By way of a preface to the exploration of what one could call "the secret corridors of trance-culture," I thought I would present some excerpts from a logbook of mine. But all of this requires some sort of personal introduction, I suppose.  

At a certain time between 1975 and 1985- I travelled a lot across this strange and yet familiar country constitutionally called "British America" and politically dubbed Canada.[1]  

I went from the Youkon[2] to Newfoundland by way of Northern Quebec, primarily as a researcher but occasionally also as a negotiator, and I made it a habit at that time to keep field  
notes. 

One cannot follow the twists and tums of territorial negotiations pitting Natives and governments against each other in their attempt to define a country - a country that steadfastly refuses to become fully American[3] - without getting a sense of travelling through the centuries. The journey is as well worth recording as were the first so-called official discoveries. 

Thus the interest in keeping a record of events and attitudes. Beyond the screen of "land claims," of "land use and occupancy studies" and of "Native and Quebec title"[4] looms an epic transcending us all. This has come to pass without any one of us being able to establish enough of a distance so that the nature and the terms of the phenomenon and of the political processes at play could be fully assessed. 

For we are dealing here with one of the last entrenchments one of the last territories of the Americas that has refused to achieve its own independence fiercely maintaining its symbolic ties with the British Crown. What an agreed-upon anachronism for which there must well be some moral and political rationale, notably that of having recourse to a Crown in order better to oppose the land and the First Peoples.[5] 
Native & Quebecois 

To explore the Native and Quebecois dimensions of America means finding oneself suddenly with too much to say, while the cloak of binding confidentiality covers up everything. And that which confidentiality occasionally allows through is immediately seized by censorship. For example, it will have taken almost forty years (1955 to 1994) for the great exile of the Eskimos of the Hudson Bay (who were, under the aegis of the government in Ottawa, sent to the High Arctic so that that territory could be strategically occupied) to be shown for what it was: a drama comparable to the deportation of the Acadiens[6], exemplifying in and of itself the geographical history of this "great and free land of Canada," one of the "last havens of mercy in the Occident" (Jean d'Ormesson). 

British America or, if you prefer, present-day imperial Canada (terms one dares not use any longer, so much has this matter been accepted as self-evident and the process of substitution been totally internalized) constitutes a non-country, a non-country attempting to sustain itself through its miIlorities in order to procure the identity sap it does not succeed in producing on its own. In various ways, the intercultural game of the last two decades serves as a spout to draw off both the past and the present which have been put in reserve so that a "New Canada" can be born again, born on the ashes of recycled totem poles and subsidized potlatchesÛand also on the ashes of all of the "Quebecs" that do not manage to be "politically correct," despite the ever so high suicide rates that have come to mark their efforts to conform to the rules. 

That's why I thought it crucial to allow some on-the-spot notes to speak. I would not get there any other way. For a bit over a year now I have again travelled across British America, working occasionally for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples[7] and especially on a feature film about the identity and the spirit of the Metis. After my years in Brazil, in the Caribbean, and a short venture to the South Pacific, the retum to Anglo-Canada proves to be a real culture shock. My goodness! Does this country-of-a-non-country ever appear stuck in a smothering geopolitical corset and cultural ghetto with, of course, a few flashes of inspirationÛa la Nancy Huston, for example, behind and beyond which the Native question looms large and fundamental.[8]  

I'd like to deal with all of this here. If my "comments are not altogether focused," "the topic is not sufficientyly defined,'' and "the transitions are badly lubricated," as I was made to understand upon submitting the final draught of this paper to the Chair Concordia-UQAM en etudes ethniques. What can I say'? I am a Canadien after all. Am I being offered here a three-point proposition about my own identity'? "You ought to clarify first of all why this text on multiculturalism should deal  
with the questions of identity!" 

How could it possibly be otherwise? What would be if everything that touches on the trance- cultural question did not at once refer back to the foundations of identity, to the very nature of the countries that draw them up, as well as to the image they endeavor to give themselves? And all the more so for American countries, whether they be "latino," "anglo" or "metis". Since Pan-Canada issues from these three tributaries, it appears to be the prime example of an uneasy identity trying to sustain or to console itself by means of a vast trance-cultural appeal. In English, I'd say, "The great trance-cultural call or the Canadian predicament and the quest for a call-of-the-wild altemative".  

Native Identity 

And yet, every Metis is a two-pawed multicultural proposition, a "living parchment" (to use Claude Aubin's expression[9] that one can see at times wandering dovn the paths and through the forests of the New World. Every Metis intrinsically comes from this Native identity whose sanity Europe, by means of "its" discovery, has keenly tried to restore ever since the dawn of its own insanity ("There is no sin south of the equator," it was said about Brazil; well, for the coureurs des bois du Canada, there surely are no laws north of the Tropics). 

Thus the Metis immediately finds himself compelled joyously to participate as a cog in the multicultural machine that will likely force him to tame that which is wild and free in him. Purification by trance-culture, what a paradox! Such is the model advanced by a tri-oceanic Canada in which the Native dimension is keenly invited to participate! 

