Decentralization comes to Labrador

The Newfoundland’s department in charge of aboriginal affairs will be decentralized to the partly Inuit community of Happy Valley-Goose Bay.

The newly created Ministry of Labrador and Aboriginal Affairs will be the province’s first department headquartered outside of St. John’s.

According to a report last week in The Labradorian newspaper, the department will be responsible for negotiating and implementing self-government and land-claims agreements with the Labrador Inuit Association and the Innu Nation.

The department is headed by Ernie McLean, the province’s assembly member for the Goose Bay region. More than 4,200 Inuit live in the province of Newfoundland, most of them in Labrador.