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On 24 July 1534, Jacques Cartier erected a wooden cross at the entrance to Gasp6 harbour. The original meaning of the cross is ambiguous. It undoubtedly marked the discovery of the territory on behalf of the French Crown, it affirmed the discoverers' Christian faith, and it served as a navigational aid to the harbour entrance. The cross eventually became the symbol of much more, however. It came to be seen as the material expression of all French claims to the lands of the St. Lawrence basin. 1 Over the years, it has become one of many images at the centre of a debate over the rights of indigenous and nonindigenous peoples-of colonizers and colonized-in northeastern North America. For the successors to the colonists, it represents (in its simplest interpretation) their right to sovereignty and to occupation of the land, a right obtained by reason of discovery. For the Aboriginal peoples, it is a symbol of the arrogance …