A Way of Life That Does Not Exist: Canada and the Extinguishment of the Innu

by Colin Samson

Based on extensive historical research and fieldwork in Labrador over many years, A Way of Life that Does not Exist brings to light the scale of the tragedies that have overtaken the Innu, giving rise to international human rights concerns. Colin Samson looks in detail at Innu relations with the Canadian state, developers, explorers, missionaries, educators, health-care professionals, and the justice system. Although the Innu have lost land and lives in the attempts to assimilate them, Samson demonstrates that many have also resisted the official state policy of "extinguishment" through both political channels and by maintaining a resilient belief in their distinctiveness and their attachment to the land.

388 pages, Hardcover

First published May 17, 2003

Reviews

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

A timely reminder that 1) colonialism is now as well as back then, and 2) that despite its claims to advocacy of human rights, Canada's First Nations are still the issue it needs to deal with. This book sits somewhere between ethnography, political analysis and history, and in being so draws on a rich set of conceptual and theoretical tools to explore the conditions of life of Labrador's Innu people. It is a book that should be consulted more widely but seem to exist only in one hardback edition, and is worth hunting down. Sadly, the story of the Innu is repeated in countless communities across the world.