NOTES
- Interviews were conducted in 1988 with approximately 45 community members (35 female, 10 male) as part of a wider study on changing gender roles in various cultural contexts in Canada. All interviews were tape-recorded and followed an open-ended interview guide. Data on resettlement emerged in discussions of how male and female roles have changed in the past 100 years. Methodology is discussed in the author's “The Progressive Verification Method: A Feminist Methodology for Studying Women Cross-Culturally,” Women's International Studies Forum (forthcoming). Appreciation is extended to the Canadian Embassy, Washington, D.C., for its grant support; to the Scientific Institute of the NWT and the people of Pangnirtung for their generous cooperation and permission to conduct research; to Kyra Mancini (research assistant and transcriber) and Sheila Qappik (interpreter) for their invaluable assistance; and to Ned Franks for a sensitive reading of an earlier draft.
- The term resettlement is used here to imply forced or coerced relocation of Native peoples from their traditional lands and camps into newly created centers of population. While many Inuit came into the settlements voluntarily on the wave of government-induced momentum, the process is the effect of social policy rather than of individual choice. Sociologically, the process has some similarities to the enforced move of Indians onto reserves and to de facto or de jure concentration of African-Americans into urban ghettos.
- Victor F. Valentine and Frank G. Vallee, eds., Eskimo of the Canadian Arctic (Toronto: Macmillan, 1978), xii.
- Reworked from Gerhard Lenski and Jean Lenski, Human Societies: An Introduction to Macrosociology, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978) and Janet Billson, “Social Change, Social Problems, and the Search for Identity: Canada's Northern Native Peoples in Transition,” American Review of Canadian Studies 18, no. 3 (Autumn 1988): 295–316.
- Colin Irwin, “Lords of the Arctic: Wards of the State: The Growing Inuit Population, Arctic Resettlement, and Their Effects on Social and Economic Change—A Summary Report,” Northern Perspectives 17, no. 1 (January-March 1989).
- C.E.S. Franks, “Indian Self-Government: Canada and the United States Compared,” paper presented to the Annual Meeting, Western Social Science Association (Albuquerque, April 1989), 1.
- Nelson H. Graburn, Eskimos without Igloos: Social and Economic Development in Sugluk (Boston: Little Brown, 1969).
- Harold W. Finkler, “North of 60: Inuit and the Administration of Criminal Justice in the Northwest Territories—The Case of Frobisher Bay” (Ottawa: NRD 76–3, 1976). (Frobisher Bay is now called Iqaluit.)
- Ann McElroy, Alternatives in Modernization: Styles and Strategies in the Acculturative Behavior of Baffin Island Inuit, vols. 1–3 (New Haven, Conn.: Human Relations Area Files, Ethnography Series, 1977).
- George W. Wenzel, Clyde Inuit Adaptation and Ecology: The Organization of Subsistence, Canadian Ethnology Service, Paper No. 77, National Museum of Man Mercury Series (Ottawa: National Museums of Canada, 1981).
- Richard G. Condon, “Inuit Behavior and Seasonal Change in the Canadian Arctic,” Studies in Cultural Anthropology, vol. 2 (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981) and Inuit Youth Growth and Change in the Canadian Arctic (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1987).
- Irwin, “Lords of the Arctic,” 2–12.
- Barry Brown, “Future Bleak As Winter for Arctic Town” (Broughton Island, NWT), Baltimore Sun, 6 January 1988, 2.
- Priit J. Vesilind, “Hunters of the Lost Spirit,” 5National5 Geographic 163, no. 2 (February 1983): 151–197.
- Doug Struck, “Among the People,” Baltimore Sun, Series, 13–17 January 1985. Resettlement as a tool of modernization has caused complications for many Native communities. For example, Inuit were moved from Port Burwell on Killiniq Island, NWT, to northern Quebec in 1978 because of “deteriorating economic and social conditions.” In 1988 the Canadian government negotiated an agreement with the Inuit Makivik Corporation to pay former Port Burwell residents $2.5 million in exchange for dropping their lawsuit against the government for personal damages. The suit alleged that Inuit had been “forcibly removed” from their traditional community, to which they now wish to return.
- Similarly, Inuit were gathered in from their camps to create the new settlement of Pond Inlet during the 1950s, “to combat epidemic and famine.” Although widespread starvation and tuberculosis were controlled, few Inuit now live well by their own or by southern standards. Good housing is “perennially short,” health remains relatively poor, infant mortality is five times the Canadian rate, the nearest doctor is 662 miles away, per capita income is one-half the Canadian average, and the cost of living is astronomical. Like many other northern communities including Pangnirtung, Pond Inlet suffers from lack of jobs, high costs of hunting, and high rates of dependency on social assistance (about two-thirds).