That's why the Native question appears from now on to be the major event marking the evolution of North America at the end of the 20th century. The Native question and, of course, the Quebec question which, afer all, is perhaps nothing but a variation of the former, more or less acknowledged as such. 

In fact, we can ask ourselves whether Quebec, as a colonial moment originating in the 17th and 18th centuries, does not constitute a phase of the "great conquest of the Natives," or whether it is not, in turn, the Native question itself that comes to mark a phase in the evolution of Quebec. Mind you, of a Metis Quebec and of a Creole North America having forever refused to see themselves as such. 

Who would have imagined, at the turn of the last century, that a question thought to have been settled for good by implosive elimination of all interested parties, would reemerge with such a vengeance less than a century later? Having, for all intents and purposes, remained in geopolitical confinement since the twenties (the last numbered treaty had been signed in 1921)[10], the problem of Native rights would suddenly resurface in the seventies? And all this as a result of the three-pronged development of the political awakening of Quebec, of the Mackenzie pipeline, and of the James Bay project.[11] 

Reindianize Canada 

The Oka crisis during the summer of 1990 and the conflict between Quebec and Natives that has deepened ever since are patently in line with those events which do nothing but refer this country back to the dawn of its own history - a history that, in order to sublimate itself better in its own eyes, has systematically forgotten or eclipsed its "metis" geography as well as its native foundations. This is true both for Quebec and for its "ancestor" Canada. And it is also true for the Natives who have themselves essentially become Metis - even though nobody from the First Nations dares admit this[12] - and who the ruling judicial apparatus is anxious to "reindianize" in order to be able to assign them to categories it has total control over. 

Everything comes to pass as if this Anglo-Canada, feeling uneasy about itself, had suddenly discovered the miraculous cure for its shattered destiny. That's why it receives with open arms conciliatory Natives in order to reembark on the kind of adventure that has failed with Quebec. From this point of view there is, then, nothing more promising than inventing for oneself a well-controlled Native Quebec-outside-of-Quebec in order to replace this Quebec-intra-muros that has betrayed one by choosing Mexico, Free Trade, the U.S.A. and whatever else, and has thus become more multicultural than stipulated by the central state. 

Therefore, the relation proposed here is built on the purposefully innocuous background marking daily the "ongoing evolution" of this moment in history that believes in calling itself "Canada," a moment that has borrowed its soul from those conquered first without, however, succeeding in appropriating it entirely. A fleeting and evasive moment. A strange Third World managing to negate itself all the better since it has at its disposal all the resources necessary to hide its face. But such cosmetics usually leave an ambivalent aftertaste it finds hard to get rid of, despite its repeated efforts to invent for itself new transcendental masks by the name of "national unity" or "multiculturalism".  

What a long mise-en-scene! It is high time to take a look behind the scenes of reality and to explore the beginning of a new day in the national capital. If there is a national capital, then there must be a nation somewhere, so let's see what happens.  

The Métis Circle 

Ottawa, 6 April 1994, 7:30 am 

The last round of hearings before the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples wraps up today with what has come to be called the "Metis Circle Special Consultation".For almost thirty years now this country has been under judicial-political commissions, fiercely asking the imperial gods, vho are as tired as they are battered, to make it discover its own identity. A country that only very recently has endowed itself with a constitution which it had to repatriate and which therefore comes from some place outside; otherwise it would not have been necessary to "repatriate" it. 

Beginning with the B & B Commission (on Bilingualism and Biculturalism) in the 60's, this process carries on and on, even though it seems this time it must come to a close - paradoxically, with the auscultation of the Native dimension that gave birth to it in the first place. But we have already come full circle! Unless a new Commission inquiring into the profoundly multicultural character of "Canada" is set up soon. Because Anglo/Franco biculturalism will soon have to give way to a triangular Franco/Native/Anglo multiculturalism (what weight!), bearer of a new, soaring energy capable of carrying it into the next century. As if the presence of a "Metis Circle" was not proof that a multicultural project has already been under way for almost five centuries!  

Not so simple! That the Metis of the whole "Dominion" would succeed in making themselves heard under a new designation ("The Metis Circle"), thus closing down the largest public hearings ever held in British North America, was far from there must be a nation somewhere, so let's see what happens. certain at the beginning. It took intense negotiations to Convince the Commissioners that a Metis identity had existed ad mare usque ad mare since the very birth of this country.[13]  

But rather than trying to provide additional eplanations, we may just as well let one ofthe invited guests take the floor.[l4]  

Ottawa, 6 April 1994, sequel, 8:00 am 

I am one of the only francophone Native elders, you know, I do not speak the English. Je parle Canayen, c'est tout. Et aussi, le Francais. 

Even though I do not speak English, I am often invited. I juggle the words, and they listen to me. A real 'Sauvage canayen', all dark, who speaks to them about the tam-tam, the drum, and calumet ceremonies, and who tells them all kinds of old stories streaked with colour. 

They listen to me politely because of my age, but it is very anti-french, you know, with the people of the Ministry [of Indian Affairs]. Tres beaucoup anti-french, and also with the Indians who let themselves be manipulated in this matter like cherubs, hoping to gain tons of benefits from this. But when the time comes to take a stand, for them as well as for us, they will allow themselves to be had like prairie chickens. 

