Page 205 [205]
OCR
MAITRES CHEZ QUI?... could not allow non-French-Québécois to display acts of sovereignty on a territory which — according to the messages conveyed by the PQ - did not belong to them. The above conclusion is rich in implications. Most prominently, it indicates that while Québécois’ cultural identity crystalized during the Quiet Revolution, any semblance of Indigenous sovereignty was inversely quashed at the hands of the province’s policy makers. Of course, it would be disingenuous to maintain that these circumstances were shaped solely by the PQ and its leader. Previous governments also had a hand in divesting territorial sovereignty from Québec’s Indigenous population during the Quiet Revolution. School manuals sanctioned by the government of Québec during the mid-1960s, for instance, propagated the view that Indigenous populations were undeserving of the province’s territory due to the former’s misuse of the latter." Evidently, the territorialité Québécoise resulting from the Quiet Revolution was not solely shaped by Lévesque and the PQ. It should be emphasized, however, that, even if dreadfully colonialist, the abovedescribed school manuals at the very least recognized the existence of distinct Indigenous communities within the province of Québec. Once formed, the PQ appears to have largely forsaken such recognitions, instead focusing on French-Québécois’ inextricable link to a territory supposedly unmarked by pre-French indigeneity. As it happens, the discourses used to promote this ideology were diametrically opposed to Indigenous self-determination.*’ As stated by Daniel Salée in “Identities in Conflict,” self-determination requires an “adequate territorial base” able to supplement institutional autonomy.” The cultural geography which resulted from the Quiet Revolution could not permit such a development for Indigenous communities in the 1980s. To carve Québec’s territory would have been tantamount, in the words of Salée, to “carving up the identity of Quebecers [themselves]” since it would have served to deconstruct the “generous, proud, self-assured and virtuous picture” Québec’s French-speakers had built for themselves over the years.” This indicates that the cultural achievements of thel960s and 1970s, as positive as they may have been for Québec’s French population, occurred to 96 Research conducted by Sylvie Vincent and Bernard Anctil found that the above-mentioned manuals forwarded the view that “comme les Amérindiens faisaient de la terre du Québec un usage qui s’accorde mal avec les nouveaux idéaux du développement économique, il fallait leur prendre cette terre pour en faire quelque chose de valable et les reléguer à l’arrière-plan, où ils deviennent les figurants de notre histoire” (Sylvie Vincent — Bernard Arcand, L'image de l’Amerindien dans les manuels scolaires du Québec ou Comment le Québécois ne sont pas des sauvages, Montréal, Hurtubise, 1979, 379). Daniel Salée, Identities in Conflict: The Aboriginal Question and the politics of recognition in Quebec, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 18, No. 2 (1995), 277-314. 98 Ibid., 279. 99 Ibid., 282, 295. 97 + 203 +