- For descriptions of traditional Inuit life, see Janet Billson, “The Changing Role of Women and Their Families: New Choices for A New Era,” in Mary Crnkovich, ed., Gossip: A Spoken History of Women in the North (Ottawa: Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, 1990), 43–59; Dorothy Eber and Peter Pitseolak, People from Our Side (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1975); Hugh McCullum and Karmel McCullum, This Land Is Not for Sale: Canada's Original People and Their Land—A Saga of Neglect, Exploitation, and Conflict (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 1975); and Doug Wilkinson, Land of the Long Day (New York: Henry Holt, 1965).
- It can be argued that this view of traditional life is romanticized. However, I am reporting here the perceptions and memories of older Inuit residents of Pangnirtung who are speaking comparatively: life in the settlement is fraught with conflict, deviance, and confusion, compared to presettlement life in the camps. That is not to imply that traditional Inuit life was free from these social problems. No society is. Missionaries were shocked by the power of shamans to kill in retribution for seemingly minor infractions; rivalry over women led to wife stealing and murder; adultery, battering, and fighting existed; deviants were left to die by nomadic communities.
- Alcohol and substance abuse rates are of concern in Pangnirtung; divorce and abortion are not common, but domestic violence is perceived to be on the upswing; murder and suicide are relatively uncommon, but depression is rampant; welfare and other transfer payment dependency are high; employment opportunities are seasonal and insufficient for the population base; vehicular fatalities are low because few vehicles exist in Pangnirtung; marriage rates are declining.
- The RCMP admittedly played a large part in the process of bringing Inuit into the twentieth century and under the domination of white, paternalistic, cultural institutions. Initially the RCMP visited camps to give welfare and record births and deaths. Their role as Canadian government liaison to the Inuit people is a role the “Mounties” had played with Indians during the crucial treaty period as well.
- Throughout the history of Inuit existence in the Canadian Arctic, periods of starvation and death have accompanied migration of herds and climatic shifts. The Inuit also suffered illness and death caused by the introduction of “white man's” diseases as early as the 1600s. See Billson, “Social Change, Social Problems, and the Search for Identity”; McElroy, Alternatives in Modernization; and L.F.S. Upton, “The Extermination of the Beothucks of Newfoundland,” in Robin Fisher and Kenneth Coates, eds., Out of the Background: Readings on Canadian Native History (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1988), 45–65.
- McElroy in Alternatives to Modernization, 90, sets the Inuit population of Pangnirtung at 54 in 1925, out of 350 in the Cumberland Sound region; 45 in 1944, out of 481; and 98 in 1961 (total number in Sound not given). After the dog epidemic of 1962, Pangnirtung grew dramatically to almost 600 people. By 1966, however, only 340 remained in the settlement, the rest having returned to the land because of lack of adequate housing and desire to live the traditional life style. As housing was added by the government, and more children were brought into the schools, the population steadily climbed to present levels. Frank G. Vallee details some of the status distinctions between those who chose to remain on the land at Baker Lake (Nunamiut) and those who came into the settlements “like white people” (Kabloonamiut): “Differentiation Among the Eskimos in Some Arctic Settlements,” in Valentine and Vallee, eds., Eskimo of the Canadian Arctic, 109–126.
- McElroy, Alternatives in Modernization, 91.
- Michael Asch, “The Dene Economy,” in Mel Watkins, ed., Dene Nation—the Colony Within (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), 53.
- Robert Davis and Mark Zannis, The Genocide Machine in Canada (Montreal: Black Rose, 1973); also, Kenneth Coates, “Best Left as Indians: The Federal Government and the Indians of the Yukon, 1894–1950,” in Fisher and Coates, eds., Out of the Background, 236–255.
- See for example Gordon W. Smith, “Sovereignty in the North: The Canadian Aspect of An International Problem,” in Ronald St. J. Macdonald, ed., The Arctic Frontier (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966), 194–255; and Environment Canada, Environment Canada and the North: The Perceptions, Roles and Policies of the Department of the Environment Regarding Development North of 60, Discussion Paper (Ottawa: Environment Canada, July 1983), 45.
- Kenneth Coates, The Modern North (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1989), 13.
