Chapter 4

Legacies of the past: barriers to effective negotiation

While the treatment of the Matimekush Lac John Innu on reserve has been a catalogue of broken promises and bad faith on the part of governments, there are three further factors in the history of Innu/non-Innu relations which have created an overwhelming barrier of mistrust for the Innu: the introduction of game wardens to deny them their long-held rights to hunt on their own land, the fur trade, and Indian Residential Schools. These factors are disastrous enough individually, but their effects also cumulate with a history of cultural genocide which included the introduction of disease, the extinction of the animals upon which indigenous peoples relied for their subsistence, and profound racism. Yet despite this constant adversity nothing in this dark history has succeeded in severing the deep connection of the Innu to their land.

Harassment by game wardens

One elder gave me a more personal description of what the activities of game wardens meant for his family:

I recall myself, when I was young there were 14 of us, and I remember my mother – she would cook a meal, prepare a meal and then when we were starting to smell the cooking we would all gather around anxious to eat because we knew that it would be good, we would be healthy and it would be something nice – that’s what I recall when I was young. But an incident happened here 20 years ago whereby there was an Innu family and I am very upset when I talk about it. The game wardens or the representative of the Crown, the representative of the government of Newfoundland and Labrador, the authorities, came to a family and they looked at what the family were eating, they looked at the pot, the meal and they took away the meal while the kids were eating and, while the kids were crying, afraid, a helicopter landing next to their tent and they took the meal, they took the cooking pot and then they took away the food of the family just as if we were in a war or something – and I’m telling you, I’m very upset about that incident when I think about it, when I talk about it, I’m very, very upset.

If this had happened to me, to my family, seeing authorities, game wardens, come to me, to my tent, come to my family and take away the food that I hunted for my children, I would have been very upset, up to the point where I would probably have taken my firearm and fired on the helicopter. That’s how disrespectful the government is towards the Innu and the lack of respect that they show and lack of compassion – towards the Innu family. I am very upset, and very saddened when I think about that too.

They took the father’s firearm – they took the gun away and by doing so, in Innu culture, they were trying to kill that family and I am not saying there is genocide here – there are rules, laws against it, but in a way they try to come up with something with a similar result, acting in a way that will compromise our life as a people, they will compromise our culture – so that’s how evil the government of Newfoundland and Labrador is.

It is as if they are trying to kill the people by doing all these actions and then we would live ten months out of 12 in the year in Labrador – they would live in Labrador, they would get a decent livelihood by hunting, surviving off the land and they find all these tricks and actions to undermine the Innu – for example the eviction orders that they sent to families, threatening to burn down the cabins of the Quebec Innu who had cabins in Labrador – they threatened to burn down our cabins, our camps, which is very unfortunate, I’m very upset by it. It is as if they are trying by all means to kill the Innu.1

Historically, the Newfoundland Labrador government has a record of resistance to Matimekush Innu’s access to their land. The claim of Innu resident in Quebec to the lands they own in Labrador is set out in a document prepared for a court case by Pierre Grégoire.2 Annexed to the brief report were a series of documents including a map of the traplines allocated to the Sept-Iles and Schefferville Innu in 1949, as augmented in 1951 and 1952, together with a list of the families to whom they were allocated. Grégoire claims that the map shows that no account was taken of the Quebec–Labrador border when the traplines were allocated. Grégoire deduces that hunting activity only became of interest to the Newfoundland government after the opening of the iron mines at Labrador City and Wabush, when the activity of game wardens was significantly increased in the area frequented by the Sept-Iles Band (at that time the Innu of Uashat, Maliotenam and Matimekush Lac John). At this time, members of the Sept-Iles Band were stopped and the maps which they carried with them showing the locations of beaver lodges were confiscated. In 1960–61 there were negotiations on the difficulties the Innu living in Sept-Iles were encountering in hunting and trapping in Labrador and an agreement was reached on the subject of caribou. Hunting permits were sent from Ottawa to allow the Innu to hunt on their traditional lands. Thereafter, the Sept-Iles Band members were treated by the Newfoundland government as residents of Labrador for these purposes. The only difference was that hunting and trapping was by permit and the skins were identified as coming from Labrador. A letter from the Ministry of Indian Affairs to Matthieu André of Schefferville dated 23 March 19613 tells the Innu that, while they are permitted to transport provisions and furs by the train which passes Lake Ashuanipi in Labrador, one of the principal hunting areas of the Matimekush Innu, they are prohibited from carrying caribou meat on the train. This was clearly another ploy to detach the Innu from their subsistence way of life. The train would have provided a very cheap means of transport to assist hunting in a community where time out on the land had become restricted by work in the mines. The alternative was air transport, which was prohibitively expensive. In 1961, the correspondence shows that the permits required to trap in Labrador arrived in Schefferville only after the trappers had left for the winter, and in 1962 that officers of the mining companies were acting to stop trapping by Matimekush Innu in Labrador.

Correspondence from 1969 shows that at that time the Sept-Iles Band were still considered residents of Labrador so far as trapping was concerned, but at the same time the right to hunt caribou was abolished by the Newfoundland government. On 22 July 1969, the Ministry of Indian Affairs wrote to the Director of Wildlife for the Department of Mines in St. John’s, reminding him that aboriginal rights to hunt in the area were subject to the Royal Proclamation, and pointing out that in other regions in Canada game wardens treated native hunters with leniency. The Innu living in Matimekush continued to purchase permits to trap and to hunt small game up until around 1976–77. The following year they requested the permits but were refused.