The Canayens and the Sauvages have always been allies and that is why they have until this day persisted both as 'people' and as 'a people'. They do not realize it, but as soon as they agree to battle against each other, like the tribes of the Far West in the past century, they destroy themselves and somebody else takes possession of the loot. Of all the loot! 

At present, the Indians let themselves be set up against the French-Canadians, thinking they can easily obtain, they believe, all the goodies and the territorial sweets they have been promised. But this way they become violently anti-Quebec, particularly if they have any 'french blood' in them, which they do not dare admit. These days, it is not viewed all that kindly any longer to have a 'frog in one's throat'. 

No, I assure you that they do not particularly like the Francos in these big buildings here and across the bridge [Hull-Gatineau]. But if you ask them why, the do not exactly know. So you have to forgive them. 

I often go to France, and it is the same. Over there the do not know our history any better. They invite me and have me perform all the wild and savage Indian dances and ceremonies. They like thatÛparticularly the young people; they understand me better than the old ones when I tell them of my people in our beautiful Canadian language. The Water, Mother Earth, the Forests, the Animals and the Plants; the Creator, the Sun and his wife, the Moon etc.  

For them, I am not a Sauvage but a Canadien, or perhaps a little bit of both. Somehow, the two are the same." 

Linguistic Realities 

Ottawa, 6 April 1994, still ..., 9:00 am 

"Taxi, s'il-vous-plalt. Gare d'autobus pour Montreal."  

"I don't speak the French, Monsieur. Just a little peu! But my wife... Ah! The perfect 'French parisien' she speaks, Monsieur. 

Ah, oui! [Not having, in the last little while, haunted the corridors of the Empire all that much, I had not heard this expression in a long time. The "perfect Parisian French"! A category that exists only in the minds of Anglo-Americans -and of their ilk - and that one never encounters in Paris, of course.]  

Yes, she's from Lebanon, like me. But she learlled it again in Ottawa, 'the French'. Not that I don't want, me, but ... you know how these things work. I have to make a living. Sometimes, I say 'bonjour' and they look at me stiff cold and do not say a word. Not the slightest sound. Just a cold and blading look. Like a gun. You know how they are. And sometimes they smile like a barking dog when you say 'hello/bonjour'. Difficult country, monsieur, very difficult for a well-to-do immigrant who wants to look like the image of Canada. Impossible, monsieur. No, I don't speal the French. I have to make a living." 

"Oh!" ["Impossible" is not French, they liked to tell us over and over again, in the seminaries, at the time of our Creole adolescence. That's right, we are "Canadiens". Therefore, everything is possibly "impossible"!] 

"But my children, they speak four languages: Arabic, French, English and Spanish. Yes, they speak "the four" and perfectly well. Just perfect, monsieur. Parfait. Right."  

If they speak the four, aussi bien se faire une raison. But here I am, beginning to write bilingually. Anyway, even if I personally do speak four or five languages, I am still, in their eyes, an F C. pure wool[l5] who speaks other languages, rather than a trance-cultural animal eluding all received definitions. 

Evidently, one can very well be a multicultural monolingual Anglo with two or four wheels, it does not matter - if one speaks English at birth. It is a question of intra-uterine parameters peculiar to this boundless expanse north of the 49th parallel, it seems. But I am jumping ahead, anticipating observations that this time were made in the northern Mid-West of the United States, in this "Amerique du nowhere" in the heart of the melting pot. 

Turtle Mountain Reservation, Belcourt, North Dakota, Z'etats-Zunis[16], 23 March 1994 

"Hi! I'm a French Chippewa. 

So they say. But, in fact, I ain't Chippewa at all. My name is Bernard Trottier. Bernie, as they call me. I'm a French-Canadian Indian. Just that. I'm a French-Canadian Indian and I'm drunk.  

Just that. There's nothing more to it. And my friend here - mon ami! ... Mon ami, right, that's the way to say it, he! Mon ami is Jokom, or Joachim ... Well! forget about it, he's Jiggs LaFromboise[17]. That's French too, I guess. But what the hell are you doing here. Where from are you?" 

"Nous somnes de Montreal. Mont'-Treal!" 

[And we are making a film on the Metis, that is to say on that part of us which our family history has locked up in trunks at the back of "la shede". But basically we want to film a language and a spirit. Wanting to photograph sounds' What an impossible, yet necessary proposition! And, beyond sounds, a river that sings, a geography that stretches out to the tundra! An aesthetic that floats between the different strata of the Conquest and without which Canada would never have taken place. What a project! You believe it can be done? Snapping out the French sounds and extracting the Native beauty out of America's belly. Trying to recover the "djigges canayennes" and the "sun dance" that blended together in your earlier trips across the star-studded liberty. What an impossible and glorious project! The dance of the old Canada-in-Quebec or of Quebec- upon-Canada! The "Quebec-Metis sound" that has melted away in the Native body of America. All the undercurrents that one had virtually lost track of and that suddenly reappear as the music drifts by. 

