Still Forgotten

Inuit were moved 2,000 km in Cold War manoeuvring

Uprooted from their homes to the south, the so-called high-Arctic exiles were promised they could return if they didn’t like their new lives. They were lied to.

The government of Canada has known (but doesn’t actually admit) for a very long time that the best way to stake a claim to the Arctic, and to defend and make that claim stick, is to have Canadians on the ground in the Arctic. Not on the ground in the sense of an annual flag waving military exercise, or in the sense of (if they ever actually appear) a couple of ice capable military vessels of some sort patrolling the Northwest passage during the warm summer months, and not in the sense of a deep sea port staffed by rotations of southerners — no, they know that Canadians have to be living there….. hence the relocation of those we call the High Arctic Exiles.

The current government engages in media hyped chest thumping about how we will defend our Arctic borders from any who would dare cross them, promises military infrastructure projects in the Arctic, and, of course, makes sure there are cameras on the PM as he helicopters onto the deck of an ice breaker – but those are simple political promises and hype that a world interested in exploiting short cuts through our Arctic backyard, and resource potential still only mostly imaginable, can shrug off far easier than they can shrug off people living in healthy, sustainable, economically viable, communities.

Over the years the four Inuit groups who occupy land that stretches across the Arctic from the Beaufort to the Atlantic have signed comprehensive land claims agreements with various federal governments led by both Liberals and Conservatives in the hopes of achieving those goals, and to this day they are still fighting to have those agreements fully implemented. Unfortunately this government, like the government before it, and the government before that, spend more time trying to find ways around fulfilling their legal and constitutional responsibilities than they do working towards helping to create those healthy, sustainable, economically viable, communities those agreements will result in.

This summers UNICEF Canadian Supplement to its “The State of the World’s Children 2009” report stated that

• * twice as many Inuit children live in poverty as do other Canadians
• * the infant mortality rate in Nunavut is more than three times the national Canadian rate
• * inadequate and overcrowded housing means that “respiratory virus and pneumonia infections are rampant”

We also know that the TB rate among Inuit is 90 times the Canadian national average, we know that suicide rates among Inuit people is 11 times the national average, we know that (via the 2007-2008 Qanuippitali Inuit health survey) half of Nunavut’s children go hungry, we know that the vast majority of Inuit children do not have reasonable access to a doctor, and we know that the housing, education, employment, and health gaps are just not closing much at all – in fact, according to statistics found in the UNICEF and other reports, you can easily compare conditions in the Canadian Arctic to those in third world and developing countries like Shri Lanka.

When the new federal “Discover Canada” handbook came out I grabbed a copy and looked at the “Canada’s History” section to see what it had to say about Inuit… it was one very short sentence

The Inuit lived off Arctic wildlife.

That’s it, the entire role that Inuit played in Canada’s history was to live off Arctic wildlife — the Vikings who arrived here thousands of years ago were deemed worthy of more space than the people who met them on the beach when they dropped anchor.

Way back in in November of 1996 the final Report of the Royal Commission On Aboriginal Peoples was issued. One of the recommendations in that report was

That the appropriate place of Aboriginal peoples in Canadian history be recognized.

Not much of that actually going on is there?

In the 1950’s Aboriginal people in Canada’s north were picked up, dropped off, and forgotten – they had served their purpose, end of story, job done, go away and leave us alone now…. and unless the government once again sees the need for a photo-op or envisions some short term strategic gain they can play some small role in, they will remain conveniently forgotten because how does one reasonably defend a claim to a remote, essentially third world, geographic location based on people when your actions show that you just really aren’t that interested in developing or allowing it to join the rest of the 1st world country we live in?