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First Nations/Quebec Coverage (Oka)

By Thomas Eric Brunner, 20 July 1995

Oki all,

The July edition of Le Monde Diplomatique (LMD) has some unusual coverage of First Nations affires w.r.t. Quebec (I've been reading LMD for about 20 years so this did stand out in my reading of this). Pages 6 & 7 is entitled "Hesitations et contradictions du mouvement nationalistic quebecois", and on page 7 is a quarter page map of Canada, but with indiengous linguistic, not just Provincial boundaries, primarily shown. Shown also are mineral wealth regional types, and the autonomous areas of Nunavik, Inuvialuit land, and Nunavut. One para of this text mentions "Amerindians et Inuits", though it does refer to the following page.

Page 8 (the 3rd of this 3-pager on Quebec), entitled "Que faire des 'premiers nations'?", by Philippe Bovet is fairly impressive. It is a full page in the LMD after all. Oka is covered, rather more from the golf course/Montreal/ Provenical Security point of view than is customarily LMD's journalistic neutrality. Better data is given for the Hydro-Quebec herbacide misuse, though the mercury accumulation is not mentioned. The NATO low-level flights (10,000 per year!) in the vacinity of Goose Bay is covered also.

All in all, to my reading, the coverage was mostly useful and not blindly pro-Parti Quebecois or "rational development". I close with a quote from M. Ghislain Picard, grand chef de l'assemblee des premiers nations do Quebec et Labrador: "Les autochtones (indigenous) combattront toute tentative de separet le Quebec du Canada." I imagin this may catch the eyes of LMD's more franco-phile francophone readership.

Mispellings are my own, and I'll post this in s.c.n/a.n

Kitakitamatsinopowaw (I'll see you again)

-- Eric Brunner