Weaving and reweaving two millennia of First Nations cultural history in Québec-Labrador

Session Hosting Format: 
in-person session
Organizer(s): 
  • Scott Neilsen, School of Arctic and Subarctic Studies, Labrador Campus, Memorial University
Contact Email: 
scott.neilsen@mun.ca
Session Description (300 word max): 

Innu living in Labrador and eastern Québec today maintain that they are closely related to the Eeyou (Cree) and Naskapi with whom they share the Québec-Labrador Peninsula, that they have a long history of interacting with other peoples within this region (and to the south and west), and that they descend from First Nation peoples who occupied this region before and when Europeans arrived.

The archaeological record shows that First Nation peoples inhabited the coast and interior of the eastern Québec-Labrador Peninsula for at least 6,000 years before colonization. Scholars generally point to cultural continuity across much of the region over the past one to two millennia, linking present-day Innu, Eeyou, and Naskapi to their precontact ancestors. However, some contend that the Innu may be more recent arrivals in Labrador, unrelated to earlier Indigenous groups. A key question is whether archaeological evidence can show a link between the First Nation groups of the late precontact period and the Innu during colonization. The answer has significant implications for the Innu and for federal and provincial governments. 

This session invites contributors to share insights on cultural continuity over the past two millennia in the Québec-Labrador Peninsula, with a focus on its eastern and central portions. Although inspired by a recent court case involving Innu in Labrador, the session seeks a broader approach, exploring data-driven, methodological, and theoretical perspectives on questions such as: How do the archaeological and historical records document cultural continuity or discontinuity? What biases are present within these records and how are they mitigated? How are "home" territories understood and described for groups with wide-ranging settlement patterns? What role do provincial borders play in studying groups who may have moved throughout the peninsula at different times? Who interprets, revises, or retells these stories, and how do their motivations matter? 

Presentations
Considering Innu Long-Term Presence in Southeastern Labrador
Presentation format: In-Person
Author(s):
  • Marianne Stopp

  In the context of a 2021 court case (R vs. Andrews), Innu heard that there is insufficient evidence in support of their presence in Labrador much earlier than the 18th century. This conclusion was based on a range of evidence including on archaeological site records held in the provincial database of which there are indeed few for unequivocally pre-18th century Innu sites and none appear to affirm a link with even earlier First Nation sites. Using data from coastal and interior southeastern Labrador, this paper examines the assertion of an abbreviated Innu history through the combined evidence from archaeological sites, historical documents, and informant accounts. It presents a research-based template or approach for reconsidering the charge of discontinuity where the warp lines of research may offer relational support for the weft lines of Innu long-term presence in Nitassinan. 
Cultural identity and continuity in archaeology, digging into the recent precontact period, Contact and the ancestral occupation of the Innus in the Moyenne-Côte-Nord region (Québec)
Presentation format: In-Person
Author(s):
  • Jean-Christophe Ouellet - Université de Montréal

This presentation explores the concepts of cultural identity and continuity in the archaeology of the Quebec-Labrador Peninsula. Sometimes overlooked, taken for granted or not said aloud these concepts nonetheless can have serious consequences for descendant communities with regards to how they perceive their identity and relations with the land. How can archaeology contribute, as a social science and historic endeavor, to the reconstitution of such narratives in a systematic, objective manner and on solid scientific grounds?

We have a take on strategies related with culture-historical archaeology which we aim to update and put into practice with a case study from a specific case study. The Mingan (Ekuanitshit) region has been the focus of a research project focusing on the late precontact period (2000 BP – Contact) and provides context and data to delve into those questions. Excavation carried by an Innu team and the author on the EbCx-01 site, with recurring occupations between 800 and 300 BP, serves as the main background for this discussion. As a conclusion, recent archaeological research in the Uashat region (Sept-Îles) encourages us to take the discussion to a broader regional context.
Dropped stitches and entangled yarns: working through complex cultural patterns
Presentation format: In-Person
Author(s):
  • Moira McCaffrey - Independent researcher