In 1979, Chief Alexandre McKenzie of Matimekush sent a telegram to the Minister of Indian Affairs requesting him to intervene to protect the Innu from Matimekush from acts of discrimination by the Newfoundland government authorities,4 saying that the Newfoundland government did not respect the rights of the Innu to hunt on their territories in Labrador.5 The Minister replied that these interests had to be taken into consideration alongside those of other indigenous groups. Alexandre McKenzie also sought help from the Regional Director of Indian Affairs for Quebec and eventually a tripartite meeting was arranged to address the issues. In 1980 another telegram was sent by the President of the Conseil Attikamekw-Montagnais (CAM) to the Regional Director of Indian Affairs in Quebec asking him to intervene to stop the court cases brought by the Newfoundland government against the Innu from Schefferville who were hunting in Labrador. Another meeting was called to organise a regime under which all native people could trap on their lands in Labrador. Again, the Newfoundland government was resistant, claiming that the numbers of caribou in Labrador had fallen to a low level.

Representatives of CAM wrote to the Newfoundland and Labrador government in the comprehensive land claims negotiations, telling the government that their comprehensive claim had been validated in 1979 and that this included territory in Labrador, some of which overlapped with claims from the Naskapi-Montagnais Innu Association based in Utshimassits and Sheshatshiu. It was proposed to set up a working group to resolve the overlapping interests. Despite support from the Ministry of Indian Affairs in Quebec, its proposals were rejected by the Newfoundland government in August 1980 in a letter which defined the Sept-Iles Band (which included Innu from Matimekush Lac John) as non-residents of Labrador. At a meeting between representatives of CAM and the Deputy Minister for Tourism for Newfoundland, it was announced that the Newfoundland government was prepared to look at the requests for the reinstatement of the pre-1969 situation, under which hunters who lived in Quebec were considered to be residents of Labrador for both hunting and trapping purposes. In November 1980, in a demonstration of solidarity, Greg Penashue, then President of the Naskapi- Montagnais Innu Association in Labrador, wrote to the Prime Minister of Newfoundland protesting at the ‘continued harassment and callous actions’ against Innu families from Quebec ‘performed in your attempts to enforce a border on our people which is not recognised by nor of relevance to the Innut’.6 In the same month, CAM asked Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to intervene on their behalf and the Minister of Indian Affairs in Ottawa wrote to the Newfoundland government asking that they should revise their trapping regulations and permit the Sept-Iles Band to trap as if they were resident. In reply, the Newfoundland Director of Hunting wrote to CAM saying that the Sept-Iles Band would have resident status but must obtain non-resident permits. However, on 9 October 1981, the Minister of Indian Affairs for Quebec had to write again to the Newfoundland minister to complain that trappers from the North Shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence were being prevented from hunting in Labrador. Meetings were held and nothing was achieved, but the Newfoundland minister had hopes that a further meeting would be successful. This seemed to be the pattern set by the Newfoundland government: one of prevarication and inaction which kept the Innu from their lands.

When in 1986 the federal Minister of Indian Affairs called for a negotiation table to settle the matter, again the Newfoundland government prevaricated, saying it preferred first to negotiate with the Innu who lived in Labrador and then to consider the position of those who lived in Quebec. Between 1987 and 1989 hunters living in Quebec were routinely being arrested and harassed, fined C$1,000 for each offence, and their hunting equipment and snowmobiles confiscated.

In 1989, Clyde Wells, Prime Minister of Newfoundland Labrador, having met with representatives of CAM, was invited to join the comprehensive land claims negotiations so that the conflicts between Labrador and Quebec could finally be resolved within the context of the wider negotiation.7 The President of CAM pointed out that a framework agreement for negotiation had been in place since September 1988, to which the Newfoundland Labrador government had given no response; and there is no response on file to this repeated request.

In March 1990, there was a further demonstration, initiated by the Innu of Saint-Augustin on the North Shore and supported by CAM, for which there is a plan of action on file.8 The stated purposes of the demonstration were listed as:

• to alert the public to the discrimination suffered by the Montagnais when visiting their territories in Labrador;

• to encourage the opening of discussions between the two governments and the Montagnais who live in Quebec with a view to reaching an interim agreement relating to the practice of traditional activities on the territory concerned; and

• to motivate the Newfoundland and Quebec governments to negotiate an agreement relating to the 1927 frontier between Quebec and Labrador.

They proposed three hunting parties of occupation in the territory to last for seven to ten days, with the Sept-Iles Band – including those from Schefferville – tasked to work with the Innu from Sheshatshiu, Labrador to demonstrate together at a location of their choice. CAM envisaged that the Newfoundland government might refuse to budge; that it might make its presence felt with helicopters, planes and visits to camps in order to show that it was on the alert, but without engaging in a confrontation; that it might arrest everybody engaging in an ‘illegal act’; or, depending on the public reaction, that it might agree to talks.

