After international success with KukumIn the book that tells the eventful life of his Innu great-grandmother Almanda, the successful writer Michel Jean invites his readers to follow him on an exciting investigation in Nunavik. Qimmik, a shock novel that leaves no one indifferent, tells through fiction an unfortunately real tragedy about which little has been said. The killing of thousands of northern dogs in Nunavik several decades ago.
Qimmik, a true novel, is set in the heart of a majestic territory that Michel Jean describes with words full of evocative power. Between taiga and tundra, a young Inuit couple from Nunavik, Saullu and Ulaajuk, learn to love each other. They travel with their dogs across a still wild continent.
A few decades later, tragedy struck in northern Quebec. A young lawyer is sent to the North Coast to defend an Inuk accused of killing two former Sûreté du Québec police officers. Her quest for justice will take her far beyond anything she could have imagined.
Nunavik. A northern territory that the south knows little about. And we don’t hear much about it. An area and a story that touched the author’s heart.
Photo provided by Éditions Libre Expression
“In Quebec we are not interested in the far north,” he comments in an interview between two trips abroad. People often have the impression that the Far North is none of their business. And often when I hear about native problems, people say… ah… it’s the English. It was Ottawa that enacted the Indian Act. »
“It was Ottawa that founded the residential schools,” he continues. But the Inuit are not the responsibility of the federal government. They are citizens of Quebec like the others and have the same problems. »
“Their story – their trauma – is the massacre of the Nordic dogs. Nobody or almost nobody in Quebec hears about it. We don’t know much about that. I found it to be a part of Quebec’s history that I think is important and that I told in the book. »
He therefore recounted what happened and the impact these events had on the Inuit population…until today.
“A lot of the problems they had came from there. For us it was the boarding schools, for them it was this. This crisis is “made in Quebec” and I really wanted to tell people about it. »
“I made it through a novel in which we lecture no one and blame no one. We’re just revealing what happened. After that, I let people make up their own minds. »
In the 50s, 60s, 70s
Michel Jean adds that he is personally outraged by this story.
“It’s not from the 1800s. It happened in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s.”
The Inuit, who lived in clans by the sea, were then forcibly grouped into around ten villages.
“An Inuit hunter comes with 10-12 dogs. It’s like a bear: it needs a large territory in order to have enough food to hunt and support its family. But they didn’t have everything there. They had no food. So the Inuit set off. »
“The Quebec government had an idea: to prevent them from leaving, we will kill the dogs. The governments – Ottawa and Quebec – launched dog slaughter campaigns. And it continued until there was nothing left. In the 1950s there were 20,000, in the 1970s there were none. We later found a few to save the breed. »
- Michel Jean is an Innu from Mashteuiatsh.
- He is an author, presenter and investigative journalist.
- His novel “Kukum” enjoyed international success and won numerous awards.
- He has very good projects coming his way.
EXTRACT
“ This world, sluggish during the long winter months, ignites at the beginning of its short summer and then bursts into hasty, feverish, and irritable life. It is red, ocher, blue, green, turquoise, yellow, orange. Incredible colors in this monochrome universe. It smells of flowers and herbs. On this long-forgotten continent, people live with their Qimmiit, their dogs. Big, strong, resilient and loyal dogs. Inuktitut and the yapping of the Qimmiit have been heard in Nunavik for five thousand years. Life there is cruel. But that’s what makes it beautiful. Valuable. »