Labrador MP slams Innu leadership in legal spat over NunatuKavut Inuit self-determination
Moments after her election win sent Yvonne Jones back to Ottawa for a third term, the Labrador MP broke her silence about a legal challenge to NunatuKavut (Inuit) from the Innu Nation, calling it a personal and political vendetta toward her from Innu (First Nations) leadership.
“I really believe that the position that the Innu took was wrong. I think they were misguided, they were misinformed, and I really think it was politically motivated against me personally. And against the Liberal government,” Yvonne Jones told CBC News on Tuesday night.
Jones was named in a court application the Innu Nation filed in federal court on Oct. 1, challenging a memorandum of understanding on self-determination signed in September between the federal government and the NunatuKavut community council, and the NCC’s Indigenous status overall.
In the application the Innu Nation said Jones — a member of NunatuKavut— was in a “clear conflict of interest” to have been involved in the memorandum. Jones was present at the signing.
The Innu Nation filed the application amid the federal election, and Jones did not respond to CBC for comment on the matter while on the campaign trail. But on Tuesday morning, she chastised its leadership as putting politics before people.
“The leaders in that community did not lead. They hung their own people out to dry because they had a political agenda, and that political agenda was to attack me,” she told CBC News.
“They let politics and propaganda and the false information guide their thinking.”
The federal government has been very supportive of the Innu Nation in the past, she said, and has “bent over backwards for the Innu communities in Labrador.”
The legal application was the latest move by the Innu Nation against the NCC to question the latter’s Indigenous legitimacy. NCC’s president has maintained the Innu Nation’s position is racist.
With files from Jacob Barker
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