Grounded Authority: the Algonquins of Barriere Lake Against the State

Grounded Authority TheAlgonquins ofBarriere Lake against the State Shiri Pasternak University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis . London Contents Abbreviations IX Note on Terminology Xlll Preface:An Autobiography of Territory xvli Introduction: Jurisdiction on Indigenous Land 1 i. Flippingthe Terms ofRecognition: A Methodology 37 2. How Did Colonialism Fail to Dispossess? 55 3. Jurisdictionfrom the GroundUp: A LegalOrder of Care 77 4. Propertyas a Techniqueof Jurisdiction: Traplines and Tenure 99 5. "They'reClear-CuttingOurWayofLife" 126 6. The Trilateral Agreement Is Born 150 7. Coup d'Etat in Fourth-WorldCanada i6i 8. The Government Must Fall 190 9. Security, Critical Infrastructure, andthe Geography 219 of Indigenous Lands Conclusion. A Land Claim Is Canada's Claim: 245 AgainstExtinguishment Acknowledgments 271 Notes 277 Index 355 54 FLIPPINGTHE TERMS OF RECOGNITION but whoparticipated in the early Trilateral land-use andoccupancy stud- ies undertaken for harmonization measures with forestry companies. But in terms of interviews conductedover the course of my research, field site visits, or through regular contact on the territory, mywork pro- How Did Colonialism Fail to Dispossess? ceeded quite separately from these groups. There area number ofreasons for this, but I will go into the central reason here. Over the course of Bar- riere Lake's struggle to see the Trilateral Agreement implemented, divi- In Cole Harris's excellent article "How Did Colonialism Dispossess?" sions arosein the community over the plausibilityof Canadaor Quebec he outlines with remarkable brevity key technologies of Indigenous honoring the agreement. Thegovernment's handin sowing these doubts dispossession in British Columbia. In so doing, he introduces critical willbe madeclear in this book. But disagreementsbetween community methodologies for appraising the impacts ofcolonialism on Indigenous members and family groups made access to these aforementioned vil- peoples' territorial belonging to the land. Harris divides his account lage sites difficult. This issue proved asmuch an academic issue as a soli- into earlier techniques of dispossession(involving direct violence, the darityproblem. Politicaldisagreement in the communityalso caused a imperial state, cultural narratives, and settler self-interest) and later rift between solidarity activists andthose community members who re- techniques ofdispossession (constituted bydisciplinary powerthrough sented non-Indigenous involvement by outsiders who adopted demands the use of maps, demographics, and a reserve geography of resettle- on the government (for example, honoring the Trilateral Agreement) ment). Although Harris delineates these strategies temporally, a mix- that they themselves opposed. As a visible member ofthe solidarity net- ture of nearlyall these techniqueshas been deployed at Barriere Lake. work, this conflict of interest restricted my freedom to move aboutthe These techniques contribute to the dynamic offorces that have shaped community as an "objective" participant or observer. It also drew con- jurisdictionalstruggles over the land. siderable contention to me from community members, other solidar- A caveatto Harris'sanalysis, though, is to specifywhat it meansfor ity networks, and individuals from other Indigenous nations who work colonialismto dispossess.The earlyhistory of settler incursions on Bar- politically with these families. These contentions form vibrant internal riere Lake'sland did not result in the removal of the community from activist discussions on the ethics of accountability in doing solidarity their lands because people were not actually displaced. Rather, their work within heterogeneous communities. lands were alienated and reterritorialized through competing use and Thus, the account presented here about the Algonquins of Barriers jurisdictional claims. Impositions ofstate andprivate authority grossly Lake is not meant to represent the views of all Mitchikanibikok Inik. undermine, yet donot necessarily succeed in extinguishing. Indigenous However, what cannot be contested are the actions of the Quebec and governance over their lands through literal expulsion. What dowe call a Canadiangovernments, whichis wheremy attention is largelyfocused process of colonization where the effect of dispossession is not removal in this book. Too much attention in recent years has been focused on but the perpetuation ofa set ofexhaustive administrative regimes that community accountability to colonial governments. Division in com- undermine, erase, and choke out the exercise of Indigenous jurisdic- munities is seen as a sign of malfunction, but only the most virulent tion, rendering Indigenous people peripheral to effective participation racism in