Nitassinan ( moe, script=Cans, i=no, ᓂᑕᔅᓯᓇᓐ) is the ancestral homeland of the Innu, an

indigenous people Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...

of Eastern

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

and

Labrador , nickname = "The Big Land" , etymology = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Canada , subdivision_type1 = Province , subdivision_name1 ...

, Canada. Nitassinan means "our land" in the

Innu language Innu-aimun or Montagnais is an Algonquian language spoken by over 10,000 Innu in Labrador and Quebec in Eastern Canada. It is a member of the Cree–Montagnais–Naskapi dialect continuum and is spoken in various dialects depending on the comm ...

. The territory covers the eastern portion of the

Labrador peninsula The Labrador Peninsula, or Quebec-Labrador Peninsula, is a large peninsula in eastern Canada. It is bounded by the Hudson Bay to the west, the Hudson Strait to the north, the Labrador Sea to the east, and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to the sout ...

.'' Nitassinan: The Innu Struggle to Reclaim Their Homeland'',

Douglas & McIntyre Douglas and McIntyre (2013) Ltd. is a Canadian book publishing firm. Douglas & McIntyre was founded by James Douglas and Scott McIntyre in 1971 as an independent publishing company based in Vancouver. Reorganized with new owners in 2008 as D&M P ...

, December 1991, 240pp, by Marie Wadden,
(book link)
, (retrieved 11/19/2012) The area was known as ''

Markland Markland () is the name given to one of three lands on North America's Atlantic shore discovered by Leif Eriksson around 1000 AD. It was located south of Helluland and north of Vinland. Although it was never recorded to be settled by Norsemen, ...

'' in

Greenlandic Norse Greenlandic Norse is an extinct North Germanic language that was spoken in the Norse settlements of Greenland until their demise in the late 15th century. The language is primarily attested by runic inscriptions found in Greenland. The limited ...

, and its inhabitants were known as the ''

Skræling ''Skræling'' (Old Norse and Icelandic: ''skrælingi'', plural ''skrælingjar'') is the name the Norse Greenlanders used for the peoples they encountered in North America (Canada and Greenland). In surviving sources, it is first applied to the ...

''.

References

Innu Geography of Newfoundland and Labrador Geography of Quebec Cultural regions {{NorthAm-native-stub gv:Nitassinan sv:Nitassinan