Arctic Migrants, Arctic Villagers: The Transformation of Inuit Settlement in the Central Arctic

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.

In spite of recent important experiments in the Arctic that raise
political, economic, and social issues for all Canadians, there has been
surprisingly little historical analysis of the events leading to such
developments as the creation of Nunavut. Here, one of the senior
scholars of Canadian anthropology combines archival research with the
anthropological fieldwork of a lifetime to explore the changing
settlement patterns from ancient times to the 1960s in a region ranging
from Baffin Island in the east to Coppermine in the west.

The author was clearly motivated by recent debates about whether the
government coerced Inuit families to relocate to unsuitable sites for
purposes that were either not made clear or perhaps misrepresented to
the families involved. But the book is about more than just the High
Arctic relocation. Damas concludes that the modern process of movement
into central settlements is just a recent manifestation of a process
that has been a part of Inuit life before. Indeed, Damas demonstrates
that in the 1950s and 1960s, centralization began in spite of government
policies, which were intended to encourage life on the land in order to
prevent dependency and demoralization. He sees little evidence of
coercion from Ottawa, and instead explores social, economic, and
technological factors. The introduction of “welfare state” measures
for improved health, housing, and education appealed to the Inuit and
played a far greater role, according to Damas, than any government
pressure.

The book will appeal primarily to scholars rather than to the general
reader, and will undoubtedly generate some debate. Certainly, it
reflects a lifetime’s observation and experience. But the construction
of the argument and the lack of historical context are puzzling. And the
use of techniques like establishing a precontact “baseline” for
comparison and the absence of Inuit voices is clearly insensitive to
Inuit perceptions of their own history. More careful editing,
particularly of the footnotes and bibliography, would have been
appropriate. Nevertheless, the book is a useful contribution to a shelf
that has been looking rather bare in recent years.