Former Customary Chief Jean Maurice Matchewan Speaks Out

Jean Maurice Matchewan under arrest at a logging blockade in the 1980s on Barriere Lake’s traditional territory.

Accusations are powerful. When Prime Minister Harper wanted Canadians to stop listening to Chief Theresa Spence, he implied she was corrupt and incompetent by ordering an audit of her band’s finances. It wasn’t until months later that she was exonerated following a judicial review, but by then much damage had been done. Canadians’ opinions had been formed. A powerful Indigenous woman was denounced and discredited so that Harper could escape responsibility for the miserable living conditions on her reserve.

As the Customary Chief of Mitchikanibikok Inik (Algonquins of Barriere Lake) for almost 20 years altogether, I was also under constant attack by the federal and Quebec governments.

I had a target on my back because I fought with everything I had against the Quebec and federal governments to protect our ancestral lands from over exploitation and our Algonquin Anishinabe way of life for future generations.

In the 1980s, our traditional territory, located about 3 hours north of Ottawa in Quebec, was being devastated by clear-cuts. Under my leadership we camped out on Victoria Island for weeks and blockaded logging roads for months to get the governments’ attention and let them know they were on Algonquin territory and that we never gave up our jurisdiction to the land.

The federal government wanted to push us into the federal Comprehensive Land Claims process. But we said no. To us, that was just another approach for the government to take away our land. We signed the Trilateral Agreement with Canada and Quebec in 1991, which we negotiated under the principles set out in an eighteenth century 3-figure wampum belt agreement and we don’t want any other kind of agreement that’s going to take our inherent rights away from our land.

As we adapt to the modern world around us, we want to keep living the way we’re living today: still hunting, trapping, fishing, harvesting medicines, speaking our language, and passing our knowledge, customs and experience onto our children, grandchildren and future generations of our Algonquin Anishinabe Peoples.

But we wanted to find a way to co-exist with others on our territory. We wanted to have a decisive voice over resource conservation, use and management on our ancestral territory and we wanted that say to be based on the knowledge we accumulated living on these lands for thousands of years. That knowledge is the legacy of our Mitchikanibikok Anishnabe Onakinakewin, our sacred constitution. This legal system makes a place for animals and plants and all living things on earth. Through the Trilateral Agreement, we negotiated to protect these things and our sacred areas, for example, seasonal moose

habitats, Algonquin family homes, camping sites and other important cultural areas. We could map that out through traditional land use and occupancy studies that Canada would pay for, and for the first time ever we’d have a decisive voice and the Quebec government would have to come to us and we would tell them where they could and couldn’t permit logging on our ancestral lands.

My community was united at that time when we signed what was called the Trilateral Agreement in 1991, a co-management/resource-revenue sharing agreement. It was an agreement with Canada and Quebec that started out as a 5-year pilot project, but has taken over 23 years to see implemented. During this 23-period, the governments have used every dirty trick in the book to derail the agreement they soon regretted signing. As I’ve already stated the federal government tried to push us into the federal Comprehensive Land Claims Policy and process and the Quebec government did not want to share jurisdiction over natural resources with our Algonquin peoples.

For years now, there has been a lot of misinformation that has circulated about me and about the 1991 Trilateral Agreement that my community signed. I want to set the record straight here once and for all.

In the past year an article was published that claimed that I falsely claimed to be Chief of Barriere Lake in 1980. I was blazed (prepared) as customary Chief at that time by our Elders Council and there was no challenge to our customary leadership process on the matter. But leadership disputes have plagued our community since 1996, when an “Interim Band Council” (IBC) claiming to be the customary government of our community was recognized by the federal Department of Indian Affairs and the IBC puppet group increased our community’s debt and damage to our community with the support of the federal Department of Indian Affairs.

Our community was united against the Interim Band Council (IBC) who were forced to govern in exile, 150 kilometers south of our reserve of Rapid Lake, in the town of Maniwaki. For a year and a half, we lived—with little or no money—off the land, in the cold, on the blockades, trying to protect our lands from logging and from an internal “guerilla government,” as a Quebec Superior Judge Rejean Paul described it in his 1997 mediator report. Later it came out that a disgruntled lawyer, Gerard Guay, who we fired for unprofessional conduct, was counseling them and that officials from the federal Department of Indian Affairs were advising the IBC on how to seize power.

This same dissenting group of community members tried to overthrow the customary government again in 2006. They say that they are against the 1991 Trilateral Agreement, but it has been my supporters who were on the frontlines against the governments and industry, sacrificing everything to get a co-management/resource-revenue sharing agreement in place so we don’t have to fight the Quebec government every time a forest license is granted to logging companies operating on our ancestral lands.

There are also allegations from long-time opponents to my leadership claiming that money was embezzled or wrongly spent in the Trilateral Agreement process. They say it is in bank accounts in the Cayman Islands. This is completely false. I have never enriched myself while I was customary Chief of the Algonquins of Barriere Lake, like everyone else at Rapid Lake I live with little money to survive.

