The Official Mind of Canadian Colonialism: Government authorities and the Qikiqtani Region, 1950 to 1975

Summary

From 1950 to 1975, Canadian officials saw the Qikiqtani Region (formerly the Baffin Region) as an isolated, under-developed and potentially embarrassing area that they wanted to incorporate economically, socially and politically into the rest of Canada. Until about 1969, Ottawa was delivering federal, provincial-type and municipal services to a small, dispersed population. In this period, the problems of the North were usually defined by people with little or no personal experience of the Arctic. The same people developed solutions, without asking any or much advice from Inuit. A greater understanding of Ottawa’s motivations and ideas helps explain how events unfolded in the Baffin Region and to understand which results were intended and which were not.

Canadian officials were part of a generation that believed that the future would be better than the past, that Canada was a decent and progressive country, that education and training were keys to a better life, and that any remnants of cultural traditions among Canada’s Aboriginal groups were likely to end due to un-named “forces beyond our control”. The archival record and Qikiqtani Truth Commission (QTC) testimonies also show that people with first-hand knowledge of the North were less certain about applying southern solutions and expectations to northern conditions, but that they were usually over-ruled by those with less understanding but more power.

Two issues were high on the federal agenda for the North in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The first was planning for economic development – especially exploitation of minerals, oil and gas. By the early 1950s, to support future development, the federal government performed extensive aerial mapping and mineral resource surveys, which covered most of the Arctic. It promoted and helped pay for defence projects that developed the Frobisher Bay townsite in Iqaluit, as well as runways and weather stations at selected Arctic locations. These investments were expected to provide new jobs to replace the traditional land-based economy for a portion of the Inuit population, to reduce social assistance costs and to generate wealth for the whole country. Officials admitted, however, that there was no certainty that the effort would lead to a sustained increase in wage employment for Inuit.

The welfare of the people – the “human problems” – provided the second area of major concern. Three central worries concerned officials: health; possible scarcity of game animals; and a belief that Inuit needed intensive retraining for the industrial economy. Ottawa sought change by increasing its own involvement in almost all aspects of Inuit life, from areas of expected government interest, such as education, healthcare and employment, to more personal concerns, such as child-rearing strategies and housekeeping. Early in the period, one high-ranking official wrote that his job was “to hasten the day when in every respect the Eskimos can take their own places in the new kind of civilization which we ― and they ― are building in their country.”

Exposure to government messages involved sending staff and publications to Inuit living in camps or in permanent settlements. Access to critical government services, however, required mobility on the part of Inuit. In particular, an epidemic of tuberculosis was addressed by bringing patients south and a southern approach to schooling was introduced, which required the dismantling of a whole way of living and bringing up children. These planned changes required Inuit, who wanted and needed access to services, to settle in permanent communities, mostly around the sites of existing trading posts in places chosen by government agents.

Throughout this period, remote officials claimed to respect Inuit culture. By the 1960s, they were no longer speaking about civilizing “primitive” people, they were describing their intentions to promote “social development” by delivering universal social programs, new technologies and economic investments that would benefit both Inuit and Canadians as a whole. However, most of their investments did not yield an immediate financial return for the South. Furthermore, this desire to benefit Inuit was imposed by outsiders in the name of Canada and its cultural norms. It largely denied Inuit opportunities to define the main problems as they saw them or to apply traditional environmental knowledge or Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit to the search for solutions.