our society can account for holding Indigenous communities in land governance? to standards ofunanimity unexpected in white communities, especially This chapter examines the steady accretion of encroachments and given hundreds ofyears of colonial oppression of Indigenous social and restrictions on Barriere Lake's lands that produce a complex space of governance systems and on their economic bases. This book is a story overlapping jurisdiction. The brief history of settler accumulation pre- about Canadian illegitimacy, above all, and the ways in which the state sented here foregrounds two meanings of dispossession that canbring attempts to absolve past and ongoing appropriation through the at- perspicuityto the term andtherefore drawinto reliefthe nature of the tempted perfection ofterritorial jurisdiction. landstruggle atBarriers Laketoday. Thefirst meaningof dispossession 55 56 HOW DID COLONIALISMFAIL TO DISPOSSESS? HOW DID COLONIALISM FAIL TO DISPOSSESS? 57 defines the term by its relation to practices of social reproduction, in- how the boundaries of the settler state are shaped by such assertions of dicating the possibility of "displacement without moving. " This kind Indigenous jurisdiction. of dispossession constitutes what Rob Nixon calls a slow violence that "entails being simultaneously immobilized and moved out of one s The Most Dangerous Band in Canada: Mitchikanibikok Inik living knowledge as one's place loses its life-sustaining features. If that which was entrusted to Barriere Lake's care is eliminated, this It all began with a footprint, at a point on the shore across from the impacts the terrain of their jurisdiction, and the knowledge that has original Barriere Lake settlement. That footprint belonged to a young been accumulated that is connected to that care is vulnerable to loss, boy. He walked around the island and saw the plants and animals and too. Clear-cut forests, mining, undergrowthpoison, overhunting, and everything that grew there. He saw everything that was in the world development-these encroachments slowlyeradicate thatwhich the Al- and made it ready for the Anishnabe people. He found gifts for them- gonquinsdepend upon to survive,physically and culturally. fire, water,and medicine-everything they would need. The sun would The second, related sense ofdispossession is connected to the specifi- betheir father, andthe earth would be their mother. Becausethe young cally sited dynamics of accumulation on Barriere Lake'slands. While boybegan here where hefound the knowledge, this wouldbe the center theirassertions of jurisdiction continued to spatializelaw on the land- of the world. 7 This is where the Onakinakewin came from, the sacred for example, in accordance with their tenure systems, hunting grounds, constitution of the Anishnabepeople. and land-management techniques-the Algonquins increasingly com- From a watershed perspective, the Barriere Lake traditional land- peted againstthe interests of state andprivate authorities. Moreover, usearea really is located in the center ofthe Algonquin world, with two these interests were themselves periodically at cross-purposes. Terri- major rivers forming what almost looks like a heart around the tradi- torial logics of power incentivizingthe state toward the perfection of tional settlement area of the band. At the top of the heart where the settler sovereigntyclashed with open spatial dynamics of capitalistac- two semispheres meet, the northern Gatineau River crosses southwest cumulation, seenwhere the state's denialof Indigenousjurisdiction led across the present Cabonga Reservoir and Coulonge River to meet the to blockadesthat shut downthe forestry sector. To be dispossessedof headwaters of the Ottawa River, which the Algonquins call Kichi Sipi, governing authority means to besubject to thegoverning logics ofother the great river. The Ottawa River flows westward, then southward. then forces.Algonquins have used the term "alienation"to describehow the southeastward for around 1, 200 kilometers beforejoining the St. Law- community's land and resources have been "planned, managed, used rence River near Montreal. andimpacted by non-Nativepeoples andtheir institutions andindus- Where the Anishnabe lived at their original gathering place, the tries, " without signifying physical or legal dispossession. river was ten feet across from one shore to the other. They put rocks Nicholas Brown articulates this dynamic as settler accumulation or across the river creating a stone weir over which they could easily scoop accumulation by possession, shifting the economic emphasis of capital- fish.For this technique, theybecame known as "thepeople ofthe stone ism onto the often silentprocesses of acquisition-the racial and legal weir : Mitchikanibikok Inik. Mitcikinabikong is the

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