Terminology

The indigenous peoples

The Innu who live in Quebec refer to themselves simply as Innu (the ‘people’), a name which includes their relatives who live across the border in Labrador. Sometimes they call themselves Montagnais, the name given to them by Jesuit missionaries, indicating those who live in the south of the Ungava Peninsula. Those who lived in the North, and who had not converted to Christianity, were referred to by the missionaries as Naskapi. Frank Speck made no distinction between Innu and Naskapi and, in his seminal work, named them all Naskapi. In its policy of divide and rule, the Canadian federal government named the Mushuau Innu who settled in Lac John Naskapi and, under this name, they became signatories of the North Eastern Quebec Agreement. Where the context permits, I have referred to the indigenous peoples under their chosen name.

Nation is a Canadian concept, used to identify 633 individual groups of indigenous people. Similarly, Band Council is a Canadian term for the governing body of each reserve equivalent to a town council. Reserve is the Canadian name for the villages in which indigenous peoples were sedentarised. Although these terms are used to identify individual groups of people and their settlements, and sometimes for convenience, these are not indigenous terms or constructs. Where possible I have used the term village to describe a people’s settled habitation.

The Innu with whom I worked referred to indigenous peoples by the term Indiens or autochtones, which translates into English as ‘natives’. They rarely used the term ‘First Nations’, another Canadian term which the Innu consider meaningless as long as Canadians deny them their rights to ancestral lands. I have used the terms native, indigenous and aboriginal interchangeably, according to context, but have avoided where possible the term First Nations.

Matimekush Lac John and Schefferville

Matimekush and Lac John are now two separate reserves served by the same Band Council. The Innu who live in these two villages settled together when the new town of Schefferville was created in 1950 to house the Iron Ore Company’s offices and employees. This is the municipality to which, in Canadian terms, Matimekush and Lac John belong. The Innu inhabitants who settled originally spent their summers in Uashat and Maliotenam (Innu name Mani-utenam) on the North Shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence near Sept-Iles. Around 1956, they were joined by Mushuau Innu from Fort Chimo (now Kuujjuaq) who were moved there by the Canadian government. Two separate Innu villages were created when the Indian Agent tried to move those Innu and Naskapi living in Lac John onto a new reserve outside Schefferville. Some Innu campaigned successfully to remain in Lac John, where they had provided housing for themselves. On the closure of the Iron Ore Company mine in 1982, the Naskapi received land on which to build a new village, Kawawachikamach and, after a successful negotiation, the Innu moved into vacated housing in Schefferville, although some chose to stay on the old reserve and in Lac John. Since the move into the town, Schefferville has been used by the Innu who live there interchangeably with Matimekush. The Innu from Matimekush Lac John are part of the negotiating table with Uashat and Maliotenam, together first as members of the Conseil Attikamekw-Montagnais, then as the Ashuanipi Corporation (named after a lake shared by all Innu and other indigenous peoples but now ceded to the Crown under the New Dawn Agreement) and now as the Strategic Alliance.

Note: Where I have quoted from French-language texts, for ease of reading I have translated the quotation into English.