Police killing 20,000 Inuit sled dogs, 1950-1963, costs Canada $45 million

Canadian government sends official born in Sri Lanka long after the killing ended to deliver an apology

KANGIQSUJUAQ,  Quebec––Canadian crown indigenous relations minister Gary Anandasangaree,  51,  on November 23,  2024 apologized in Kangiqsujuaq,  far northern Quebec,  to the Inuit people for sled dog massacres conducted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police [RCMP] and the Sûrété du Québec [Quebec Provincial Police] from 1950 to 1963.

Anandasangaree,  along with the apology,  also delivered a Canadian government pledge of $45 million,  worth about $32 million in U.S. funds,  in reparations to the Inuit for the economic and cultural damage that killing the dogs did to the remote Inuit communities and way of life.

This will be the third,  largest,  and probably the last Canadian government payout for the killings,  after nearly 20 years of formal investigations.

From Jaffa to Kangiqsujuaq

The Inuit,  known in Alaska as Eskimos,  live chiefly inside or near the Arctic Circle.

In the Canadian Far North,  this includes the Yukon Territories,  Northwest Territories,  Nunavut,  and northern Quebec,  and Labrador,  which is below the Arctic Circle but shares the Arctic climate.

The last of the RCMP mass sled dog killings occurred 10 years before Anandasangaree was born in Jaffna,  Sri Lanka,  7,281 miles from Kangiqsujuaq,  and 20 years before he emigrated to Canada at age 10 with his parents.

Steamy-hot Sri Lanka,  circa 300 miles above the equator,  is about as different as could be from the Canadian Far North,  but Anandasangaree could empathize with the Inuit from direct experience,  having lived in Sri Lanka at a time when poisoning street dogs in numbers far greater than were killed in Inuit villages was the sole form of government animal control.

“Economic,  cultural,  & emotional upheaval”

The sled dog killings “led to great economic,  cultural,  and emotional upheaval which is still felt today,”  Anandasangaree said.

With the money,  Anandasangaree suggested,  “Nunavik Inuit will be able to reintroduce dogs,  remove barriers to accessing the land,  and promote healing from the devastating loss of the dogs.

“I have heard from elders of the horror of the mass killing of the dogs that occurred in this community,”  Anandasangaree said.

“The dogs,”  called qimmiit in the Inuit language,  “were shot,  burned in a pile on the ice in front of the owners,  and the remains were left there for the winter,  forcing the community to be reminded daily of the violence and trauma of losing their dogs.

“Many communities lost all their dogs”

“By the end of the dog slaughter, only a few qimmiit remained in Nunavik, and many communities lost all their dogs,”  Anandasangaree narrated.

“When the dogs were killed,  Inuit were abruptly forced into settlements,  adopting a non-Inuk way of life.

“The federal government takes responsibility for its role in the dog slaughter,”  Anandasangaree emphasized.  “When it started in the 1950s,  the killing of the dogs was done under federal authority, although federal officials were aware that the dogs were essential to Inuit for traveling to camps and for hunting.

“This was a horrendous betrayal by those who were tasked to support and live in partnership with Inuit and who were present in your communities.

“This has created immense distrust toward the federal government,  including the police,”  Anandasangaree acknowledged.

20,000 dogs killed over 13 years

“A 2010 report from Jean-Jacques Croteau,  a retired Superior Court of Quebec judge,”  summarized Nick Murray for Canadian Press,  from the national capital in Ottawa,  “found Quebec provincial police officers killed more than 1,000 dogs in Nunavik,  belonging to about 75 Inuit hunters,  “without any consideration for their importance to Inuit families.”

Altogether,  the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Sûrété du Québec are believed to have killed about 20,000 dogs in the Canadian Far North between 1950 and 1963,  “for health and safety reasons,”  Croteau acknowledged.

Explained Pita Aatami,  president of Makivvik Corporation,  representing the Inuit, “Historically, Inuit didn’t tie their dogs.  That was one way of keeping them healthy.

“And it’s only when the non-natives came,  that they started having to tie their dogs.  And that’s when the dogs became more vicious,  lazier.  Not as good as before,  that kind of thing.”

Introduction of schools brought dogs into villages

Wrote Murray,  “The 2010 report from Croteau,”  which led to an earlier $20 million settlement for some of the sled dog killings,  “found Canada’s liability for the deaths of the dogs arose,  in part,  because of the establishment of mandatory schooling and residential schools in Nunavik villages,  and failure to intervene sooner when killing sled dogs began in four initial villages.

