Cree -- Government relations, James Bay Hydroelectric Project, Inuit -- Québec (Province), Canada -- James Bay Region, Indigenous peoples -- Canada -- James Bay Region 

"The James Bay project is one of the world's largest, costliest, and most contentious energy ventures - one its opponents claim is producing an environmental catastrophe on the scale of that occurring in the Amazon rainforest. Half of the project has already been built, damming rivers and flooding large areas in the northern Quebec wilderness. Hydro-Quebec, Quebec's giant electric utility, is trying to build the second half of this hydroelectric scheme - to inundate more of what remains one of the last great tracts of wilderness on Earth, and thus to generate more electricity for Quebec, New York, and the New England states.

Fighting Hydro-Quebec are the Cree Indians who live in the James Bay region, and their allies in the environmental and Native rights movements. They accuse Hydro-Quebec of destroying the traditional life of the Crees, and thus of committing cultural genocide. Its proponents argue that the James Bay project generates clean and renewable electricity, that it will make Quebec a wealthy society, and that to abandon it would be economic suicide.

Electric Rivers explores the natural and human history of the James Bay project; probes the political and financial interests behind it; explains the technology by which the project diverts rivers and converts them into electric power; describes the repercussions on nature and Native society; and chronicles the long, bitter struggle in both Quebec and the Northeast to stop it and, by using electricity efficiently, to make it unnecessary."--Back cover.