Welcome

Matakan – A Tourism Offer

Jimmy Flamand
March 31, 2011
Kempt Lake

"Sometimes you come across surprises, bears, moose."

Jimmy Flamand, Nehirowisiw

Go hiking and identify medicinal plants. Walk on a beaver dam. Canoe on a huge lake and set foot on Île de l’amour. Enjoy moose and fresh fish out of the water. Sit around the fire listening to ancient legends before heading to bed on a nest of fir branches… This is the fair tourism experience that the Manawan community offers at the traditional Matakan site. The project creates more than jobs, it creates relationships that are steps towards mutual recognition and dialogue.

Transcript

Outdoors. Close-up shot. Jimmy Flamand is standing in front of coniferous trees. He’s dressed in a black snowmobile suit and wears sunglasses.

Jimmy Flamand

We’re at the Matakan site. It’s a project that started in the spring of 2008. We've been operating since then. I would say, that 95% of our customers are European, but we have more and more Quebecers who, who are interested in our product and who come for a visit.

Close-up of Jimmy Flamand's face. From the reflection in his glasses, we can clearly see behind the scenes: a prospector's tent as well as the interviewer and the cameraman, seated at a picnic table.

It's a project that... that we’re working with Mr. Jean-Michel Perron and various tour operators from, from Montreal. Yes, we’re in a partnership with them. And it gets better and better. Every year, we receive more and more customers.

Fade out.

And we also focus on sustainable tourism, in other words, we try to minimize the impacts on the environment and maximize the economic benefits for the community. And also, we plant a tree for, for each customer, which compensates for, for greenhouse gases. Travelling is done by plane, so it necessarily has an impact on the environment and air quality. And that's it; we plant a tree for each customer. It's an... It's an initiative that's, that’s appreciated by the people we do business with, the tour operators. Yeah!

Jimmy Flamand is sitting at the wooden picnic table in front of coniferous trees, near a snow-covered lake. In the distance, there’s a forest.

Interviewer

Uh, and what inspired this idea? Did it come from the community?

Jimmy Flamand

It was an initiative by Jean-Michel Perron who had, uh, strongly recommended that we develop a tourism product. Yes, he often told us that we were sitting on a gold mine and...[Laughter]

Interviewer

And he wanted... Nobody else really had that vision before...

Jimmy Flamand

No, no, no...

Interviewer

It took an outsider’s view...

Jimmy Flamand

Yeah, yeah...

Fade out. Close-up of Jimmy Flamand's face.

Interviewer

What's your typical day right now? Here with all the customers...

Jimmy Flamand

A typical day? We go canoeing, excursions in canoe. We do net fishing demonstrations, although we do angling as well. That's it. It's mainly canoeing. There’s a 4.7 kilometre hiking trail on this side. It's interesting. Sometimes you can come across, uh, surprises: bears, moose.

Interviewer

Is there a lot of game here?

Jimmy Flamand

A lot.

Interviewer

In the fall, uh, do you hunt?

Jimmy Flamand

Hmm! Hunting is more during winter. Fall, uh, I would say from May to October, it's essentially fishing. It's full of fish! Mother Nature is generous.

Interviewer

So as, uh... It's like a business, like outfitting, guiding moose hunting...?

Jimmy Flamand

Uh, more or less. No, it's not in that perspective. It's more for, uh.... for uh... to demonstrate our way of life. Yeah.

Interviewer

More, uh, the cultural aspect?

Jimmy Flamand

Yeah.

Interviewer

Is it appreciated?

Jimmy Flamand

Very! We have comment cards that are filled out and... It's 100% satisfaction! That's what we aim for as well.

Interviewer

Why do you think people are satisfied?

Jimmy Flamand

Well, the welcome, the warmth, the warmth of the people. And the food as well is a big part of it.

Interviewer

What's the typical menu?

Jimmy Flamand

Uh, fish. Yeah, fish.

Interviewer

All the time? Well, I won't be able to come!

Jimmy Flamand

Oh! No? Well, granted we can vary... We serve moose regularly.

