A Way of Life That Does Not Exist: Canada and the Extinguishment of the Innu

by Colin Samson

This book is about the social and political processes involved in the extinguishment of a unique way of life of the Innu people of Nitassinan, the Labrador-Quebec peninsula. In the 1950s and 60s, the Innu were prompted by Canadian authorities to abandon permanent nomadic hunting, the way of life that had made them independent and self-reliant occupants of the Subarctic. These people, who had occupied a territory the size of France, and for whom the land, waterways and animals provided physical, moral and spiritual sustenance, were settled in government-built villages in Northern Quebec and Labrador. Sustained efforts to impose Euro-Canadian authority upon the Innu have had the effect of seriously eroding not only a distinct way of life, but a unique view of the self, society, and the cosmos. Such efforts have also resulted in rates of suicide, alcoholism, and other forms of self-destructive abuse that are among the highest in the world. By observing interactions between the Innu and the Euro-Canadian institutions imposed upon them, Samson examines how the attempt to destroy the Innu way of life has actually operated. The book looks in detail at Innu relations with the Canadian state, developers, explorers, missionaries, educators, health-care professionals, and the justice system.

392 pages, Paperback

First published May 17, 2003

Reviews

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

A timely reminder that 1) colonialism is now as well as back then, and 2) that despite its claims to advocacy of human rights, Canada's First Nations are still the issue it needs to deal with. This book sits somewhere between ethnography, political analysis and history, and in being so draws on a rich set of conceptual and theoretical tools to explore the conditions of life of Labrador's Innu people. It is a book that should be consulted more widely but seem to exist only in one hardback edition, and is worth hunting down. Sadly, the story of the Innu is repeated in countless communities across the world.