by ALEXIS LATHEM
Marching against dam
On the morning of June 10th, a group of Innu people from the community of ManiUtenam, near the Quebec City of Sept Isle, set out on a 360 kilometer march towards a Hydro Quebec dam construction site on the Romaine River. Dressed in florescent vests, they departed from an encampment at the entrance to the reserve, beside Route 138, the only major road in the region, where the group has maintained a continual protest since the end of April.
Impossible to miss as vehicles pass along the route, the encampment strikingly asserts the presence of the Innu –who have been consistently ignored by governments and developers as they continue to encroach upon Innu territory.
The Innu people (not to be confused with the Inuit) are the indigenous people of the northeastern part of what is today called Quebec and Labrador. To the Innu, this is Nitassinan, “our land”, which they have never ceded to Quebec or to Canada. Having escaped the predations of agricultural and industrial encroachment for centuries, the Innu were not settled onto reserves until the 1960s – most of them located at the mouths of the rivers emptying into the Gulf of St Lawrence – at the same time that the provincially owned utility, Hydro Quebec, began to construct a series of large dams in Nitassinan, effectively ending a way of life. The dams destroyed the salmon, flooded forested valleys, and paved the way for the industrialization of the Innu homeland.
“We demand to be recognized,” reads a hand-scrawled sign at the site. Plumes of woods moke rise from small canvas – and spruce- pole tents (the style of tent used by the Innu when they are in the forest) clustered around a large structure called a chapetoine, traditionally used for ceremonies and councils. Children play in the sand beneath overhanging banners that read (in French), “No Plan Nord! We want a Plan Innu!” and “Protect the Romaine River!”
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