Richard Desjardins and Robert Monderie spotlight an often ignored people whom they lived beside but knew little about. Their turbulent history, brought to the screen for the first time, dates back over 5,000 years. But the next century may well be their last. For too long, they have lived in abject conditions, sometimes worse than in Third World countries. Yet the two filmmakers didn't have to travel thousands of kilometres to find these people. The Algonquin nation lives right here in Quebec.

Barely two centuries ago, the Algonquin occupied land that stretched from Laval to Val d'Or and over to Lake Huron. Like their ancestral way of life, this land has all but disappeared. The nation of 9,000 is now divided in Quebec into about 10 communities, their final refuge. The Algonquin have been forced into a sedentary lifestyle, often reduced to poverty and cut off from their traditions. The nation is slowly coming apart. The infant mortality rate is high. Younger children have lost their mother tongue and can no longer communicate in Algonquin with their grandparents.

Richard Desjardins and Robert Monderie bring to light the greatness and the misery of this "invisible nation." Invisible at least to whites, who often still harbour prejudice against the Algonquin and all Aboriginals. Ignoring all the clichés, the filmmakers visit the last parcels of Algonquin land to give these people a voice and to reveal the unspoken and hidden despair.

This isn't the first time the duo has teamed up for a film project. In 1977, they launched A Raging Disaster, and in 1999, their documentary Forest Alert shook the Quebec logging industry to its core. Eight years later, they're back with an alarming portrait of a people who lived for centuries in harmony with the forest, which served as their sanctuary, hunting ground and inspiration. Of course, their lives were not perfect: death haunted the camps, winters were harsh, and battles with other Aboriginals over land proved bloody. Their territory was vast and unpredictable.

The delicate balance was upset once the Europeans landed in the 16th century. When Jacques Cartier erected his wooden cross in Gaspé in 1534, it marked the beginning of a long period during which territory occupied by Native peoples was dispossessed and carved up. Yet for Aboriginals, land cannot belong to people; people belong to the land.

Europeans and Aboriginals first worked hand in hand developing the lucrative fur trade and confronting the ruthless winters. Yet given the Europeans' appetite for lumber, the Aboriginals became a mere hindrance. It was only their territory the Europeans wanted, who as they settled along the St. Lawrence River forced the Native peoples, particularly the Algonquin, further and further away from the water and onto the outskirts of white communities.

To try to legitimize this gradual invasion, the Europeans signed treaties, offered gifts and concluded deals. A royal proclamation drawn up in 1763, three years after the British captured New France, set out the borders of an Indian territory. Despite this recognition, Aboriginal land began shrinking. Increasingly marginalized and sedentary, Aboriginals found their lives and traditions disrupted and their very survival in jeopardy.

In their film, Richard Desjardins and Robert Monderie capture this brutal break with the natural world and its dramatic impact. The many problems facing the Algonquin (some communities have no school, drinking water, or even electricity despite being a stone's throw from hydroelectric dams) often stem from a series of historical misunderstandings marking their relationship with whites. Over the years, Oblate missionaries came to speak to the Algonquin about a god the Aboriginals knew nothing about. Rivers were turned into logging highways so their canoes could no longer use them. Country music replaced their traditional song, which vanished with the last shamans. With all these changes, the voice of a people has grown weaker and weaker.

Large portions of Algonquin territory were never officially ceded to the Quebec government. As a result, towns like Maniwaki and Notre-Dame-du-Nord sprang up on land belonging to the Natives. Meanwhile, corporations plundered natural resources without giving the communities a dime. Not only did the government take their land, but it also adopted a policy to assimilate Aboriginals, "whiten" them, strip away their language and identity, and teach them concepts, such as the Catholic notion of hell, that clashed with their vision of the universe and the afterlife.

Hell was indeed what many Natives endured as children when they were taken from their families and raised in residential schools run by religious groups. Men talk about the physical and sexual abuse they suffered, while women, victims of the circle of violence this abuse has triggered, expose abusive spouses, sometimes more than 10 of them on the same reserve. The courage of these women should be applauded because they are breaking the silence in environments controlled by band councils. These councils represent a third level of power (after the federal and provincial governments) and can revoke a person's right to occupy a home.

Violence is often turned inward in communities where eight people share the same ramshackle home, where the rare schools are sometimes like zoos and where nearly half the boys (for example, on the Lac Simon reserve) have attempted suicide. No surprise really that at Rapid Lake, buying cocaine is sometimes easier than buying flour.

In this eye-opening documentary, the two filmmakers want to end the denial of this painful reality. Before shooting the film, Richard Desjardins admitted he knew little about the life of the Algonquin. With Le peuple invisible, we can no longer feign ignorance.