Exiled Inuit tell of starvation, desperation

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Their stories contrasted sharply with the opulent surroundings of the Chateau Laurier's main ballroom. They told of having to scrounge in dumps to find food. They told how babies almost starved at the breasts of malnourished mothers. And they told of how the Canadian government tricked and coerced them into leaving their homes to be dumped on a desolate beach in the High Arctic.

In two moves in 1953 and 1955, the federal government relocated 17 Inuit families from Inukjuak, Quebec and Pond Inlet, Northwest Territories to Grise Fiord on Ellesmere Island and Resolute Bay on Cornwallis Island. For four days last week, 35 of these High Arctic Exiles (as they refer to themselves) got a chance to tell their complete story to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.

"My father died of a broken heart," said Larry Audlaluk of Grise Fiord. "As soon a we got there his heart started hurting." Eight months after arriving at the beach on the southern trip of Ellesmere Island, his father was dead.

"Later years as I travelled around, people would ask me how my father died." The government officials said he had been dragged to his death by a walrus, that he had died a hero's death pioneering the new promised land.

"My father died of a heart attack after getting out of bed," he said. "He had been having these fainting spells and one morning he got up and walked a few steps and collapsed. My mother thought he had fainted again."

The majority of the government relocatees came from the northern Quebec settlement of Inukjuak. They had a school, stores, a church and access to medical treatment there. Most of the people lived in outpost camps around the settlement, hunting caribou and waterfowl and trapping white fox.

In the spring of 1953, RCMP officers and government officials began visiting camps around the Inukjuak, saying they needed people to move to a good new land. At that time Inuit held whites in a kind of fearful respect called Ilira, which is described as being the way a small child views his parents. Many of the camps were visited. Several times, threats were used.

Amagoalik said that his father only agreed to go if the government would promise that the people could return if they did not like the new land and that the families that were moved would be kept together.

The people were told the new land would have plenty of game even though no wildlife surveys had been done on the area. They were also told there would be shelter for them when they got there. When the exiles arrived they found nothing but barren beaches.

At Grise Fiord there was a two-man RCMP post at Craig Harbor several miles from the Inuit settlement, and the Resolute Bay air force base was off limits to all but whites.

"We were completely cut off from the rest of the world," said John Amagoalik, former leader of the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, who was sent to Resolute Bay as a child.

In the high Arctic the majority of game was polar bear, seal, whale and other marine mammals. Many of the people from Inukjuak pined for their traditional food.

The exiles said they were sent north to protect Canadian sovereignty from claims by the United States and Scandinavian countries. Two former ministers of Indian Affairs, John Munro and Bill McKnight, have also said the move was made for the purpose of protecting sovereignty. Current Minister Tom Siddon, however, has repeatedly said this is not true.

The exiles are asking for $10 million in compensation and a formal apology from the federal government to make up for the hardships and broken promises. In 1990, Parliament's Aboriginal Affairs Committee recommended Ottawa recognize the Inuits' contribution to Canadian sovereignty in the High Arctic, negotiate compensation and apologize.

The Department of Indian and Northern Affairs maintains the Inuit volunteered to go and have not suffered undue hardships. The Commission will hold hearings at the end of June to hear from the authors of government reports onthe exiles.