Innu

The Innu are a First Nations people of eastern Quebec and Labrador, whose homeland, Nitassinan ("our land"), covers much of the Quebec-Labrador peninsula. For centuries they were caribou and moose hunters who moved with the seasons through forest and tundra. French colonists called the southern groups Montagnais, "mountain people", and the northern ones Naskapi; today some 29,000 people of Innu origin live in communities across Quebec and Labrador.

Innu simply means "person" or "people" in their language, Innu-aimun, part of the Cree–Montagnais–Naskapi chain of dialects; it has no kinship with the Inuit languages spoken by their northern neighbours. Broadly, the Montagnais lived in the wooded south, along the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the Naskapi on the open barren lands of the north. Since about 1990 the Montagnais have officially used the name Innu, while the Naskapi of Kawawachikamach keep their own name. Our maps reflect this with labels such as Montagnais Innu, Naskapi Innu and Nitassinan.

The ancestors of today's Innu lived as hunter-gatherers on these lands for thousands of years. They hunted caribou in the north and east and moose in the west, along with beaver, bear, porcupine, geese and ducks; they fished for salmon, trout and eels, took seals on the coast and gathered berries and maple sap. Families travelled by canoe in summer and on snowshoes and toboggans in winter, living in wigwams covered with birch bark in the south and caribou hide in the north. Women prepared hides and made clothing painted or decorated with quillwork. Innu belief centred on respect for animals, above all the caribou: hunters placed bones and skulls in trees or on platforms as offerings, and shamans performed the shaking tent rite. Their oral tradition features the moon hero Tshakapesh.

The southern bands met Europeans early in the seventeenth century. In 1603 Samuel de Champlain made an alliance with an Innu group, and in 1609 Montagnais warriors joined him, with Wendat and Algonquin allies, on an expedition against the Haudenosaunee. Around Tadoussac the Innu fought as allies of New France and suffered Haudenosaunee raids during the seventeenth-century wars. Innu oral history recalls that the site of Quebec City, which they called Uepishtikueiau, was settled by the French with Innu permission, and that relations later soured: in one account the French made the Innu dependent through trade and then displaced them, in another open conflict drove them away. The Innu also had conflicts at times with the Inuit, the Mi'kmaq and the Abenaki.

The Innu of Labrador and the Quebec North Shore never ceded their land by treaty. From the early twentieth century, as forestry and mining spread, governments and churches pressed them to settle in permanent villages. The loss of hunting life brought deep social harm, including high rates of addiction and suicide; in 1999 Survival International described the Innu of Labrador as suffering the world's highest suicide rate. At their own request, the island community of Davis Inlet was moved to a new mainland site, Natuashish. Large hydroelectric projects flooded traditional hunting grounds on the Upper Churchill in the 1960s.

The Labrador Innu founded the Naskapi Montagnais Innu Association in 1976, renamed the Innu Nation in 1990, which negotiates land claims and self-government. The Naskapi signed the Northeastern Quebec Agreement in 1978, and in 2008 the Labrador Innu agreed the Tshash Petapen ("New Dawn") agreement with Newfoundland and Labrador over the Churchill River projects. Innu writers, filmmakers and musicians, such as the band Kashtin, have brought the language to wide audiences.

Our maps draw an approximate Innu territory on the Quebec-Labrador peninsula from 800 to 1715. Neighbours include the Cree to the west, the Beothuk across the strait in Newfoundland and, further north, the Thule and Inuit.