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MARIE-CLAUDE GILL-LACROIX
Parti Ouébécois (PO), Lucien Lessard, traveled to Listuguj in order to hold
talks with the community’s band council.* An encounter between Lessard and
a Listuguj Chief has gained particular infamy since the documentary’s release:
Listuguj Chief: You French-Canadians are asking for sovereignty here in Québec.
You are saying it’s your country and you want to be independent in your country.
Were surprised that you don’t understand us Indian people and our sovereignty
on our land. Lucien Lessard: You cannot ask for sovereignty because to have
sovereignty one must have one’s own culture, language, and land.’
Obomsawin has described Lessard’s comments as “dreadful.”° As accurate
as her description may be, this paper is not interested in deriding Lessard’s
beliefs. Obomsawin does a fine job of explaining Indigenous peoples’ own
cultural, linguistic, and territorial claims in Incident at Restigouche. Rather,
this paper will seek to understand why a member of the PQ would be so obtuse
regarding the idea of Indigenous territorial sovereignty within Québec.
It was PQ founder, René Lévesque, who stated in 1977 that nationhood
is characterized by “a clearly defined territory, [...] history, [and a] common
language and culture.”’ Lévesque fervently believed Québec met all of the
above requirements.* So much so in fact that he and his party orchestrated a
referendum meant to ascertain the people of Québec’s willingness to separate
from the rest of Canada in May 1980.’ As evidenced by the events in Listuguj,
Lévesque and the PQ did not extend beliefs of sovereignty to the Indigenous
communities located within the province’s borders.’ Why was that? More
precisely, why were the PQ andits supporters so unwilling to accept Indigenous
peoples’ possible territorial sovereignty in the 1980s? In order to answer this
question, this paper will examine the effects of Québec’s Quiet Revolution
on the province’s ‘cultural geography.!! Jackson and Cosgrove’s particular
concept of cultural geography will be instrumentalized to better understand
This section of the film is from 29:30 to 33:13 in Obomsawin, Incident at Restigouche.
This encounter is described from 30:48 to 31:25 in Obomsawin, Incident at Restigouche.
The term is used from 30:48 to 30:57 in Obomsawin, Incident at Restigouche.
René Lévesque, Quebec: A Good Neighbour in Transition, Vital Speeches of the Day, Vol. 43,
No. 9 (1977), 283-284.
8 Ibid.
° See David H. Kaplan, Maitres Chez Nous: The Evolution of French Canadian Spatial Identity,
American Review of Canadian Studies, Vol. 19, No. 4 (1989), 421; Louis Balthazar, Les
nombreux visages du nationalisme québécois, in Alain-G. Gagnon (ed.), Québec: État et
Société Tome I, Montréal, Les Éditions Québec — Amérique, 23-40, especially the section
titled ‘Les traits du Nationalisme Québécois Majoritaire.’
10 Lessard sanctioned the raids in accordance with the wishes of Lévesque (see 29:40:00¬
30:25:00 in Obomsawin, Incident at Restigouche).
“Cultural geography is a relatively new field dedicated to studying how culture affects
geography and vice versa. For more information: Denis Cosgrove — Peter Jackson, New
Directions in Cultural Geography, Area, Vol. 19, No. 2 (June 1987), 95-101.
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