Fluidity of Ethnic Borders in New France: Descendants of Nicolas Pelletier and Jeanne Voisy
The genealogy of a root family, Pelletier-Voisy, who landed in Quebec in 1636, illustrates for their eight children and their close descendants, the dynamic of interaction between settlers and Aboriginals, marked by the porosity and fluidity of ethnic and social boundaries. Identity has nothing to do with blood, pertaining rather to individual trajectories and modalities of integration into kinship networks. The figure of the voyageur emerges, as does his close proximity to the Aboriginals. Nomads maintain the mobility of their way of life by becoming travelers while settlers-voyageur embrace mobility by traveling with and among Indigenous people. The colonial context shows this fusion of peoples and their subordination to the Crown and to the Catholic Church. The Innu oral tradition sees it as the process of conquest.