Quebec City Summary

This article is a response to a call from the Quebec government to include more Native history in their school curriculums. In it, Vincent grapples with the practice of decolonization through her discussion of Innu and French “versions” of the history of Quebec City and subsequent disagreements over land claims. The Innu and French narratives have instances where they can be related to one another and instances where they appear incompatible, revealing fundamental differences in the way their narrators perceive and experience the world. Following this, Vincent reinforces the idea that ‘to the victor go the spoils,’ including the power to decide which history is History, and suggests that a better path to decolonizing involves an intentional lack of reconciliation in the narrative.

In fact, Vincent’s main point seems almost directed at archaeology: if one seeks to do justice to the past, particularly Native American pasts, one must consider and tell alternative narratives and perspectives. As previously mentioned, the dominant cultural group is usually the one deciding which version of history to disseminate and perpetuate, a subtle form of exerting colonial power. Archaeology is a field rooted in Western methodology and ontologies, and it has often played (sometimes unwittingly) a part in colonization. In a field that sometimes claims to be postcolonial, shedding ties to a singular version of history and opening ourselves up to multiple interpretations of the past is certainly a relevant