Brutal Relocations#

In May of 1950, the Government of Canada relocated the Ahiarmiut for the first time, moving the people from their homeland at Ennadai Lake to Nueltin Lake. This relocation was undertaken without explanation, without consultation, and without consent. The Ahiarmiut were moved in a matter of hours, but the effects of the Government of Canada’s actions continue to be felt to this day. Families were directed onto an airplane and flown to an island in Nueltin Lake. They were forced to leave behind their territory, their shelters, and most of their belongings, including tools critical to survival such as axes, knives and outdoor clothing. Elders speak about having their tents destroyed in front of their eyes before getting on the airplane.

Once at Nueltin Lake, Canada did not provide the Ahiarmiut with adequate food, shelter, tools, or other supplies. They had no shelters and no caribou skins to build new ones. There was insufficient country food on the island to sustain their people. What assistance the Ahiarmiut received came not from government officials, but from Dene hunters in the area who shared some food and supplies. In the face of these harsh living conditions, a number of Ahiarmiut became ill and several passed away. In the fall of 1950, knowing that they could not survive in this environment, the Ahiarmiut undertook a three-month journey to return home to Ennadai Lake, walking more than 100 kilometres through wind, ice, and snow.

The Ahiarmiut knew that Ennadai Lake would sustain them, as it had for generations. They knew where the caribou migrated and where to find small game and fish when caribou were less plentiful. They knew the lands and the waters. However, the Government of Canada thought it knew better and, in 1957, decided to relocate the Ahiarmiut a second time.

This time, the Ahiarmiut were relocated to North Henik and Oftedal Lakes, several hundred kilometres away. Once again, this relocation was done against the wishes and without the consent of the Ahiarmiut. Prior to the move, government officials were told by the Ahiarmiut that this area was poor country for game and that their people would be hungry there. Once again, this relocation was undertaken without providing the Ahiarmiut proper supplies and support. The Ahiarmiut were flown to unfamiliar lands and left with only six dogs, basic provisions and “starvation boxes” of food meant to last just a short time. And, once again, the Ahiarmiut suffered tragic consequences as a result of the Government of Canada’s actions.

As the Ahiarmiut had foreseen, the new location had insufficient caribou, small game, and fish to feed their people. In response to starvation conditions, Ahiarmiut hunters did everything they could to find food for their families. When several hunters took some supplies from a nearby prospecting cabin, they were treated as thieves. Instead of recognizing that the Ahiarmiut were merely trying to survive, government officials put these hunters in jail in Arviat, exacerbating an already desperate situation. While being held in Arviat, the hunters were compelled to do menial labour and one of them lost his eyesight.

Starving families at North Henik and Oftedal Lakes were forced to eat what little they could find: caribou hides stripped of fur, a single ptarmigan shared among ten children, one fish cut into tiny pieces to last a family several days. Malnourished mothers were unable to nurse their own infants. The ill and elderly became so weak that they had to stay in bed for days on end to conserve energy. In these horrifying conditions, a number of Ahiarmiut passed away from starvation and exposure. It was only after seven Ahiarmiut had died by February 1958, including one who was murdered and another killed in self-defence, that the government intervened and relocated surviving community members to Arviat. By that point, many Ahiarmiut had already made the three-day trek to Padlei Post on their own to seek help.

Even in the aftermath of the tragic deaths of their community members, the Ahiarmiut were poorly treated by government officials. In Arviat, they were held in police custody, where their caribou skin clothing was destroyed and they were discouraged from engaging in traditional activities, such as drum dances. One community member, Kikkik, was put on trial for killing the man who had murdered her husband. Though she was acquitted, the heartbreaking events of that time remain with the Ahiarmiut to this day.

From Arviat, the Ahiarmiut were subjected to two more relocations—first to Rankin Inlet and then to Whale Cove. These relocations further severed the Ahiarmiut’s ties to their traditional lands and practices. Elders speak of being treated as outsiders, of losing their dialect and of having to adapt to new foods and cultural practices.

