“I ask: How can people who claim these rights deny these same rights to us? Where is the logic?”
With those words, Grand Chief Matthew Coon Come went on the attack against Bill 1, the Quebec government’s Declaration of Sovereignty, at hearings of the Cree Eeyou-Astchee Commission in Montreal.
The Grand Chief was especially irked by one section of the declaration which claims that the “heart of this land beats in French”—”this land” is defined as everything from Ungava to the American border.
Just one sentence earlier, the declaration concedes that French colonizers only arrived here 400 years ago.
Coon Come ridiculed the declaration’s logic, noting that the Quebec government’s first presence north of Val d’Or was a brief visit by Rene Levesque in 1963.
“There are Crees alive today whose grandparents never saw a white man anywhere in Ungava. We Crees are still the only permanent inhabitants, and are the majority residents, of our traditional lands.
“I am not yet 40 years of age. Even I have been in Eeyou Astchee longer than the government of Quebec!”
Coon Come called the sovereignty declaration, which Quebecers vote on Oct 30, “a fraud on Aboriginal peoples” and “a plain attempt to dominate and subjugate our societies, cultures and ways of life.”
“This shameful declaration denies our existence,” he said.
“This shameful declaration diminishes our status and rights. This shameful declaration is an outright and intentional lie, repeated in 1995 by people who should know better.”
David Cliche, advisor to Premier Parizeau on the First Nations file, also spoke before the Commission in Montreal.
He boasted of Quebec’s relations with Native peoples and promised that sovereignty will improve the “financial independence” of Natives—”thanks to the greater participation of Natives in paying for the services they receive.”
Cliche and the Grand Chief addressed the hearings on Sept. 21, after weeks of travel by Commissioners who have crisscrossed James Bay listening to Cree concerns about Quebec separation. The hearings will culminate in a sitting of the Cree Legislature, a body with delegates from all nine communities, in Chisasibi Oct. 17 to 19. A Cree referendum will be held before Quebec’s Oct 30 vote.
Crees have as much right as Quebecers to hold a referendum, Coon Come said. “Every argument that the separatists make in their preambles, in their declarations, in their laws, are arguments the Crees can make—9,000 years, better.”
Three representatives of the Cree Nation Youth Council also issued statements criticizing the PQ. They wondered how an independent Quebec can be trusted, given past violations of Cree rights by successive Quebec governments. “It is the common belief among all Cree that the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement was signed under duress,” the youth said.
“Eeyou Astchee—our Land—is the lifeline for Eenouch/Eeyouch and we need to start standing up and shouting because they don’t listen to conventional means.”