Extreme close-up on Jimmy Flamand's glasses. The interviewer and cameraman are reflected in his glasses.

Interviewer

But, uh, you, as a person who works here, what's your typical day?

Jimmy Flamand

We get up at 7:00 in the morning, breakfast at 8:00 and after breakfast, in the morning, depending on the weather, we can go canoeing or hiking. We also make, we also work... We do small workshops in which we work with bark. We make bark baskets or we try different, uh, different kinds of herbal teas. Yeah!

A Pow Wow Experience

Lita Isaac
December 11, 2010
Listuguj

"We welcome everyone."

Lita Isaac, Mi'qmaq

Pow Wows are Indigenous gatherings. They celebrate both the heritage of the ancestors and the vitality of current generations. For members of communities who had to move, they provide an opportunity for them to come together and return to their roots. They also offer the ever-growing general public an immersion in the cultures of First Peoples through food, dances, songs, drums and craft stands. Through these celebrations, which bring them great pride, they create bonds in a spirit of affirmation and openness. Everyone who participates wants to come back!

Transcript

Interview with Lita Issac A picture of her accompanies the sound of her voice.

Lita Issac

Sometimes, when I started on the powwow committee, ok, uh, they don’t understand. They wanna understand, some people genuinely are sincere, they would like to understand what the powwow is about, what goes on at the powwow, you know, they… And then there’s people that say, “Oh, that’s voodoo, that’s voodoo, that’s not right.” Making, yeah, making comments that you know…

Interviewer

Tourists?

Lita Issac

Not tourists, but, uh, people from across the river, you know? People that are non-native. And they’ll comment like that, and right away you want to defend, but I took the extra moment to say, “Ok, let me explain this”, and I’m gonna try to be positive, so that registers instead of feeling like they’re attacked. So I would explain what the powwow is. It seems like the first couple of years, I had to explain it more often, where now people are starting to understand, especially in the surrounding areas, the non-natives, they are starting to understand that a powwow is just our way of gathering, and we celebrate our culture, our language, our traditions, our food, the food we get from the woods, the moose, the deer, sometimes we have bear, the fish from our river, and that’s practicing our inherent rights. Our ancestors would hunt with spears, they would fish with spears. They would gather and have celebrations. Yeah, spears, des harpons? OK? And they would gather and they would have celebrations.

It was very uh… It was a way of life. There was no religion, it was just a way of life of living off the land, respect for the trees, respect for the animals, respect for the water, respect for the, you know, the medicines, the birch bark that makes our homes, the animal hides that makes our clothing and our blankets, our protection. So it was a way of life. So what we do every summer is we have a powwow, it’s a traditional gathering and we try to pay respect to our ancestors you know? Of how they lived. We could never go back and live like that, we’re very spoiled people today. We can’t never go back and just live of the land. There is people that can but you know, we’ve uh, we’ve, we’ve integrated so much that, we have to integrate in order to survive with society today, or sometimes along the way we may not remember, or forget, completely forget our language, or forget our, uh, our traditions. So the powwow brings people back together, and we give them that chance to see. This is, you know, especially people that have lived, uh, they’re from Listuguj but they moved away to work in Montreal or in the United States, they always come over the powwow. So we give them that chance again to experience eating moose meat, uh, fiddlehead salmon, and it’s cooked by our elders here in Lustuguj and, uh, seeing our people dance…

[…]

In the, the dance area, that’s where we have the audience. We have a second area. In the second area, there is the harbour, and the harbour is where all the drummers sit and sometimes we have up to fourteen drums, and there could be 10 to 12 men around the drum, so we have a lot of, that come from all over. It’s amazing. It’s amazing. And so on the outside is the arena, and that’s where we have the bleachers and the audience. And, uh, these people, some of them have witnessed our gathering before, some of them haven’t. But they’re genuinely curious.

Interviewer

Witness, what is it?

