By Heidi Atter, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Independent
November 4, 2025
Innu rights advocates are calling for a public apology and a more appropriate funding offer from Hydro-Québec after a ratification vote on a proposed ‘reconciliation agreement’ between Innu Nation and Hydro-Québec failed on Monday.
Jerome Jack, son of late Innu leader Bart Jack, said he’s proud of the ratification process results. “I’m looking forward to Hydro-Québec coming back again to really reconcile this time, so that they can see how Innu are banding together to request and demand a formal apology,” he told The Independent. “Hydro-Québec failed to come to the community and acknowledge the people.”
In June Hydro-Québec announced a proposed deal between the public utility and Innu Nation, the organization that advocates and negotiates on behalf of Innu rights-holders in Sheshatshiu and Natuashish.
The proposed agreement represented Hydro-Québec’s effort to settle out of court a legal challenge brought against it by Innu Nation related to the construction, operation and maintenance of the Churchill Falls Hydroelectric Complex, and to establish a new relationship between the parties.
The agreement proposed to pay Innu $87 million over 16 years and a three per cent Churchill Falls dividend. CBC News reportedthat from the signing of the contract in 1969 to 2019, Hydro-Québec made profits of close to $28 billion, compared to $2 billion for Newfoundland and Labrador. The proposed $87 million for Innu represented a 0.31 per cent share of Hydro-Québec’s profits from that 50-year period.
The vote failed on Monday, with less than half of Innu in Sheshatshiu voting, so the threshold to ratify the agreement was not met.
Earlier this week Innu Nation negotiation committee member Peter Penashue told CBC the community of Sheshatshiu was about 10 votes short of the 50 per cent threshold. “The agreement is […] dead as far as I’m concerned,” he said Tuesday.
Penashue said he’s disappointed with the result, and isn’t sure if the door is open for further negotiations with the Quebec utility.
Meshakamau ‘meant so much to us’
The ratification failure was important to Jodie Ashini, as the Innu Cultural Guardian remembers sitting on her father’s lap at the age of seven, listening to him talk about finding old Innu bones in the dirt on the traditional grounds of Meshakamau—the area flooded by the Smallwood Reservoir.
“He really wanted to see what was left after the Smallwood Reservoir had receded, and he wanted to see the devastation that it caused, because Meshakamau was a very important place that Innu people—we’d used it for thousands of years,” she says of her father and late Innu leader, Daniel Ashini. “It was a gathering place of the Innu people from the north, from the east, from the south,” Ashini said. “It meant so much to us.”
Ashini says she looked up at her father and heard the pain in his voice as he described finding a skull at the site. “I remember hearing his voice crack, and I remember the pain in his voice,” she recalls. “There was a skull. An Innu grave had been washed away by the waters from the Smallwood Reservoir, and all that was left was the skull and some neck bones—maybe a little bit of a shoulder—and that was it. The rest had been washed away to the turbines of the hydro electric dam and [were] never to be seen again.”
Ashini says after that, she and her sister Jolene have been determined to walk in their father’s footsteps to continue his legacy of cultural preservation, political activism, and fighting for Innu rights.
In recent weeks, that meant sharing their views and explaining to people why they were personally rejecting the proposed reconciliation offer as it didn’t include enough funding, funding for a cultural centre on the reserve, or a public apology.
“Hydro-Québec would have got away without a public apology. They would have got away without contributing to some form of a place or somewhere that could hold information about Meshakamau for the youth—explain to them why we can’t go back there, explain to them why they can’t go visit their grandfather’s bones,” Ashini says. “If we were to accept this deal, they’d be able to sweep all that under a rug, and we would never see an apology.”
Ashini is hopeful, now that the ratification has failed, Hydro-Québec will take the matter more seriously and recognize the Innu of Labrador are owed more appropriate compensation, including funding for a culture centre and a public apology.
Innu Nation did not respond to The Independent’s requests for comment.
In a statement to The Independent, Hydro-Québec said it will engage with the Innu Nation to determine next steps and will remain “attentive to the needs and priorities expressed by the communities.”
Land defenders call for general election
Jack and others had been protesting Hydro-Quebec’s exploration work at Gull Island last summer before the reconciliation agreement went to a referendum. He hopes to see a formal apology from Hydro-Quebec on Innu lands.
On Thursday, Jack and others asked workers at the Innu Nation office in Sheshatshiu to leave and work from home in an effort to barricade the building. “We see the Innu Nation has failed to represent the Innu accordingly, failed big time,” he said Thursday. “So we are here today to demand our general election.”
Jack and others have been calling for a general election of elected Innu Nation board members since a July 3 meeting when the ratification agreement was first presented. On Thursday morning, Innu Nation members left the building and RCMP came to the scene to ensure the protest was peaceful and no property was damaged.
Jack said he was happy workers were leaving the building and respecting the protest, but that RCMP being called further shows Innu Nation isn’t listening to the people it represents. “This move shows Innu Nation doesn’t want any public opinion at all,” he said, adding some workers told him they were glad to leave for the day as they “don’t feel directed anywhere” and don’t “have any direction” from leaders.
Florence Milley, office administrator for Innu Nation, said calling RCMP when there is a situation at the office is a protocol to ensure the safety of the staff. “We don’t know the outcome of any protest. If it’s peaceful, it’s peaceful. But, you know, in the meantime, my job is to make sure that my staff is safe first, and get them out of the building,” Milley said. “I’m not going against [land defenders]. Whatever they feel is what they feel.”
Milley said a peaceful protest doesn’t need to bother the staff trying to do the work they are hired to do. She said it’s important people go after and express their frustration to the elected officials, not the staff. Milley said she would rather the elected officials finish their terms to next year, then a general election will be called as usual.
“They’re always picking on every leadership, it doesn’t matter who it is. We can be fighting the same battles every election,” Milley said. “We’ll see what happens, I guess.”
Leaning on culture, heritage key to rebuilding divides in communities: advocate
In Natuashish, a majority voted in favour, but recently-elected Mushuau Innu First Nation Chief Patricia Andrew posted publicly that she was voting against the agreement, while band councillors posted they were voting in favour.
Ashini hopes people can come together by reconnecting with their culture and who they are as Innu people. Innu have lost land, animals, and are losing their language and culture, but she has hope, she says.
“That’s what I fight for day in and day out. That’s what I’ve wanted since I was seven years old,” Ashini says. “We need to be able to make sure that our youth know where we came from, that we’ve been here for 9,000 years—the struggles that we have went through.”
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If people work together for the future, the social and economic health of the Innu could be strengthened, Ashini says. “When we work together, we are strong. And with this, I think we can become united again and get the best deal, the best apology, the best building,” Ashini explains. “There’s so many possibilities when we’re united as one front, as the Innu people of Labrador.”