- Tables are conceptual, not mathematical, in nature because of inaccessibility of reliable statistical data on Pangnirtung. Arrows indicate direction of trends and their relative estimated weight as described by respondents.
- This argument is made also in Eber and Pitseolak, People from Our Side.
- Terence Armstrong, “The Administration of Northern Peoples: The USSR,” in Macdonald, ed., The Arctic Frontier, 57–88.
- Reported from other Baffin Island communities in Billson, “The Changing Roles of Inuit Women.”
- Ralph Matthews distinguishes between “transfer dependency” and “dependency theory,” The Creation of Regional Dependency (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983), 69–76. The latter is intended here.
- Vallee, “Differentiation Among the Eskimos in Some Canadian Arctic Settlements,” 111.
- See Irwin, “Lords of the Arctic,” and G. Anders, ed., The East Coast of Baffin Island: An Area Economic Survey (Ottawa: Industrial Division, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, 1966).
- Finkler, North of 60, 46; McElroy, Alternatives in Modernization, 71.
- Irwin, “Lords of the Arctic,” 5.
- Lynda Lange, “The Relation Between the Situation of Dene Women and The Changing Situation of Elders, in the Context of Colonialism: The Experience of Fort Franklin 1945–1985,” paper presented at the conference, Knowing the North, Boreal Institute for Northern Studies, Edmonton, November 1986, 4.
- Finkler, North of 60, 23ff.
- Janet Billson, “Standing Tradition on Its Head: Role Reversal Among Inuit and Indian Families in Canada,” paper presented to the Annual Meeting, Western Social Science Association (Albuquerque, April 1989).
- While domestic violence was undoubtedly easier to deal with in the immediacy of camp life, it should be noted that in many Inuit camps rivalry over women occasionally led to wife stealing, fighting, and even killing. Cf. Janet Billson, “Violence Toward Women and Children,” in Mary Crnkovich, ed., Gossip: A Spoken History of Women in the North (Ottawa: Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, 1990), 151–162.
- See Neil C. Skinner, “Foundations of Aboriginal Sovereignty in North America: A Comparative Review,” paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the Western Social Science Association (Albuquerque, April 1989); Inuit Committee on National Issues; and Finn Lynge, “An International Inuit Perspective on Development in the Arctic,” The Northern Raven 6, no. 1 (Summer 1986): 1–3.
- Obviously, prior to the influx of white influence, the Inuit had political autonomy and self-government; land claims vis-à-vis a central government were not an issue.
- Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: The Free Press, 1957), 49–50.
- George Manuel and Michael Posluns, “The Fourth World in Canada,” in Jean Leonard Elliot, ed., Two Nations, Many Cultures: Ethnic Groups in Canada, 2nd ed. (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, 1983), 15–18.
- Ray Funk points out that government social impact studies regarding the construction of the Mackenzie Valley pipeline assumed that the pipeline would speed evolution from traditional to modern life for Native people and that “gains in employment, training, and social amenities would offset the unavoidable [negative] social consequences.” Although one study “regretted that Natives would become a declining minority in the North,” it said this was “an irreversible trend.” “The Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry in Retrospect,” in William Derman and Scott Whiteford, eds., Social Impact Analysis and Development Planning in the Third World (Denver: Westview Press: 1985), 125–26. (Social Impact Assessment Series, No. 12)
- Matthews, The Creation of Regional Dependency, 162.
- Roger Gibbins and J. Rick Ponting, “An Assessment of the Probable Impact of Aboriginal Self-Government in Canada,” in Alan Cairns and Cynthia Williams, eds., The Politics of Gender, Ethnicity, and Language in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 171–245.
- Cited in Gibbins and Ponting, 182.
- Janet Billson, “No Owner of Soil: the Concept of Marginality Revisited on Its 60th Birthday,” International Review of Modern Sociology 18 (Autumn 1988): 83–204.
- Gibbins and Ponting observe that the historical relationship between aboriginal people and the governments of Canada has been “contentious and…unsuccessful.” “An Assessment of the Probable Impact,” 172. More optimistically, Bernard Blishen detects growing demand among Canadians in general for state recognition of group rights. “Continuity and Change in Canadian Values,” in Cairns and Williams, 1–26.
- A lesson from the Inuit and Indian experiences of resettlement might be applied to current efforts to bring often-resistant homeless people into shelters. The provision of food and shelter without simultaneous provision of opportunities for pride, self-esteem, and economic independence may create more problems than it is designed to resolve.
- Lynge, “An International Inuit Perspective on Development in the Arctic.”