A long-time land claims negotiator with the Innu Nation says talk of reconciliation makes him want to “throw up.”
Peter Penashue has been involved with land claims talks with the federal and provincial governments for many years, and there’s no immediate end in sight.
The talks themselves have dragged on for more than three decades, and Penashue says Canada and the province of Newfoundland and Labrador are in “no rush” to settle the process.
He believes it’s part of a larger strategy to wear the Innu Nation down, and some of the issues being brought forward, like how Innu will be able to identify themselves while hunting or fishing on the land are “silly.”
Add to that the fact that federal Rate Mitigation will result in the loss of $1 billion from the Innu’s Muskrat Falls Impact Benefits Agreement over the next 50 years.
(Muskrat Falls file photo, August 2019, courtesy Nalcor.)
He says the concept of reconciliation rings hollow.
“I just throw up when I hear that word ‘reconciliation'” says Penashue, “’cause it doesn’t mean anything to governments…they just repeatedly use it to make themselves happy and make other people feel good about the relationship with Indigenous people.” He says “there’s nothing good and sensible happening…on the reconciliation front. It’s all words—nothing more.”
