Editing Naskapi (section)

====Move to Schefferville====
For reasons that are not entirely clear, virtually all of the Naskapi moved from [[Fort Chimo]] to the recently founded iron-ore mining community of [[Schefferville]] in 1956. Two principal schools of thought about this move exist. One of them holds that the Naskapi were induced, if not ordered, to move by officials of [[Indian and Northern Affairs]], while the other believes that the Naskapi themselves decided to move in the hope of finding employment, housing, medical assistance, and educational facilities for their children.

Although officials of [[Indian and Northern Affairs]] were certainly aware of the intention of the Naskapi to move from [[Fort Chimo]] to Schefferville and may even have instigated that move, they appear to have done little or nothing to prepare for their arrival there, not even by warning the representatives of the [[Iron Ore Company of Canada]] ("IOCC") or the municipality of [[Schefferville]].

The Naskapi left [[Fort Chimo]] on foot to make the {{convert|400|mi|km|-1|adj=on}} journey to [[Schefferville]] overland. By the time they reached [[Wakuach Lake]], some {{convert|70|mi|km|0}} north of Schefferville, most of them were in a pitiable state, exhausted, ill, and close to starvation.

A successful rescue effort was mounted, but the only homes that awaited the Naskapi were the shacks that they built for themselves on the edge of [[Pearce Lake]], near the railroad station, with scavenged and donated materials. A short time later, in 1957, under the pretext that the water at Pearce Lake was contaminated, the municipal authorities moved them to a site adjacent to John Lake, some four miles (6&nbsp;km) north-north-east of Schefferville, where they lived without benefit of water sewage, or electricity, and where, despite their hopes in coming to Schefferville, there was no school for their children and no medical facility.

The Naskapi shared the site at John Lake with a group of Montagnais, who had moved voluntarily from [[Sept-Îles, Quebec|Sept-Îles]] to Schefferville with the completion of the railroad in the early 1950s.

Initially, the Naskapi lived in tiny shacks that they built for themselves, but by 1962 [[Indian and Northern Affairs]] had built 30 houses for them, and a further four were under construction at a cost of $5,000 each.