Quebec to acknowledge “impact of the slaughter of sled dogs” in Nunavik

A dog team departs a Nunavik community, in an undated file photo from the 1950s. (FILE PHOTO)

On the afternoon of Aug. 8 in Kangiqsualujjuaq, Quebec premier Jean Charest, his native affairs minister, Geoff Kelley, Makivik Corp. president Pita Aatami, and Maggie Emudluk, the chairperson of the Kativik Regional Government, will sign an agreement in which Quebec will recognize “the impact of the slaughter of sled dogs in Nunavik” between 1950 and 1960, a brief news bulletin says.

The agreement flows from a 2010 report by Jean-Jacques Croteau, a retired Quebec superior court judge, who was mandated by Quebec in 2007 to look into the issue.

The whole of Nunavik society suffered the damaging consequences of the actions, attitudes and mistakes of bureaucrats, agents and representatives of the federal and provincial governments who killed at least 1,000 dogs in Nunavik during the 1950s and 60s, concluded Croteau.

Agents, workers, bureaucrats, bearing responsibilities from the federal and provincial governments owe compensation and an apology to the Inuit of Nunavik, Croteau said in his report.

After an amount for compensation is settled on and paid, Croteau suggested the money should be divided up among non-profit Inuit corporations to:

• Organize dog sled races like the annual Ivakkak dog sled race in Nunavik;

• Promote the creation of Inuit art and its sale; and,

• Promote the teaching and use of Inuttitut and of Inuit syllabics throughout Nunavik.

Croteau looked at all possible information regarding the sled dog killings, including the 2005 brief that Makivik submitted to Quebec and the federal government, personal testimonies from Inuit and non-Inuit, the RCMP’s final report from 2006, legislation regarding loose dogs, and the 2005 Makivik-produced video “Echo of the Last Howl,” which showed how the “burning pyramids of dogs” on the ice left an enduring legacy of pain and loss.

In the film, Aatami said the slaughter of Inuit dogs “reminded us of the wrongdoing to the Japanese” during World War II.

Then, Canadian residents and citizens of Japanese descent were declared “enemy aliens” and taken to internment camps for the duration of the war.

All of their property and belongings were sold, without the owners’ consent. Towards the end of the war, the Japanese were given the option for “dispersal” to places and towns east of the Rocky Mountains, or “repatriation” to Japan.

On Sept. 22, 1988, the Japanese Canadian Redress Agreement was signed, and in the House of Commons, then-prime minister Brian Mulroney acknowledged the government’s wrongful actions.

Ottawa also offered individual and community compensation.

Last September, at the tabling of the final report of Quebec’s human rights commission, which looked at abuse towards children and youth in Nunavik, Aatami said the trauma of relocations, dog slaughters and residential schools were making themselves felt.

Nunavimmiut are paying a steep price for the past, he said.

“We’re going through a lot of pain,” he said.

Over the years, Makivik has lobbied for attention to the slaughter of sled dogs.

In 2005, Makivik submitted a brief called “The Slaughtering of Nunavik Qimmiit,” to the federal and provincial governments, suggesting snowmobiles, all-terrain vehicles and canoes should be legally regarded as tools instead of recreational vehicles by the government and be subject to lower taxes — a request that may be also reflected in today’s agreement.

Makivik also rallied political support to the issue.

Gilles Duceppe, leader of the Bloc Québécois, said “we’ll always be beside you, supporting your fight” after a 2005 screening of “Echo of the Last Howl” in Kuujjuaq,

“It’s fundamental, from one day to the next they couldn’t go fishing. They couldn’t go hunting…imagine if someone took away all the means of transport from one day to the next in a city. Imagine if we took away camels from the Bedouin or the Tuoregs,” Duceppe said. “What would that do? It forces people to change their way of life, and those who were nomadic to become settled. That’s a major transformation in a society and no one worried about that at all.”

(More to come)