In a letter dated 21 October 1991, when CAM was considering a court case to settle its differences with the Newfoundland government, Peter Penashue, then President of the Innu Nation in Labrador, advised by lawyer John Olthuis, suggested that CAM join forces to discuss an approach to the Newfoundland government in the light of the recent decision in the R v Sparrow9 case. This approach stemmed from a fear that any court case might prejudice the future of a working group set up in Labrador to address similar issues with regard to the Labrador Innu Nation.

In 1991, the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Ovide Mercredi, following the decision in the Sioui10 case, called on the government of Quebec to recognise aboriginal land rights, and on the government of Newfoundland to settle the rights to hunt and trap of Innu who live in Quebec.11 He declared that the government of Canada was in breach of its fiduciary obligations in allowing the ‘constitutional rights of the Montagnais to be trampled upon’, concluding: ‘These people, who had lived with the caribou since time immemorial, know what is best required to maintain the survival of the caribou, the ecology of the region and their way of life, while governments attempt to impose offensive criteria upon them. Real negotiations, based upon principles of justice and equity, must take place if this matter is to be resolved.’

Nevertheless, on 2 December 1991, the Newfoundland Intergovernmental Affairs Secretariat wrote to Chief Alexandre McKenzie of Matimekush rejecting his proposal of a buffer zone around Schefferville in which the Innu could hunt and trap without interference. He said that hunting and trapping rights for the Innu of Schefferville should be treated as a separate issue, and at the same time rejected any notion of Newfoundland involvement in the comprehensive land claims negotiation.12

Immediately following yet another meeting with Premier Clyde Wells of Labrador in which he sought information but promised no action,13 on 24 February 1992 Peter Penashue of the Innu Nation wrote once more suggesting the setting up of a joint committee representing the Innu Nation, CAM and the Schefferville Montagnais to arrange for joint management of the George River Caribou Herd, which was under threat from ‘more and more industrial projects imported from the south’.14 These included hydro-electric dams, roads, military flight training and new mining operations.

There was further trouble between the Innu of Uashat, Maliotenam and Matimekush Lac John (the ‘Strategic Alliance’) and the Newfoundland Labrador government in the run-up to the ratification of the New Dawn Agreement in Principle, under which the Innu resident in Labrador agreed to sign away the rights of all Innu from either side of the Quebec–Labrador border to vast tracts of Innu land. There was a group of Innu hunters called Tshikapisk who opposed the Lower Churchill Falls project and the hunting ban which the Newfoundland Labrador government was proposing in order to protect declining caribou numbers. At the same time, the Innu of the Strategic Alliance wished to assert their right to hunt on their lands in Labrador. In order to do this, the Strategic Alliance organised a hunt of 100 Innu hunters who between them killed 250 caribou. This provoked outrage in the Newfoundland and Labrador press, but the Strategic Alliance pointed out that these numbers were justifiable as representing the average size of catch for this number of hunters. Mario Blaser15 suggests that the issues of the Agreement in Principle and the ban on indigenous hunting are intertwined. The protest hunt came only after the Newfoundland Labrador government threatened to burn down Innu cabins in Labrador. The main thrust of Blaser’s article is the failure of the Newfoundland Labrador authorities to appreciate the spiritual aspects of Innu hunting and also the spiritual taboos which, for the Innu, surround the dam construction at Muskrat Falls.

The fur trade

From early contact onwards, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) and its predecessors required that time and effort be diverted from the major task of subsistence hunting towards the trapping of fur-bearing animals such as marten and, most important, beaver. This new hunting activity provided an alternative source of livelihood in the years when the caribou did not come, but this advantage was outweighed by the negative impact of the cash economy. Eleanor Leacock describes the change in the way of life of the Innu which the fur trade demanded:

The Seven Islands Indians … have completely adopted the white trapper’s system in all its essentials. The white trapper has several hundred traps which are left where they are set from year to year. He has usufruct rights to his line as long as he continues to use it … He has several ‘tilts’ along his line, each a day’s journey from the next, and he travels continually back and forth. He leaves his family at the coast and, in the interest of efficiency, generally works alone, although maintaining regular contact with the trappers whose lines border his.16

This represented a very significant break with the nomadic life related to the caribou hunt which required the Innu to travel north with their families and in small groups. It also entailed a dietary change in that the Innu became more dependent on store-bought food like flour and lard, and less reliant on country food. One hunter in the Mistassini region told Eleanor Leacock that traded supplies were ‘essential’: ‘Wherever possible, meat and fish are served together with banock [sic], the Indian bread, but quite frequently, the bannock is the only food available.’17

Gerald Sider points out that the most valuable pelts were found in the autumn and early winter, at the time when the caribou hunt takes place. But the fur-bearing animals could only be found in locations which were a long way from the migration paths of the caribou, which meant that indigenous people became bound into an unjust system and so a climate of distrust began in dealings with white people.

An Innu elder commented:

The reality that affected our land use and our way of life was the coming of the trading posts. We noticed a change in the traditional lifestyle in the sense that we depended more and more on the products that were offered by the trading posts in exchange for furs – flour, sugar, things like that, and our ancestors felt obliged to get as much as possible in furs, to bring them back to the trading posts and to get something back – new products that we were not used to having before. This greatly affected our traditional lifestyle in the sense that we were trapped in a way in some form of dependency towards the trading posts.

