The SQ has dismantled an Innu blockade on the access road to the SM-3 work site. The raid occurred just hours after Innu went to the polls to vote on a compensation agreement for the SM-3 hydro-project.
The Innu of Mani-Utenam split down the middle in the referendum, with 53 per cent voting in favour of the agreement and 47 per cent against. The vote showed a sharp division between the two communities which form Mani-Utenam. Members of Uashat voted 70 per cent in favour of the agreement, while Maliotenam was two-thirds against.
The division reflects deep ideological and political differences between the two communities, which each have about 1,000 residents and lie at the mouth of the Moisie River. Maliotenam was created by the exodus of Innu from Sept-Iles in the 1950s. Some Innu refused to follow this movement and stayed in the original community on the boundary of Sept-Iles, which took the name of Uashat. Both communities are ruled by the same band council, located at Uashat.
The two communities held a referendum in Oct. 1992 to split into two separate bands. Maliotenam voted 56 per cent in favour of this idea, but the Band Council refused to implement the proposal.
For this reason, many Innu in Maliotenam say the vote on the SM-3 agreement is invalid. “If Maliotenam had achieved separation, we would have won the vote,” said Sylvestre Rock, a member of the traditionalist Coalition For Nitassinan, which opposes the SM-3 project. “The chief didn’t have the authority to negotiate outside his territory [Uashat].”
Rock said the coalition plans to contest the referendum. Mani-Utenam Chief Elie-Jacques Jourdain didn’t return The Nation’s calls.
The SM-3 project would involve the diversion of two of the Moisie River’s main tributaries into the nearby Sainte-Marguerite River. The chief spokesman of the Coalition For Nitassinan, Gilbert Pilot, was one of the 15 people arrested at the blockade on the SM-3 access road.
