 There's a land of boundless beauty where the untamed rivers run and majestic snow-capped mountains rise to meet the morning sun. My name is Jim Learning. I'm a part of the Nunasiyevut Community Council and no, I'm a member of Community Council and what I have to say is very, I'm forced me very quick. I have to get home, look after dogs. For me, it's about the environment and the indignation around us as a people being ignored, being downstream from this miserable project, meaning that the dam can break and come down the water and come down and see us real quick and the food will be poisoned over time. We have thousands of years food supply, secure food supply and fish and seals and that will be impacted by the doubling of the mesmerismal mercury but those are all facts. I think you know that. My emotional feeling around is, I think should be reported, is that it's terrible to have somebody do this to you. You have no idea how your dignity suffers and I suffer from not being treated fairly. I really do it. That's a bad thing for me and not only that the mesmerismal mercury is dangerous for our future. If you think abrasion is slowing behind and can't quite keep up, go ahead. Load in the neurotoxins and slow them down even more and we know dam is they're not clean so I don't have to go into that. I'll stay with stay with the emotional stuff and our fight of course is through the United Nations, UNDRIP and GADU that gives us some hope of dignity in this process which we badly, badly need and I can't imagine a democracy your size and with your intensity over just casting that off and say well there's an expendable population we can be a part of that, sure why not. Our government can do that or whatever that is our administration, we're the government, I turn that around and so that's my beef with this and not very well put here today unfortunately I've got campaigning I kind of got that on my mind as well so anyway that that's my piece for this is we need dignity we need respect and we demand respect and we hope for dignity and you have to respect that to give us the dignity we're losing thank you very much. Okay 60% of wildlife around the globe is at risk because of fossil fuel burning underground mining and all other manner of human population greed. It affects us locally with mining in Boise Bay because it threatens the caribou herd population which for decades we have depended on for subsistence because of the high cost of living in northern communities. Now it threatens our fish because of the construction of all technology hydrodams. I would like to share with you my statement my fellow ex-con land protector marjorie flowers was going to read at the muskrat inquiry but I'm assuming the inquiry got wind of it and wouldn't let her bring any paper into the inquiry. First of all this is not reconciliation like liberal leader and Canada's Prime Minister Trudeau promised. Trudeau has turned this country into a militarized state after seeing the wet to wet nation being arrested for defending their territorial homeland. The wet to wetten our leaders and I'm so proud and honored to be in the company of them as we are defending our waterways culture and the environment. I witnessed for the first time in my 48 years Labradorians working together whether Inuit Inuit or settler. We are defending our right to live as we are. We shouldn't be criminalized or sent to prison. We are protecting our own lives ensuring our families are safe from this hydrodam that destroys and adds to environmental destruction. What I demand to know as is my right as a tax-paying Inuit woman of this province as a native of this land at the end of this inquiry will those individuals like Danny Williams who first proposed this project Kathy Dunderdale who followed through the project and sought federal funding to proceed Stan Marshall his predecessor and successor Dwight Ball when he was appointed the Aboriginal representative. Now core executive directors be held accountable and be reprimanded for what they have done and continue to do all for a lousy buck. Will there be an independent study on the North Spur? Sorry my phone is gone off. Will the vegetation be cleared? I found out one thing about myself after being arrested and incarcerated at HMP throughout that terrible ordeal. I am not a puppet. I choose every day not to allow this colonial oppressive state to dictate dictate my actions. I have to choose every day because we are still defending our way of life in provincial and supreme court for almost three years now. After hearing about the Brazil dam break where 166 lives were lost and 147 missing only fills me with a continued drive to fight. I choose to do my best just like everyone here to protect those I love so I can't give up until there's an independent study on the North Spur and the vegetation is cleared. Despite being diagnosed with PTSD from being imprisoned even after seizures for the first time in my life because my brain doesn't want to believe that people can be that cruel even after all the panic attacks after all the harassment by cops and others who want to keep control I will always choose to fight. I'm not a criminal even the criminals in HMP knew that. I want real justice at the end of this inquiry. I want those who sent us to prison for trying to protect our own lives from muskrat sent to prison themselves. I want an independent study on the North Spur I want the vegetation cleared but I don't get what I want so I have to choose to fight every day to protect those I love. Why am I being criminalized for exercising my right to peaceful protest and on my homeland? Twice now I had the opportunity to see a psychiatrist but miss both because of short notice to help with my PTSD. I also had the chance to take sick leave but I couldn't afford it because of the high cost of living this project has caused. Firstly I am tired of NELCOR trying to silence us. I'd like answers to these four questions through this inquiry. One, will those individuals I mentioned earlier be reprimanded? Two, will there be an independent study on the North Spur and be publicly published? Three, will the vegetation that can cause methylmercury in the river be cleared? And four, why am I being criminalized for defending my way of life and those I love? So I wanted to put a personal human story on this conference today and I hope you heard me. Thank you. I am of inuit descent. My family's been here in this area for almost 200 years. I wanted to do this. I just wanted to speak with you because we have been here in our area thinking we're all alone but finding out that we're not. We have many people like you outside of this area. I'm sorry. Who is on our side and who will help us also. We've been trodden on here by our own government. Our own laws and we need other people to stand up and help us get through this. We're fighting for our land, for our rights. We have like I said our own government who is against us and using our law against us to incarcerate us for standing up to try to preserve our land, our way of life, our culture. I was born on the bank of this river, the Grand River the one they're polluting in a little tiny clinic almost 58 years ago now. My mother was born across the river from from this area where we live in a place called Traveston. Her grandfather actually purchased a parcel of land there and it's been in our family since although nobody lives there there is a small cemetery there and we're afraid when the stand breaks it'll take out that little cemetery. I'm also concerned too with the clear cutting not only for the methamercary but for the the corridor that's going to lead down through to the states for the hydroelectric project I get I guess to get the electricity down to you. They clear the land. They use herbicides. It pollutes. It like in our area we're very sandy and it would just seep into the sand and get into the brown water. It'll affect animals, birds, insects. It will come your way too. That'll go through to your home through your properties, through your places you love. I'm sorry and there's it seems there's nothing we can do that would change the minds of these people who think they're doing wonderful things by these hydroelectric projects. They are neither clean nor green nor needed. I'm just glad you fellas are here to help out and I know there's more people. I'm glad you're on our side and I appreciate and thank you for even being here today to listen. Thank you so much. Good day. My name is Elder Davis. I'm a Labradorian. I was born in this community and I something like Peggy I grew up with the river in my backyard basically. My brother lives in the house that I spent most of my early years in and that house had to be moved at one point because the river was starting to get a little eroded and closer to his house it had to be moved. I guess that's just a small indication of what would possibly happen if the north spur fails which is a natural but slightly upgraded by the contractors, Nalcor contractors to what they consider a fortified natural dam. We don't think and the quick play experts in Europe don't think it'll work either and we certainly don't trust Nalcor and we have our reasons. I long as Roberta was involved with the Joint Provincial Federal Environmental Assessment it took a lot of research a lot of time and a lot of items came up and I couldn't hardly believe when I began that an organization like Nalcor which is supposed to be working for the people would be blatant liars. They came up with their conclusions that favored them in several aspects of wildlife damage to the land the waters everything seemed so easily done and easily justified by Nalcor. A good example and I've used it a lot of times Atlantic salmon is a prized fish for sportsmen and Atlantic salmon do send muskrat falls. Not huge numbers but enough that that is a stock of salmon that will if they continue on and that dam works long enough will go extinct. They came up with several items that in their attempt to convince people that salmon don't go up there. There's at least three elaborate items that they did with involving a lot of research testing a radio tracking of salmon in their minds that we would be convinced that salmon don't go up this river. Of course a lot of local people who had spent time up there know that that's quite a horse pucky they know the salmon have ascended that falls and Nalcor just basically invented these reasons and tried to convince people not very successfully that these salmon do not go up there. It would have been a hurdle for them if people had been told the truth that salmon do go up there because there are Atlantic sports fishing communities organizations volunteer groups and so on that strive to keep these salmon populations up because it's a viable sports fishery it's great for them for the people that travel from far away and businesses make a lot of money out of this. That's one example. We have numerous examples. You're all aware that songbirds are right now going to a horrific decline in population and species and there's one place just a few kilometers 10 miles maybe upstream from the muskrat falls dam site and it's a I guess you call it a bird rookery or raising and breeding of at least three species of sparrows concentrated in one spot along with several other songbirds and waterfowl and in the winter there are pteromagin snow pteromagin of an Arctic species more or less. Canada geese stay there in late summer when they're molting. That is one of only two areas along this river which is several hundred miles long where those songbirds congregated for centuries probably nobody knows. That's underwater now. No birds can spawn or breed there anymore and it's just happened and nobody seems to care especially the promoters of this dam. They don't even look at this. It's just another example like there was a maybe there are a few survivors of a relatively rare woodlands caribou population that centered more or less around this area the red wine mountains woodland caribou. Less numbers I heard that had some plausibility with maybe 22 animals and we told Alcor if they continue with this project if they actually start the project and continue with it that herd will go extinct. I don't know if there is a single animal alive there now. There may be if they've escaped all the noise and the construction laying of cables and whatever goes with a hydro project including significant damming. I don't know if any survived if they