The people who came before us, the former chiefs and councils, worked very hard. They were accompanied by lawyers. The answer was always the same: We were told that we belonged to the Listuguj community, which is the neighbouring community. We are part of Gespe’gewa’gi, in the Gaspésie. There are three Mi’kmaq communities, and we were told that we were part of Listuguj, but Listuguj is four hours away from us. So, for us, it didn’t make any sense. So, year after year, term after term, each chief worked to create a reserve.
Then, about a year and a half ago, we heard that there was a new process and that we could fill out and submit a form and get guidelines to help us through the process. So we decided to try this process and figured we had everything to gain. We went ahead with it. It was extremely rigorous work. We assigned people to work on this file full time. Finally, after a year and a half, we got a positive response.