The Nunatsiavut government in Labrador has released a study from a Harvard mercury researcher on the effects of the newly constructed Muskrat Falls dam. The study showed that water flooding the reservoir behind the dam would contain methylmercury levels "to the point that they exceed regulatory thresholds for exposure," building up over time in fish and other game consumed by the native population. Muskrat Falls will affect three peoples - the Innu, the Nunatsiavut and the NunatuKavut - who will have to alter their diets, and as such their cultures. Methylmercury ... can lead to intellectual impairments and immune system problems. Some of the hydroelectric dams have already disrupted the hunting and fishing traditions of the Cree living nearby. Muskrat Falls echoes what the Canadian historian James Daschuk has called "the politics of starvation." In his 2013 study, "Clearing the Plains," Mr. Daschuk argued that famine was a conscious settlement strategy to "create ecological conditions in which disease exploded." Nutritional questions have always been cultural questions for the indigenous peoples of Canada. Hunting and fishing are more than a traditional way of life. The land is the connection to the larger world and to history. High methylmercury levels would render the land untrustworthy. If you cannot trust the land, what can you trust?