Like the coureurs de bois, the Innu and Huron-Wendat, what brings people here today is the Canadian wildlife.

BBC: Qu��bec's wood runners

Meantime, Innu and Inuit groups claimed the nickel deposit lay on their ancestral land.

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While the French were trading with the Innu, the English made alliances with an indigenous American league of nations, the Iroquois.

BBC: Qu��bec's wood runners

In around 1675, they settled here under the name huron-Wendat, and began to challenge the Innu for control of the beaver fur trade.

BBC: Qu��bec's wood runners

The first people in this area of valleys and peaks were Innu, a nomadic indigenous nation, known to the europeans as the Montagnais.

BBC: Qu��bec's wood runners

The canoe routes are those used by the coureurs des bois, and by the Innu and huron people with whom they traded. historic trails lead through the dense forest.

BBC: Qu��bec's wood runners

Back in the 16th Century, the point where the St Lawrence River tightens became a base for a rogue collection of hard-bitten survivalists, who spent months venturing deep into the heart of Innu territory to the trading posts at Lac St-Jean.

BBC: Qu��bec's wood runners

This was the case with the Cree over the massive James Bay hydroelectric dams in northern Quebec, the Innu over the Voisey's Bay nickel mine in Labrador, the Inuit over diamond mines in the Northwest Territories, and the 1999 creation of the new territory of Nunavut, the largest land-claim settlement in Canadian history.

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