Classic anthropological literature defines precontact hunter-gatherers as peoples with a flexible resource base who followed seasonal movements to harvest food, access critical materials like toolstone, maintain essential family and social bonds, and visit meaningful places on the landscape. In northern Québec-Labrador, the historic movements of the Eeyou, Innu, and Naskapi are legendary. At times, individuals and groups crossed vast expanses of the boreal forest and tundra, including to coasts on all sides of the peninsula. Europeans and later anthropologists who interacted with these groups described them in ways that aligned with prevalent conceptions of land tenure – as bands that “owned” or occupied defined territories. The requirements of contemporary land claims and laws have concretized some of these notions, insisting that people be present in specific places back through time. Building on a data set drawn from late precontact period sites in interior Québec, and incorporating historic elements, this paper aims to describe peninsula-wide cultural patterns dating back close to two millennia. Can evidence of shared toolstone preferences, distinctive habitations, plus expressive and material culture help us envision new models of how groups in the eastern Subarctic inhabited and moved through their northern world.
Recent prehistory and the contact period on Quebec’s Lower North Shore. From the year 1000 to the 17th century
Presentation format: Online - pre-recorded
Author(s):
  • Jean-Yves Pintal

European writings on Quebec’s Lower North Shore for the 16th century, although rare and lacking in detail, nevertheless provide information that is worth considering from the point of view of Aboriginal occupation. For their part, archaeological data are relatively abundant for this period and the preceding centuries. Admittedly, 14C dates do not always offer the resolution needed to address these recent periods, but the European material found at the Aboriginal sites makes it possible to propose a chronology of contact that fits well with the historical data. What emerges above all from this analysis is the fact that these First Nations, those identified as early as the year 1000 on the Lower North Shore, were part of an interactive sphere that included groups from central Labrador, those from Newfoundland, the “Little Nations” of the Middle North Shore and the St. Lawrence Iroquoians. The arrival of European fishermen in the early 16th century turned their way of life upside down, but they continued to frequent the banks of the Blanc-Sablon river. Following the “disappearance” of the St. Lawrence Iroquoians and the slow decline of the Beothuk, they seem to have increased their links with groups in central Labrador.
The Tyranny of the Colonial Project and Lines on Maps: An Assessment of Modern Political Boundaries in the Narrating of Indigenous Deep Histories in the Quebec/Labrador Peninsula.
Presentation format: In-Person
Author(s):
  • Chelsee Arbour - Department of Archaeology, Memorial University
  • Anthony Jenkinson - Tshikapisk Foundation

This paper examines the way in which current political boundaries affect how archaeologists and cultural heritage professionals narrate Indigenous deep histories. We focus here on the case of the Quebec/Labrador treatment of its human history and on the ways in which archaeologists are sometimes unwittingly drawn into roles which may make them accomplices in the colonial appropriation of Indigenous histories and the propagation of the nationalistic mythologies made by settler states. Acknowledging that current political boundaries are problematic for framing and narrating an Indigenous past in the Quebec/Labrador Peninsula, and as starting point to address the imbedded issues thereof, an assessment of survey/excavation intensity throughout ‘Labrador’ utilizing GIS and site data recorded and stored within governmental repositories is implemented to inform this discussion. Intertwined with this are considerations of how the past is written and defined in this region, with particular reference to how settler political boundaries have served as a limiting frame or a conceptual barrier that constrains how the past is viewed, forcing it into a construct in the service of compliance with settler narratives that distorts archaeological evidence and prevents the emergence of a coherent Innu/Iyu ancestral archaeology in the Quebec Labrador Peninsula.
Unweaving the tapestry of First Nations cultural history in eastern Québec and Labrador: an introduction to the session
Presentation format: In-Person
Author(s):
  • Scott Neilsen - School of Arctic and Subarctic Studies, Labrador Campus, Memorial University

The cultural histories of First Nation peoples in eastern Québec and Labrador draw on historical data from the fields of Anthropology, Archaeology, Folklore, Geology, History, and local knowledge, and are mostly if not all narrated from an etic perspective. A key concept within this approach to rendering the human past in the present is context. Though its meaning within these fields is not standardized, context typically refers to the relationship between things and their surroundings, and is relevant to the strands of data, as well as the weavers of that data – both today and in the past.

The goal in this presentation is to provide some context for this session, i.e., to unweave some of the strands entwined within the session abstract and presentations. At a minimum this will establish the motivation for the session, outline current etic views of the last two millennia of First Nations history in Labrador and eastern Québec, and highlight some of the main points of data and opinions within the Innu dis/continuity debate. There may even be some discussion of epistemological looms, if time permits.