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Outside/In

Introducing: Powerline

Outside/In

NHPR

Natural Sciences, Society & Culture, Nature, Science, Documentary

4.71.5K Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2017

⏱️ 2 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Hydro-Québec, the world’s fourth largest hydropower producer, pumps out low carbon electricity at the cheapest rates in North America. For some, it is the key to a greener, more prosperous, future, but that “clean energy” comes freighted with a complicated history and an uncertain future. This is the story of how a massive, state-owned utility company came to be a symbol of the French-Canadian people. It’s also the story of how a company, with all of the force of a colonial culture behind it, used its power to try to push Quebec’s original occupants—its indigenous people—to one side. It’s the story of how that effort led to something that has become its own kind of revolution in Canada: native people pushing to regain power over their own lives and culture. And it’s a story about the environmental benefits and human costs of clean energy.  New episodes weekly starting November 9th. Featuring new music from Breakmaster Cylinder.  outsideinradio,org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey there, Sam Evans Brown here, host of Outside In.

0:05.0

So this past spring and summer and fall, I've been working on something big.

0:12.0

For us,

0:12.8

Adro Quebec is a very powerful symbol. I mean, if you dismantle

0:17.9

I draw Quebec, it would be like dismantling us. All summer I've been traveling to Canada where I've been gathering stories about hydropower, you know, big dams, clean, renewable energy.

0:40.0

In Quebec we have a clean resource and we're using it in the best way and we know how and it's a privilege.

0:50.8

The thing is, every one of those electrons comes freighted with history.

0:55.8

And some of that history, it's dark.

0:59.2

It's a big discrimination in Quebec against the First Nation. We know that. We live her. We feel it just by the way they look at us, you know, we feel it.

1:09.0

Maybe you've heard stories like this before, stories about who gets to control the land below our feet.

1:15.0

They tried to make a sweet deal with the news to buy their rights for basically nothing.

1:23.8

It was unconstitutional, illegal, totally illegal.

1:28.0

But what about the electricity that flows over our heads?

1:31.2

She says to me, how to say they will never love Harugabec, never.

1:36.6

They will take generation and generation.

1:39.0

We're not perfect, but we are working with the people and we want to work with them. So with all the rest of the message

1:47.3

I hope you give this one. Coming this fall, Outside In presents Power Line, a four-part series about who holds power, who wields it, and when you've got none, how do you take it?

2:00.0

Look for all four episodes coming at you once a week starting November 9th.

2:05.0

We can't wait to share it with you. you're going to.

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