ABEL BOSUM, GRAND CHIEF of the Grand Council of the Crees, plants his dress shoes where his parents’ house once sat on a thinly wooded spit that curls into Doré Lake like a dog’s tongue into a bowl of water. A late September breeze rushes through the birch trees. Bosum’s mind turns to the past. This was the site of the final village from which his people, the Oujé-Bougoumou Cree Nation, were uprooted by a mining company — this one a gold pit owned by a fellow named Campbell — in the unrelenting pursuit of monetizable minerals from the Canadian Shield.
The Bible says the Israelites wandered the wilderness for 40 years before Moses led them to the Promised Land. The Oujé-Bougoumou Cree roamed the boreal near what is now the town of Chibougamau, Que., like squatters, seeking shelter in road-side shacks, miners’ tents and trapline cabins for some 70 years before Bosum led them to secure a permanent reserve on the shores of Lake Opémisca, about an hour’s drive from here, in 1992. For some, the exodus might not be over.
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