Inuit seek probe into 50-year-old dog slaughter

Sutton Eaves
CanWest News Service
Wednesday, March 09, 2005

OTTAWA -- Inuit elders had a gruesome tale to tell MPs on Tuesday of thousands of sled dogs slaughtered at the hands of police.

The killings took place 50 years ago, but the emotional stories were recalled with hopes of sparking a public inquiry into what many Inuit believe was a secret government policy to undermine their culture and tradition.

Appearing before a Commons committee on aboriginal affairs, Quebec Inuit Johny Watt described the day when policemen arrived at his door with dog harnesses in their hands. They had just shot some of his dogs, which were tied to the side of his house. Now they wanted him to dispose of the bodies.

"I suspect that the federal government administrators ordered the QPP (Quebec Provincial Police) to shoot the dogs as I have seen with my own eyes a federal government engineer running around, actually running around, in the community looking for dogs to shoot," said Watt, 79.

Pita Aatami, president of Makivik Corp., a nonprofit organization formed to administer a 1975 land claims agreement, is demanding the federal government not only investigate the deaths of more than 20,000 sled dogs killed by police across northern Quebec and Nunavut in the '50s and '60s, but also apologize and provide compensation packages to the 250 families affected by the loss.

He and others accuse the federal government of having a secret policy that saw the decimation of sled dogs as a way to push remote Inuit settlements closer to communities where their children would go to school.

"It just didn't pop out of thin air, it happened. I want to make sure that people understand in Canada the wrong that was done to the Inuit. There has to be a public inquiry," Aatami said.

In testimony Tuesday, a senior officer in the RCMP, which was alleged to have initiated the killings until provincial police took over in the mid-'60s, said hundreds of dogs had to be shot because of disease, starvation and distemper.

Although most records from that time had been destroyed, he said those that remain showed officers were forced to kill dogs that posed a risk to the community.

"Sometimes RCMP members' duties force them to perform actions which may have appeared destructive and inexplicable to youngsters who observed them. Those youngsters are now senior citizens whose memories of losses their families had to endure may still cause them pain," said Chief Supt. Kevin Vickers.