Statement by INNU

Grupo de Trabajo sobre Poblaciones Indígenas

18° Periodo de Sesiones - 24 al 28 de Julio de 2000

STATEMENT OF THE INNU COUNCIL OF NITASSINAN
(A Non-governmental organizations in special consultative status with ECOSOC)

AT THE 18TH U.N. WORKING GROUP ON INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
GENEVA, JULY 2000

ITEM 4: INDIGENOUS CHILDREN AND YOUTH

Madam Chairperson,

        After two years’ work, ‘Canada’s Tibet – the killing of the Innu’ was launched on November 8th 1999. It was created in order to raise awareness in Canada about the Innu’s complex and shocking situation and to explain how they came to be in this predicament.

        Three Innu – Napes Ashini and Shapatish and Katneen Malak – were invited to Europe to speak at the launch of the report. Tragically, the son of one of the participants committed suicide while his father
was flying to Britain. It was a dreadful confirmation of one of the report’s findings – that the Mushuau
Innu ( the most northerly group) suffer from the highest suicide rate in
the world.

        The launch of the report was covered by virtually every newspaper and TV and radio station in
Canada. The Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, was quizzed about it on his way to the Commonwealth
summit in South Africa (he described Canada’s treatment of the Innu as ‘generous’). The Newfoundland Premier, Brian Tobin, called a press conference to respond. And we have not heard a single word from the Quebec Premier, Lucion Bouchard.

        Whilst it was clear that the report had succeeded in pushing the Innu’s treatment to the top of political agenda, no government spokesperson would address the report’s main conclusion – that the policy under which Canada negotiates indigenous land ‘claims’ is fundamentally biased against the Indigenous Peoples. In the glare of the world’s media spotlight, the Newfoundland and federal governments quickly agreed to transfer control over education to the Innu in Labrador – something the Innu had been requesting for years. But officials’ true attitude towards the Innu was revealed in the reply sent out by the Newfoundland authorities to the thousands of Survival members who wrote letter of protest.

        In that reply, the government denied that it forces the Innu to negotiate land ‘claims’ whilst pushing
ahead with huge industrial projects on the very land the Innu are ‘claiming’, but did admit that it only
consults with the Innu over these projects. Survival and the Innu have called for these projects to be
suspend until the question of land ownership is settled, as handing large tracts of Innu land over to outsiders whilst negotiating over that self-same land makes a mockery of the whole process. The government justified this approach by saying that ‘suspending development until it [the land claim] is concluded would deny the Innu significant opportunities and revenue.’

        It is this paternalistic assumption to know what the people want better than the people themselves (and all the harm that flows from) that the Innu and survival’s thousands of supporters are fighting.

        Madam Chairperson, I want to personally convey to this Working Group my reactions and what I sense among the Innu people generally in the wake of the release of the Survival report... It is as if we had been crying softly in a sealed box where Canada’s slick public relations had kept us and finally the seal is broken and we are heard... I don’t know what will come of it all but I can tell you that today for the first time in many years we feel hope. Our hope stems from a renewed belief that we can together with our friends around the world and at home exert sufficient pressure on Canada to fundamentally rethink its approach and relationship with peoples such as my own...

        As ‘Canada’s Tibet’ reveals, Canada continues to use legal arguments based on the doctrine of Terra Nullius and the alleged primitivity of the Innu, arguments which have become totally discredited in modern human rights law.

        The method by which Canada attempts to square the circle of its awkward indigenous fact is epitomized in what we call in Canada the Comprehensive Claims Policy. In this iniquitous procedure, which is represented to us as being the only forum of redress available and in which, in extremis, we have felt compelled to participate, Canada requires that as a precondition to addressing Innu grievances, the Innu must accept and acknowledge, a priori, that our homeland, Nitassinan belongs to the Crown. All that remains to negotiate are the terms on which we are to formally surrender it.

        The Human Rights Committee of the United Nations (April 1999) and the U.N. Committee of the
Economic and Social Council (November 1998) have recently condemned Canada’s approach as
represented by the Comprehensive Claims Policy as violating fundamental provisions of the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic and
Social Rights on the rights of Peoples.

        The Survival Report on the violations of Innu Human Rights shines a strong light on practices by the
Canadian State which, although hitherto shrouded in obscurity, now stand exposes and condemned.
There appears to finally exist an opportunity to persuade the Canadian State to abandon the Comprehensive Claims Policy in favour of authentic negotiations in which Canada and not us becomes the claimant; and in which the recognition of our collective rights as a People (including the fact of our ownership of Nitassinan) is a precondition for talks to formalize our relationship with the Canadian State.

Armand McKenzie, LL.
Innu Lawyer
INNU COUNCIL OF NITASSINAN
Tel: 418-964-6781
Fax: 418-968-2370
e-mail: amck@quebectel.com
WWW Site: http://www.innu.ca

For the full version (online) of Survival report: http://www.innu.ca

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