Quebec’s most prominent newsmagazine has singled out Bill Namagoose for a bitter editorial.
Namagoose, the executive director of the Grand Council of the Crees, is called a “useful idiot,” “naive” and “the mercenary of an anti-Quebec guerilla” in the unsigned editorial, which appears in the October 15 issue of L’Actualité.
Namagoose, who is mistakenly identified as “the Cree chief,” is denounced because Crees expressed concerns about Quebec’s decision to give new names to 101 islands in the Caniapiscau reservoir.
“What’s the problem? A hundred names among the thousands (there are over 11,000 Native toponymes in Quebec)… big deal, as they say in modern Cree and Inuktitut.
“Are you saying there is no place in the middle north of the province for the languages of 99 per cent of its population?” the editorial asks.
“The North, where you live, belongs to us, like Montreal and Cap-de-la-Madeleine, where we live, belongs to you.”
The editorial continues, “These islands, why didn’t you name them before? They didn’t exist, you respond.
Of course they didn’t exist: the Quebecois created them, and the lake that contains them. Who owns names, who names owns.
“Because this territory, these islands, they bought them. They, almost everyone in the world, except you. You were on the other side of the counter, you took the money. Your representatives cried victory when the courts increased the amount. And they signed the deal. Then cashed it.”
