[Thank you Lavone for finding this]

Inuit truth commission seeks reconciliation with dark chapters of the past, including a 'dog slaughter' by the Mounties

KATHERINE O'NEILL
From Monday's Globe and Mail
January 21, 2008 at 4:22 AM EST

IQALUIT — A $2-million truth commission will begin travelling around Nunavut today in an attempt to shed light on a dark chapter in Inuit
history and also solve a long-standing mystery: Who killed thousands of their sled dogs?

"It's reclamation of our past," said Terry Audla, executive director of the Qikiqtani Inuit Association, which represents Inuit in the Baffin
Region. "It's something our people need to have."

The Iqaluit-based association established the independent truth commission, which plans to interview more than 200 Inuit and non-Inuit in 13
eastern Arctic communities over the coming year.

The commission, which is headed by Jim Igloliorte, an Inuk and retired Labrador judge, is investigating controversial federal government policies that affected the Inuit between the 1950s and 1980s.

Commission officials will also comb through hundreds of documents from that era in an attempt to set the historical record straight.

The 30 years in question were a difficult period for the once semi-nomadic Inuit, as most moved off the frozen tundra for the first time and
into permanent settlements administered by government officials.

Everything was foreign, including the laws, food and housing, and their traditional way of life abruptly changed.

Many Inuit blame their current social problems, including high rates of alcohol abuse, domestic violence and suicide, on this part of their
history.

Some elders have even alleged the RCMP - either acting alone or with the federal government -deliberately murdered up to 20,000 of their sled
dogs to help officials control the Inuit and speed up the process of assimilation.

For centuries, sled dogs - qimmiit in Inuktitut -had been the Inuit's main source of transportation and a direct link to the land
and their food supply.

Some elders have tearfully told stories about travelling into a settlement to buy supplies and upon leaving a store, coming across Mounties
shooting their harnessed dogs.

Since 2000, Inuit groups in the eastern Arctic and Northern Quebec have demanded a federal inquiry into the alleged cull, which is referred to as the "dog slaughter" in many Arctic communities.

In 2006, a report by the RCMP found that while thousands of Inuit sled dogs died between the 1950s and 1970s, the Mounties killed them only
for reasons of public safety or health.

It found no evidence of a sinister plot and suggested that factors such as canine diseases and the introduction of the snowmobile to the Arctic in the 1960s could have also led to the rapid disappearance of sled dogs.

While officers talked to almost 200 witnesses, only a handful of Inuit elders agreed to be interviewed. "The level of mistrust is still
there," explained Mr. Audla, about the lack of elder co-operation with the police investigation.

Madeleine Redfern, executive director of the truth commission, said the Inuit who lived through the transition to settlements still have a hard time talking about it.

"We don't want to go in there and cause more trauma," explained the 40-year-old Inuk lawyer. "But I really believe that these people want their history out into the world. They don't want to die without being able to tell it."

She said that very little about this era has ever been told from an Inuit perspective, and the commission won't be a "witch hunt" but rather a process of reconciliation and understanding.

The commission's final report is expected to be ready by mid-2009 and could potentially contain recommendations calling for compensation.

Kimmirut, a hamlet on the south coast of Baffin Island, will be the first place the commission visits (it was selected long before a young
Mountie was slain there while responding to a call last November). Twenty-six elders have already signed up to tell their stories.

Frank Tester, an Arctic researcher and professor of social work at the University of British Columbia, hopes the commission will lead to
healing. "This is probably the most dramatic and astounding rate of cultural and social change experienced by any group of people anywhere in the world in all of recorded history," he said. "The end result is trauma."

Prof. Tester said there's "no doubt" sled dogs were killed, but he's never found any evidence of a systematic dog slaughter carried out by the
RCMP. He's interested to see how the commission deals with the matter.

Prof. Tester said many Inuit have remained largely quiet on this period of history because they had lost so much control, so quickly. While
there were many competent government officials during that time, there are also many who treated the Inuit horribly and like children, he said.