Introduction Representations of First Nations and Métis in Canada and Quebec Présentation Représentations des Premières Nations et des Métis au Canada et au Québec

In 2008, when the Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures (ACQL) put out a general call for papers for our annual conference at the University of British Columbia, we were intrigued to discover that a number of our members had proposed papers on representations of First Nations and Métis in Canadian and Quebec writing. The essays were on subjects as diverse as métissage and hybridity, questions of place, and First Nations mythological figures; the texts included Margaret Laurence’s A Bird in the House, Virginia Pésémapéo Bordeleau’s Ourse bleue, Joan Crate’s Foreign Homes, Bernard Assiniwi’s La saga des Béothuks, Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach, and Thomas King’s Truth and Bright Water. After hearing many of these excellent papers, in both French and English, at three separate panels at our May 2008 conference, the French-language and English-language vice-chairs/program co-ordinators for ACQL decided to put out a general call for papers on the topic. In that call we invited papers that considered the literary, cinematic, and cultural constructions of First Nations and Métis in Canada and Quebec, in literary and cultural works both about and by Aboriginal and Métis writers and artists, presented in French, English, and other languages in Canada. We wanted to examine the importance of such representations in the cultural imagination and the sociopolitical reality of contemporary Quebec and Canada. We invited researchers interested in this project to analyze novels, short stories, works of theatre, poetry, essays, or films; alternately, we suggested that they focus on historical, legal, and political documents; sociological and anthropological studies; or cultural events in Canada and Quebec. The responses to this invitation make up this special dossier in the International Journal of Canadian Studies. In order to understand the Quebec and Canada of today, it is essential to reflect on First Nations and Métis peoples. Whether to satisfy pure anthropological curiosity, a taste for exotic narratives, or imperialist and colonialist motives, discourses and representations of Aboriginal peoples have been the object of European interest ever since the first Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English navigators and explorers set foot in the New World, a world that was really no newer than Europe. Numerous travel narratives exist, like those of Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot), Jacques Cartier, Samuel de Champlain, Henry Kelsey, the Baron de La Hontan, and George Vancouver. Numerous relationships were put in writing by clergy such as the Récollet Franciscan Gabriel Sagard, the Jesuit François-Xavier Charlevoix, and the Ursuline Sister Marie de l’Incarnation. Consequently, we have countless travel and relationship narratives and tales about First Nations. Through their writings, the first explorers, missionaries, and colonialists of New France and New England described and defined those whom they initially encountered. Although these texts were intended mainly for a French and English public located in the ancient metropolises of the colonial empires, Canada’s First Nations and Métis peoples are still, to some degree, subjected to the constructed identity that was gradually established in the writings of Europeans who came to North America. Among the principal reflections is the construction and representation of individual and collective identities of First Nations and the Métis; the relationship that these Aboriginal individuals and communities have with Québécois and Canadian societies; and the cultural, social, political, and historical relations that First Nations and Métis establish with Quebec and Canada. These questions are explored from the Amerindian and Métis viewpoint, and from a Québécois and Canadian perspective. Such exploration involves a description and definition of different co-existing identities; an understanding and explanation of the identification process of individuals, communities and nations; and analysis of the relationships and …