Mind 75yards of the clinic; at least we would have access to a phone. He could call for
emergency help if he needed it, or see the nurse who came each week. No, said
Thomas, he wanted to be in the camp.
When we got to the camp, everyone else was away. I asked Thomas again if he
would like to go to the reserve, at least to find other members of his family. ‘No,’
he said. ‘Better finish here.’ He went to his family’s tent and sat down at its entrance.
He was tired and weak. I made a fire for him and put a kettle on to boil. I fetched
a few pieces of dry meat so that he could eat whenever he was hungry. He sat very
still, looking around, not saying much.
As the fire blazed up and the kettle began to steam, Thomas said: ‘See the
horses.’ I looked up and saw that the family’s horses were all standing close to the
little group of tents. They had their heads low to the ground and seemed to be
staring at us. I was astonished: the horses always kept their distance from the camp,
moving far into the forest, doing their best not to be caught and ridden or loaded
with packs. Every morning they had to be trailed into the woods and, often with
some difficulty, herded back to the tents, where they could be tethered for use.
Now they stood there, close, unmoving.
‘Horses they know,’ he said. ‘In my mind.’
I waited for a while, making sure Thomas got his tea and was comfortable. The
horses stayed there, watching. Thomas died a few weeks later.
3
In 1988, during the filming of Hunters and Bombers, we interviewed Mary Adele
Andrew, the mother of Alex Andrew, my Innu guide and interpreter. She was a
large, energetic woman who had brought up a big family as a single parent – her
husband had died when the children were still young. She had a strong inner
warmth, a generosity of spirit that insisted anyone who came to her house must sit
and eat whatever she happened to be cooking. I had been with her at a summer
camp, and I knew how much she loved to be far away from the settlement, out on
the land. I knew she would have a great deal to say about what had happened to
her family, and to all the Innu she knew, as a result of having spent so much time
stuck in Sheshashiu.
Mary Adele sat at her kitchen table and talked to Alex. She spoke slowly, care-
fully, with great force. ‘These houses were built to trap us,’ she said. ‘They told us,
“Stay here, you’ll get a house.” But it was a trick to get our children to go to school
and to make sure we stayed in one place. It was a lie, so we wouldn’t see our land
being destroyed. They hoped we wouldn’t say anything. They said when our chil-
dren leave school, they’ll get good jobs. But nothing happened.’
Instead, the people had lost their real wealth, their real homes. Their land had
been taken. The Church and the school, the priests and the government, had
joined forces to do this. In one of our interviews, Elisabeth Penashue told us: ‘In
the old days we used to revere the priests. They were powerful and said, “Don’t go