After decades of anguish, High Arctic Exiles monument unveiled

Carver Simeonie Amagoalik, right, stands beside his year-long labour: a monument to the High Arctic Exiles who founded Resolute. A plaque reads in English and Inuktitut, “They came to these desolate shores to pursue the government promise of a more prosperous life. They endured and overcame great hardship, and dedicated their lives to Canada’s sovereignty in these lands and waters.” (PHOTO BY GABRIEL ZÁRATE)

RESOLUTE — It was a cold and blustery day in Resolute Sept. 8, but not all the tears were from the wind.

The day marked the long-awaited unveiling of the first of two monuments to the High Arctic Exiles, 22 Inuit families relocated to the modern-day communities of Resolute and Grise Fiord under false pretences in 1953 and 1955.

“What happened should never be forgotten,” said Markoosie Patsauq. “Future generations should know what happened in this place.”

Patsauq vividly remembered the day his ship arrived and his exile began in 1955, when he was 12 years old.

“My impression of Resolute was that we had arrived in a dead land,” he said. “There was no sign of any life, not even the seagull.”

Unfamiliar with the land, Patsauq’s family had a hard time finding game to hunt. Meanwhile the sea was full of icebergs that made hunting by kayak dangerous.

With food difficult to find on land or at sea, Patsauq’s family went hungry for weeks until the sea ice formed and his father was able to catch a seal.

But in October the sun set on the High Arctic and did not return until February, an unfamiliar phenomenon for the families who hailed from Nunavik.

“We were blind hunters,” Patsauq said. “The first winter was very, very, very hard for hunters … we barely survived that first winter. I’ve never had such a hunger after that.”

John Duncan, the federal minister of Indian and Northern Affairs, presented a framed set of the English, French and Inuktitut versions of the government’s official apology to the Hamlet of Resolute, amid cries of “Thank you Jesus!” and “Hallelujah!”

It was the same text Duncan read to some of the surviving exiles in their home community of Inukjuak on Aug. 18.

“A lot of people I hear, the apology was accepted,” said Resolute’ mayor, Ludy Pudluk, whose family moved to Pond Inlet to follow relatives who were part of the relocation a few years earlier.

Pudluk suggested the Aug. 25 visit by Prime Minister Stephen Harper went a long way toward addressing the anger in the community about how the federal government has treated them.

Harper had been in town for Operation Nanook — the military’s annual sovereignty exercise in the Arctic — but he also spoke with local elders and restated the government’s apology to the exiles still living in Resolute.

Some of the day’s tears came from Elizabeth Allakariallak-Roberts, born in 1957, only a few years after the first families arrived in Resolute.

Allakariallak-Roberts recalled the secrecy with which the community once approached its shameful history.

Born to a family with roots in Inukjuak, she had no idea that her parents had been unwilling settlers to the High Arctic until she went to high school in Iqaluit at age 13 and was asked why she spoke the Nunavik dialect of Inuktitut.

“I asked my mom, ‘Where are we from?'” she recalled.

Also in attendance at the unveiling were the presidents of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., the Qikiqtani and Kitikmeot Inuit associations and Makivik Corporation, organizations which long lobbied Ottawa for the apology which finally came in August.

“It took many years for the Inuit to learn to live in the High Arctic without daily struggles for survival,” said NTI’s acting president James Eetoolook. “The unveiling of the monument is an important step in helping in find closure and healing from these terrible events.”