Video’s a quick, decent overview of Newfoundland and Labrador’s Provincial Archaeology Office seeming attempt to rewrite Innu history.
Summary: NL provincial govt attempted to limit an Innu exhibition in a provincial museum, to bar Innu from stating they’ve been in Labrador for more than 300 years. They’re rolling out the claim that the Innu only arrived in Labrador after (white European) settlers did. When asked about it by news media, provincial spokespeople will only repeat talking points about Land Claims or say they’re looking into it.
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Snips from local in-depth independent news, June 30th: Inside the Provincial Archaeology Office’s theory that Europeans inhabited Labrador before Innu
Stephen Loring, an arctic archaeology and museum anthropologist with the Smithsonian’s Arctic Studies Centre in Washington, says it’s “convenient” for the province to claim that the Indigenous People who lived in Labrador prior to European contact disappeared or went extinct, rather than acknowledging the archaeological evidence and oral history linking Innu to the territory for 8,000 years.
Loring says the province’s position that Innu have only been in the Labrador portion of Nitassinan, the Innu homeland, for around 300 years appears to be an attempt to disenfranchise Innu from their history and culture so the government can weaken the Innu’s position in their land claim negotiations and in their right to participate in future land-use and economic development in the province. […]
The province’s position “amounts to the erasure of Innu history,” Innu Nation Grand Chief Simon Pokue said. “It is contrary to the accepted historical and archaeological record and dismisses the knowledge, history, and lived experience of our people.” […]
“We will not be told who we are by the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador or anyone else,” Pokue said. “It is simply wrong for the province to use a cultural exhibit, on Indigenous Peoples Day no less, to try to rewrite the accepted history of the Labrador Innu.”
Snip from June 19th, same publication: Province shocks Innu, disputes their history in Labrador
Ashini was surprised by the government’s about-face as she and her father Daniel helped the head of the Provincial Archaeology Office, Jamie Brake, with his Masters degree. Ashini says Brake worked on his masters about Innu history on Innu lands with a permit from Innu Nation and found an artifact Daniel identified as a snowshoe needle still used by Innu today, as well as charcoal samples dating back 1,500 to 1,600 years, while others were as recent as 300-700 years old.
Brake submitted his thesis in June 2007 to the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at Memorial University. It is titled Ashuanipi Kupitan: Excavation at the Ferguson Bay 1 Site in Western Labrador.
In the 200-page document, Brake thanks Daniel Ashini “for spending time with us on Ashuanipi Lake, for telling us lnnu legends at night by the campfire, and for teaching me so much about Labrador and its wonderful people. Daniel also provided important information about some of the material culture encountered at the site, and it was him who suggested the title for this thesis.”