PAM FRAMPTON: NL's PC government on shaky ground over Innu dispute

Archaeologists affirm Innu were in NL long before the 1700s, but PC government's dispute over timeline seems to be rewriting history

At a time when the Canadian government has proclaimed its commitment to reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples, the Newfoundland and Labrador government seems intent on going backwards. On June 21, an exhibition telling the story of millennia of Innu culture set to open in Labrador for National Indigenous Peoples Day was cancelled by the Innu Nation when organizers said they had been told by provincial government representatives that the timeline of their presence in Newfoundland and Labrador could not go back more than 300 years. Where had this 300-year-old narrative come from?

And, most importantly, why was it being asserted? What do archaeologists have to say? As recently as the 57th annual meeting of the Canadian Archaeology Association in St. John’s in 2025, archaeologists were affirming that the Innu were here long before the 1700s.

Marianne Stopp, an archeologist specializing in the history and prehistory of Labrador, presented a paper at that conference that refutes the government’s fantastical claim that the Innu only sprang into existence in Labrador once European settlers caught sight of them. “Early cartography, reportage, and correspondence reveal broad Innu occupation of eastern Quebec and Labrador, and extensive geographic knowledge and overland travel,” Stopp wrote in a paper titled “Considering Innu Presence in Southern Labrador, Canada.” “These records are bridging evidence for the 1500-1700 time frame during which Innu are said to be absent.

They are, further, evidence that links early historic Innu with precontact ancestors.” Stopp suggests the province’s assertion that the Innu have only been here for 300 years could be motivated by political and legal considerations, and those were my thoughts exactly when the controversy erupted. “Is, for instance, the post-contact date asserted for Innu arrival strategic with respect to ongoing land claims negotiations?”

Stopp asks. That’s a very good question. It certainly sounds like the government was given legal advice to not formally acknowledge the presence of the Innu pre-1700 in order to bolster its claim on land or resources further down the road.

Innu cultural guardian ‘insulted’ by province’s assertion On June 25, APTN News reporter Jesse Staniforth laid out the sequence of events. Staniforth wrote that Innu cultural guardian Jodie Ashini had been down to the wire in preparations for the exhibit Innu Pakassiun, or “Innu Tools for Survival,” when she got a call from officials from the provincial art gallery who told her the government did not approve of the Innu timeline as it was about to be presented. “To me, it was the most insulting thing I think I’ve ever heard,” Ashini told APTN.

“To have to think about all these people that I talked to over the years. I refused at that point to go back to the Innu Elders and tell them that everything you know is wrong.” I can’t imagine being told that the very foundations of what you know about your own culture are hollow; how shocking and unsettling that must be, like the ground dropping out from underneath you.

“They’re pushing us back,” Ashini told The Independent newspaper. “It’s like the time of settlement and pushing us down and keeping us contained. They don’t want our story.

It’s a way of trying to hold us in place rather than let us grow.” In the wake of the cancelled exhibit, members of the Innu Nation said they felt like their very history had been cancelled, and there were protests against the government’s directive. Wakeham ‘deeply regrets’ events — but no explanation why it happened Premier Tony Wakeham and Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation Minister Lela Evans met with the Innu on June 22 and 23, and in a letter to Innu Nation Grand Chief Simon Pokue dated June 23, Wakeham apologized, saying he “deeply regret the events that produced the controversy.”

But what his letter does not establish is why the provincial government is sticking to this 300-year-old fiction in the first place. The letter is strangely worded, with Wakeham saying that he will “encourage free Indigenous cultural expression at statutory institutions publicly displaying Indigenous culture ... without editing,” but that “Indigenous freedom of expression includes the rights of other Indigenous people to comment on Indigenous exhibits.” Is the premier suggesting other Indigenous groups dispute the Innu timeline?

Who established this 300-year timeline in the first place, and why is it being resurrected now? Wakeham and his government have a lot of explaining to do, and the Innu Nation deserves accountability and transparency. You can’t rewrite history and not be prepared for hard questions.

Pam Frampton lives in St. John’s. Email pamelajframpton@gmail.com | X: @Pam_Frampton | Bluesky: @pamframpton.bsky.social