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High Arctic relocation
The High Arctic relocation took place during the Cold War in the 1950s, when 92 Inuit, sometimes called High Arctic exiles, were moved by the Government of Canada under Liberal Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent to the High Arctic.
The forced migration is widely considered to have been implemented by the Canadian government to assert its sovereignty in the Arctic Archipelago (which had been subject to disputed territorial claims) by the use of "human flagpoles". The relocated Inuit suffered extreme privation during their first years after the move.
In August 1953, seven or eight families from Inukjuak, Nunavik (northern Quebec) (then known as Port Harrison) were transported to Grise Fiord on the southern tip of Ellesmere Island and to Resolute on Cornwallis Island. The group included the family of writer Markoosie Patsauq. The families, who had been receiving welfare payments, were promised better living and hunting opportunities in new communities in the High Arctic. They were joined by three families recruited from the more northern community of Pond Inlet (in the then Northwest Territories, now part of Nunavut) whose purpose was to teach the Inukjuak Inuit skills for survival in the High Arctic.
The Inuit were taken on the Eastern Arctic patrol ship CGS C.D. Howe to areas on Cornwallis and Ellesmere Islands (Resolute and Grise Fiord), both large barren islands in the hostile polar north. While on the boat the families learned that they would not be living together but would be left at three separate locations.
The relocatees included Inuit who had been featured in Robert J. Flaherty's film Nanook of the North (1922), recorded prior to the relocation. It also included Josephie Flaherty, Robert's half-Inuit son, whom he never met.
The forced relocations are widely considered to have been motivated by a desire to reinforce Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic Archipelago by creating settlements in the area. In Relocation to the High Arctic, Alan R. Marcus proposes that the relocation of the Inuit not only served as an experiment, but as an answer to "the Eskimo problem." The federal government stressed that "the Eskimo problem" was linked to the Inuit's reluctance to give up their nomadic ways in areas that were supposedly overpopulated and went so far as to provide detailed accounts of poor hunting seasons and starvation within the Inukjuak area as a direct result of over-population. However, the federal government knew the area in question was in the midst of a low trapping season due to the end of a four-year fox cycle.
The Canadian government has claimed that volunteer families had agreed to participate in a program to reduce areas of perceived overpopulation and poor hunting in Northern Quebec, to reduce their dependency on welfare, and to resume a subsistence lifestyle.
The families were left without sufficient supplies of food and caribou skins and other materials for making appropriate clothing and tents, and suffered extreme privation in the first years after the relocation. Despite this, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) reports from the time stated that the two colonies were generally successful in terms of morale, housing, and subsistence living.
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High Arctic relocation
The High Arctic relocation took place during the Cold War in the 1950s, when 92 Inuit, sometimes called High Arctic exiles, were moved by the Government of Canada under Liberal Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent to the High Arctic.
The forced migration is widely considered to have been implemented by the Canadian government to assert its sovereignty in the Arctic Archipelago (which had been subject to disputed territorial claims) by the use of "human flagpoles". The relocated Inuit suffered extreme privation during their first years after the move.
In August 1953, seven or eight families from Inukjuak, Nunavik (northern Quebec) (then known as Port Harrison) were transported to Grise Fiord on the southern tip of Ellesmere Island and to Resolute on Cornwallis Island. The group included the family of writer Markoosie Patsauq. The families, who had been receiving welfare payments, were promised better living and hunting opportunities in new communities in the High Arctic. They were joined by three families recruited from the more northern community of Pond Inlet (in the then Northwest Territories, now part of Nunavut) whose purpose was to teach the Inukjuak Inuit skills for survival in the High Arctic.
The Inuit were taken on the Eastern Arctic patrol ship CGS C.D. Howe to areas on Cornwallis and Ellesmere Islands (Resolute and Grise Fiord), both large barren islands in the hostile polar north. While on the boat the families learned that they would not be living together but would be left at three separate locations.
The relocatees included Inuit who had been featured in Robert J. Flaherty's film Nanook of the North (1922), recorded prior to the relocation. It also included Josephie Flaherty, Robert's half-Inuit son, whom he never met.
The forced relocations are widely considered to have been motivated by a desire to reinforce Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic Archipelago by creating settlements in the area. In Relocation to the High Arctic, Alan R. Marcus proposes that the relocation of the Inuit not only served as an experiment, but as an answer to "the Eskimo problem." The federal government stressed that "the Eskimo problem" was linked to the Inuit's reluctance to give up their nomadic ways in areas that were supposedly overpopulated and went so far as to provide detailed accounts of poor hunting seasons and starvation within the Inukjuak area as a direct result of over-population. However, the federal government knew the area in question was in the midst of a low trapping season due to the end of a four-year fox cycle.
The Canadian government has claimed that volunteer families had agreed to participate in a program to reduce areas of perceived overpopulation and poor hunting in Northern Quebec, to reduce their dependency on welfare, and to resume a subsistence lifestyle.
The families were left without sufficient supplies of food and caribou skins and other materials for making appropriate clothing and tents, and suffered extreme privation in the first years after the relocation. Despite this, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) reports from the time stated that the two colonies were generally successful in terms of morale, housing, and subsistence living.