When the Good Life Ended.

In a single generation, Canada's northern people have had to face enormous change. Now they want to build a better future for themselves that mill combine the wisdom of their ancestors with a more modern world

As recently as 1957, the Inuit of the Kimmirut region of Baffin Island, south of Iqaluit (formerly Lake Harbour) lived in eleven camps. These were at ancient, traditional sites along more than 300 miles (480 km) of coastline, writes Fred Bruemmer in Arctic Memories. They used canvas tents in summer, and igloos or qarmait (houses made of whalebone or driftwood and animal skins) in winter. They dressed in caribou-skin clothing and travelled by dog team, and nearly all their food came from sea and land. They lived as their ancestors had for thousands of years. But 11 years later, in 1968, only one of the camps remained. The people had left the land to live in government-built towns with schools for their children, and plywood houses for them to live in.

In his book, The Desperate People, Farley Mowat writes about the rapid decline of the Ihalmiut, the inland Native people who lived in the Keewatin District in the Northwest Territories. He chronicles their virtual extinction as a result of changes brought about by white traders. He argues for the full and immediate emancipation of the surviving Canadian Eskimos from the intellectual, spiritual, economic and social domination which we have imposed upon them. He describes the Ihalmiut as a rich and contented people who lived comfortably off a vast supply of caribou - they seldom knew hunger; they had an abundance of the warmest clothing a man could want - caribou skins; their dogs were numerous and strong; the children in the tents were also numerous, and there was little or no need to face the horror of putting babies that could not be fed under the snow to die. They had no effective enemies amongst men. The deer were incredibly numerous, and the muskoxen were still abundant ... But, in 1912, hundreds of them were wiped out by a plague spread by traders. As competing traders entered the country, the Native people spent much of their time hunting foxes, and became dependent on trading them for rifles and ammunition as well as food. They and the traders, with their guns, killed too many deer, using them for fox bate and dog meat in the course of setting their long trap lines. Herds of deer changed their routes and left the Ihalmiut starving on a massive scale. By 1932, the market for white fox pelts collapsed, and most of the white trappers and traders in the southern Keewatin plains left. By 1942, fewer than 100 Ihalmiut had survived. As Farley Mowat lamented, By 1946 the land had become a land of graves.

It was more than 50 years earlier, in 1880, that Canada decided to claim all the land up to the North Pole. The Inuit who lived there were not consulted, and no one really knew what land existed there. At the same time, whalers were pushing into the Arctic Sea. They brought trade goods to the Inuit, including metal, tools, guns, and whaleboats. But, by the turn of the century, whale stocks were severely depleted, just as the caribou would be generations later.

Canada's interest in the North continued to grow toward the end of the 19th century as more foreigners explored the High Arctic. To protect its claim on the land Canada established its first Royal Canadian Mounted Police post at Fullerton Harbour, north of Chesterfield Inlet, and added several more at various Arctic locations in the 1920s.

While it had claimed the land, Canada's federal government still had little to do with the Inuit until 1939 when a court decided, on their behalf, that they were Ottawa's responsibility.

Interest grew in the early 1950s, when Canada realized the strategic importance of the High Arctic: the Soviet Union sat across from it, poised to launch a nuclear attack across the frozen North. That had a profound effect on Inuit life. Someone in Ottawa thought it would be a smart idea to settle the seminomadic Inuit there to create a permanent presence and help reinforce Canada's claim to ownership; in other words, to establish sovereignty in the region.

At the same time, during the 1950s and 1960s, the Canadian government began to provide health care, housing, and education. This seemed like good news to the Inuit too. Many of them wanted their children to receive an education and have access to health care. But their lives changed dramatically as they moved from the land into settlements.

The government scheme started in Port Harrison, Quebec. The Inuit in that community were told that the government would like them to move. They were told there would be jobs with wages available, and that if they didn't like it in their new homes after two years they would be brought back. But, the plan was ill-conceived and poorly implemented.

The first eight families who agreed to go left in 1953. They were headed for Craig Harbour, and Resolute Bay. They were, literally, dumped on the beach and left pretty much to fend for themselves. Families were split up among the settlements, and the people had little to protect them from the rapidly approaching winter other than their tents. The plan was a disaster.

The bureaucrats in charge of the project got glowing reports of its success from the RCMP officers whose job it was to look after the immigrants.

Glossed over was the fact that the Inuit had virtually nothing to eat but seal meat, and that they picked over the garbage from the RCMP post for scraps to add to their diet. It wasn't mentioned that people scrounged at the dump for bits of wood that could be used to build rough shelters. And, little information got out about the deep depression many felt at being isolated from their friends and families.

In many cases, Inuit did work for the RCMP but they were never paid. The promises to return the people to their homes in northern Quebec were also not honoured. By the early 1970s, they began going back to Quebec at their own expense.

Around the same time, in 1971, the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (ITC) was founded. A committee of Inuit decided it was time to speak with a united voice on various issues about development of the Canadian North and preservation of Inuit culture. By 1983, ITC was a national organization representing more than 25,000 Inuit in the Northwest Territories, northern Quebec, and Labrador, as well as six regional associations.