I don’t think they gave a fair price for all the amount of fur that was given or traded at those posts, according to what I have heard through the oral tradition. I heard that the fur was piled very high for a small amount of goods given back to the Innu, just the essential basics, tea, flour, just the basics. When they were leaving the trading posts they left owing something back to the trading posts. They were already getting things on credit and they had to spend the whole year trapping to pay it back and then they ended up again owing money. I don’t think that the Innu made a profit out of this process of economic exchange. I think the profit was on the side of the fur trade company, the HBC. Those are the ones who got all the wealth and got a lot of money. The money didn’t stay here in this community.18

Others spoke of instances when, in lean years, having failed to produce enough furs, members of their family had been turned away empty-handed by the HBC manager and left to starve.

Colin Samson defines this relationship:

Although the fur trade enabled the continuation of hunting via trapping fur-bearing mammals, the purpose of hunting was changed by making it commercial. In order to acquire furs, traps and guns were needed and the only way of obtaining these tools was by entering into a quasi-market exchange or debt peonage relationship with traders. Hunters quickly saw that this equipment, and later snowmobiles, outboard motors and even planes were useful to them. The desire to use such technologies combined with the advent of individual traplines that accompanied fur trading in many places, facilitated the decollectivisation of trapping and encouraged more individual or small group-based hunting activities that potentially made hunters as reliant on the trader as upon each other.19

Yet the trader could never be relied upon. Gerald Sider claims that starvation of the hunters was a deliberate policy of the HBC to force the Innu to do more trapping. At the same time, traplines were exhausted by over-exploitation. Further, the HBC posts introduced diseases into defenceless populations, but no medical assistance was available at the posts. HBC factors also provided alcohol to the indigenous hunters, a further means of binding them to the trading post.20 To use Sider’s term, the trappers were disposable. Georg Henriksen records the deaths of 200 Innu over the course of two seasons.21

A.P. Low, who was stationed at the Fort Chimo HBC post in the 1890s, observed the Innu women, when reunited with other families at the post in the spring: ‘Instead of joyous greetings, the women clasp one another and indulge in a period of silent weeping …’22

Indian Residential Schools

The Innu are aware that it was only when iron ore was found on their territory, and their lands became of importance to the non-Innu, that the authorities took an interest in their schooling. It was not until iron ore was discovered around Sept-Iles on the St Lawrence North Shore, and inland at what became Schefferville, that parents were pressured to leave their children behind so that they could attend the Maliotenam Residential School. Some children were sent further afield to Jonquière. This meant that residential schools came comparatively late in the history of the Innu.

Those people I interviewed between the ages of 40 and 70 had either experienced residential school themselves or had siblings or parents who had undergone the indignities and privations which such schooling entailed. Since the Innu still lived the nomadic life in whole or in part as late as the 1970s, not all children in a family were necessarily sent away, or left behind when it was time to return to the interior after the summer break on the coast. In some families, only the children who had not proved themselves to be excellent hunters were sent to school.

Thus, the experience of the Innu is different from that of indigenous peoples elsewhere in Canada, where residential schooling often started as early as the 1870s and where most children in any community were taken away. There are many accounts of the experiences of children who suffered in this way23 and, in 2005, an Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement was reached, under which C$1.9 billion in compensation was set aside for Indian Residential School survivors, and a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up in order to educate settler Canadians about this dark episode in their shared history.

Innu now see the schooling not only as an attempt at assimilation but also as an attempt to break their connection to the land. Père Babel and Père Arnaud had built a relationship of trust between the church and the Innu which led the Innu to accept the church’s offer of education. In addition, it was difficult to feed a large family in Nutshimit so the promise of board and lodging as well as education in residential schools had its attractions. It is also suggested that, with money constantly owing to the HBC, the hunters could get more fur if their children were cared for elsewhere. Parents also feared that they would be sent to jail if they did not allow their children to be taken away to school.

A hunter told me of his family:

I was very fortunate not to go to residential school. But when I think about my older brothers and sisters, it basically killed our identity, our connection to the land. Imagine all these people who went through the residential schools, today they would probably be skilled hunters. They would be able to transmit our way of life to the younger generations, so basically it cut off our connection to the land.

We lost all these people, all these minds and workforce, in the sense that probably many of them would know about our handicrafts. The women would be able to use all the traditional skills, to do all the crafts that we had – they would be able to sew, many of them able to do all the traditional skills like making snowshoes. The men would have been good carvers, making canoes, snowshoes, and [would have been able] to use the Innu tools to carve the wood. Therefore, I think we lost a lot: we lost generations, and people just got brainwashed and they lost all confidence, all pride in themselves and who they are. They began to deny who they are.

In terms of who we are as Innu it is as if we would have to start all over again – we would be in the kindergarten of our way of life, of the Innu school, and we must struggle to gain back this identity, the skills and it’s a tremendous task [he laughed] – in terms of the language, like a vision or Utopia. It’s a huge, huge task.24

Although the inducement was an education which would allow their children to become doctors, lawyers, priests and teachers, the education did nothing to prepare the Innu to take their place in mainstream Québécois society and, at the same time, robbed them of their own culture and the skills required to lead the nomadic life which would have been their choice.

