In a small clearing among the trees, mostly coniferous, the ground has a geometric layout. Wooden stakes support ropes stretched a few centimetres above the ground. Some orange ribbons are attached to the ropes or the ground. A young girl wearing a blue hooded sweater, black pants and a shoulder bag is standing.
Where are we here? We're not in the old post, but we're in the woods, not even 50 meters away.
She points in front of her.
Well here, it's, uh..... Well, let me say that it's been four years, that I’ve practiced archaeology with my boyfriend and, uh... well Steeve Dubreuil. And the reason we're doing this is for, uh..... We know that there have been, uh....a European presence, but we want... we want to see proof, traces that the Innu came and camped here. And now, it must have been, uh... five days of work, this thing. Tomorrow, I'm going to [...] continue if the weather permits, if it doesn’t rain. I hope so. And, uh.... That's it. Before doing any excavations, we asked the elders if we could... if it was respectful or not, and uh, even then, there was like a grave in the site of the, uh... old post. But we looked, and there was nothing.
Another archaeologist, probably long before us, who had been here and, uh... or I don't know, but there was nothing. We wanted to have a ceremony and... but we didn’t get the chance. We couldn't find it. So, we continued to search everywhere, to find pearls, to find pieces of pipes, quartz, gunflint... And, uh... Wait...
She walks around the camera, straddles the ropes and kneels at the other end of the site. She indicates a piece of land.
There's a place here, well, I don't know if you can see it very well. It’s.... Wait, I'll show you properly.
There's the litter, there's the humus that's a little mixed up with the grey sand that's there. Here, the orange sand is, uh... it's sterile sand. There's nothing left. The things to be found... They’re between these two places. And somethimes we find, uh...
She indicates, by pointing in front of her and to her right, the places where objects have been found.
Well, like I said; pearls over there. We found a pearl there, pieces of pipes, a little... well, a lot of gunflint and quartz and uh... What else did we find? Old forged nails, lots of things.
She gets up, rubs her knees to brush off the earth and then puts her hands in her pockets.
And we... That's it... It’s just to... not to prove, but to, uh... to see... to be certain. Because we know there was an Indigenous presence, but, uh, yeah. There aren’t really any traces there. Utshe also found some Indigenous pottery. [Coughing] Excuse me. So, uh... I’m all excited. And that's it. It’s... Yeah, it's important. Yeah, in the past, the Innu and the Europeans met to trade here. So, uh, yeah.
And well, you see, it's not... it's not very deep, is it? It's not even 30 centimetres deep. I imagined it much deeper, because, uh... I kept seeing archaeological sites in Egypt, and that's it. So, it's not really deep. So, that's it. I like coming here.
She walks towards the camera, passes by, crosses over the ropes again to return to her starting point.
We have nice offices, uh... as they say. Okay, that's it. Uh... a lot of finds and continuity, and all.