Environmental knowledge: the innu Nation request to Quebec to retract

News 16 March, 2018
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    Mike McKenzie

    QMI agency

    Friday, 16 march 2018 15:53

    UPDATE
    Friday, 16 march 2018 15:53

    Look at this article

    NITASSINAN – the Chiefs of the innu nation of Quebec are not satisfied with the excuses offered by the Quebec government for having put in doubt the environmental expertise of aboriginal people and ask the government Couillard to retract.

    “Quebec knows what he has to do if he truly wants to do things the right way: the government must adopt the United Nations Declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples in quebec law and to apply it in a concrete manner”, stated by press release the chief Mike McKenzie of the Conseil Innu Takuaikan Uashat mak Mani-utenam.

    The government Couillard is in trouble since the disclosure of a letter in which the sub-québec minister of the Environment, Patrick Beauchesne, seems to cast doubt on the relevance of indigenous knowledge on the Environment.

    “The federal government’s intention to systematically to take account of indigenous knowledge, in the same way that the science and the evidence could prove problematic in cases where the aboriginal knowledge and science is found to be contradictory”, had written Mr. Beauchesne in a correspondence to the canadian environmental assessment Agency.

    The quebec minister of aboriginal Affairs, Geoffrey Kelley, has since offered his apologies to the Assembly of First nations of Quebec, a gesture insufficient in the eyes of the Chiefs of the innu nation.

    “Ask TransCanada, with its proposed Energy East, the project promoters uranium, or oil on Anticosti island if it is a good idea to ignore the lack of consent of the First Nations”, for his part, said the leader Rodrigue Wapistan of the First Nation of Nutashkuan.