Lita Issac

Witnessed, like they’ve experienced it. They’ve seen it before. So when it comes to, uh, people that are really genuinely curious, they wanna know what a powwow’s about, they’ll come, and they’ll ask questions if they can. We have a master of the ceremony, the MC, and we ask him to please announce our protocol, please announce what type of dance is it, who can dance. Can everybody dance? Or just men traditional or women traditional, or the whole audience. So they’ll announce it. And, uh, you know, people that don’t come, that’s fine, we understand that, we welcome everybody. We send our invitations on the radio, uh, the newspaper… At one point we met with all the mayors, many, many years ago we met with the mayors from the local to give them an explanation of what our gathering was about. And, uh, we could see some of them were, maybe we’re wasting your time, but at least they did come to the meeting, uh, some of them were, “Ok, I’m gonna, you know, try and get my community to go over if they can”. And, uh, we invite them for the meal, to come and witness the beautiful handy crafts that our people sell. We only let First Nations vendors and that’s because we can’t go to shopping malls and sell our stuff. We can’t go to festivals and sell our stuff. And that’s fine.

[…]

We, we don’t stop non-natives vendors of coming, because we’ve always had this hope that our people will have the spotlight. This is a powwow. When you go to a powwow, you want to buy from a native person, a person that has made that hand drum or made that rattle or made that keychain or jewelry and they feel proud. You know they feel proud. Maybe they might don’t sell a couple of their crafts, but they’re proud. This is their time, this is their spotlight. This year we had over 52 vendors, this is the highest amount we never had. We have vendors that come from all over New Brunswick, uh, we had Aztecs. If they’re Indigenous, if they’re Indigenous we will welcome them, as long as they are not making the Mi’gmaq craft. You know? Don’t, don’t uh, sort of step on our feet. You know, the Aztec, they’re Indigenous, we have Peru, they come, they called us from Ottawa and we say yes, as long as you’re not making anything Mi’gmaq, and they come and they’re very respectful. So this was the biggest turn on with vendors. We usually make one circle, we had to make two circles. And, and I was too busy to go around, I’m always too busy to go around to look at the vendors… But from what everybody keeps telling me after the feedback, I got, “Oh my God, it was the biggest powwow you guys had” and “Oh my God it was the best powwow you guys had”, and I was “Oh my God thank you!”

Sharing Ecosystems

Pierre Nicolas
August 14, 2011
Cacouna

" The exhibition, the site, they show the evolution of a people."

Pierre Nicolas, Wolastoq

For many Indigenous communities, tourism is becoming an important lever for economic development. Their members' close relationship with the territory and their environmental sensitivity is a wealth they wish to share. In collaboration with local partners and in a spirit of mutual respect, they want to draw attention to the beauty and fragility of nature, because each of its elements is part of an ecosystem that we must learn about to better protect it.

Transcript

Outdoors. Pierre Nicolas sits on a wooden picnic table on the banks of the St. Lawrence River. He’s wearing a brown t-shirt and glasses.

Pierre Nicolas

So, park sanctuary. It’s a joint composition. It will be part of the touristic development that will be paired to the maritime centre of Rivière-du-Loup: Cacouna Point, the inn, the marsh of Cacouna. So, it’s a multiplicity, a package that, in the future, should be offered to tourists. And we can see that there’s a demand for this niche, right: environmental protection, preservation. So, we're going to do this in accordance with this new alignment.

Interviewer

I know that you can't talk about your projects, but, uh, economically, what would you like to...?

Pierre Nicolas

Well, what would we want? Well, we're... We still have a lot of projects. We’re working with firms and community projects with other communities. Projects, uh, how could I say? On energy related projects such as wind turbines, dams here in the regions, Trois-Pistoles and things like that.

The camera slowly zooms in on Pierre Nicolas' face.

After all, wind turbines are new in the sector, so we're exploring. Well, we really want to have enough of the, the potential and the resources, to have the resources, uh, the interest to really update or set in motion. May we be successful with these projects in the making for the good of the community. So, the more jobs we create, the more we participate. Our revenues increase. So, that’s a source of interest for our members. [Laughter] There you go!

Interviewer

Lets wait for the dog to stop barking...[Laughter]

Pierre Nicolas

We want to start, uh, we’ll soon have a dog breeding project and we're going to make meat patties to attract whales. [Joking]

Have you heard about the, of course I'm going by sector, the maritime centre?