Eh, Monsieur Jigg La Framboise, tribal chief and square dance caller. What doyou think about that?] 

Red Lake Falls, Minnesota, 25 March 1994 

Chutes du Lac Rouge or Lac aux Chutes Rouges, it depends. Rolla County, North Dakota. "Canadiens" turned "French-Canadian Settlers" accompanied by fortune seekers from all over Europe and the rest of the cosmos. "Indian cow-boy,""Ukranian farmer'' or "former Coureur de bois," which one is the best trance-cultural proposition for happiness in the kingdom of the Mid-West? 

Suddenly, I remember the puzzlement of the French geographer Andre Siegfried. "How could one possibly imagine a state as rectangular as Dakota one day developing a national conscience?" he had asked sarcastically and mockingly. A legitimate question? Unless such a quadrant was put in place precisely to take away from the Metis and the Indians any spatial conscience and any possible sense of belonging to the country of their soul. Assimilation-participation by intervening geography. The power of the mental circle against the power of the agrarian rectangle as the ultimate piece de resistance!  

But what exactly is it all about, this multiculturalism-before-the-term-was-ever-invented that came to constitute, by the mere power of things, all inter-native, trans-tribal or "cross-frenche" metissage? When you are called Jaune Quick-To-See Smith and introduce yourself as Salish, Shoshone and French Cree, who exactly are you?[l8] That's not talked about in the Canada of your origin, and yet this geographic hybridization touched streams, mountains and rivers and affected the entire country at every ford, every bivouac and every sacred spot ("power spot," as it is called in Anglo). If you need at least a few drops of savage blood in order to be Metis, then what could the flood of place names such as the following ones reveal: 
 

riviere au lait           milky river  
riviere boucanee       smoked river  
riviere enragee         enraged river  
riviere tannee           tanned river  
riviere qu'appelle     calling river  
riviere oualla-mette   walla-walla river 
riviere sauvageuse    making-you-wild river 

Everything that the Quebec of the last quarter of a century has tried so hard to forget about itself. Particularly that it had give birth to a Native Creole who was going to serve as vernacular cement for an entire continent, from the Mississippi to the Youkon. Dead ducks, Exfrenches, catholic and animistic Indians dividing their time between the impossible memory of the St. Lawrence that had betrayed them and the "reservation back home" where they were caught in the nets of the Indian Agent: 

IÌm going back to Britanny and warn my fishermen: 'Don't sail for the mouth of the St. Lawrence, that's where you got fooled before -ils vous on [sic] joué un tour.[19]  

In fact, the entire oeuvre of a Kérouac testifies to the impossible difficulty of being trans-culturally Franco in the America of the Anglo dream, a dream which will not stop calling for help Francos, Indios and other Chicanos by imploring them to let themselves be mentally imprisoned in order to feed the national myths. And if ever they refuse, they eventually find themselves under arrest. Come now, for what crime of"lese-yanqui" has a certain Leonard Peltier been rotting in prison for twenty years if not to save his honor as a Metis in a world that has always refused to recognize it! 

You only need to glance through Peter Matthiessen's In the Spirit of Crazy Horse[20] to understand a little, but not everything. No, definitely not everything. Peter Matthiessen, this admirable writer, suggested about the Oka crisis something like this: "They are worse than the Sandinistas with the Misquitos, those Quebecois." He is right. For the most part. Yet I get angry and do not want to hear him say this. At least not as long as he has not made the necessary adjustments in his own country, having read, even if only out of the corner of one eye, a little book published in Boston in 1918 and ever since buried in the rubbleÛa book called Our Debt to the Red Man, the French-lndians in the Development of the United States[2l]. 

Who and what are these French-Indians? Who and what are, by the way, the so-called Quebecois and to which tribe do they belong? I have tried to provide some answers to these questions elsewhere[22] but would like to mention here another anecdote about the foundations of the geomorphology of the empire: 

Last Monday I went into Flagstatf, Arizona. My wife looked after our laundry, and I looked after the kids. There were lots of Indians down there, and some old- timers stared at us when they heard our French.  

One of these red men finally came over and took a chair right next to us. After a minute or so he asked: "You, you have some pure blood"  

Totally taken by surprise, I only managed to say, "What?"  

And then the Indian answered, "Me, I'm Navaho. What's your tribe?'  

I answered, "Me, I'm a Cajun." Still staring at me, the old man said, "So you come trom Mexico[23]. 

I repeat my question. These Quebecois, who exactly are they? Who are these Paleo-Canadians lacking, it seems, any respect for the other, but not being any less scattered bout this continent for seeing themselves intermixed vith almost all of its tribes and all its flowing waters? According to wht iS written about them, they risk being overtaken soon by their own past, unworthy of their own grandeur the very same thing that has been written about the Natives. 

"Any respect for the other"?... The other!... What other?  

That other which lies dormant in them as well, I assume. 

