NITINIKIAU INNUSI: I KEEP THIS LAND ALIVE

NITINIKIAU INNUSI: I KEEP THE LAND ALIVE

Awards

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Shortlisted for NL Reads and winner of the in-house vote.

Shortlisted for the BMO Winterset Award.

Shortlisted for the Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher.

Featured on two CBC Radio Ideas shows:

Massey Lectures 4 on Human Rights with Alex Neve: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/cbc-2025-massey-lectures-alex-neve-9.6974336

Ideas in the Afternoon with Dr. Kristina Fagan Bidwell: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/history-of-indigenous-writing-newfoundland-labrador-1.6749098

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Publisher’s overview

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Labrador Innu cultural and environmental activist Tshaukuesh Elizabeth Penashue is well-known both within and far beyond the Innu Nation. The recipient of a National Aboriginal Achievement Award and an honorary doctorate from Memorial University, she has been a subject of documentary films, books, and numerous articles. She led the Innu campaign against NATO’s low-level flying and bomb testing on Innu land during the 1980s and ’90s, and was a key respondent in a landmark legal case in which the judge held that the Innu had the “colour of right” to occupy the Canadian Forces base in Goose Bay, Labrador. Over the past twenty years she has led walks and canoe trips in nutshimit, “on the land,” to teach people about Innu culture and knowledge.

Nitinikiau Innusi: I Keep the Land Alive began as a diary written in Innu-aimun, in which Tshaukuesh recorded day-to-day experiences, court appearances, and interviews with reporters. Tshaukuesh has always had a strong sense of the importance of documenting what was happening to the Innu and their land. She also found keeping a diary therapeutic, and her writing evolved from brief notes into a detailed account of her own life and reflections on Innu land, culture, politics, and history.

Beautifully illustrated, this work contains numerous images by professional photographers and journalists as well as archival photographs and others from Tshaukuesh’s own collection.

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“Here is the diary of a living legend. It is also a diary for today, an invitation to follow the steps of our ancestors through a single Innu woman whose love for the land never falls apart even within the biggest struggle storms of our time.”

- Natasha Kanapé Fontaine, Innu poet and performer

“People are not separate from the land; rather people work either for or against the land, which makes Penashue's memoir and activism a touchstone text for land protection and Indigenous resistance.”

- Esme G Murdock, San Diego State University, Transmotion, 6(1) 2020: 303-306.

https://journals.kent.ac.uk/index.php/transmotion/article/view/892/1778

“Tshaukuesh’s diary is sad, funny, resolute, eloquent, and real. Anyone interested in Innu traditional life and the struggle of the Innu today will want to read about the life of an Innu woman who fights for her people and the land, and who never, ever gives up.“

- Julie Rak, Professor, Department of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta

“The book Nitinikiau Innusi: I keep the Land Alive, shows how one woman can make a difference. It shows how Mrs. Penashue protested against Low level flying and gives a first hand account on how it affected her people and the land. She talks of her love of the land and how much she loves it. She shows that being on the land was more healthy for people than it is these days. She shows that there was nothing in their hunting, fishing or gathering that ever caused damage or disease to a person, in fact she shows how the land helped people heal. This is a heart breaking but moving book to read for living in Labrador and helps to understand the Innu way of life.”

– Steph White, Them Days blog

https://themdays.wordpress.com/2019/06/

“Tshaukuesh (Elizabeth) Penashue’s book is a diary-based account of her efforts to preserve the way of life of her people, the Labrador Innu; it provides a vivid picture of their collective traditions while emphasizing her personal objectives for the work she has undertaken. The format of the book, developed with editor Dr. Elizabeth Yeoman, gives us not only her life but her times, showing the stages of Innu political activism and environmental concerns from the late 1980s until the present day.”

– Martha MacDonald, Labrador Institute of Memorial University, ARCTIC: Journal of the Arctic Institute of North America

https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/arctic/article/view/70087/53938

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“the story of Indigenous people everywhere, living, or trying to live, on land that once was theirs but has been encroached upon and is being destroyed… a valuable record of Innu and Indigenous life.”

Maura Hanrahan

https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/nflds/2020-v35-n1-2-nflds05991/1076778ar/

Newfoundland and Labrador Studies, Volume 35, Number 1-2, 2020, p. 166–170.

“Ce livre d’Elizabeth Penashue et d’Elizabeth Yeoman est un témoin précieux de la vie d’une femme autochtone forte et engagée. Il est d’une grande valeur autant pour les milieux académiques que pour les autochtones et le grand public. Écrit dans une prose accessible, c’est un exemple réussi d’autoreprésentation autochtone.”

– Duchesne, É. (2019). Review of Nitinikiau Innusi. I Keep the Land Alive,

Tshaukuesh Elizabeth Penashue et Elizabeth Yeoman. University of Manitoba

Press, Winnipeg, 2019, 244 p.] Recherches amérindiennes au Québec, 49(2),

106–107. https://doi.org/10.7202/1070765ar

https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/raq/2019-v49-n2-raq05428/1070765ar.pdf

"In blunt and sometimes deeply poetic language, Tshaukeush narrates the relationships that have enriched her life and fostered her life’s work. She speaks about her relationship with the land and the plants and animals that have provided sustenance for the Innu since time immemorial. […] Unsettling and difficult, life-affirming and joyful, this text and its fundamental message are urgently needed to challenge continuing colonization in Tshaukuesh’s community and all of our communities."

Vicki S. Hallett, Canadian Journal Of Native Studies, 39(2) Fall 2020

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