During the First Annual Whapmagoostui (Great Whale) Gathering, Cree and Inuit peoples came together to discuss resistance to Hydro-Québec’s plans to expand hydroelectric development with a new dam on the Great Whale River.
Whapmagoostui lies where the Great Whale River reaches Hudson Bay. Hydro-Québec’s proposed Great Whale hydroelectric project threatened Indigenous lands and waters. International opposition, led by the Cree and supported by ecological and solidarity groups in Canada, the U.S., and abroad helped derail the project; Hydro- Quebec suspended it in November 1994.
New Archive Photo of the Week: People fighting for their land. Their sovereignty. Their right to exist.
One photograph. Five decades of struggle, resistance and memory.
Each week, as hundreds of photographs are digitized from Orin Langelle’s five-decade archive, one image is selected, newly edited, and brought back into public view.
Archive Photo of the Week revisits moments of social, ecological and economic struggle that might otherwise disappear from collective memory—along with the people, places and stories behind them.
From the archive, back into history.