The Innu The Montagnais Naskapi

Examines the history, culture, changing fortunes, and future prospects of the Montagnais-Naskapi Indians. Includes a picture essay on their crafts.

Examines the history, culture, changing fortunes, and future prospects of the Montagnais-Naskapi Indians. Includes a picture essay on their crafts.

A detailed look at Innu relations with the Canadian state, developers, explorers, missionaries, educators, health-care professionals, and the justice system.

Library-quality hardcover book with dust-jacket. This book of the Chahkapas hero legend cycle is the second book in a series prepared for reading in Naskapi and in English by the Naskapi Development Corporation. John Peastitute (1896 - 1981) was a Naskapi Elder who was not only well respected as a story-keeper, but also as a storyteller. His repertoire of both tipâchimûna (stories) and âtiyûhkinich (legends) was extensive, and his performances engaging. The tape recordings of his stories that have survived to be preserved, processed and studied are a precious legacy. The Chahkapas stories tell of the small but mighty hero who snares the sun, is swallowed by a fish, rescues his sister, and avenges the death of his parents by the monster Kachituskw.

After six children from Davis Inlet, Labrador, died in a house fire in 1992, Innu leaders called for a public inquiry. The federal government refused. The Innu nation and the Mushuau Innu Band Council held a people's inquiry instead, followed a year later by a second project undertaken at the invitation of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. This book presents the words and stories they gathered as part of those two projects. -- from book jacket.

Labrador Innu cultural and environmental activist Tshaukuesh Elizabeth Penashue is well-known both within and far beyond the Innu Nation. The recipient of a National Aboriginal Achievement Award and an honorary doctorate from Memorial University, she has been a subject of documentary films, books, and numerous articles. She led the Innu campaign against NATO’s low-level flying and bomb testing on Innu land during the 1980s and ’90s, and was a key respondent in a landmark legal case in which the judge held that the Innu had the “colour of right” to occupy the Canadian Forces base in Goose Bay, Labrador. Over the past twenty years she has led walks and canoe trips in nutshimit, “on the land,” to teach people about Innu culture and knowledge. Nitinikiau Innusi: I Keep the Land Alive began as a diary written in Innu-aimun, in which Tshaukuesh recorded day-to-day experiences, court appearances, and interviews with reporters. Tshaukuesh has always had a strong sense of the importance of documenting what was happening to the Innu and their land. She also found keeping a diary therapeutic, and her writing evolved from brief notes into a detailed account of her own life and reflections on Innu land, culture, politics, and history. Beautifully illustrated, this work contains numerous images by professional photographers and journalists as well as archival photographs and others from Tshaukuesh’s own collection.

Reveals how racist Canadian government policies have crippled the Innu of eastern Canada -- a once self-sufficient & independent people. The UN's Human Rights Committee described the situation of indigenous people as Ôthe most pressing issue facing Canadians', & condemned Canada for its practice of Ôextinguishing' aboriginal people's rights. Chapters: the colonization of the Innu -- Britain starts, Canada accelerates; who are the Innu?; history; life in the community; the invasion of Innu land: hydroelectric projects, military training, mining, & roads & communications; Innu resistance; why Canada claims its own Innu land; what the Innu want; & solutions.