Montour also reflected on the words of Lafrenière especially.
“We have to think of some of the bills that the CAQ (Coalition Avenir Québec) passed and say, okay, if that is really the case, you need to consider in meaningful ways, to us, what you’ve done,” said Montour.
Walking the path of the Great Peace
Inside the Montreal Museum of Archaeology and History, visitors can now see the signed documents of the Great Peace of Montreal, on loan from the Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer in France.
When the document, which consists of four double-sided sheets, was on display in Montreal for the 300th anniversary in 2001, it had to be displayed horizontally, meaning half the document and many Indigenous signatories were not visible.
This time, the museum found a way to present it vertically in a way that will not endanger the preservation of the documents: it is in an alcove, far away from windows and shaded from overhead lighting and inside a glass case that has its own microclimate. Being able to present it this way means that the entire document can be seen publicly for the first time in many, many years.
As such, visitors can see all the marks that acted as signatures for the Indigenous representatives; what is considered to be Kahnawake’s mark is a deer, signed by Haronhiateka, the leader of what is marked on the document as the Sault – the Seigneury of Sault St. Louis.
Samuel Moreau, the project manager for the museum’s Road to the Great Peace interpretive tour, said that how the document would be presented was at the forefront of the museum’s mind as soon as they asked the French archives to loan the document in 2019.
“The priority is always the document’s preservation,” said Moreau.
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“But presenting it horizontally, we would have had to make a choice on which pages to show. When we get to the signatures pages, there are three of them, including one that is double-sided. That means we would have had to choose which people we would not have shown, and that’s a heartbreaking decision.”
The story of the Great Peace of Montreal has been a part of the museum’s offering for many years, but with the 325th anniversary, one more addition joins the treaty documents: a video featuring Indigenous and non-Indigenous historians and cultural figures speaking on how the story of the Great Peace affects them today.
These include Innu Land Insights co-founder André Dudemaine, Kahnawa’kehró:non researcher Gerald Taiaiake Alfred, and Abenaki filmmaker Kim O’Bomsawin.
“We were already tackling it from a historical point of view in our exhibits, but not from a contemporary point of view,” said Moreau.
“We wanted to add that part to say what it represents today, but also how we can be inspired by it to create a peaceful world now.”
The interpretative tour, which includes the Great Peace of Montreal’s documents, will run until September 20.