The RCMP killed sled dogs to keep the Inuit in one place.
In the 50s, when Canada started to want Inuit lands, hundreds of sled dogs were slaughtered. The killings were deeply shocking to the Inuit who have a very strong relationship with their dogs, and who relied on those dogs to transport food and goods. Without the dogs, Inuit could not hunt or move around as they had before. It was a deliberate strategy to ‘settle’ them.
For years the RCMP and Canada have claimed that the dogs were sick and needed to be put down. These lies, and the violence inherent in the slayings, are slowly coming to official light.
Some Inuit in Nunavik are finally receiving compensation for the slaughter, but of course these paltry sums cannot undo the damage of forced settlement and relocations. Canada seems to believe that financial compensation obviates any need for real change.
Disgusting, and too little, too late… as usual.
Where’s PETA on this shit. Are they so caught up in making sure people can’t practice their traditions up North?
They needed the Inuit to act as ‘flagpoles’ to ensure Canada’s “claim the Arctic” was staked, particularly during the Cold War. They even relocated families into the High Arctic and stranded them there on purpose to fulfill this goal.
Not ancient history, colonialism in Canada. Recent and ongoing. PETA doesn’t give a shit about any of that. They operate in a vacuum, like the rest of settler society, where injustices of the ‘distant past’ can be conveniently forgotten, and injustices of the present are invisible.
I often wondered about how/why the Inuit became settled. Now I know. :|
