Musée ilnu de Mashteuiatsh

Mashteuiatsh, a name meaning "where there is a point" in Ilnu-aimun, is the only Aboriginal village in the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region and is home to the Pekuakamiulnuatsh community, whose occupation of the territory surrounding Lake Saint-Jean—called Pekuakami in the Ilnu language—dates back thousands of years, long before the arrival of the first European settlers in the region in the 19th century. The Ilnu Museum, founded to preserve and transmit this cultural heritage, presents collections of traditional objects linked to hunting, fishing, and craftsmanship activities that shaped the ancestral nomadic lifestyle of this Algonquian nation, now adapted to contemporary realities while maintaining living cultural practices such as birch bark canoe-making, leatherwork, and beaded embroidery techniques. The establishment also offers a program of cultural events, including the summer gathering "Nil, tshil, tshilanu" which invites visitors to discover in an immersive way the history and traditions of the community. A visit to the museum naturally leads to a broader discovery of Mashteuiatsh, where several shops and services inspired by Aboriginal culture allow visitors to deepen their understanding of the First Nations who shaped, long before colonization, the territory now known as Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean.