The Innu were healthy, active, and attuned to their environment before the advent of mining near what was to become Schefferville in the late 1930’s. The author describes in this text the drastic changes that his community saw during the 1940’s while he was band leader and came to distrust the government. Sedentary lifestyle, pollution, changes in metabolism, destruction of their ancestral territories, disrespect of the caribou’s life-cycle and of the Innu people’s traditional knowledge are dealt with poignantly in this account of settlement, industrial modernity and its consequences.