The other!? I cannot stand hearing this phrase any more, an Anglo colleague of mine whispers in my ear, a colleague who has chosen Quebec as his home and this new home as his language. The other! ... What an all-purpose trap to throw in the face of all those who want to normalize and seal within the identity accredited by the bleeding hearts of "political correctness!" Nowadays, to be Quebecois or FC and to proclaim it loudly does not, in fact, seem to be too politically erotic (to avoid calling it politically incorrect) any longer. So then what? Take one's life by means of cultural suicide[24], or lay a moral trip on the other by systematically fleeing one's history in multicultural circles of an identity subsidized by the Secretary of State . 

Indeed, not everyone can be multicultural, regardless of the number of sedimentary layers resting in one's geography! It's a kind of postmodern Rh-universal blood that the easy-going and respectful national Secretaries of Fine Arts require. To take part in such transfusions would be impossible, it seems, both for the pure laine ground water of the deep country and for the cosmopolitan affluents of the Laurentian basin - whose charter has, at any rate, hardly been established in the annals of an anthropology too worn out to recognize itself. 

I'll say it again. It is difficult to be Metis without being in one's very body multicultural or at least "multicultured"! So? ... Let's have a closer look at what happens in the country of Neufe-France. 

New France and Old Reservations 

Oka! 

Oka, summer of 1990. The year and the season when Quebec lost its virginity, it has been maintained. The Mohawk summer. Prelude to many more summers to come'? 

But who are the Mohawks? 

Who are the Iroquois? 

They are Montours, Delisles, Pel[le]tiers of Franco-savage origin having passed into English in this America of the "melting pot" like the tens of thousands of Franco-Francos whose quintessence would one day be embodied by Jack Kerouak: 

... I see it all and only because an outsider American Genius Canuck canm see, 'Ca-na-da' - (l say) Ca-na-daw - and my brother darkhaired anxious angry Canucks vehemently agree with me - 'It's always them!' thev cry and I see that sarcastic non-French smirk on the redheads' faces, smashable faces, something hateful I must have seen on Ste. Catherine St in 1953 March, that arrogant Britishified look - or from ancestors' memories of old French-lndian canoe wars - Had I gone back to Canada I wouldn't have taken shit one from any non Frenchman[25]  

Between Iroquois and "Old French-lndian canoe wars," between Iroquois and Quebecois, there must be some kind of common "quois"-thing somewhere, halfway between the "iro" and the "bec'. What does Lasagne of the Montour family think about that?[26]  

Cauhnawaa / Kahnawake! 

The rather respectful Canada-Quebec adopts the designation Kahnawake whereas many Iroquois themselves always still say Caughnawaga in this country where battles are fought vith phonemes as weapons. 

Billy Two-Rivers - accused of kicking everybody who is not pure off reserve. Just like Quebec, it seems. Except that, on the one hand, nobody has ever forced anyone to come to Quebec and, on the other hand, there have never been any real pure laines - Native or other - anywhere but in the heads of those who imagine them. How can one actually define Indians without, in fact, defining whoever defines them in this country where the Anglo is less a linguistic category than a political one?  

Akwesasne / St. Regis! 

In this hexangular triangle of Ontario / Quebec / Upper Canada / U.S.A / Bas-Canada / E.U.dA., an Iroquois reserve, a crossing point of rivers, where Abenakis, Penobscots, Malecites, Micmacs, Acadiens, Algonquins and ... Canadiens-Canayens have pulled up.  

Okanasatake ! 

Born of the multicultural meeting of Sulpicians and Huronquois, of a pine forest and a golf course project - a Metis establishment called Okanasatake. 

If I list these places endowed with two or three names (a very common feature in practically all of Quebec which remains under the domeshaped toponymical double blanket of parochiality and vernacularity), one question still remains - essentially a geopolitical question, if one gives it the slightest thought. 

Where in North America, in fact, are the "Iroquois Reservations" located? In New York? In Boston, Portland, Washington, Philadelphia? No, the Iroquois establishments are found all around Montreal (and that other Franco-American place now called Toronto), even though the Iroquois live in a much vaster area, of course. There must be a reason for that. 

But why are the only important Native reserves on the Atlantic Seabord located exactly at Montreal's doorstep and not elsewhere? In asking this question, one is already answering it?  

Well, in that case ... 

Where is Montreal? 

Where is Quebec? 

Perhaps it is rather Montreal - the city with thIee names: Hochelaga / Ville-Marie / MonteReal - that finds itself located at the very doorstep of Caughnawaga / Kanawakhe and the contemporary "Iroquoisie," the land of the Iroquois.  

And Quebec? Where is Quebec located? This enclave of the U.S.A. that so far has escaped integration. Quebec, the largest Indian reserve - bigger than that of the Navahos - and the vastest multicultural reserve in all of North America. 

A people has grown up in a river valley that has been the artery of an entire continent. A people whose names change like the seasons. A people that has "savagely" but unsuccessfully attempted to resist the accelerating attempts to "ensavage" it. A people that suddenly sees itself preferring the savages of the cinema over its own beautiful, supposedly white soul. 

Who is it, this people? lt does not really know, trying to look beyond the great geographical amnesia that has been bestowed upon it. It wanders from one identity to the next: Canadien, French Canadian, Quebecois, French Quebec--and has had enough of finding itself always backed only by itself. 

