Guardians of the Land : The Struggle of an Atikamekw Family Against Bill 97 and Deforestation
Quebec, Canada (2025)
As part of my ongoing documentary project, initiated in French Guiana and Peru, on the social and environmental impacts of extractivism on Indigenous communities across the Americas (film to be released in 2026), I spent two weeks sharing the daily life of an Atikamekw family resisting deforestation on their ancestral territory. The family fears that Bill 97 will accelerate logging activities in the absence of proper consultation. Introduced by the Quebec government in April 2025, this reform of the province’s forest management system has also been challenged by environmental organizations, legal experts, and segments of civil society. To assert their sovereignty and protect the forest, members of the Echaquan family established a resistance camp five hours north of Montreal. A living space that brings together awareness-raising actions, intergenerational knowledge transmission, solidarity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, and the revitalization of ancestral cultural practices.
Translation into English in progress; for now, the full story is only available in French.
