Dogfight

Irniq: If I spoke about what I’m saying today, I would have been severely punished by the Hudson’s Bay Company manager, by the Roman Catholic priest, by the grey nuns in Chesterfield Inlet, and threatened with an arrest by the RCMP. Because we were not supposed to criticize the white man when he came to the Arctic. We were supposed to be obedient people.

Rudnicki: I never heard about any official edict to get rid of the sled dogs. The Inuit were being attracted to the hamlets. Many of them were giving up life on the land. It was their land, but with population increase I guess it was getting more difficult to live on the land in distant camps. People chose to move because their kids were in residential school, or because they had health problems. There was a Hudson’s Bay Company store. There were welfare services. They saw reason to go into these hamlets, and they brought their sled dogs.