In New Zealand, I saw the film Map of the Human Heart and I could not help but cry. This Australian viev of Canada, telling the story of the half successful love of a Quebecois Metisse and an Eskimo caught between two worlds, against abackdrop of Grey Nuns and the Royal Air Force, between Montreal and Iqaluit (Frobisher Bay). How come the Australians immediately grasp what the elite of the multicultural pure laine republic has always refused to see? 

Refusing To Be Métis 

René-Daniel Dubois will have had something to say about this, in deliriously apt words which I hasten to report here:  

We retuse to accept ourselves as Metis ... 

After all, one must not forget that we are the only Whites in America who have been defeated, which puts us in a particularly ambiguous position vis-a-vis the Natives. We lose out on either side: we can claim neither oppression nor imperial victory. And the side we have chosen is that of the imperial claim. Thus, if we want successfully to negotiate anything interesting with English Canada, we have, realistically speaking, only one ally in the world, and that's the Natives. We have the possibility of achieving with them what so far no white power has ever achieved ... 

I had just finished writing a paragraph on this matter when, after a night ofwork, I learned that the Surete du Quebec had attacked Kanawake. I beganto cry. I did not undersfand such imbecility. The way the Quebecois acted that summer is totally obscene. This obscenity has its origin in our need toadhere to the American image, a need that's all the more strong since it is linked to our sense of illegitimacy ... 

Basically, we refuse to accept ourselves as Metis because we want to havea divine mission. But in this case, the divine mission cannot be anything but death.[27]  

How to define yourself without defining your counterpart who will always take it upon himself to define you. Carl Jung once had this to say: 

I am myself a question addressed to the universe and I must convey my answer, for othervise I shall always be dependent on the answer of others. 

Here Jung had no doubt already invited us to formulate a response to the propositions he himself suggested elsewhere, propositions about the archetypical identity of the Quebecois (that is to say, in this case, the Canadians) in the European conscience, in short, in the conscience of the Christian Occident: 

... There are indeed people who lack a developed persona - Canadians [read Quebecois] who know not Europe's sham politeness - ['ours mal leches,' ie boorish bears] blundering from one social solecism to the next perfectly harmless and inlocent, soulful bores or appealling children, or, I they are women, spectral Cassandras dreaded for their tactlessness, eternally misunderstood, never knowing what they are about, always taking, forgiveness for granted, blind to the world, hopeless dreamers. From them we can see how a neglected persona works, and what one must do to remedy the evil. Such people can avoid disappointments and an infinity of sufferings, scenes, and social catastrophes only by leaming to see how men behave in the world. They must learn to understand what society expects of them; they must realize that there are factors and persons in the world far above them ...[28] 

The offspring of this intercourse (doubtful and doomed from the beginning) between the blundering bear and the woman animated by a "neglected persona" subsuming her, the "Canadiens" were only waiting for a word from one of their own to feel redeemed. And soon, a Pierre Trudeau would respond. 

Multicultural Modes 

Failing to be the country of the Canadiens and the Metis which it has always embodied between two constitutional glaciations, Canada would thus be the homeland to a novel multicultural mosaic. Contrary to the United States of A., to Brazil, to the Argentinian Republic or to any other country whose identity relies on fulltime assimilation, the Canada of the 70s would be founded on a different mythology: that of the right of all Canadians to assimilation by sublimation or, to multiculturalism. 

But the model of a bilingual and multicultural society that the Trudeau government had suggested for the Dominion ad mare usque ad mare did, in fact, not come from Toronto nor from Winnipeg nor from Vancouver but, of course, from Montreal. How could it have been otherwise? Multiculturalism came from halfway between Ville Mont-Royal and the College des Jesuites a Cote-des-Neiges, where Trudeau had been formed. The very same Chemin de la Cote-des-Neiges that Marguerite Bourgeoys or Jeanne Mance followed to try to attract the attention of the little "sauvagesses" and to seduce them with maple syrup or other sweets in order to lead them to true faith.  

Today's tactics and strategies of trance-cultural enticement are thus not new - far from it. 

Because if in America there is, and always has been, a multicultural-republic-before-the-term -was-ever-invented, it is, of course, Montreal that embodies it rather than New York, San Francisco, or Miami. By subliminal conviction, Trudeau offered the model of Montreal to all of Anglo-Canada. And the latter will make every effort proudly to become "Quebecois" without realizing this, and wanting it even less, as the whole thing has been so well covered by multicultural gaiters and so well impregnated with pancanadian perfume. What magnificent subterfuge ! Trudeau will have succeeded in montrealizing Vancouver without the latter even realizing it. And neither do the students enrolled in "French immersion" programmes offered for the emerging bilingual elite, from Whitehorse to Iqaluit via St. John's, Newfoundland.  

It is, fact, specifically the Montreai model of ìmulticulturalismî (at least the model of the Downtown, of' Notre-Dame-de-Grace, of Ville Mont-Royal and of the West-lsland against a backdrop of coureurs de bois returned home to their hearths, half anglified, via la Cote de la Grande-Loge-Aux-Castors[29] that, having repatriated it symbolically, one will invoke a few years later in order to condemn those ever-damned French-Canadian-Bloc-Quebecois separatists who may want to ethnify this very same Montreal in their own image. What an irony to realize that the multicultural allolingual Canadian-Quebecois haunting the bars of the Montagne by Saint-Denis (hem!) will suddenly have become, in the eyes of the Anglos, a menace to his own national unity. 

