Reading the River

Currents of Home in Narratives of the Romaine River Hydro Project

Abstract

This article examines how Hydro-Québec’s Romaine River megaproject, completed in 2023 on unceded Innu territory, brought to the surface dissonant narratives of belonging held by Québécois and Innu actors on the Quebec cultural scene. Throughout the twenty-year-long public debate over the project, a number of cultural texts emerged that reveal how hydro development, as a manifestation of Quebec’s distinctive colonialism, highlights conflicting collective identities that cohere through different attachments to land. I explore this event of extractivism through its representation in different narrative forms: J’aime Hydro, a documentary play by Christine Beaulieu; briefs from the commission of public hearings on the environment in Ekuanitshit; Les murailles, an autofictional novel Erika Soucy, and Atik^u utei. Le cœur du caribou, a collection of poetry by Rita Mestokosho. In gathering different kinds of cultural texts from both Innu and Québécois voices, I propose a method of “reading the river” itself through the narratives that claim it.