Photo: Innu Elder Penashue testifies at hearing on February 17, 2023.

Tshaukuesh (Elizabeth) Penashue testified last week about the mistreatment of Innu people by colonial governments and how that continues today.

Penashue was speaking at an inquiry in Sheshatshiu (near Canadian Forces Base Goose Bay and more than 1,600 kilometres north of St. John’s) that is examining how Innu children and families have been affected by the state’s “child protection” system.

Penashue spoke about Innu life before colonization.

She said: “Before the government broke our land, we had everything, everything. Water was clean, trees, rivers, animals, berries, medicine. …There has been so much damage done. Dammed our rivers. Destroyed the land.”

CBC provides the context: “Penashue, 78, was born [in 1945] near Churchill Falls, Labrador, and moved with her community to Sheshatshiu in the 1960s. Land the Innu lived on, including traditional burial grounds, are now underwater in the area flooded to create a reservoir for the Churchill Falls hydroelectric project.”

CFB Goose Bay on Innu land

Penashue’s book Nitinikiau Innusi: I Keep the Land Alive also discusses the land defence struggles against the military base on her ancestral territory.

During World War II a section of traditional Innu land was claimed by the state to create an airbase. It was operational by December 1941.

That airbase is called Canadian Forces Bay (CFB) Goose Bay.

The Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW) has noted: “The local population, including Indigenous people, was not allowed to use or settle on land near the military base and landing strip.”

Years ago, Penashue commented: “In the 40 years that the military has been in Goose Bay, the Innu’s culture has collapsed. The use of our lands by others, without our being consulted, has caused stress in our family relationships and links to our family violence. The Innu did not welcome foreign domination. It happened against their will.” 

We contrast her statement with the Government of Canada media release from last year on upgrading infrastructure at the base that noted: “The Department of National Defence has a 5 per cent Indigenous procurement target and will continue to seek out opportunities for greater collaboration with Indigenous-owned businesses.”

Photo: In August 2022, Defence Minister Anita Anand and Labrador Member of Parliament Yvonne Jones announced plans for infrastructure upgrades at the base.

This airbase, 5 Wing Goose Bay, now serves as a “forward operating location” for Canada’s current fleet of CF-18 fighter jets. (Back in 2010, National Defence described it as: “A Canadian Deployed Operating Base (DOB) of CF-18s operationally committed to NORAD.”)

It will also presumably serve that function for the new Lockheed Martin F-35 warplanes that Canada intends to buy. The first four F-35s are expected to be delivered to the Air Force in 2026, with all 88 F-35s to be in place by 2032.

The base has also been used for exercises, including Operation NOBLE DEFENDER in March 2022 that saw “a number of military aircraft and personnel from Canada and the United States” with flights “conducted over sparsely populated arctic areas at high altitudes” where the military claimed “the public is not likely to see or hear aircraft in Canada.”

Operation NOBLE DEFENDER in 2023 again involved 5 Wing Goose Bay and this time four F-35s marking “the first time NORAD has deployed F-35s to Thule, Greenland.”

Innu land defenders arrested for challenging warplanes

Beginning in the late 1980s, the Innu, led mainly by women, began defending their land against NATO low-level fight testing for the cruise missile. More than one hundred Innu land defenders and their supporters were arrested at re-occupations of the Goose Bay airfield and the Minipi Lake bombing range.

Penashue has noted: “Innu women never used to go out to meetings, but it was time to wake up and do something to stop the destruction caused by low-level flying and weapons testing. …I went to the bombing range with other activists. We put tents on the base to protest. We were jailed many times, in Goose Bay and Stephenville. We walked from Toronto to Ottawa and they put us in jail there, too… I went to Europe twice to speak.”

Video: Hunters and Bombers (1990)

And Penashue has remarked: “When we go on the base, even when we are close to the jets, none of our children or elders go up to smash the jets. We never do that…. We tell the children, don’t touch anything. Don’t break anything. Don’t be rude.”

Photo: A protest at the Goose Bay air force base in 1988 in opposition to NATO low level flight training over Nitassinan.

In October 1994, the Peace Brigades International-North America Project commented: “A continuing issue for the Innu of both Labrador and Quebec is low-level flight training over their hunting territory by Canada and other NATO countries.”

PBI-NAP highlighted at that time the lack of free, prior and informed consent: “The training began without any prior consultation with the Innu.”

It wasn’t until 2005 that the 50+ years of low-level flying operations by NATO member countries over these ancestral lands finally ended.

Uninhabited land?

Penashue has commented: “Canada sees our land as uninhabited land. It is inhabited by the Innu, and it is inhabited by wildlife. This is hunting territory, nomadic territory. It is not for war games.”

As recently as September 2020, the Department of National Defence (DND) stated that it would be holding joint US-Canada air defence exercises out of 5 Wing Goose Bay.

Their media release seems to confirm Penashue’s comment. DND stated: “[The] exercise flights will be conducted over sparsely populated Arctic areas and at high altitudes where the public is not likely to hear or see them.”

Photo: A CF-18 fighter jet at CFB Goose Bay, September 2020.

