MPs want judge to probe dog slaughter

“This is at least the beginning of something”

By NUNATSIAQ NEWS

GREG YOUNGER-LEWIS

A cross-section of federal opposition MPs are pressing the government to launch a long-awaited judicial inquiry into the widespread killings of Inuit sled dogs in the 1950s and 1960s.

Inuit organizations from Nunavik and Nunavut scored the strongest coup to date in their battle for an apology and compensation after a House of Commons standing committee agreed last week to demand that the Liberal government start a judicial investigation into why police killed upwards of 20,000 dogs throughout the eastern Arctic from the 1950s to 1970s.

For years, Inuit leaders have accused RCMP and Quebec provincial police of conducting a systematic slaughter of Inuit dogs during that period. They allege that police acted on provincial and federal government policies designed to draw Inuit into settlements.

Pita Aatami, the president of the Makivik Corp., said Inuit are one step closer to finding the truth about what happened, after the standing committee on aboriginal affairs and northern development finished hearing testimony from elders in Ottawa on March 10.

The decision to call for an inquiry came at the end of two days of testimony from police, elders and Inuit politicians about the alleged dog killings.

“This is at least the beginning of something,” Aatami said. “We’ve been saying this all along. But the Liberal government wasn’t listening to what we were saying.”

However, Aatami noted the motion, tabled by the Bloc Québécois, isn’t binding on government. The federal cabinet can listen to the request when it is read in the House of Commons, but doesn’t have to reply, under its own laws.

The federal government turned down similar requests five years ago from Makivik lawyers.

But if government ignores the call for an inquiry this time, Aatami promised that he will bring his fight to the United Nations, in hopes of embarassing Ottawa into taking action.

“We’ll keep lobbying until the government listens,” Aatami said.

Senator Charlie Watt of Kuujjuaq echoed the threats during the committee hearings by alluding to “other” means that Inuit had at their disposal.

“It’s not in the government’s favour to deny what happened,” said Watt, who attended the meetings as an observer. “The system had a policy to slow down nomadic people in the country. We all know that.”

Opposition MPs on the committee said they were moved by the emotional testimony of several Inuit elders who spoke about police shooting their dogs.

The elders, brought by Makivik Corp. and the Qikiqtani Inuit Association, included Joanasie Maniapik of Pangnirtung, Mark Papigatok of Salluit, and George Koneak and Johny Watt of Kuujjuaq.

Alicee Joamie, an elder now living in Iqaluit, cried as she recalled in Inuktitut how hard life became after police killed the family dogs on a summer day in the late 1950s.

Joamie and her husband were picking up bullets at a store in Iqaluit before going back to their hunting camp, when their eight-year-old son came running with news that their dogs were being shot.

Joamie said her son wailed at his father to stop the police, but the officer continued without consultation or explanation. He was apparently amused by the event, she said.

“The officer touched me and smiled,” Joamie told the committee through on interpreter. “He seemed to make fun of me, what we just went through. They were the ones who we looked up to, and they were the ones who shot the dogs.”

Joamie said the killings forced the family to go hunting on foot because they had no other transportation. She added that the event turned her son into a bitter and unstable person in his adult years.

Police testimony during the committee hearings claimed that all dog killings were based on a policy of protecting the communities from disease and dangerous animals. In some cases, police killed dogs at the request of their owners because the animals were sick, a senior officer said.

RCMP records showed that distemper, a disease specific to dogs, ravaged the dog population in 1960. Over half the police dogs had to be killed that year.

But Pat Martin, an NDP MP on the committee, said some of the police testimony didn’t make sense. He pointed out that in some cases, police shot teams of healthy dogs that they claimed were dangerous, even when they were tied up to a narrow hitch, while their owners stopped to pick up supplies in a store.

“Couldn’t they have just taken them… by the harness instead of killing them?” Martin asked. “We want justice even if it’s 50 years too late on this issue.”

A representative for Anne McLellan, the federal minister overseeing the RCMP, said the government hasn’t made a decision about how to respond to the new push for an inquiry.

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