And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 08:23:07 -0500 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Lynne Moss-Sharman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: 50 yrs ago: RCMP shot Inuit sled dogs Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Tuesday 30 March 1999 When Mounties gunned down the sled dogs The RCMP will apologize for a misguided policy that deprived Inuit hunters of their livelihood and spawned a half-century of resentment in Canada's North. Janice Tibbetts reports. Janice Tibbetts The Ottawa Citizen IQALUIT, N.W.T. - When Lucassie Nutaraluk thinks of the Canadian justice system, one thing that still comes to mind is how the Mounties shot bullets through his four sled dogs almost half a century ago. "They just went up to them and it was 'bang, bang.' They didn't explain anything," the aging Inuit man said yesterday through an interpreter. It was the early 1950s, and Mr. Nutaraluk's husky hunting dogs were among the victims of an RCMP policy to rid fledgling Arctic communities of canines, ostensibly to control diseases such as rabies and distemper and prevent the animals from running loose. Since Mr. Nutaraluk speaks no English, and the RCMP officer didn't speak Inuktitut, there was only silence between the two men after the hunter watched his dead huskies collapse. Today, the RCMP, hoping for a fresh start with the creation this week of a new justice system, one of the key components of the Inuit homeland of Nunavut, realize they have to make up for the past if they want to polish their image. To that end, the new Nunavut detachment is crafting an official apology to people like Mr. Nutaraluk, now a 77-year-old grandfather whose dark eyes still flash with anger as he recalls how the police took away his "hunting tools," leaving him without a dog team to drag his sled across the snow-covered tundra. "I couldn't get any of this," he said, pointing his withered finger at a feast of caribou spread out on his coffee table. At a recent RCMP conference in Iqaluit on how to build bridges with the Inuit, elders spoke adamantly of the need for the police to make up for destroying an untold number of huskies in the 1950s and 1960s. "The whole idea is to say we've learned from mistakes of the past and we want to correct them to build a better relationship," said Cpl. Glen Siegersma, media relations officer with the Nunavut detachment, which will officially come into existence Thursday. The RCMP, considered the front-line players in an overhauled justice system designed to put more decision-making in the hands of the Inuit, realize they have a lot of mending to do in communities where police have been traditionally perceived as the gatekeepers of a white justice system that hasn't worked for aboriginals. Chris Bothe, commanding officer of the Nunavut headquarters, plans to have an apology ready in the next few months. RCMP officers are still trying to determine where and why so many dogs were shot to death. What is known is that the mass destruction of dog teams happened around the same time the federal government launched school construction and housing projects in an effort to pull Inuit from their nomadic lifestyle into modern communities. The fallout from the canine destruction is not unique to Nunavut, a 2.2-million-square-kilometre chunk of the eastern Arctic that will officially break away from the Northwest Territories this week. The Inuit of northern Quebec are planning to tour communities trying to find out more about why the massacre happened throughout their region. "We want the people of Canada to know about this because this actually happened," said Pita Aatami, president of the Makivik Corp., the organization representing northern Quebec Inuit. "We're not going to give up until something is done, because people's livelihoods were taken away. Some dogs were shot when they were chained up and the bullets hit the houses. People would run out and see the police shooting their dogs." Mr. Aatami, who learned recently that his late father's dogs were also shot, said reports have only started to surface in the last year. At Makivik Corp.'s annual general meeting last week, older Inuit vividly recalled how their lives abruptly changed when their dog teams were destroyed and sometimes left in a heap on the ice, leaving their owners to rely on government handouts to buy food. In Nunavut, RCMP already fear that saying sorry won't be enough, since it appears elders in some communities are starting to talk about lobbying for financial compensation. For Mr. Nutaraluk, the prospect of an apology after almost 50 years is little comfort. "I would prefer money instead of words from the RCMP, because my dogs were very valuable to me," said Mr. Nutaraluk, who struggled for years before he started hunting by snowmobile. Copyright 1999 Ottawa Citizen "Let Us Consider The Human Brain As A Very Complex Photographic Plate" 1957 G.H. Estabrooks, Creator of the Manchurian Candidate born New Brunswick [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.aches-mc.org &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&