The relocations of the Ahiarmiut between 1950 and 1960 were misguided, mishandled, and tragic. These relocations profoundly and permanently impacted Ahiarmiut community members and the Ahiarmiut way of life. To this day, the Ahiarmiut remain far from their homeland at Ennadai Lake and have never forgotten the friends and family members lost as a result of the relocations.

Genocide By Attrition#

Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, Wilfrid Laurier University, a human rights scholar, I has long argued that Canada committed cultural genocide against Indigenous peoples. Recently, she’s come to conclude, in the case of the Ahiarmiut, that it’s not cultural genocide—it’s actual physical genocide.

An article in the Globe and Mail last summer by Gloria Galloway told the story of what happened to the Ahiarmiut, a small group of Inuit in 1950. Galloway got much of her information from David Serkoak, an Elder who lived through the relocations.

The Canadian government moved the Ahiarmiut to an isolated island and did not provide them with food, shelter or tools.

To survive, they ate bark and other scavenged food until winter came. Many died. In 1957, they were relocated again. They were given tents, as well as a “starvation box” that might feed them for a week. Many more died.

There were three more relocations after this.

You might ask whether the term “genocide” can be applied to a group as small as the Ahiarmiut. Yes, it can. The United Nations adopted a Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (UNGC) in 1948.

The UNGC does not say that genocide requires a minimum number of victims. It also refers to the destruction of groups “in whole or in part.” The entire group doesn’t need to die for a deportation to be considered genocide.

In sociological terms, rather than legal, Helen Fein, a genocide scholar, coined the term “genocide by attrition”. This means the genocide takes a while, with victims dying of starvation and disease rather than outright murder.

In legal terms, the only reason not to call the deportations of the Ahiarmiut genocide is the question of intent. The UNGC specifies that actions constituting genocide must be accompanied by “an intent to destroy” the group in question.

Perhaps Canadian bureaucrats did not intend that the Ahiarmiut should die. Perhaps they believed that Indigenous people could survive even if they were left on an isolated cold island they had never lived on before and where they were given no shelter, tools or food.

Even so, when Canada deported the Ahiarmiut, it violated its international commitments to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) which Canada voted for on December 10, 1948. This was a declaration, not a legal treaty. But it implied a commitment to all human rights, including rights to adequate food and protection from starvation, the right to housing and the right to health.

Canada signed the UNGC on November 28, 1949, although it did not ratify it (the second step to accepting legal obligations) until September 3, 1952.

Had anyone with political authority noted in 1950 that Canada was committing genocide against the Ahiarmiut, the government could have argued that it had not yet ratified the UNGC, so it was in the clear. And the government could have argued that although it accepted the UDHR rights to health, shelter and food in principle, it did not yet have to provide them.

More likely though, to the Canadian government, Indigenous people at the time were disposable. The government could move them when and where it wanted, for whatever reason it wanted.

Testimony Of An Inuit Woman Survivor#

Mary Anowtalik, 81, was a young girl in spring, 1950*, when police arrived with government workers to uproot her and other Ahiarmiut Inuit from their camps at Ennadai Lake in Nunavut’s rugged interior region inland of Hudson Bay.

Anowtalik has kept her story out of the public eye until now. She said she was waiting all these years for an apology outlining the details of what had been done to her and her family, so no one could call her a liar. Anowtalik spoke in Inuktitut to CBC journalist Jordan Konek in January.

“Where we were in the first place [Ennadai Lake], we had everything we needed,” Anowtalik said. “There were no stores, there were no preachers, there were no nurses. There was no hamlet, there was no bylaw. But because of elders and the adults, we lived a good life by their teaching us how to survive.”

The Ahiarmiut lived off the land by hunting and fishing, following a nomadic existence in tune with the seasons.

“At that time, we had everything we ever needed. We had tents in great shape, we had good hunting tools for survival, we had qajaqs [kayaks] to go hunting.”

Anowtalik remembers the spring when her family and other Ahiarmiut were drying meat and preparing caribou skins for the summer. A roaring in the sky was followed by the arrival of “qublunaat”—white people.

“We had no clue what was coming to us and that time we had no clue what planes were,” she said. What was coming were police, arriving by plane.

