Illegal hunters may have wiped out small Labrador caribou herd, minister says

It's the Quebec Innu unapologetically mass hunting that is a major source of the diminishing herd.

I've personally seen them coming with cube vans and transport trucks loading them up full of dead caribou. There is absolutely no need of it and they refuse to understand the implications of it all. Very few of the native Labradorians are defying the law and we are suffering without our main source of diet.

I spent my entire life eating caribou, my family literally SURVIVED off of it. I mean life or death survival, it was our only source of food for months sometimes (with potatoes onions and cabbage being the only store bought additions) and I haven't been able to eat it for 8 Years. 8 Years without the culturally ingrained food for the soul we all lived on, why it's such a big part of our art, stories and legends.

Foreign foods mostly upset my stomach. My ancestors consisted off of meat and berries and everything else does a number on my digestive tract. I'm not saying we should all be able to hunt whatever we want, but that don't punish all of the native groups when the problem falls with a provincial outsider.

I don't say this with any amount of hatred for the Quebec Innu, it's just the facts. I've spoken to a few and they don't hide why they are there. But the government is too afraid to take action against them and focus it all on Native Labradorians, making us look like the bad guys from an outsider perspective.

We just all need to stop for a few years and things could make a noticeable upswing. Before long we all could hunt again with restrictions. Even though in my family and many others (I'm Inuit) we only kill what we need to survive and any extra, we share with other families and elders who can't get out and do it themselves any more. So it won't be a difficult thing to comprehend culturally as many of us understand conservation in ways that only modern culture is starting to care about (within the last 50 years or so).

/r/canada Thread Link - cbc.ca