First Nations wary of PQ's plans

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As Quebecers went to the polls to elect a near-record number of separatists to power, Cree Elder Robbie Matthew Sr. was getting ready for his yearly four-month stint on his trapline. Like the vast majority of Native peoples in Quebec, he didn't vote.

"Myself, I was not really concerned about who won and who lost. Myself, I was more concerned about what are we going to do about the land issue," said Matthew, a trapper from Chisasibi, the community most affected by Hydro-Quebec's James Bay hydroelectric project.

"The Elders are telling us if we want to govern ourselves with self-government, what are you going to use if you run out of land? Without the land, you cannot govern yourself. You don't have anything to go by."

At the same time, Matthew was adamant that the Cree Territory which covers one-third of northern Quebec mustn't be taken out of Canada.

"Quebec cannot do this," Matthew said bluntly. "It cannot separate from Canada because it doesn't have the power. Maybe it thinks it's got the power. But there is one greater power than all the powers we know - the power from above."

Matthew's remarks foretell growing tension and a seemingly unavoidable standoff between the fledgling Parti Quebecois government and Quebec's 11 First Nations. On September 12, Quebec voters elected 77 Parrti Quebecois deputies to their National Assembly, and only 47 Liberals, who ran on a strong- pro-federalist platform.

The vote was split along ethnic and geographical lines, with rural Quebecers and francophones preferring the PQ, while the Liberals did well among anglophones, ethnic voters and residents of Montreal, the province's largest city.

Among those elected are notorious PQ politicians who have distinguished themselves with anti-Native remarks. The most controversial is Richard Le Hir, the outspoken former president of the Quebec Manufacturers' Association, who recently

made headlines across Canada with his statement that Quebecers have nothing to learn from Native cultures.

The victorious PQ promises to hold a referendum on Quebec's sovereignty by next July. Despite the protests of Quebec Native leaders and federal Indian Affairs Minister Ron Irwin, the PQ insist that its present borders will remain intact if it leaves Canada and that Native peoples and their lands will have to come with Quebec whether they like it or not.

But for Matthew, like most of the 17,000 Crees and Inuit who form the majority of the population in the northern two-thirds of this province, there is little feeling of attachment to Quebec.

Cree Grand Chief Matthew Coon Come sometimes speaks of how Quebec's presence in the North dates back only 30 years, when a young Rene Levesque travelled beyond the 49th parallel distributing frozen turkeys and Quebec flags. In a sign of the tensions to come, the Crees of Eastmain ran their Quebec flag upside down, much to the consternation of Levesque. It wasn't done out of respect, says Coon Come, but because they didn't know which side was up.

Quebec's 11 First Nations have been busy discussing the threat of Quebec's sovereignty at various meetings throughout the summer, and the discussions are just heating up.

For Crees, the topic was a big issue at the four-day Cree Nation Gathering that started the day after the election and at their annual general assembly in August.

The assembly made some waves in the Quebec media when it passed a resolution affirming the Crees' right to self-determination and calling for a Cree referendum on whether the James Bay Territory and its billions of dollars of hydro-installations should remain as an independent Quebec, stay in Canada or go it alone as a separate nation.

Other first Nations are also watching political developments in Quebec City with distrust and skepticism. Sylvestre Rock, an Innu opponent of the SM-3 hydro-project, says virtually no Innus voted in the election.

"It's not our affair," he said.

"It doesn't concern us. The Innu are sovereign on our territry."

Rock added that he doesn't think it matters which party is in power; the Innu people seem to get it just as bad from politicians of all stripes. Just weeks before the Sept. 12 election, the then-ruling Liberals launched construction of the Sainte Marguerite hydro-project, which will drastically affect traditional activities in the Innu community of Maliotenam, where Rock lives.

But the PQ favors this project, as well, Rock said. Indeed, Maliotenam is in the riding represented in Quebec City by Denis Perron, a PQ militant who is one of the hydro-project's biggest champions.

"All the parties are the same," Rock told Windspeaker. "It's the same party that keeps coming back - the same policies, the same errors. No party recognizes our ancestral rights."