| Summary: | In 1971, Robert Bourassa, then Premier of Quebec, launched a major
hydroelectric scheme to be built 1400 km North of Montreal. Known as the
"James Bay" project, the first phase included the creation of eight
powerhouses, six reservoirs and the diversion of two rivers. These
transformations necessarily impacted the local Cree people; a territorial
agreement partly compensated them but remains controversial to this day.
While northern communities overwhelmingly bear the ecological cost of
the project, the bulk of James Bay energy flows south to the industrial
centers of Quebec, Ontario and the U.S. The assertion then that "James Bay
belongs to all the Quebecois" which was meant to ease political tensions
about the project begs the question, "Who are the Quebecois" and how do
the Crees fit within such a community?
This thesis explore that question by looking at the Quebecois cultural
production of territory and its resources in the north. If James Bay was out
of reach, it was never out of view. Media and political discourses reiterated
key elements of a Quebecois cultural relationship to place, some of which
are contained in the rural literature known as the roman de la terre.
Several elements of this literature and its broader context were
recontextualized in James Bay, particularly as they pertained to the will to
occupy the land and develop natural resources. This was an important
aspect of making James Bay - a land historically inhabited by the Crees -
into a "Quebecois" national landscape. I suggest that this process was
largely rooted in representations of nature that sought to bind it with
nation and national identity. Thus James Bay demonstrates the close
connection between identity and environmental struggles. For the
Quebecois, the access to James Bay was supported by a territorial discourse
that performed their own cultural past. This provoked an organized
resistance from the Crees which constituted them as a modern political
unit. A look at the cultural geography of the region highlights the political
scales created in the accessing of resources that render their equitable and
sustainable use more difficult to achieve.
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