Found Croteau,  “The authorities chose confrontation over negotiation by using the services of the Sûrété du Québec.  As a result, any untied dog was killed without prior warning,  while the statute [the police] relied upon allowed anyone to kill a stray dog without incurring liability.”

Croteau reported that the government of Canada “knew of the issue involving the killing of sled dogs as early as 1958,  but still established more schools in other villages.”

“Inuit families were in a hurry” to comply with mandatory schooling

Summarized Murray,  “Croteau said Canada should instead have suspended the unilateral launching of day schools in favor of first consulting with Inuit elders and establishing more schools as needed.

“Because school attendance was mandatory,”  Murray explained,  “and because Inuit then never allowed themselves to be separated from their children,”  as Croteau also observed,  “Inuit families were in a hurry to settle in villages,  bringing their dogs with them in order to ensure their livelihood and transportation.

“In Kangiqsujuaq specifically,”  Murray said,   “Croteau’s report recalled how the federal government opened a school in 1960,  then a nursing station a year later.  By 1962,  small prefabricated houses were built and Inuit settled in the village.”

“There was a clash of values & practices”

But “The Inuit traditional practice of keeping sled dogs loose in their camps did not work in the permanent settlements,”  recalled Madeleine Redfern,  executive director of the Qikiqtani Truth
Commission,  to Remata D’Aliesio of the Toronto Globe & Mail in 2012.  “There was a clash of values and practices,”  Redfern explained.

Recounted Croteau of what happened in Kangiqsujuaq,  “As was the case in the other villages,”  where the same problems had occurred and recurred many times for more than a decade,  “the dog issue arose once the school opened,  because mandatory attendance led families who had been nomadic to settle in the village.

“Never before,  that is to say,  not since time immemorial,  had outsiders attempted to exert control over the dogs,  which seemed so strict to members of the community.

Had no collars or chains, but had rabies outbreaks

“To the Inuit,”  Croteau wrote,  “the whites’ attitude was a threat to their culture,  their way of life.  They could not understand how a provincial statute,  of which most were unaware,  could give an officer discretion to determine the fate of their sled dogs.”

Further summarized Murray,  “Croteau also wrote that many dog owners did not have adequate collars or chains to even tie up their dogs.  He determined that over a three-day period sometime between 1965 and 1967, more than 200 dogs were killed in Kangiqsujuaq alone,  amounting to more than half of the canine population.”

Complicating the situation were sporadic rabies outbreaks,  contracted by sled dogs from Arctic foxes. A Canadian federal administrator introduced a vaccination program,  but some of the vaccinated dogs died,  spreading further mistrust.

Whether those dogs died from having contracted rabies before they were vaccinated,  or from bad vaccines,  is unclear.

“Negotiation instead of confrontation”

“Canada, in its capacity as a fiduciary, should have asked its civil servants to solve the problem in the above-mentioned villages through negotiation instead of confrontation,”  Croteau determined.

Recalled Murray,  “In 2011,  then-Quebec Premier Jean Charest formally apologized to Inuit in Nunavik for the province’s role in the killings across the region,  and settled with Makivvik for $3 million toward promoting and protecting Inuit language and culture.

“In 2019, the federal government apologized to Inuit in Nunavut for the RCMP’s role in killing sled dogs there.”

No evidence of a plot

Contrary to common impression among both the Inuit and outside activists for indigenous rights,  Croteau discovered no evidence that the RCMP and Sûrété du Québec sled dog massacres were part of a deliberate plot to destroy Inuit culture and livelihoods.

“Nothing in the file leads me to believe that [such a plot] occurred,”  Charest declared in a 22-page interim report issued in 2009.

“The allegation of a fact does not necessarily mean that it has been proven,”  Charest cautioned.  “At the time the federal authority would have supposedly given the order to destroy Inuit sled dogs,  it was sending to Nunavik more than 3,000 [rabies vaccine] doses.”

Protection of livestock law was misused

But Croteau found that the federal and provincial governments for misused a law applicable to dogs menacing livestock as rationale for killing sled dogs,  usually hundreds of miles from any other domesticated animals.

“I do not see how a stray sled dog in the Arctic territory of northern Quebec,”  now Nunavik, “could be injurious to agriculture,”  Croteau wrote.