While there is an acknowledgement among those who had turned to Indian Spirituality that not all priests were bad, the psychological, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of the priests and nuns was reinforced by an institutionalised racism which scarred the recipients for life. The only way they could cope on returning to the reserve was to resort to alcohol and drugs. In many cases, the ability to lead a normal family life was taken away and a deep mistrust of education was passed on to succeeding generations. One woman told me: ‘Because of residential school, I don’t know how to sew, how to clean the caribou. But also I don’t know how to live with white people. I am nobody.’25

Everything that the Innu held dear, they were told, was bad, heathen, conjuring, sorcery, primitive; to the extent that they began to believe it themselves and they were cut off, not only from their families, but from the roots of their culture. Having stayed in schools for ten years of their lives, they lost the ability to walk the long trails, the knowledge of where the animals, fish and birds could be found, the sense of freedom and the self-reliance enjoyed in the country. In return, they got dependency on benefits, ridicule and rejection by mainstream society. As many said, they were totally lost.

A woman elder told me: ‘I drank because of residential school. I got married and had a child but I was still drinking. My mother couldn’t understand why. I was mad at my parents because I had lost my culture. I stopped drinking when I realised I was passing it on to my grandchildren.’26

Stephen Harper’s apology27 to the victims of the residential school system did not begin to address the wrongs the former students and their families have suffered and continue to suffer to this day. Matimekush Lac John had to wait a long time before the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) sent people to take their testimony, very late in the day, by which time those giving evidence were very anxious. The compensation received under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement was never enough to change lives – just enough to buy a plasma TV, a truck or a skidoo – and there was friction in the families over how the money was to be spent. No compensation was paid to the community as a whole. The apology did not come from the perpetrators – no priest or nun offered a personal apology. Western psychology did not provide answers to the continuing trauma.

At the end of a long interview with a former chief, I asked him what he thought of Stephen Harper’s recent apology to Indian Residential Schools survivors. I reproduce his answer in full because it is such a comprehensive picture of the damage caused by this experiment in assimilation. It took him an hour to reply:

I guess it all started with the residential schools in the sense that most of my family, my older brothers, my sisters, my younger sisters, we all went to the residential school and somehow there was this threat that if the child didn’t go to the residential school our parents would be jailed or sent to prison. So, there were all these veiled threats.

Basically, what happened is that one would expect that you would glean something from the residential school, that you would get some form of education to have a better life, and then that’s what the parents were hoping, that somehow we would get better lives because of course living off the land, the parents knew that there were hardships. Nevertheless, we entertained for a while this illusion that we would get something back from the residential schools or there would be some positive outcome. We entertained this for a while up to the moment that we realised that we didn’t learn much.

In fact, instead of gaining something we were losing a lot, our culture, we were losing everything, every aspect of our culture was being lost and the residential schools even changed the life of our parents in the sense that they couldn’t go on the land any more. They were prevented somehow [by the game wardens and the construction workers from the new railroad] from going on the land.

But they were very torn – the decision to send the kids to the residential school was very difficult for them. They thought we would get better lives. We didn’t get any form of education. My dad probably would have liked me to learn about all these Innu traditional skills, but I couldn’t and I lost a lot and my parents lost a lot in this whole thing. They lost pretty much their lifestyle, because we were told, ‘Go and live in Sept-Iles. We will build a house for you. Your kids will be taken care of and you guys won’t need to worry about food any more because you will get coupons [probably worth about C$20] to buy food. You won’t need to worry about living off the land any more.’

That’s what residential school did. That’s how it changed the fabric of Innu society. We entered into some form of identity crisis. It screws you up a lot. You don’t know. You are totally lost. At some point you don’t identify yourself with your culture. You don’t believe in your culture and you believe somehow you are making this illusion that you will get something much better than your culture. You go through some form of identity crisis. You are totally screwed up for years. You don’t know what to do and it takes you a very long time to get your life back together. That’s the extent of how residential school changed our lives.

The apology doesn’t cover all the things lost through the residential school experience. We lost so much, so much in terms of culture, our identity, our traditional knowledge, our traditional skills. It disturbed a lot of our society, the families, the relatives, the kinship. I remember at times when I was young I was hoping that I would see my parents just like the students who lived in Sept-Iles; their parents were living in Sept-Iles and they could see their parents. But it wasn’t possible for us to see our parents. So we were deprived of their affection, of their love. A kid needs to be taken care of, to be hugged, to be cuddled, and we were cut off from all those experiences that a child needs, we were deprived of this as well.

And then all the effects of the residential schools went on throughout all our life – all the students who went experienced the effects of the residential schools through many, many aspects of our lives. Because you were told you were bad, Indians were bad. Your lifestyle was bad. And you ended up believing that you were bad as well, that your parents were bad and your culture and your people, they were just bad. In terms of society, the choice that society was making, that your people were making, the choices were bad as well. So, therefore, you denigrate or dismiss or despise your own culture. You don’t like your parents, you don’t like your culture. You end up believing that you are in the wrong place and the wrong time.

So it goes on throughout your life and it took me a long time, personally I probably lost, like, 20–25 years of my life because of the experiences I had to do with the residential schools. I didn’t succeed in my professional life, even though I was good at school. I always thought that I had the skills, the certificates and everything to get a decent job but I couldn’t because I was an Indian and I was told that I was bad and that I wasn’t good enough to fulfil the position. I was just an Indian even though I had a certificate. I wasn’t good enough. And it went on and on through my life and even coming back here I lost the ties and the kinship and everything of my sense of being Innu. I lost my language, so I couldn’t speak to my cousins or uncles or people. I was not able to talk to them.

