Introduction to the Innu

Oral Tradition

According to Innu oral tradition, the world is an island created by Kuekuatsheu (Wolverine) and Atshakash (Mink) after a great flood. The archaeological record shows that the Innu and their ancestors have occupied a large portion of Labrador and eastern Quebec for thousands of years. The Innu call this territory Nitassinan.

At the time of contact with Europeans, the Innu had already established an extensive trading and kinship network throughout the Quebec-Labrador peninsula. Ramah chert, a strong quartz material from Ramah Bay in Labrador, as well as pottery and other products were exchanged throughout the territory. Archaeological evidence shows that Ramah chert was traded as far as northeastern United States.

Before settlement in the 1950s, the Innu were organized in small family hunting groups that moved from one part of the territory to another on a seasonal basis. In the summer months, they gathered at larger lakes or coastal locations where wildlife was plentiful, and winds provided relief from pesky flies.

Part of the Innu tent village, on shores of Kakatshu-utshishtun (Grand Lake). 1930. Photo by Fred Coleman Sears. Courtesy of The Rooms, Provincial Archives Division. Newfoundland and Labrador. VA 110-12-1

Woman stretching caribou skin to make babiche to fill the snowshoe. 1927-8. The second Rawson-Macmillan Subarctic Expedition. Courtesy of Field Museum of Natural History (Anthropology) CSA61446

The caribou herds of the peninsula supplied the Innu with clothing, tent covers, babiche for their snowshoes, tools, as well as meat. The caribou also nourished the Innu spiritually. To this day, the Caribou Master Kanipinikassikueu (also known as Papakashtshishk^u and Katipenimitak) remains the most important of all the beings in the traditional Innu religion.

The oldest Tshishennuat (Elders) remember the days when caribou were speared from canoes as they crossed the Mushuau-shipu (George River). They recall living in shaputuan(s) (multi-family dwellings) heated by open fires, hunting partridge with bow and arrow and wearing caribou-hide clothing.

Nuk, Innu boy with bow and arrow, 1927-8. Photo by Donald Baxter MacMillan. Courtesy of the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum and Arctic Studies Center, Bowdoin College. 3000.33.254

Innu boys playing checkers. Sheshatshiu. 1963. Photo courtesy of Ray Webber and the Canadian Museum of History

Innu maps of their territory made for land rights negotiations show countless travel routes, camp sites, burial sites, birth locations, harvest areas for caribou and other wildlife, locations of mythological meaning, caribou migration routes, as well as Innu names for many of the lakes and rivers in the territory. These names and maps show that Labrador and eastern Quebec was not an untouched, unexplored “wilderness” but lands that the Innu have lived on for millennia.

With no consultation with the Innu, forestry, mining and military developments began to encroach on Innu lands at an ever increasing and expansive rate in the second half of the last century. By the 1990s, the Innu Nation decided they had no other choice than to begin negotiations with Canada and the province of Newfoundland and Labrador to reach a land claims agreement, or modern day treaty. Ceding or relinquishing Aboriginal rights to their beloved lands continues to be an outstanding issue in these decades-long negotiations.

To the Innu, the land is their history, their culture and their future. The land is a storehouse of wildlife and natural resources that has sustained them for generations, and which they hope will continue to provide for them in future years. Nowadays this history of life on the land is the source of Innu identity and continues to play an active role in Innu poetry, film, music, crafts and many other forms of creative expression.