Observation

natau	s/he hunts	ninataun	I hunt
upau	s/he takes off (by plane)	tshiupaun	you take off (by plane)
ishikapau	s/he stands in a certain way	nishikapaun	I stand in a certain way

The verbs above have a stem ending in au: natau-, upau-, ishikapau-. The Innu Dictionary gives the following information about au stems.

In western dialects, au stems are often pronounced with long u: [t∫ǝtǝmu:] tshitimau s/he is poor. However, this pronunciation [u:] is not systematic in the western dialects, since the pronunciation [a:w] is found in all dialectsWhen there is a long a, the sequence [a:w] remains as is in all dialects.  for kuetshinau s/he does many things (pronounced [kwe:tńa:w]) and upiuau s/he has hair (pronounced [upi:wa:w]).

AI VERBS WITH au STEMS

nekau	s/he is covered with sand	ninekaun	you are covered with sand
uńakau	s/he is filthy	tshuńakaun	you are filthy
tshitimau	s/he is poor	nitshitimauti	I was poor
manitikańau	s/he is in disguise	tshimanitikańaunan	we are in disguise
nipau	s/he gets married	ninipaunan	we get married
ishpau	s/he flies high	apu ishpaut	s/he does not fly high
shatukapau	s/he stands up straight	shatukapaui!	stand up straight!
upiuau	s/he is hairy	apu upiuaut	s/he is not hairy

NOTES
In the 3rd person singular of the Independent Indicative Present (the dictionary form), au stems look a lot like long a stems, especially since the a is sometimes long (in which case it is pronounced [aw] in all dialects); however, when conjugating au stems it becomes clear that the u appears everywhere in the conjugated forms, which is not the case for long a stems; for example: nekau s/he is covered with sand, ninekaun I am covered with sand, tshinekaun you are covered with sand. In the eastern dialect, au stems could be confused with long u stems (for example with verbs like nekau, ukaumau and akuneshau in the table above), because their conjugations are identical. In the western dialect, the pronunciation distinguishes these 2 stem types, and it’s for this reason that they are considered separate stems, as described in the dictionary. Verbs with stems ending in -kapau standing up are all au stems; once you know how to conjugate one, you can conjugate them all. As for all short u stems, the inflection -u of the 3rd person singular of the Independent Indicative Present is assimilated to the u of the stem.