Relocation often a death sentence

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"It was just like a desert, just gravel. How could they have sent us there when there was nothing."

Seventy-seven-year-old Minnie Allakanallak was questioning the federal government's decision to move Inuit from northern Quebec to the High Arctic in the early 1950s.

Allakanallak and 34 others were in Ottawa last week to testify before the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. The commission is holding a special series of hearings into the government's relocation program.

In two moves in 1953 and 1955, the federal government transferred 14 families from Inukjuak, Northern Quebec and three families from Pond Inlet, NWT to Resolute Bay on Cornwallis Island and Grise Fiord on Ellesmere Island. The High Arctic Exiles (as they call themselves) were told the RCMP and other government officials that the new locations would be rich in fish and game and there would be shelter when the got there.

When the people got to their new homes, they found nothing but barren beaches of gravel.

"When we first landed, our children were crying with cold," said Jaybeddie Amaraulkik from Inukjuak, who was left at Grise Fiord. {The only shelter on the beach was a boulder. There the children snuggle up with the dogs to stay warm."

The areas the people had been sent to had little game that the people from Northern Quebec were used to. Around Inukjuak the diet was mostly caribou, fish, water-fowl and berries. In the new locations the only food was seal, whale and other marine mammals. Many witnesses said they longed for the food they were used to

The group sent to Resolute Bay survived by scrounging in the dump, said John Amagolik. "Whenever a plane would arrive, we would rush to the dump to get the sandwiches that would be thrown out."

Sarah Amagolik and the baby she was nursing at the time almost starved to death that first year.

"I didn't eat anything but tea until my uncle scrounged some cans of food from the dump." Simeonie Amagolik told the commission how devastating such a life was.

"My wife died, the elders died off very quickly. The only medical help was the RCMP and they only fed us apple juice."

Many of the witnesses broke down into sobs as they recalled painful memories. Larry Audlaluk of Grise Fiord described the drowning of his only childhood companions, as tears flowed down his face. The children had been out at the edge of the ice trying to catch sculpin to feed their families when the two boys drowned. "Do you know what it is like to lose your only companions in the whole world."

The Inuit of the early fifties regarded whites with a type of fearful respect called Ilira. Because of this, many did not question the RCMP when they said the people should move. The exiles contend the government moved them to stop military encroachment by the United States in the High Arctic.

The Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development has responded with two consultants' reports that state, "The decision to relocate the Inuit grew from government policy of the day. The policy was developed with a view to ensuring that those Inuit living in areas in which the natural resources would support them could continue to pursue that way of life...those living in areas which had inadequate resources and insufficient wage employment opportunities would be moved.