This was in the late 1960s, and is remembered by older Innu hunters as a sad time because their lands and ecosystems were altered out of all recognition and European place names were written over theirs. Mista-shipu became the 'Churchill River.' At the same time, Wmston Churchill - one of the earliest backers of the project - was honored by re-naming Patshetshunau 'Churchill Falls', which also became the name of the town created for the power plant workers. Smallwood honored himself by naming the massive flooded area - the third largest artificial lake in the world - Smallwood Reservoir. The resulting hydro-electric power project reduced the grandest and most spectacular waterfall in North America, Patshetshunau, to a trickle. Soon after joining Canada, the Newfoundland authorities cut a deal with British financiers and Hydro-Quebec for the damming of Mista-shipu, the wide river in the heart of Innu hunting territory. Smallwood famously called Labrador 'the one lucky break that nature gave to Newfoundlanders.' With no consultation with the Innu, and with no mention of them or the indigenous Inuit in the terms of confederation, the newly formed Newfoundland government under Premier 'Joey' Smallwood moved quickly to clear the land of 'Indians' to make way for natural resource extraction. The crucial turning point was the handing over of the former British home rule colony of Newfoundland (of which Labrador is a part) to the Canadian confederation in 1949.

In this short presentation, I would like to explain how this works in regard to the Innu in particular, but by extension to many other aboriginal peoples in Canada.Īlthough the distant precursors of this program were generations of missionaries and fur traders, it has been only relatively recently that the policy of destroying the Innu way of life has met with any successes. Yet this human knowledge and the way of life upon which it is based has been systematically dismantled by an aggressive program of cultural, legal and political extinguishments operated by the state of Canada. Whereas the Innu religion binds people and the natural environment together, Christianity, as one Tshenut (elder) told me, 'does not make any sense here.' European languages are poverty stricken in trying to describe the natural features of the land Western science is limited in its abilities to understand the relationships between humans and animals. Human understanding of this complex Northern landscape is given its deepest meaning in Innu history, stories, legends, religion, and language, as well as in their lives as nomadic hunters The basis for human knowledge of the delicate balance between humans, animals waters, trees and the natural environment is most developed within the Innu. They and their ancestors have occupied the Labrador-Quebec peninsula for as long as 7,500 years. The Innu are the northernmost Algonquian-speaking peoples of North America.

Samson draft control