Interviewer

No.

Pierre Nicolas

No one talked to you about it? No. Okay!

It’s in the tourism development niche. We've made great progress on that issue. This is the development of the Rivière-du-Loup Point with regional stakeholders. There are 10 stakeholders, including the City of Rivière-du-Loup, the Chamber of Commerce, CLD and the whole lot. And we’re stakeholders in this, we’re partners. And there’s a centre, there’s a centre that will be built on the point of Rivière-du-Loup. Currently, there are whale watching cruises. There are… there are all kinds of activities going on there and we’re an integral part of the project. We have our port, that we’re in the process of putting into operation. And eh, in that particular place, there’s actually a good, uh.... It’s a strategic point of the region, and also a good, uh, clientele, it currently has great clientele potential. Where there are about 200 to 300 000 people passing through there annually, without it.

So, we’re setting up a centre. In which, we, the First Nations, have a space, a souvenir shop. We’re looking into setting up a marine mammal cruise service. When it comes to marine mammals, it's not just whales, right? There are seals and everything that moves, birds. There's the aquatic fauna, there's resources. So, uh, this is the other niche that we’re developing regarding tourism development.

[…]

Change of scene. The interviewer is on the left of the screen and Pierre Nicolas is on the right. They’re sitting side by side on the picnic table. There are deciduous trees behind them, a grassy lawn and a small white building.

Furthermore, it's a theme park as well. Where the exhibition in front of us stands, there was supposed to be a traditionally Maliseet longhouse. The evolution, the exhibition, the site, it was in fact the evolution of a people. Therefore, we start with artisanal houses at the back, longhouses and all that, y’know. Afterwards, you come to the house, the small trapper’s house, like in the film by Daniel Brière. Then, we come to the Launière house, here. So, that’s all, those are all the stages. And as for the fourth one, look, it’s the present, it’s here, it's the community centre, eh. So, it was the evolution of a nation that was focused on that. So, all kinds of activities were planned. It's still to come. It's going to be part of the, uh, recreational tourism project with the park, the marsh, Rivière-du-Loup Point, Cacouna Point, the inn and all that. So, this is the concept we're looking at. Soon, perhaps by October, it should be presented to the band council.

Interviewer

Are the sea cabins yours or not?

Pierre Nicolas

They’re ours! We’re the owners. Lately, there's been an addition to the reserve and then, uh, that's also in the works. So, unfortunately, it's not on the reserve. We were stopped by the environment, y’know. So, yes, and with good reason because the waste was being sent out to sea. There weren’t any... Well, it wasn't organized at the time. But when we made the purchase in 2005, we were aware of this fact. Well, uh, something happened that caused delays. So, we weren't ready. But now, the plans have been re-submitted to the last band council. These sea cabin plans are quite up-to-date. They’re even, uh, futuristic, but with Indigenous flair. When I specify Indigenous flair, it's cubic. Did you know that we have the third, well I say the second, most beautiful sunset in the world, huh? It's renowned. I'm not the one stating this, it's National Geographic, y’know. So, and, uh, actually, it's really beautiful. So, we're taking advantage of it. All of these cabins have a glass façade. And we don’t even touch the ground, that's for sure. It's all going to be on stilts, at different heights and in different areas so that neighbors don't intrude on each other, y’know? However, they’ll each have view of the river. And, the rear section is elevated on stilts to see over the houses. Hence, it's something quite futuristic, but with Indigenous flair. Y’know, we're developing a bit. We’re in the year 2010, right?

Interviewer

11!

Pierre Nicolas

11? Oh! Time flies, right? Time flies. There you go! So, we adapt.

And Indigenous flair, on top of that, well, the materials are wood. The signs, they’re going to be like that...

He points to a building that can’t be seen on screen.

... and I don't know if you saw the inside of the, like in Wendake eh, the hotel Wendake, the rooms? Well, the interior is pretty much the same style of décor, y’know. So, it may look like this a little bit. Well, it's a great project, in this regard.

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