Friends of Elizabeth Penashue »
Oct 26th, 2009 by admin
Elizabeth Penashue is an Innu elder from Sheshatshui, Labrador. During her childhood, the northern Innu were starting to be settled by the Canadian government. Elizabeth has spent much of her life fighting the impacts of colonialism – from hydro dam developments, NATO flyovers, to a loss of connection to land and culture. Right now she is fighting the proposed Lower Churchill Hydro project (LCHP), which threatens to wipe out what’s left of traditional Innu land.
Innu land –also known as Nitassinan – was never surrendered to “Canada”, nor were any treaties ever signed ceding Nitassinan territory. As the industrial economy developed, the government looked to the land in Labrador as a “no-man’s land” – a place to harvest “natural resources“ (minerals, hydro-power, animals, and timber) and to conduct military low-level flying exercises and bomb testing. The Innu – who have always been on the land – were treated as if they did not matter, and during the 20th century were forcibly settled and administered with colonial policies such as the residential school system. By cutting the Innu off from using their traditional territories, the land was slowly encroached upon by white settlers or taken over on a large scale by industrial projects like mining and hydro-electricity.
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