So you lose a lot – your culture, your language, your traditions, your traditional knowledge and with the money, the compensation – it’s not enough to compensate for all the things that you lose in a person’s life.

And the effects go on to the other generations in the sense that because you screwed up through all these years, you were not a good parent to your own children because you didn’t know how to take care of them. We don’t know what to transmit – what kind of knowledge you will transmit. You lose trust. You don’t have that. My parents had to learn values, their own principles. I didn’t have any because I was totally screwed up. I didn’t know where to go. I was not an Indian. Who was I? You can’t teach your kids to be an Indian because being an Indian is bad, you know. So how do those kids relate to one another and how do they define themselves? They define themselves by what they are witnessing today. It’s like pot smoking, gambling, alcohol, drugs. That’s what they are looking at. The only models that they have. They don’t have any other models because the parents are totally screwed up.

In my professional life, I tried to do something good. I tried to help out my community – as a chief, as a Band Council manager back then, or band administrator because all of our business was taken care of by white people, by Indian Affairs, and probably I was the first one or one of the few who were educated enough or who had the non-Innu skills to go and look at the book-keeping for instance, to look at the papers, write things, fill out the forms and so on. Even there I had my own doubts because the non-Indian colleagues would say ‘You’re not good enough to take care of your own matters. You will never know how to manage. You will never be able to take care of your own affairs up there.’ And then it ends up in a subtle way that you start believing that and you question yourself professionally. Then we start to think, yes, we are not up to that. And we will always be these screwed-up people who are bad people, with no skills, with nothing good to offer.

It goes on like that, on and on, and because of that I was looking at those things when I was band manager, and I even tried to ask for help from my wife. I asked her to help me out into the wee hours, trying to perform professionally, do a good job and then I failed miserably because I didn’t have all the resources, human resources or financial resources to manage properly. I didn’t have the help because Indian Affairs didn’t give you all the resources to do a good job, to perform well. They always give you just enough to be in the same loop of misery day after day, month after month, season after season, year after year. Just enough to be in the same misery of your own. So I didn’t get any help.

What was the end of that? Well I was even more screwed up and I ended up drinking – when I was younger I had started drinking because I felt so bad and then professionally because I was screwed up because I was a bad Indian or a bad Indian manager (I couldn’t do what the white people were doing). I ended up drinking because I questioned myself. I wasn’t good enough for anyone. I was of no help to anyone. I wasn’t good enough for the white people and I wasn’t good enough for my own people. So I lost probably 25 years of my life because of the experience of the residential school and I am so upset about this because nothing will compensate this, the years lost, traditional knowledge, all the skills, all the strength that my parents and ancestors had. They could rely on themselves and had the skills to survive for thousands of years. They were brilliant people, survivors with all the intelligence to survive in difficult situations and nowadays, even if I have an axe, I can’t do a proper job. My parents could do those things and they didn’t have axes, they had their own tools to survive off the land with their own skills, their own intelligence, their own ways – they were capable of surviving off the land all year long.

So this is a long answer to your question. I got carried away but those apologies will never compensate all the loss we face and all the loss we went through because of the experience of the residential schools.28

Since Newfoundland Labrador did not join the Confederation until 1949, the survivors of the residential schools system within the provincial boundary were excluded from the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement of which the Innu resident in Quebec were beneficiaries. They were also excluded from the proceedings of the TRC. However, on 7 November 2016, the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador approved a Settlement Agreement following an action brought by five former residential school students who attended either International Grenfell Association or Moravian schools.29 Under the negotiated settlement, the survivors were awarded C$50 million to be shared between 1,200 survivors. However, the survivors will only receive C$32 million once lawyers’ fees have been paid.30 There is provision for commemoration events similar to those which have taken place in the other provinces of Canada. The settlement was endorsed by the federal government, despite the fact that it had formerly argued that it bore no responsibility since the schools were not run on its behalf. Having been excluded from Stephen Harper’s apology, finally the residential school survivors of Newfoundland and Labrador received one from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on 24 November 2017.31

On its very first page, the Report of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission names the residential schools project cultural ‘genocide’, which it defines as follows:

Cultural genocide is the destruction of those structures and practices that allow the group to continue as a group. States that engage in cultural genocide set out to destroy the political and social institutions of the targeted group. Land is seized and populations are forcibly transferred and their movement is restricted. Languages are banned. Spiritual leaders are persecuted, spiritual practices are forbidden, and objects of spiritual value are confiscated and destroyed. And, most significantly to the issue at hand, families are disrupted to prevent the transmission of cultural values and identity from one generation to the next. In dealing with Aboriginal People, Canada did all these things.32

The residential schools system was the enabler for all Canada’s assimilation policies, which would rid them of ‘the Indian problem’. Taking the broadest interpretation of its remit, the Commission’s Report also concludes that the general Canadian public’s ignorance of the consequences of the Comprehensive Land Claims Policy reinforces racism, and ‘makes for poor public policy decisions’.33 One poor public policy decision was to refuse to release key documents to the TRC which were relevant to its inquiries.34 The Report sets out 94 ‘calls to action’ which would begin to redress the balance in favour of indigenous nations.35 It declares the doctrine of discovery, under which Europeans claimed indigenous land, to be null and void.36 It also calls for the immediate implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.37