They lined her up with the others in a flat, gravel spot from where Anowtalik says they watched a bulldozer emerge from the distance and crawl toward her family’s camp.

“This thing started plowing all our belongings, everything that we owned,” she said. “I saw our beautiful tent being torn down and then that same bulldozer made a turn and started plowing our fresh dried meat.”

All their belongings were pushed into a pile and covered with gravel “so we couldn’t get into it again.”

She said the Ahiarmiut who were gathered were immediately put onto a plane without being told where they were going. According to a government report, authorities had neglected the “inclusion of an interpreter to explain … why they were being moved.”

Everyone went quietly, except for one.

“My brother was being difficult because he did not want to leave the Ahiarmiut land,” Anowtalik said. “Because he stood up for himself, the RCMP officer started beating him up.”

She said police eventually subdued her brother and loaded him onto the plane.

“After long hours of flying, we came to an area where there was a bunch of trees and then they started going in a loop around the trees and landed in an area around a river.”

The Ahiarmiut, unfamiliar with air travel, were happy to get off the plane and on to firm ground. They were deposited southeast of their homeland near Nueltin Lake, just North of what is now the Manitoba/Nunavut border.

Left with nothing except the clothes on their backs—“we had no tea or food”—some died, she said.

“There was a lot of us that were just in the middle of nowhere outside with no shelter,” she said. “There was absolutely nothing, no mitts, no hats, all we had was our caribou clothing. Luckily it was during spring time so nobody froze to death right away.”

But without shelter in the cold days and nights of early spring, illness was inevitable. “Two old men, two old women and two children all died from coughing and the flu,” Anowtalik said.

The dead were buried on a sandy slope with no traditional burial.

“During my life as a child, [I remember] when family members died we would do proper burials covering them in skin and making sure they’re buried properly—covering their whole bodies in rocks and wood so that they’re protected,” Anowtalik recounted. “But because where we were had nothing, we buried them with what we had.”

“Up to today, burying those people is still in my heart. I don’t think I’ll ever forget them in my life.”

By summer, the displaced Ahiarmiut were starving, reduced to hunting ptarmigan with rocks.

They may have died on those barren lands were it not for the help of others who travelled in the region. Anowtalik remembers the aid of a tall Cree hunter she calls Piji Jahi. He and his family quickly assembled a collection of food, tools and goods for the Ahiarmiut.

“The whole family of Jahi came to us and they brought everything with them—caribou skin, bear skin, all dried skins ready to use. It was pure joy.”

Jahi and his family lived with the Anowtaliks and fellow Ahiarmiut until they were well.

By the fall, the Ahiarmiut knew they could not survive a winter in the Nueltin Lake area. According to the transcript of the Canadian government’s apology, it took them three months to trek back to Ennadai Lake, walking “more than 100 kilometres through wind, ice and snow.”

In 1957, the Ahiarmiut were forcibly relocated again. This was the second of at least five relocations to come to another barren location several hundred kilometres away.

Anowtalik was finally moved to Arviat in 1958. She received $100,000 as part of the 5-million dollars settlement with the Canadian government over the forced relocations of the Ahiarmiut in the 1950s.

Reparations And Apology#

From 1927 to 1951 it was illegal for Indigenous peoples in Canada to organize or meet, making it extremely difficult to resist these brutal acts.

Ahiarmiut survivors have asked for reparations and an apology. The Canadian government and the Inuit have recently agreed to settle, in part to bring “closure” to this event.

If ever a group of Indigenous people were entitled to apology, memorialization and compensation, it is the Ahiarmiut. But more than that, the Ahiarmiut are entitled to an acknowledgement by the Canadian government that they were victims of genocide.

Source:

• The Conversation
• Ahiarmiut Relocation Claim Settlement
• Statement of Apology for the Relocation of the Ahiarmiut

Further reading:

• ‘The saddest time of my life’: relocating the Ahiarmiut from Ennadai Lake (1950–1958) / Cambridge journals
• Inuk elder recalls the day her family was forced to relocate, nearly 70 years ago / cbc.ca

AUTHOR

The North Observer
Independent Expert