The Montreal Gazette reports that the only time an Aboriginal issue was raised...

The Montreal Gazette reports that the only time an Aboriginal issue was raised during the recent Quebec election, it infuriated the First Nation and Inuit communities in province. PQ leader Pauline Marois said her party would make it mandatory for political candidates to pass a French exam in order to run for public office, and that would include Aboriginals, because “the common language here is French.” Not so, said Ghislain Picard, grand chief of the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador. “The language of Quebec isn’t just French. It’s Inuktitut, Cree, Atikamekw and a swath of other Native languages that were spoken here long before French ever was.” The next day Marois said the proposed law would only apply to “new arrivals” in Quebec, but the backtracking did little to appease Aboriginal groups. “I would like to hear (Marois) try to speak Inuktitut,” said Rhoda Angutiguluk, the mayor of Kuujjuarapik. We only began learning English in the early 1960s. Most of our elders are unilingual Inuktitut speakers and children have only really been learning French since the 1990s.” Fortunately for Marois, First Nation people don’t really take part in mainstream elections. Kahnawake Grand Chief Mike Delisle said “You stay in your canoe, we’ll stay in ours. We’re our own nation, our own people. So when the PQ speak of a distinct society, it’s kind of a term they borrowed from us. We’ve been calling ourselves a distinct society for centuries.”