documents/it/2011_
Inuit-Housing-Crisis-Canada-FullReport.pdf>; Indian and Northern Affairs, Food Security in Northern
Canada: A Discussion Paper on the Future of the Northern Air Stage Program, Government of Canada,
<http://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/45335/publication.html>.
Author biographies
Caroline Desbiens is a professor in the Department of Geography at Laval University and holds the Canada
Research Chair in Historical Geography of the North. Her research focuses on the changing territories and
territorialities of aboriginal peoples through industrialization, particularly hydroelectricity. Her book, Power
from the North: Territory, Identity and the Culture of Hydroelectricity in Quebec (UBC Press, 2013) explores
the cultural expansion of the Québécois into Northern aboriginal territories via resource development.
Étienne Rivard is the scientific coordinator of the Centre interuniversitaire d’études québécoises (CIEQ) at
Laval University. His main fields of research are on Métis territoriality and its cartographic expression and
on the idea of métissage. He also works on North American francophone geographies and on the place of
Aboriginal peoples in planning and territorial development in Canada. He is the coeditor (with Yves Frenette
and Marc St-Hilaire) of La francophonie nord-américaine (Presses de l’Université Laval, coll. ‘Atlas historique du Québec’, 2012).