have they're the last of that herd I can guarantee. These are examples I could go on a long time but there are other people want to talk and I just I hope you realize how how affects the people here that to see these species die out our land is destroyed. I've traveled that river from Tertiary Falls to Goose Bay eight times and it's always a pleasure to be on the river and if this dam is built and the next one they they talk about that Gull Island is done it won't even be a river it'll be three stinking industrial reservoirs the river will have gone you probably didn't know that there actually was a significant falls on this river one point it's called the Grant Falls three times higher than Niagara Falls it's a trickle now and sometimes it runs practically dry it's that's an example of the destruction they have done to make few politicians and construction people and their bodies rich everybody else suffers I think I've had enough to say thank you Hi my name is Marjorie Flowers can you hear me okay I'm an Inuit woman from Brigilette in Donatiawood I moved here to the Upper Lake Melville region of Labrador in 2003. Brigilette is a predominantly Inuit community on the coast that's further out the inlet from Goose Bay about 120 air kilometers and the population where I grew up and all my relatives who still live there friends and family still depend on the the fish the migratory salmon the trout smelts shellfish migrating birds like the geese and the ducks that was that my friends just talked about I suffer from knowing that the environment is so tragically raped and destroyed here right in our backyard in our home but more importantly is I I'm seeing the destruction the blatant and brazen destruction of my food source today just today because it's spring hunting time and the seals the seal of the spring seal hunt is on I'm not talking about the industrial seal hunt I'm talking about subsistence seal hunting for food today my nephew is out on the ice today to bring me back a meal of seal meat because it's what we do what we've done for hundreds of years in the spring we go up on that bay or out on the bay from here and we hunt the seals and we come back and we cut it up and we fry it and we eat it and the seal next to humans in this area is the highest animal in the food chain now I I know generally how the the accumulation of methylmercury happens you know like the lower down at the bottom where this like smaller plankton and smaller organisms live in the ocean or in the river in the in the tarrington basin from where we are now uh the small levels of methylmercury but as as the higher levels to have bigger animals to fish eat there's a bigger and bigger accumulation until it reaches when it reaches the seals what I eat what my family eat but my friends and community depend on when they eat those seals there is now there will be a a dangerous amount of methylmercury in those seals and right now our government our provincial government is telling me and telling us here in this group and telling Labrador and telling Inuit people and aboriginal people indigenous people here in this land that they they will not clear that reservoir they will not take the the soil and the and the vegetation out of that uh because originally because they said it was too much money it will cost too much although they've already gone uh about eight billion dollars over budget they can't take the the the topsoil off to prevent that development and accumulation of methylmercury which is like beyond comprehension to me and so many other people why they would neglect to do that why they would choose not to do that I don't don't think so much of it as neglect I think it's outright decision-making around power and greed like like Beatrice talked about it's not it's not that they don't know is that they don't care they don't care about us and I need if anything I want to get that message out to you today that we are a small group of people here that what you see in this room and a few more have decided not to be the passive group of people anymore and I mean there's a there's hundreds of people now in this area that have just now accepted because the government kept moving forward Nelcor kept spending money the federal government kept sending down billions of dollars you know so what we were up against this massive massive industrial undertaking that we we had so little power over all we can say all we can do is protest at the gate and that's what we were doing we were very peacefully protesting to say with our signs and banners and lab reflects to say we we want you to clear the reservoir please just tell us that you'll clear the reservoir or do something to mitigate this problem never done ignored completely by the premier ignored completely by our mha's ignored completely by aboriginal governments so we we're left to our own devices to stand up and and to speak and to share the message in some manner it's so frustrating it just it leaves me in a place of utter frustration when I start to talk about it because we have beaten our heads against a brick wall with our own leaders here in this land and people know people know what's going on but for whatever reason there's people bought off there's people paid this amount of money and there's division amongst the groups purposely perpetrated by our own government so that to silence us and to and to remove us from standing up for what is right and this is right what we're doing is right and we need your help to to to spread this message this this dam is wrong this dam is environmentally unsound this is not a green project this is devastating our culture this is devastating our land this is devastating my food chain and I want to absolutely get that message out to you please tell three people when you leave there today when you leave that place today go and tell three people and they hopefully will tell three more people because what you're buying and power coming down into the united states is is what I find equivalent to the blood diamonds in Africa so that's all I have to say thank you for listening hi my name is Amy Norman I'm a in a woman born and raised here in Happy Valley Goose Bay I'm my family's from Northwest River Nain in Nunatia and also Newfoundland you know my fellow land protectors have talked to you a lot about some of the most important issues with this project such as the methylmercury contamination and how it affects our food webs and our culture such as the north spur and its instability and how you know we're fearing for our lives because the structural stability of this mega dam hasn't been you know properly looked at you know all these really big scary things one thing that I want to talk to you guys about is a bit more I guess it feels a bit more abstract so I'm going to talk to you about the UNDRIP which is the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples so if you're not aware this is an an international instrument that was adopted by the United Nations in 2007 to enshrine the rights that constitute the minimum standards for the survival dignity and well-being of the indigenous peoples of the world and I will say now that you know most of our group most of us are indigenous you know there's a large proportion of us that are Inuit southern Inuit or Métis and Inuit we also have many settler allies so you know our fight and our resistance to this project it has to be I think you can't ignore indigenous sovereignty and indigenous rights when you're discussing this project in addition to all the other you know kind of abuses of power that come with this project so I'm back to UNDRIP it protects the collective rights that may not be addressed in other human rights charters that emphasize individual rights and it also safeguards the individual rights of indigenous peoples so it's basically this big 46 it's a it's a big document with 46 different articles that outline the rights of indigenous peoples it was adopted by 144 countries with 11 countries abstaining and four countries voting against it and the four countries that voted against it were Canada the US New Zealand and Australia so if you think about those four countries and what they have in common it's settler colonialism you know the UN actually said themselves Australia New Zealand Canada and US these share a very similar colonial history and as a result have common concerns each nation argued that the level of autonomy recognized for indigenous peoples in UNDRIP was problematic and would undermine the sovereignty of their own states particularly in the context of land disputes and natural resource extraction so you know you have these four superpowers basically being the only ones in the world opposing the rights of indigenous peoples because they're worried about resource extraction so what i'm going to do is i'm going to quickly read a couple of the articles that are outlined in UNDRIP and talk about how muskrat falls violates these articles and then i'm going to tell you what we've kind of been doing on the international side trying to get the united nations more involved with this so article eight indigenous peoples and individuals have the right not to be subjected to forced assimilation or destruction of their culture i think this is a really important point when you're considering methylmercury and methylmercury contamination caused by the the vegetation in the reservoir of the dam because our governments have essentially decided to not do anything about it they are choosing to contaminate our food webs that's our traditional foods that is our link to our culture i don't think the the importance of those food systems cannot be overstated you know who we are as Inuit people you know really like we're seal people that's who we are that's who we've been for millennia you know we rely on seal for food and for clothing and for warmth you know the oil that's who we've always been and suddenly you know that's being threatened so that's article eight um we're gonna scroll down to article 19 states that states shall conduct and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free prior and informed consent before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them this idea of free prior informed consent also comes back um in article anyway the number is not important basically free prior and informed consent um i'm sure most of you probably understand the concept but it's the idea that every in like every indigenous group has to you know consent to anything happening on their land um and it has to be given freely without you know bribes it has to be done before anything happens so prior and informed you have to have the full picture and when we're talking about muskrat falls free prior and informed consent doesn't exist because we have three different indigenous groups in this area we have the innu we have the inuit of of new nazi avut and then we have the southern inuit and the matey of new two avut when the provincial government was first um you know starting with this project they only talked to the innu they kind of took this really hard line stance being like no it's just their land it's only them they talked to them they had a you know a benefits agreement signed um and they ignored the inuit and the southern inuit they basically kind of drew this line on a map and said this is the only tiny little area that's going to be affected by this project the reality is um what is you know traditional inuit territory is just downstream from this river right so all of the methylmercury contamination coming up here from the dam flows down onto our lands so it's not like we're not affected um you know it's still coming onto our lands but because the project itself is a bit upstream they decided not to consult um so we never gave free prior and informed consent and the big the other big um article number i'm going to mention is article 32 indigenous peoples have the right to determine and develop priorities and strategies for the development or use of their lands or territories and other resources um yeah so i i mean there's so many things wrong with this project i could literally sit here and talk to you for hours about it um but one thing we've done so on our end in terms of the united nations kind of side of things when the resistance to the project was kind of like at this big boiling point in 2016 there were a group of us who got together and we sat down with the united nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples we went line by line looking at every single article and we wrote out exactly how muskrat falls violated each single article we you know it was this massive like 50 page document um we submitted it to the un um but you know the the people the group of us that were writing this you know we're all you know young women a lot of us were just like still in university we don't really have an understanding of how these things work in terms of how to petition the united nations um you know such a big entity so that didn't really go anywhere we never heard a response back um flash forward to just you know a couple weeks ago actually we submitted um another document and this time we had some help from some great allies who kind of have done this thing before um so we knew what to be writing and how to submit it and we knew the kind of pathway to the united nations a little bit better so this time we were um giving submissions to uh the united nations special rapport tour on toxins because he's going to be coming up to canada to make a visit um and he was I guess opening for submissions to see exactly how uh indigenous peoples in canada are affected by toxins so we you know wrote up a big article about methyl mercury because that's our kind of focus on the toxin side of things um and I think that's available online and we can you know make sure you guys have the links if you're interested but um yeah I I don't know I'm not sure else I'm gonna go with it I'm gonna pass it off to someone else but um it oh no I do have one more point sorry I just remembered my point um one big takeaway that I want you guys in your group to have in particular uh is thinking about like the greenwashing of hydroelectricity because a lot of politicians um and in particular like politicians on the left or like you know these like liberal types they tend to champion um hydroelectricity as this wonderful green you know resource and it's going to save us and I I really want you to take what we're saying and see how destructive it is to us to our homes to our way of life to our culture see that destruction and know the truth about hydroelectricity and you know do what you can to to make sure your part of the world isn't complicit in you know the destruction of our humanity right like it's it's important to stand up for you know marginalized peoples or however you want to word it but I think as long as you can kind of see through the like neoliberal greenwashing of hydroelectricity and think about the people who we were actively harming when you are championing this green energy so thanks um I first I guess I want to say is thank you guys for um listening to everything we have to say and another thing is from what I understand you are um concerned about what what's going to happen to your environment when all of this clear cutting or whatever it is that has to happen in order for uh the the power to get to your part of the world I would like to invite everyone of you to come to Labrador and see how beautiful it is here um there was a lot of devastation a lot of damage done over the years and I think I'm not really sure what it's like in your part of the world but I'm sure you know you're going to see some devastation once this starts I don't think it's worth the electricity that may you may receive or the next state may receive there anyway my name is Linda Sander McLean I live in the flood zone and I'm very emotional about this I have a grandson that looks with me and a daughter and my of course my husband and we love to fish we love to hunt we love wild food and my fear is that one day my my grandson he's only two that he won't get that opportunity to learn how to set a net how to clean fish it even could eat the fish because it will be so poisonous um in the upper Churchill and Churchill Falls um which is the other huge project that's about 40 50 years old now um if you like I said if you ever come to Labrador go to a place called Escar they have these huge fish that you can catch and um they're contaminated there's signs posted everywhere warning people not to eat the fish because they're so contaminated with the methylmercury and that's my big concern that once this horrible project gets under once it's basically full blown that it will contaminate and poison the fish and we will see signs everywhere to say caution and another thing is um we don't have a lot of faith in what the government says our government says we don't have a lot of faith in what the engineers says in the now core project and the thing is is that um I do believe that that damn will give way because of the click plate quick clay like Roberta had mentioned earlier and it will kill us it will flood our properties it will destroy our homes there's a small community not far from us now that has already been flooded even before this project is finished and uh people have lost homes because of the greed of nail court it's all I can think of it as and um I see that uh something that's going to be happening that's our future I I see it I I have no doubt in it so if you guys are concerned about what's happening in our part of the world or what may happen in your part of the world I welcome you to come to Labrador you can live you can come and stay in my home if you want to come and you want to check it out yourself just to see the damage that that this huge project is created and continues to damage our environment um it's it's horrible and I I can't think of any other word to think or say but um like the other people in our group had mentioned that um our government has fallen down on caring for all of the people of this province and I am so disheartened with the uncon concerning and the negative attitudes that they have towards us I'm a social worker and the most the the children on my caseload are Innu and Inuit and they come from devastating homes where there's a lot of um drug and alcohol abuse and a lot of those families are employed by this project. So just because there's a lot of money that's flowing due to this project there's a lot it's not just the methylmercury not just the fare of the damage of the dam but also the loss of culture families in lives and all there's nothing good about this project but I thank you guys for listening.