Canadian Press – Innu Nation of Labrador has filed a lawsuit against Hydro-Quebec seeking $4 billion in compensation for the ecological and cultural damage caused by the damming of the upper Churchill River in the early 1970s. They call the Churchill River’s large watershed Nitassinan. The river itself is called Mishtashipu. The Innu never ceded their land to European settlers and no treaties were signed, lawyer Nancy Kleer said. “They have Aboriginal title to this land,” Kleer said, noting that a formal land claim process started in the 1990s.

Senior Innu leaders said Tuesday the provincially owned utility illegally took land from the Indigenous group without consultation in the late 1960s as construction started on the Churchill Falls hydroelectric project in central Labrador. “Hydro-Quebec has made billions of dollars from that contract, (but) it has not paid us a single penny for the damage to our land or damage to our lives, and to our people,” Grand Chief Etienne Rich told a news conference in St. John’s. “We are extremely disappointed in Hydro-Quebec’s refusal to take responsibility for what they have done to our people and our land.

The massive hydroelectric project led to the creation of the Smallwood Reservoir, which flooded 6,500 square kilometres of traditional Innu territory, destroying fishing and hunting grounds, caribou habitat and ancestral graves, Rich said. The deal to build the Churchill Falls hydroelectric project was signed between Newfoundland and Quebec in 1969, and the project was completed in 1974. As well, Kleer said officials from Hydro-Quebec have for decades refused to negotiate any kind of settlement with the Innu. She said the $4 billion claim is based on calculations suggesting Hydro-Quebec has earned $80 billion in profit from the project, with another $70 billion expected by the time the power contract with Newfoundland and Labrador expires in 2041.