My community gets nothing because they didn’t sign. Why do we have to sign away our rights to be part of the wealth of the country?

The Innu Nation has nine communities – before it was only one. Now it is divided into three groups – west, east and middle. The groups are not all at the same stage. The government plays with them – it doesn’t act in good faith.

I always thought that they were insulting our people in some way because it’s not their land, or they have joint rights on that land. If they don’t have exclusive rights to that land, at least they should have considered our views and be respectful or asked the government if we wanted to surrender our lands – because at least we should have had choices as a society about that. But they don’t insert any provisions in those treaties that affect the rights of the Innu. But they were careless, I believe, but they would say, I heard somewhere, that the Crees or the Inuit were acting under duress, that we were forced to sign this. Well, we were under the same situation and we didn’t surrender our rights.

We are miserable when we see our land given away to others and the privileges they receive when they sign agreements.

It is a big insult what the governments have done to our people. They have insulted our people by letting this happen. By letting other people have our rights, by signing away our rights, the Canadian government has acted. The government gives service with one hand but takes something back with the other – gives programmes and services but takes away our rights.

The government fails to tell the real story about the Indian people.