My then legal Counsel David Nahwagahbow and Policy Advisor Russell Diabo have also been accused of all sorts of treachery. They were our most trusted advisors for many years and never provided counsel or advice that wasn’t about protecting our ancestral Algonquin Anishinabe lands. They suffered more than they ever gained in the process because of the vilification they continue to endure from misinformed or dissenting community members.

My community critics have also claimed that the 1991 Trilateral Agreement is about letting the logging companies come and take what they want. To this I say: it was our community members and my supporters that went to the blockades when necessary to stop logging not authorized under the 1991 Trilateral Agreement process. It was my community supporters of the 1991 Trilateral Agreement process who first identified a proposed copper mine in our territory. And it was our community leaders who support the 1991 Trilateral Agreement process who went to that mining company’s Annual General Meeting and told them there would be no mining on our territory.

It was also my supporters from our customary leadership process in 2010 who set up a land protection camp at Poigan Bay to try protect the Wawatie family lands from clear- cut logging because the DIA “recognized” Council had not respected the 1991 Trilateral Agreement interim lands protection process, letting Quebec go ahead and issue logging permits in the family territory.

Why we still support the Trilateral Agreement

We’ve been arrested, beaten, starved, and had our names dragged through the mud. But the worst thing that has ever happened to us is, as a result of the long struggle to get the spirit and terms of the 1991 Trilateral Agreement honoured by the federal and Quebec governments, is that we became divided as a community.

The government has exploited our vulnerabilities and sown doubt in the viability of the Trilateral Agreement as a deliberate divide and conquer tactic that we must overcome.

To get the Trilateral Agreement process off the ground at all, we had to fight an incredibly hard battle. The funding that Canada was supposed to transfer to us to do our sensitive area sites (SAS) maps (the first phase of the Agreement) failed to materialize and we had to spend band funds to complete our (SAS) maps. We borrowed money from our community administration and went into debt. Eventually, Quebec Superior Court Judge Rejean Paul became a mediator between us and the white governments, and the monies we used towards Trilateral Agreement studies and work was repaid to our community administration.

The federal government never liked the 1991 Trilateral Agreement and viewed it as a threat, a “back-door” to the federal Comprehensive Claims Policy and process. Canada, under the leadership of Prime Minister Jean Chretien, intervened on several occasions in our customary leadership selection process by encouraging and supporting dissenting family factions within our community to try to overthrow myself and the late customary Chief Harry Wawatie, who was supportive of the 1991 Trilateral Agreement process.

In fact, in 1998, customary Chief Harry Wawatie negotiated a Bilateral Agreement with the government of Quebec on an approach and process to conclude the work of the 1991 Trilateral Agreement, including co-management of natural resources and resource- revenue sharing. Just when things seemed like they were back on track, the federal government breached the Trilateral Agreement by unilaterally withdrawing from the process in 2001. Community members pressured the government of Quebec to continue to honour the 1991 and 1998 Agreements with our community, although the Quebec government continued to try to obstruct and derail the process in a number of ways.

Further negotiations unfolded in 2006, with the appointment of Special Representatives of Quebec (former Quebec Cabinet Ministers John Ciaccia and Clifford Lincoln) and representatives from our community, who prepared Joint Recommendations that were approved by both parties. These recommendations included that the Trilateral Agreement be recognized as a Special Management Zone, subject to wildlife management plans and forestry management plans under co-management with our community that would be instituted to see implementation of integrated resource management plans, in conformity with the Trilateral Agreement. These recommendations represent the legacy and hard work not only of myself but the late customary Chief Harry Wawatie in negotiating the 1991 and 1998 Agreements in behalf of our community.

Although Chief Harry Wawatie is no longer with us, as a former customary Chief, I intend to fully support our current Chief and Council in their efforts to get the Quebec government to honour it’s word and negotiate an agreement to implement the above noted Joint Recommendations as is set out in Phase III of the 1991 Trilateral Agreement and section 7 of the 1998 Bilateral Agreement.

Finally, in 2010, Stephen Harper’s Minister of Indian Affairs, Chuck Strahl, in collaboration with the Quebec government had developed a joint Canada-Quebec strategy to sideline the 1991 Trilateral Agreement process by imposing a section 74 Indian Act band council election system over our customary leadership selection process and law. The federal government relied on the Quebec government using a Surete du Quebec (SQ) Swat Team to enforce a coup d’etat in order to replace our duly selected customary Chief and Council with an imposed Indian Act Council who worked to help the federal and Quebec government’s try to bury the Trilateral Agreement process.

I support the efforts of our current Chief and Council to return our community to a customary system of government and rid ourselves of the colonial Indian Act elective system, imposed by the Harper government in 2010.