Amnesty International said in a report this week that climate change has affected and is threatening the culture and way of life of the Innu people of the Pessamit community in Quebec.
“In the short term, all of Quebec and Canada will pay the price. However, the ancestral Aboriginal know-how is a key tool in the fight against climate change. We have a duty to listen and learn,” according to the report.
Members of the Innu nation noticed about 20 years ago that the banks of its territorial waters were eroding. That erosion, Amnesty said, was compounded by an “increase in temperature, milder winters and the multiplication of freezing and thawing periods.”
In addition, Amnesty said, 13 hydroelectric power plants and 16 Hydro-Quebec dams have been built on the territory since the 1950s “without free, prior and informed consent, without even the appearance of consultation.”
Other issues that Native peoples in Canada face include industrial logging of millions of acres of Canada’s boreal forests. Jennifer Skene of the Natural Resources Defense Council says much of the boreal forests are “irreplaceable, uniquely carbon-rich primary forests.”
“And every time new roads are created to serve the forest industry,” Amnesty said, “non-native hunters and tourists take them over... [which is] an additional threat to traditional Innu activities.” The rights group says the Canadian and local governments issue “permits for logging and tourism, without regard for the Innu.”
“History cannot be rewritten,” Amnesty said, “We can also do things differently today... by ensuring that the free, prior and informed consent of the whole community is obtained.”