Historic trauma

In its work with Indian Residential School survivors, the Aboriginal Healing Foundation identified a phenomenon which greatly amplifies the losses suffered, the harms done and the grief experienced by those who were caught up in the Indian Residential Schools process. They use the term ‘historic trauma’ to describe the cumulative effect of all the catastrophic interactions between settlers and indigenous peoples which led to loss and death.38 Historic trauma leads to ‘the creation of a nucleus of unresolved grief that has continued to affect successive generations of indigenous people’.39 This study demonstrates the incidence of disease, loss of land, loss of flora and fauna and attempts at assimilation which led to the wiping out of indigenous populations from 1493 onwards, and links these events to the waves of colonisation of the North American continent. The writers identify historic trauma as a disease in itself.40 They piece together this history of devastation in an attempt to ‘remind people that indigenous social and cultural devastation in the present is the result of unremitting personal and collective trauma due to demographic collapse, resulting from early influenza and smallpox epidemics and other infectious diseases, conquest, warfare, slavery, colonization, proselytization, famine and starvation, the 1802 to the late 1960s residential school period and forced assimilation’.41

What happened to indigenous peoples in the waves of colonisation was unspeakable – it is so horrific that it cannot be spoken of. The memories are so traumatic that those affected could not speak of what they had endured. In the opinion of the authors, ‘This nucleus [of unresolved grief] is so condensed with sadness, so pregnant with loss, so heavy with grief that its very weight constitutes a good reason why people often do not talk about it or, as one aboriginal woman said, “It is probably too horrible to turn our gaze in that direction”.’42

The writers classify this shared experience of intergenerational grief as a form of post-traumatic stress disorder, leaving indigenous peoples in a state of chronic sadness. Gerald Sider compares the dislocation of indigenous society in the wake of these catastrophic events with the impact of the Black Death in Europe.43 As noted above, the elders in Matimekush referred to the loss of key skills when children were ‘educated’ in residential schools. Further, the impact of pandemics meant that elders were not there to pass on the oral history of their people, which could have transmitted much invaluable (traditional) knowledge. The epidemics were so catastrophic that there was no one left even to bury the dead.

Sider notes that continuous waves of famine and epidemic meant that indigenous peoples lived with uncertainty as to their future.44 He describes the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 which ravaged impoverished native communities in Labrador – what he calls the ‘White Plague’.45 He compares the effects of the flu in St. John’s, Newfoundland, where there were sufficient medical facilities and the death rate was one per cent, with Labrador where there was little or no medical access and the population was devastated. He attributes this in part to the long history of famine, epidemics, forced relocation and provincial bans on hunting and fishing.

As the interviews carried out in Matimekush Lac John show, the shattering of culture and identity manifests itself in alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide, all forms of abuse, physical and mental illness, apathy and fatalism, all markers which the writers of the historic trauma study identify as the consequence of post-traumatic stress.46 As Gerald Sider points out:

We might usefully appreciate the fact that ‘doing’ drugs and alcohol is, among other things, an expression of one’s autonomy, and it produces the social connections with others rooted in this autonomy. The starting point here is that people who engage in what the dominant society calls ‘substance abuse’ usually know full well that it is ‘wrong’, know that it is not approved, know that it is illegal, know that it is destructive, whatever. So to do it is to express one’s freedom and autonomy from such strictures, such control, such dominant statements about yes and no – even though it is also the case that the users themselves know it is destructive to themselves and others. They are, at least for the moment and beyond the compulsions and satisfactions of addictions, making their own lives as they choose, even though … even though …47

Sider maintains that the historic trauma suffered by indigenous peoples can never be considered to be in the past. It is in the present and in the future too. He tells us that many of the catastrophes are socially produced, not natural phenomena,48 especially in the experience of the Inuit and Innu of the Quebec-Labrador Peninsula. In particular, he cites the activities of the HBC and the Moravian missionaries, and later the Newfoundland Labrador government, and the resulting acts of self-destruction among the Inuit and Innu themselves, seeking oblivion in alcohol, drugs and suicide.49 He also notes the colonisers’ tendency to ‘blame the victims’.50 While still recognising the long history of suffering at the hands of the colonisers, he attributes the waves of self-destruction to the forced settlement of the Inuit and Innu into government villages. Despite the building of new villages with relatively better conditions, the epidemic of suicide and other pathologies of deprivation have persisted.51 Yet the Canadian answer to the dysfunction of indigenous communities remains ‘re-education’.52

