Steve MacLellan

“Now I come to you your land and I give you 10 minutes; I give you 10 minutes to be able to say how I feel about the land that I love more than my own life,” said Kirk Lethbridge, who was arrested in 2013 while protesting outside the project site.

Nunatsiavut Government, which represents the Inuit of Labrador, has been unsuccessful in using the courts to try and halt the project. It has maintained all along that its people stand to lose the most as Nunatsiavut beneficiaries who live in isolated coastal communities rely most heavily on the traditional foods scientists say will carry elevated levels of mercury following flooding.

On Thursday Nunatsiavut President Johannes Lampe issues a statement saying with flooding now underway, “the time bomb is ticking on the future of those who depend on the Churchill River and Lake Melville for sustenance, and on the health, culture and way of life of many Labrador Inuit.

“If this is what reconciliation is all about, then we want no part of it.”