Arctic Smoke and Mirrors

Kerry Abel is a professor of history at Carleton University. She is the author of Drum Songs: Glimpses of Dene History, co-editor of Aboriginal Resource Use in Canada: Historical and Legal Aspects, and co-editor of Northern Visions: New Perspectives on the North in Canadian History.

Beginning in 1953, 17 Inuit families were moved by the Canadian
government to settlements at Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord in the high
Arctic. A number of years later, some of those who were resettled
complained that they had been misled about the motivation for the move
and coerced into leaving their homes. Their demand for an apology and
compensation has led to a heated debate that raises difficult questions
about the use of historical evidence.

Gerard Kenney argues in this book that the Inuit were relocated because
the government was concerned about the hardship they were suffering. He
dismisses the theory that a concern for Arctic sovereignty was the
hidden agenda and is particularly scathing about what he sees as the
one-sided treatment accorded the story by both the media and the Royal
Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Using archival research and interviews
with people whom the Royal Commission did not hear from, he pieces
together a story that is quite different from the one presented by, for
example, Shelagh Grant of Trent University and the Soberman report to
the Human Rights Commission.

Although its presentation is rather choppy and sometimes confused, this
book is an important contribution to the debate. The author quite
correctly points out the distorting effects of a misreading or selective
use of the sources. And yet, he makes the same mistake he discerns in
other studies when he takes at face value the RCMP reports and
“happy” Inuit letters that issued from the new settlement. A trained
historian would have taken into account the constables’ vested
interest in making it look as though they were doing a good job, as well
as the pressures that discouraged the Inuit from complaining. Kenney’s
book serves as a useful corrective to previous treatments of the issue,
but it is by no means the final word.