Dear ABMInsider,
Of all the inexplicably nonsensical political lines in the sand I’ve seen over the years, I believe N.L. Premier Tony Wakeham’s stance on Innu history in Labrador may be one of the most incomprehensible. Not only is it directly hurting business in a region on the cusp of explosive nation-building resource development, but—and this is by far the bigger issue—it blithely erases years of Indigenous culture and oral history.
Earlier this month, an Innu-led exhibit called “Innu Pakassiun” was supposed to have opened at the Labrador Interpretation Centre, an arm of The Rooms—the province’s museum/archives/art gallery. It was cancelled following a dispute over the timeline of Innu history in Labrador. I invite you to read the full, well-documented story in this article, published by The Independent on June 19. But the short version, sufficient for our purposes here, is that decades of archaeological evidence pointed to the Innu and their ancestors having more than 3,000 years of history in the Big Land. Now, the Province and the Provincial Archaeology Office say new evidence indicates the Innu have only been here for 300 years.
However, not everyone agrees with that new evidence, including a group of senior anthropologists and archaeologists at Memorial University. According to a statement released by the group, the “archaeological literature on Labrador does not support the categorical exclusion of long-term Innu presence.”
So why would the Premier take such a hard line on something so obviously tenuous?
Anthropologist Stephen Loring, who works with the Arctic Studies Centre of the U.S.-based Smithsonian Institution, told the CBC it feels like a power move.
“Government wants control over land that is ancestral Innu land, belongs to the Innu, and so by denying their land claim based on this spurious historical misinterpretation- that's the dark side. And whether that's true or not I don't know. But it certainly has that appearance,” said Loring.
If that’s the case, it exposes economic reconciliation as a fatuous promise. It’s horrifically insulting to Indigenous people (and a clear warning that government isn’t to be trusted), and puts any potential development in Labrador on indefinite pause.
Unless something changes, dramatically and soon, last week’s Innu protests and the subsequent cancelation of Expo Labrador are a well-publicized harbinger of things to come. Arctic sovereignty, new agreements on Churchill Falls, more power from Gull Island, critical minerals… Labrador, and its Indigenous populations, are integral to all this and more.
Erasing the past could well decimate that future. Here’s hoping Premier Wakeham wakes up to that reality.
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Dawn Chafe Co-owner & Executive Editor Atlantic Business Magazine [email protected] |