If Trudeau had wanted to montrealize Canada, then Levesque at the same time had tried to quebecize Montreal. Both of them at once succeeded and failed, according to the well-tried formula of "noui," that is of a simultaneous "oui"and "non". One must, of course, recognize that, in one stride, the current Quebec has, in passing, become federalist in Quebec and sovereignist in Ottawa. What a tour de force and what more could one ask for? This is perfect bliss, only that in themeantime, for all those who had managed not to see it so far, a third party has appeared - a third bed-fellow who had of course always been present, even if only in the very name of Canada or of Quebec given to the country. A third unwilling pre-Laurentian bed-fellow who certain media begin to point the finger at as the real separatist: the Native[30]. The lesson has borne fruit. The Francos, whose very name "Canadiens" had been skinned off from them, manage to designate the Native as "separatist," just as they themselves have been outfitted with such a name. 

Coming Full Circle 

And so, having looked at ourselves from all angles, we have come full circle. 

From now on, there exist two separatist peoples, two peoples smuggling each other, one at the doorstep of the other: Quebec / Mohawks or Canadiens / Agniers.  

Two peoples whose confrontation is carefully planrted, in a location unbeknown to them both.  

Two peoples looking to negotiate their independence in their assumed dependence and looking to seize a history - their history - which has slipped through their fingers.  

Two peoples who oppose each other because they do not know any better or, rather, because they know very well that their survival has often depended on an implosion that kills them in the long run.  

Two peoples who, having offered America their soul and their symbols - the maple leaf, lacrosse, hockey, the loup-manitou, the marou-garou[3l] etc. - are now engaged in a secret, obtuse, confused and illusory war. Because there won't be any winners.  

There won't be any winners.  

Two peoples shaped as much by their conquerors as by themselves and their anthropological advisers. Two peoples who have come to believe that they really are what they have been told they are. 

People of the longhouse, people of the mobile home - both of them children of the ìchemin-qui-marche[32]. Rabaska peoples, Hodeosounee. Otipemisiak. People of the land without assumed land. 

Peoples in cosmological tatters unable to explain their genesis to themselves. 

Fragments of histories and time not patched up by geography, flating on the battered magma of the Americas, Like driftwood on spring tides.  

How to restore a tree whose branches are washed out by ice floes?  

Overheard in a cafe on Cote-des-Neiges, on January 26, 1994. 

Those blasted savages. It don't make sense. It's like double standards.Someone will have to put 'em in their place, once and for all. If not, this whole thing's gonna end in a bloodbath. 

Remark by a high-ranking official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, January 1994. 

There have always been peoples who win and peoples who lose. The longer the Natives put off admitting their defeat, the more this will work against them. 

Traditional societies are finished. For them, it's all over. OO - V E R.Over. I have religiously followed the constitutional debates on the Native question, in 1981. It was extraordinary. This country simultaneous-translation called Canada. Admirable, isn't it! Suddenly, two participants spoke a Native language. It was all over. A message appeared on the screen: Nous regrettons de ne pouvoir vous transmettre des propos qui ne sont pas prononces dans les langues officielles. - We apologize for not being equipped to transmit material not expressed in one of tle official languages. They were ipso facto excluded from the circle. 

What circle, exactly? Certainly not the Great Metis Circle without which this country would have never existed. Wherever in America there are no Metis, there is no Canada. And wherever there is no Quebec, there is no ...? Well, what exactly? What conclusion can be drawn here? 

It would be as well to follow the path a little further and, by way of an open conclusion, to go down along the longitude that leads to the Caribbean since Antillean words - canoes, maringouins, cays - have been migrating to Canada since the beginning of its history and are still used today. 

The recent history of Quebec will, by the way, have demonstrated to what extent all the cultural and geographical distinctions - North/South and South/North turn out to be meaningless. And Montreal, Quebecanada, is more than ever the hub of Such an encounter. Incidentally, if Montreal constitutes, forthe most part, the geocultural capital of the Inuit and of the Eastern Arctic[33], it is also the place which will have succeeded in producing, in part anyway, its first President of a Republic, in the person of Jean-Bertrand Aristide[34]. 

Creole America 

I will thus finish this contribution on fluid America by drawing on another log and another notebook, that of the encounter between Creole North America and Creole Caribbean America. The action takes place in Petionville, in the opulent suburbs of a Haiti that is increasingly skinned for the courage to have dared become the only colony of Franco-America and of Creole America to have achieved its sovereignty. 

It is out of Montreal and via Montreal that a handful of Hiaitian intellectualsare in the process of assuring, by a variety of interventions, retlections andpublications, the permanence of a language and of a wav of thinking essential not only for Haiti but also for Quebec. All one needs to do is readthe following testimony to discover, from the perspective of a Hiaitian exile, a Quebec that ignores almost all of its true political force and cultural power.  

