Serge Bouchard - The Laughing People: A Tribute to My Innu Friends

A Tribute to My Innu Friends

SERGE BOUCHARD

with Marie-Christine Lvesque

Translated by Craig Lund

McGill-Queens University Press
Montreal & Kingston London Chicago

McGill-Queens University Press 2021

Originally published in French as Le people rieur. Hommage mes amis innus Lux diteur, Montreal, 2017

www.luxediteur.com

ISBN 978-0-2280-0812-5 (cloth)

ISBN 978-0-2280-0926-9 (ePDF)

ISBN 978-0-2280-0927-6 (ePUB)

Legal deposit third quarter 2021

Bibliothque nationale du Qubec

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free

(100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: The laughing people : a tribute to my Innu friends / Serge Bouchard with Marie-Christine Lvesque ; translated by Craig Lund.

Other titles: Peuple rieur. English

Names: Bouchard, Serge, author. | Lvesque, Marie-Christine, author. | Lund, Craig, translator.

Description: Translation of: Le peuple rieur. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210203471 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210203536 | ISBN 9780228008125 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780228009269 (PDF) | ISBN 9780228009276 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCSH: Innus de Ekuanitshit. | CSH: InnuInnus de Ekuanitshit. | CSH: InnuInnus de EkuanitshitHistory. | CSH: InnuInnus de EkuanitshitSocial conditions. | CSH: InnuInnus de EkuanitshitSocial life and customs.

Classification: LCC E99.155 B6813 2021 | DDC 305.897/320714178dc23

When I was little, I didnt want to be a fireman,

I wanted to be an Indian.

Failing to do so, I loved them instead, so much.

All Indians, the Innu in particular.

To Georges, Desneiges, and Michel;

to Reggie, Jean-Charles, Josphine, Rita, and many others,

this book, with all my affection.

This book on the Innu Nation and the community of Essipit is the realization of a dream we have nurtured for several years. Indeed, already more than a decade ago, with the collaboration of historians, Elders, anthropologists, and ethnologists, we collected writings, pictures, and recordings. But never did we believe that this project would have piqued the interest of an author with a reputation as great as Serge Bouchards. Yet, this is not surprising, since Serge Bouchard is an unconditional friend of the Innu: he lived among us, in all our communities, from Pekuakami (Lac Saint-Jean) to Pakut-shipu. He made friends, lived moments of pure wonder, distress, great joy, and also profound sadness. This book is a testament to that.

There is nothing academic in this work. No scholarly analysis or grand theories. Only facts, images, and stories: many images, many stories that, like in Innu-aimun, the Innu language, are evoked, described, told, and sometimes whispered around a fire. With, in the background, the peaceful grin of the Innu people watching life pass just as a river flows, sometimes peacefully, without eddies or rapids, and sometimes violent like a torrent: memories of miraculous hunts and catches, dialogues with animals, and exchanges with several spirits of the forest; also, memories of fracture, splits, and removal of children forced to go to boarding school.

In a way, this book is a gift that Serge Bouchard and the Essipit community are giving to the Innu people. Like a mirror, it gives back to those who behold in it an image of great depth, like a lake whose shores disappear into the horizon. As far back as memories go, the Innu were there, are still there, and will continue to be there until memories cease. And for them to remain, their fire must be maintained.

So, thanks to Serge Bouchard and his co-author Marie-Christine Lvesque, to the late Pierre Frenette, to members of the Innu Nation, and to all those who contributed, from near or far, for making this dream a reality.

Tshinashkumitinau kassinu uikaneshmaut.

MARTIN DUFOUR

Chief, Essipit Innu First Nation Band Council

During this long writing journey, many put their shoulders to the wheel. We thank them from the bottom of our hearts: Eve Delmas of Lux Editions for the quality of her support and her fine psychology, Sylvie Vincent for the critical, very critical rereading of the manuscript, and Robert Lalibert, one of the last of the Mohicans in the patient and sharp art of revision. Their extreme rigour has greatly improved the book. We certainly thank the Council of the Essipit Innu First Nation and salute its Chief, Martin Dufour, for having financially supported the writing of the book. A special tip-of-the-hat to the former executive director of the Council, Rginald Moreau, whose trust and enthusiasm brought life to this project, as well as to Marc Chaloult and Suzie Gagnon, who have supported this project from the beginning. Finally, let us acknowledge the research work of Florence Parcoret.

Related to the larger Algonquian family, the Innu have been present on the Quebec-Labrador peninsula for several millennia. These former nomads were the first Indigenous Peoples to establish commercial and cultural ties with European explorers and missionaries. Today, they form a Nation of about eighteen thousand people grouped into eleven communities: nine in the boreal part of Quebec Mashteuiatsh (Pointe-Bleue), Essipit (Les Escoumins), Pessamit (Betsiamites), Uashat mak Mani-utenam (Sept-les and Maliotenam), Ekuanitshit (Mingan), Nutashkuan (Natashquan), Unaman-shipu (La Romaine), Pakut-shipu (Saint-Augustin), Matimekush (Schefferville); and two in Newfoundland and Labrador, Sheshatshiu (Northwest River) and Natuashish (Davis Inlet). Their language, Innuaimun, and their culture, Innu-aitun, are still alive and well.

In My Red Book

Adolescent at the time of my classical studies, in my room on the desk where I did homework, I had a red hardcover volume that I was so proud of like a medieval monk beholding a rare manuscript. It was The Indians of Canada by Diamond Jenness. I consulted it incessantly, to relearn each and every day some rare and precious knowledge I was afraid of forgetting. I would find out much later what Innu writer An Antane Kapesh meant when she asserted that she was proud to be a savagesse: a term considered by some to be cursed, yet she translated it literally as the joy of living on savage lands. Much in the same way I naively believed Indian was among the most beautiful word in the world. I thought it nice to be an Indian. Yet history got the better of me; it got the better of us all. These savages and Indians, they disappeared, cast out with other dirty, decried words. So, we changed the words, thinking it would change the world, that by no longer saying this word or that, the problem would be resolved. We all know that someone who is visually disabled is not entirely blind, just as a person with reduced mobility is not wholly disabled; it would appear that someone who is Native is much less Indian.

In the book you are about to read, we frequently used these words, savages and Indians; they do not carry with them the charge that they have taken on today. Generally, when it comes to Indians, we use terms indifferently, like Indigenous, First Occupants, or First Nations members, to avoid the weight of repetition. Anyway, no matter the name, this book takes the side of the Innu.