The year 1927 —
That’s when British physician Harry Paddon wrote “Ode to Labrador.” It contained in its first verse the couplet:
“Thy proud resources waiting still,
Their splendid task will soon fulfill.”
It’s also the year the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London declared the Labrador boundary in Newfoundland’s favour.
“What was at stake in this decision was control over resources,” said Neria Aylward, a masters student at Oxford University whose current research looks at how settlers came to feel entitled to Labrador.
Aylward was the first speaker on Saturday at the Muskrat Falls Symposium — a discussion of the hydroelectric dam touted to address questions that won’t be asked at the public inquiry.
Aylward began her talk by asking the audience to read the “Ode to Labrador” lyrics.
One woman in the audience from Labrador immediately said the song “speaks about our land being just resources for people to come in and take away from us.”
“I want to make the point that a really critical examination of Muskrat Falls requires that settlers stop pointing fingers at one another just for a second and confront the racialized mythology of entitlement that keeps settlers in positions of power in this province in the first place.”
— Neria Aylward
Aylward’s contribution to the symposium was to question the “settler political conversation” around Muskrat Falls which she said is “premised on entitlement to land that’s not ours to begin with.
“Like the narrator of the "Ode to Labrador", (politicians) all take for granted that the land belongs to them to begin with.
“I want to make the point that a really critical examination of Muskrat Falls requires that settlers stop pointing fingers at one another just for a second, and confront the racialized mythology of entitlement that keeps settlers in positions of power in this province in the first place.”
Aylward’s talk set the tone, and was a springboard from which a wide range of speakers shared what they know about the project, including personal accounts from members of the Labrador Land Protectors, discussions of environmental issues, the role of journalism, and economic considerations.
Memorial University economist Jim Feehan told the room-full of attendees that he realized fairly early on Muskrat Falls “didn’t really seem to pass the basic economics test.”
Speaking about rates, he said, “if the price you need for it to be commercial is so high that people won’t pay that price, then that tells you that was not the project to do.”
Co-organizer of the two-day event and Memorial sociology professor, Stephen Crocker, said the goal of the symposium was to bring together diverse speakers, enabling citizens to become better educated about the project.
“There is an emerging theme that Muskrat Falls is so big that nobody can understand it, and all we can do is just stand back and let it unfold.”
Crocker said the free event was organized to provide access to information to show that “Muskrat Falls is comprehensible.”
He said that will allow attendees to counter the emerging thesis of “that’s just the way it goes with megaprojects” and give people a better understanding.
Armed with that information, Crocker said those in attendance can more fully participate in critical conversations of the issues surrounding it — “their splendid task’” for the Muskrat Falls age.
Twitter: @juanitamercer_