Impact of noise levels

WCAX has reported that a decibel meter measurement of the noise level of an F-35 in flight showed 109 decibels. An iPhone decibel app measured the noise in the high 90s – too loud to hear a conversation. The highest reading was 113 db.

The article highlights: “Officials said the F-35s did not use their afterburners on this flight”, which would presumably mean even higher levels.

EcoPolitic has noted: “Noise from military aircraft has different effects on wildlife, covering primary, secondary and tertiary effects. These effects can occur during the acute or chronic period and have sublethal and lethal consequences depending on the acoustic duration, intensity and biology of a particular species.”

It has also been argued: “Woodland caribou may be more vulnerable to negative impacts of military jet noise during calving periods, dependent on predator density.”

It’s not clear if studies have been done by the Canadian government on the impact of noise levels on people and wildlife near the air force base.

We continue to follow this situation.

Photo: Innu Elder Tshuakuesh Elizabeth Penashue and Peace Brigades International-North America Project activist Anne Harrison in 1995.

Photo: An F-35 fires a missile during  a live-fire test.

On February 12, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters that he had ordered an object in the air over the Yukon to be shot down because it had “unlawfully” entered Canadian airspace and posed a “reasonable threat” to the safety of Canadians.

The unidentified object over Yukon territory was shot down by an American F-22 fighter jet the previous day, Saturday February 11.

Major-General Paul Prevost also told the House of Commons standing committee on defence that two CF-18s were scrambled (presumably from Canadian Forces Base Cold Lake) but were still five minutes away when the balloon was shot down by the F-22.

The object above Yukon was the second of three shot down by the US Air Force fighter jets on three successive days (February 10 over Alaska, February 11 over Yukon and February 12 over Montana) that was preceded by the shooting down of a balloon near South Carolina earlier in the month (February 4).

The tone of the moment began to change on February 14 when a White House official said that the three objects shot down since February 10 may be connected to “benign” commercial or research efforts.

Then on February 16, US President Joe Biden further elaborated at a media conference: “The intelligence community’s current assessment is that these three objects were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research.”

And on February 17, Global News reported: “The U.S. Air Force shot down an object in Canadian airspace using a US$400,000 missile last weekend, and it turns out that object might have been a $12 balloon released by a balloon hobby group.”

What did Canadian pundits say about this between Saturday February 11 and Tuesday February 14 when the United States began to acknowledge the objects were likely benign?

On February 13, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre stated: “The Prime Minister has made us more vulnerable to foreign aggression. His cancellation of the F-35 jets wasted years and billions of dollars that could have gone into our forces. Had Canada possessed these jets today, we would not be so vulnerable and unprepared for danger.”

Christian Leuprecht of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute commented in The Globe and Mail: “Modernizing Canadian air defence, along with the long-overdue deal for F-35 fighter jets, are down payments to ‘maintain the watch’, and fulfill the most fundamental obligation of the state: keeping its citizens safe and the country secure.”

The Globe and Mail also reported: “Yukon’s Premier [Ranj Pillai] says the downing of a mysterious object over the territory marks an important milestone in the debate over the security of Canada’s arctic.”

And Lee Berthiaume wrote in The Canadian Press: “Canada’s CF-18 fighter jets are still not equipped with the type of missiles [AIM-9X Sidewinder missiles] the U.S. military recently used to shoot down four unidentified flying objects, even though the Canadian military ordered 50 more than two and a half years ago.”

This was also the timing that the Department of National Defence may have chosen to acknowledge that it would be spending $6.3 billion on new advanced air-to-air missiles (capable of shooting down balloons).

And even as late as February 18, a letter to the editor in The Toronto Star noted: “Perhaps, as many have suggested, it would be wise for Canada to purchase a combination of more CF-18s and F-35s. We certainly want to have the capacity to defend this great land with the most appropriate weapons. We want a reliable and always available fighter plane.”

It may also be potentially significant that the Washington Post is now reporting that the surveillance balloon shot down on February 4, may have inadvertently entered Canadian and US airspace because it encountered “atypical weather conditions” and veered north “in response to a strong cold front that had unleashed exceptionally frigid air over northern China, the Korean Peninsula and Japan.”

Today, Christopher S. Chivvis, the director of the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, warns in The Guardian: “Much uncertainty still surrounds China’s balloon spying program and the other mysterious objects that have now been identified over North American airspace. One thing seems certain, however: incidents like these could too easily spiral out of control in the future, ending in disaster.”

And David Vine, a professor at American University, recently commented on Democracy Now!: “The balloon incident offers a rare opportunity for us to consider a really hard and stark question. And that is: Do we want a war with China? I think the people of the United States absolutely do not want war. They are sick of war, sick and tired of war, after 21 years of war launched by the George W. Bush administration with its ‘war on terror’, the catastrophes in Afghanistan and Iraq, following prior catastrophes dating to the War in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. We need to move in another direction.”

We continue to follow this situation.

For more: “The F-35 is an aircraft that is designed to drop bombs and kill people” – Retired Canadian air force colonel Paul Maillet (February 13, 2023)