Words From Whale Cove

Six Inuit tell the story of their families’ forced relocations to an unfamiliar land—and how they came to call the place home.

- Suzie Napayok-Short And Cody Punter

IT WAS ONLY sixty years ago that people began to settle in Whale Cove — recently enough that some of the hamlet’s first inhabitants are still alive to recount the story of its origin. The Nunavut community is one of several towns the federal government created through forced relocations beginning in the 1920s. The reasons for the resettlements, which frequently resulted in tragedy, were varied and often misguided. During the Cold War, when the US and the Soviet Union threatened to encroach on Arctic territory Canada claimed as its own, the government relocated Inuit to the far North to establish its sovereignty. In some instances, communities were settled around trading posts or relocated when the posts were shut down. In the case of Whale Cove, now a town of about 400 on the coast of Hudson Bay, some of the first Inuit inhabitants came there in the wake of a devastating famine.

Before the relocation, many of the displaced Inuit lived nomadically and relied on the migration of caribou to survive. Among them were the Ahiarmiut, an inland group of people, who were forcibly relocated several times, beginning in 1950. In 1957, despite warnings from the Ahiarmiut that the settlements chosen for them were not conducive to hunting, they were dropped off in another un familiar location with almost no provisions. Seven Ahiarmiut died from starvation that winter. (The Ahiarmiut would have to wait more than six decades — until January 22 of this year — for the federal government to issue an official apology following a $5 million settlement for its role in their displacement.) In 1958, seventeen Inuit died of starvation at Garry Lake, a community northwest of Hudson Bay, after government officials failed to respond to repeated warnings about the dire conditions.