You know, the stopover in Quebec has democratized us without us actually realizing it when it was happening. Now, with the benefit of hindsight and having been back in Ha'ti since February 86 (rather, a continuous round trip Montreal - Port-au-Prince, since I now divide my time between these two cities and wouldn't know how to do without either one of them), it is now, as I told you, that, meeting all our compatriots from the United States, from France and ... from Hai'ti, I discover to what extent we have become different. Different while at the same time conserving in a renewed fashion this common background which still unites the Haitians of the land and those of the diaspora. 

No other host society has had more of an impact on Haiti and the Haitians than Quebec. It is here where it all happens and it is here where it will continue to happen. The Haitians who went to France or to the USA did not chose France or the USA; they had historically been co-opted, chosen by those countries. Whereas Quebec was for all of us a discovery and a voluntary cholce. 

Evidently, we arrived in Montreal during the key years when Quebec lived through its great period of liberation, and this atmosphere permeated us.We were with Quebec, we were Quebecois with this Quebec that struggled for its independence, we were Haitians with this Quebec that did not know anything yet about Haiti but that nevertheless supported our struggle wholeheartedly. 

We entered this country with our culture, our hopes, and our prejudices. We had come, I have to confess, from a very old segregationist tradition and from a culture of domesticity. And in Quebec nothing, absolutely nothing, corresponded to that. So much so that we found ourselves abruptly gobbled up by a society that challenged us and called us into question every single day, all the while surrounding us with a material well-being that totally innervated us. 

It was an extraordinary feeling. We discovered white people who did notbehave like Whites. That was, I assure you, inconceivable for us and, vou can Imagine, for the Haitian elite, it continues to be so to this verv day. For Haitians, the Quebecois, contrary to the French, do not know how to play their white part at all. The Quebecois are white without realizing it. Nobody has told them so and, on top of that, it's only the French who, in the eyes of the Quebecois, possess the legitimacy of language. For all these reasons, the Quebecois appear like some non-white Whites who deeply unsettle the Haitian elite. 

Quebec does not reproduce the classic racist stereotypes - what happens here is something entirely different. So the upper middle-class Haitian is totally lost and powerless before this subspecies of culture which is not black but nevertheless contains certain characteristic elements of black culture. 

The problem of the women of the Haitian elite who married Quebecois men (and there are hardly any; it's the ordinary Haitian women who generally have married Quebecois men) is exactly of this order. They want the Quebecois to play the role of the White man, and the Quebecois does not know how. When this happens in Ha'lti, it is so funny, it makes you weep. The Quebecois man drinks his rum with the private chauffeur, invites the maid to his own table and does thousands of things that are simply not done when you're white. But despite that - what a surprise - he is not ostracized, nor ruined. He has money or seems to have it. Thus the Haitian elite does not understand the Quebecois and prefers to look down on him, with a contempt deeply tainted with racism, of which the latter most of the time is absolutely unaware. 

Listen, let me tell you a story. Not very long ago, in Port-au-Prince, I wasin the company of a magnificent Quebecois woman, you know the kind of girl with free movements, a direct look on her face and no discomfort whatsoever and I could go on. 

Oh! Look how beautiful this white woman is, said a friend. Is she French? - No. Quebecoise. 

-Ah, too bad! Not for me, thank you very much. Quebecois women don't interest me. They are capable of having relations with Blacks as if there was nothing to it. And of jumping from one class to the other without the least respect for what you represent. Not for me at all. French women, on the other hand, know very well how to maintain the proper distance between the classes and won't affront you by moving from a Mulatto on to a Negro. 

Get it? All the questioning resulting from the simple presence of Quebec in Hailti. You have no idea how unsettled these guys are![35] 

With the Quebecois, the Haitians encounter a people that resembles them, ut "en creux," similar on the inside, Yet different on the outside. Quebec appears like the inverse image of Halti. The great imaginary whiteness that just about every Haitian searches for abroad (Fanon discussed this fantasy at length in Black Skin. White Masks) is thus not what it used to be. The Quebecois irrefutably prove that one can have a White skin and a Negro spirit. 

That's how the Haitians feel about it, and so nothing works any more theway it used to. By its very existence, Quebec explodes the entire Haitian system .  

It's extraordinary. 

Extraordinary indeed, and one cannot but salute with emotion and admiration this hymn in honour of "la femme-quebec''. It is, however, hard to believe in the future of a people whose socio-political survival depends on the negation of its most triumphant Creole identity. 

The day when Quebec will collectively succeed in doing what it manages to accomplish individually will be a day of great liberation. For my part, I am convinced that a winner will emerge, but via a pathway passing through the recognition of the Metis identity of the Quebecois people and its panamerica extension. 

jm, montreal, 
10 june 1994 - revised 4 june 1995 

P.S. With my most profound thanks to Micheline Labelle for having invited meto participate in the Chair's Seminars. 

I also have to say that without the insistence and the perseverance of Celine Moise, this text would not have seen the light of day. May she find here the expression of my gratitude. 

Translated from the French by Michael Mundhenk