Federal government apologizes for Dundas Harbour relocations in Nunavut
The federal government has offered a long-awaited apology to Inuit families affected by the Dundas Harbour relocations in Nunavut nearly a century ago.
Gary Anandasangaree, the federal minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs, delivered the official apology at a ceremony in Arctic Bay, Nunavut, on Thursday afternoon.
"We recognize and acknowledge the profound harm done to your families, your communities and your way of life, for taking you from your homes and families, for the hardships you endured and the displacement and ruptures of kinships," Anandasangaree said before a crowd gathered in the local community centre.
"The government of Canada took advantage of its dominant position over Inuit living in the Arctic and moved them to further its geopolitical goals without due regard to the desires of the relocatees or the impact that the move would have on them."
The Dundas Harbour relocations were early examples of government-directed moves of Inuit.
In 1934, according to the Qikiqtani Truth Commission, a ship carried 52 Inuit and 109 dogs from several Baffin Island communities — Kinngait, Pangnirtung and Pond Inlet — to Dundas Harbour, an abandoned RCMP post on Devon Island. A Hudson Bay Company clerk also went to operate a trading post there.
A 2013 report from the Qikiqtani Truth Commission says the government's motives for the relocation were "complex."
"Reopening Dundas Harbour made a sovereignty statement at little or no expense to Canada, and also brought Inuit to an unpopulated area from more southerly locations that were considered to be overhunted," the report reads.
Two years later, however, the Dundas Harbour trading post was abandoned, and some Inuit were taken back to Pangnirtung. Others would be moved again, several more times, over the following years.
Lucy Qavavauq, who's with the Dundas Harbour Relocation Society which had been advocating for the official apology, said it was "something that has been coming a very long time."
Qavavauq said that while she welcomed the official apology, she wishes it "would have happened sooner."
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