Speaking of the tuberculosis epidemic and the current suicide epidemic among the Inuit of Nunavut, Lisa Stevenson tells of the different meaning of death for the settler Canadians who came north to treat the Inuit. The priority of the incoming health workers was to keep people alive. Once they were dead, they ceased to matter. She says their work is directed at populations, not individuals.53 Through a series of interviews with Inuit living in Iqualuit, Nunavut, she describes the impact of this point of view on the Inuit left behind when their kin were taken south for treatment and, later, when a village had suffered a suicide. Because the Inuit see no separation between life and death, they need to know the circumstances of the death, what the loved one said in their final moments and to know where they have been laid to rest.54 Inuit would do everything they could to avoid being taken south on the C D Howe, the boat which took them to the sanatoria. If they died in the south, they would be buried in unmarked graves and news of their deaths might never reach their loved ones. The patients were given military dog tags with numbers and their names lost significance. To this day, the Innu of Natuashish and Sheshatshiu, Labrador make an annual pilgrimage to the graveyard of the former sanatorium at St. Anthony, Newfoundland where their relatives were taken and from which they never returned. Lisa Stevenson remarks on the contradiction that Canadian health workers impose a duty to live and at the same time have an expectation that native peoples will inevitably die. Further: ‘Although the norms of cleanliness, tidiness and deference were taught and modelled assiduously by social workers, nurses, doctors, missionaries and others, the Inuit (from the perspective of the colonial agents) could never quite manage to live up to the standards set by their white counterparts.’55

Whether in homes, in health centres or at the negotiation table, the attitude of Canadian settlers towards indigenous peoples is one that is reflected in the concept that they are wards of the Crown – they are viewed as incapable of knowing what is best for themselves. This is a presumption that amounts to institutionalised racism.

Sider says that the solutions offered to native communities are only ever partial and are subject to the domination of governments and corporations. While some undoubtedly thrive in their new circumstances, inevitably others in the indigenous group suffer: ‘what was done … has led to the increasing differentiation of Native societies’.56 This is evident in the Labrador villages of Sheshatshiu and Natuashish, which have entered into the land claims process, and as a result are more prosperous than the Central Quebec villages which have refused to sell their land. Sider sees displacement of indigenous peoples, whether physically or by being deprived of their means of survival, as another form of imposed dependence. Displacement, he says, makes native peoples vulnerable to domination.57 He suggests that, in this context, the term ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’ be abandoned and the term ‘continued trauma stress’ be used instead. He points out that this is not a disorder, since the chaos caused by their history is not the fault of the native peoples. Further, he says, the silencing of these ‘continually re-created memories of domination’ is one of the core untruths of power, central to the political violence which is the fate of indigenous communities.58

On 25 August 2017, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) denounced Canada for its ongoing violation of indigenous land rights. Its report called for indigenous peoples to be recognised as decision-makers and that free, prior and informed consent be obtained for all matters concerning their land rights.

In response, in his address to the United Nations on 21 September 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau finally acknowledged the truth of what the United Nations had been reporting for years. He acknowledged the devastating legacy of the forced removals, broken treaties and residential schools, and continued:

For indigenous peoples in Canada, the experience was mostly one of humiliation, neglect and abuse … There are, today, children living on reserve in Canada who cannot safely drink, or bathe in, or even play in the water that comes out of their taps. There are indigenous parents who say goodnight to their children and have to cross their fingers in the hopes that their kids won’t run away or take their own lives in the night … And for far too many indigenous women, life in Canada includes threats of violence so frequent and severe that Amnesty International has called it a ‘human rights crisis’.

That is the legacy of colonialism in Canada.59

Another legacy of colonialism, however, is procrastination so far as indigenous projects are concerned. Despite the fine words, any assistance to indigenous communities seems to be directed to exploitation of natural resources on their land.

The people of Matimekush Lac John have refused to agree to the extinguishment of their land rights in exchange for the freedom to manage their own affairs. They have kept faith with their forebears and have, insofar as they are able, managed the land and its flora and fauna for future generations, just as their ancestors did for them. In 70 years, much of their land has been ruined by developments without consultation and without their consent. Yet their way of life has survived all the incursions from non-aboriginal society and the disastrous attempts to assimilate them into mainstream culture.

As Commissioner of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, Thomas Berger wrote: ‘It is native peoples’ profound desire to be themselves that has led to the present confrontation. Far from deploring their failure to become what strangers want them to be, we should regard their determination to be themselves as a triumph of the human spirit.’60

Calvin Helin observes that indigenous peoples living on reserve in dependency find this situation normal.61 The people of Matimekush Lac John are caught in as tight a trap as the animals they depend upon: in order to escape the cycle of deprivation and dependency, they must sign an agreement with people and organisations they do not trust, which extinguishes the rights to lands they have held for thousands of years. This is a stipulation which is prohibited by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.62 These lands form the basis of Innu language, culture and identity, and the Innu of the Strategic Alliance are the stronger psychologically for standing by their beliefs.

There is a marked absence of the sacred around land claims negotiations tables. Proceedings may begin with a sage-burning or smudging ceremony but the spirit of these ceremonies in no way impacts on the conduct of the meetings. Indigenous representatives are encouraged to enter into the corporate mindset and to step away from the fundamental belief that land is the basis of their identity.

The troubles of the Innu resident in Quebec are by no means behind them. When asked to participate in the land claims negotiations, they refused as soon as they realised that any settlement would entail extinguishment of their rights to the land.

However, their relatives in Labrador decided that their future and that of their children lay in a settlement which recognised their absolute right to a proportion of their land and promised future employment and a degree of self-governance. While the Innu of Matimekush Lac John respect their cousins’ right to do this, they are saddened that this entails the loss of their own land rights.