There is much to be done but the Inuit are learning to adapt to the changes ahead. Jose Kusugak, one of the most influential Inuit leaders in Canada North, is of the generation that has lived two lives. He was born in an igloo at Repulse Bay in 1950. He grew up in the traditional Inuit way, learning to hunt and living in an igloo during the long, winter months. But, he also has learned about the outside world, attending a residential school at Chesterfield Inlet. Now, Mr. Kusugak is president of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., the organization that administers the $1.1 billion being paid to the Inuit of the Eastern Arctic as part of the land-claim settlement with Ottawa. His life, and his People, are in the midst of another major transition.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES:

1. Read Farley Mowat's book The Desperate People, Death of a People/Volume II.

2. Research how traditional Inuit live and do a detailed report on A Day in the Life of an Inuit family.

3. Create a brochure describing an adventure tour for vacationers from the south. Your Arctic tour will include a week living on the land in the traditional Inuit manner under the guidance of an Inuit hunter. Your brochure should describe how vacationers will travel, what they will see, their accommodation, what they will eat, etc. Your brochure also should make it clear that this is not a vacation for everyone, but it will be one that will never be forgotten.

FACT FILE

Historically, Inuit were a society of equals with no term for chief or boss or master.

British whalers reached northern Baffin Island by 1817, hunting for the bow-head whale, prized for its oil and baleen, which was used in corset stays, buggy whips, and other products requiring elasticity and flexibility.

Animal rights activists brought about the decline of the sealskin industry in the 1970s, eliminating a traditional occupation for many young men and the Inuit livelihood, which depended on seals for food, clothing, and fuel.

RELATED ARTICLE: A CLASH OF CULTURES

Author Fred Bruemmer tells of an Arctic whale killing in his book Arctic Memories, Living with the Inuit. A group of hunters paddled their kayaks into the icy waters to encircle the whales, keeping totally quiet and hiding near ice floes. The women and children watched "the ancient drama of the hunt" from a cliff top high above the sea. Once the whale was harpooned "the other kayaks converged at high speed to help in the kill; the sequence of their arrival and help would determine, by ancient custom, their share of the whale." When the hunters hauled their reward ashore, the entire town descended upon them, expecting a share of the whale, as is the Inuit custom. But the wage-earners among them never shared their wages. "This is European custom." So, the hunters moved their camps farther from the villages, and shared only with other hunters, as they had done for centuries.

RELATED ARTICLE: CHEMICALS

The untold damage caused to Native people by harebrained ideas to "settle" them is one sad reality for our northern citizens. They're also being hit by pollution. A Canadian government study released in 1997 found that northerners, whose diet includes whale meat, have raised levels of contaminants in their bodies that may be harmful to the unborn. The chemicals accumulate and concentrate in cold environments such as the Arctic, where they enter the food chain. They include primarily manufactured, carbon-based compounds that travel easily through the atmosphere and are hard to break down. They have been linked to a wide range of adverse health effects in humans and animals, including birth defects, reproductive failure, cancer, behavioural abnormalities, and immune-system problems.

In June 1998, negotiators from Canada and more than 100 other countries gathered in Montreal to talk about developing a global agreement to phase out persistent organic pollutants (POPs).

Global warming is taking its toll on the Arctic as well. Scientists say the temperature during the winter of 1998-99 in the western Arctic was one degree Celsius warmer than in 1966 and that, based on analysis of plant life, temperatures are at a 400-year high. As a result, the Arctic ice cap has melted by about 5% since the 1970s, and the temperature of the Arctic Ocean is going up. They also report that the latest generation of seals in the Arctic is much thinner than usual and polar bears in some regions are down a third in body weight.

About 50 researchers and officials from Canadian universities and federal agencies met in February 1999 to discuss global warming's impact on the Arctic and set 10-year research objectives. Some said it's also time to start talking about what needs to be done. One of the big concerns is methane from millions of years of decaying plant matter, which Arctic researchers said is a time bomb that could be set off by global warming. One federal permafrost specialist reported that if the methane escapes into the atmosphere, it could accelerate global warming because it is 31 times as effective as carbon dioxide at trapping heat at the Earth's surface.

RELATED ARTICLE: A MAGNIFICENT LAND OF FINE PEOPLE

In his book, Arctic Memories, Fred Breummer said that having spent years travelling and living with the Inuit he felt like the old Inuk hunter in the following poem, recorded by the Danish ethnologist Knud Rasmussen in the 1920s:

   Glorious was life
   Now I am filled with joy
   For every time a dawn
   Makes white the sky of night
   For every time the sun goes up
   Over the heavens.

And he wrote about his memories "of a fine people, of marvelous trips, of a magnificent land, still wild and free ..."

Websites

Arctic Circle - http:// arcticcircle.uncom.edu/Museum/

Qikiqtani Inuit Association - http:// www.nunanet.com/~lands3