The End of the Road Part IV-A: Adventure with the Cree of Chisasibi

March 08, 2010The End of the Road Part IV-A: Adventure with the Cree of Chisasibi

I must admit, I didn’t know what to expect when I stepped out of the canoe in Chisasibi. I was pleasantly surprised to find a nice and clean town that looked relatively affluent. With over 2000 Cree, Chisasibi is much larger than Radisson, and Hydro Québec workers from Radisson drive the 120km dirt road here to buy supplies at the town hardware store. This village was like nothing like the native reservation I’ve seen near Montreal, here, there were only nice houses (not prefabricated, like in Radisson) and clean streets.

But it soon became clear that this is no ordinary village. Life here, as I discovered is completely different from even the urbanized towns closer to Montreal.

My first surprise was to learn that 98% of the people here speak Cree as a first language. Some only speak a little bit of English (the main second language). Everything here is spelled out in Cree, from street signs to store names, and this is clearly not for the rare tourists who occasionally make it this far North.

In front of most every house was a newish truck, an ATV and a snowmobile, and behind was a large tepee, roughly two floors high. The tepees surprised me most and I assumed that they were symbolical, built for their cultural value. Not so! They are very much functional. The locals explained to me that the tepees serve as “outdoor kitchens” where caribou meat and fish are prepared. Another thing I discovered was that every family in the town had a second house or a cabin, rather, somewhere out in the surrounding wilderness, where they hunt, fish and trap. These activities, though performed with modern equipment, seem to be a major part of everyone’s lives, and I never had a single discussion in Chisasibi that didn’t somehow tie in to hunting or fishing.

On the shore of river and bay, a fleet of large motorized canoes lay prepared. There appeared to be one for ever person in the village.
Reunited with my car, I drove back to LG1 and crossed it, continuing 50km on an unpaved road to a peninsula called Longue Pointe, technically the Northern end of the road (guess that was the whole point of the trip). There I made a point to swim in James Bay, since it is technically a part of the Arctic Ocean, just to say I did. Needless to say, the water was freezing. I mean, the air itself was only 8 degrees.