“The evidence indicates that northern Quebec Inuit  were never consulted regarding the application of the Agricultural Abuses Act,  a law totally inappropriate for them and in no manner supporting the exercise of their aboriginal rights.

“It was beyond understanding.  The officers displayed a total lack of awareness of Inuit
fundamental rights,  of their culture and the importance of the dogs for their subsistence,”  Croteau assessed.

“Two ways of thinking”

“The Inuit and Qallunaat [white people] had two ways of thinking about the dogs,”  explained Jane George for the Nunatsiaq News in Iqaluit,  Nunavik.  “For Inuit they were regarded as
an essential form of transportation,  but for Qallunaat,  the dogs were pests.

“Kangiqsujuaq and Kuujjuaq were the two settlements where the highest number of killings occurred,  according to the report,”  continued George.

“Two witnesses at a public hearing in Kangiqsujuaq said two provincial police officers arrived one day by seaplane,”  George wrote.

“They came out of the plane without saying a word to anyone and started chasing stray dogs in the village.  They killed 32 of them and simply left thereafter without any explanation,”  according to the witnesses.

“Looked at all possible information”

“Documentary evidence,”  added George,  “shows that three disease outbreaks,  rabies, canine distemper and canine viral hepatitis, also occurred” during the time frame when most of the sled dog killing was done,  in 1959 and 1960 around Kuujjuaq,  and along the Hudson Bay coast in 1961 and 1962.

The Charest report “looked at all possible information regarding the alleged sled dog killings,  including a 2005 brief that Makivik submitted to Quebec and the federal government,  personal  testimonies from Inuit and non-Inuit,  the RCMP’s final report from 2006,  legislation regarding loose dogs,  and the 2005 Makivik-produced video Echo of the Last Howl,”  George said.

“Echo of the Last Howl,”  George explained,  “showed how the ‘burning pyramids of dogs’ on the ice left an enduring legacy of pain and loss.”

The makers of Echo of the Last Howl refused to cooperate with the 2006 RCMP investigation,  reported Bob Weber of Canadian Press.

Culling continued to be recommended

Even after Echo of the Last Howl generated international awareness and controversy over the sled dog culls,  Winnipeg Humane Society executive director Vicki Burns triggered an uproar on November 19,  2006 by telling Brookes Merritt of the Edmonton Sun that,  “The solution,”  to attacks by stray dogs on Inuit,  Cree,  and Metis reservations in northern Canada,  “is to cull the dog population,  and provide spay and neuter services to native communities at the same time.”

Though Burns apparently said nothing about shooting dogs,  her remark was summarized in the headline of the resulting article as “Annual dog shoot proposed,”  and in the lead sentence as “An annual ‘dog shoot’ would help keep dog packs on native reserves from killing any more helpless children, says an animal welfare worker in Manitoba.”

Further distributed by the National Post and then posted to several British animal rights email lists, the article hit raw nerves in both Europe and indigenous communities.

Fatal attacks

Brookes Merritt interviewed Burns,  known for “lobbying the Manitoba government to bring better vet services to native communities,”  he wrote, “after five-year-old Lance Ribbonleg was
killed by a pack of stray dogs at the North Tallcree First Nation’s reserve near Fort Vermilion.”

In Manitoba,   Brookes Merritt continued,  “a two-year-old boy was mauled at the Hollow Water First Nation in July 2006,  and a three-year-old boy met the same fate on the Sayisi First Nation in June.  Some communities there have ‘dog shoot days,’  in which stray dogs are culled.”

ANIMALS 24-7 has collected documentation of 13 similar fatal dog attacks in the Canadian Far North since then,  a ratio of fatalities to human population approximately 75 times higher than for the rest of Canada and the United States over the same years.

The dogs involved in the Canadian Far North fatalities are typically non-working offspring of sled dogs,  or retired sled dogs,  left to fend for themselves around the edges of settlements.

Polar bears

Historically,  pariah dogs patrolling the perimeters of encampments helped to protect the Inuit from polar bears––but that was when the threat from bears was far greater than in recent times,  and mostly before the Inuit had rifles.

Under pressure of police culling,  and genetically diluted by the introduction to the Far North in the early 20th century of Malamutes who could pull more and Siberian huskies who could run faster,  “By the 1970s,  Canadian Eskimo dogs were nearing extinction,”  wrote Remata D’Aliesio of the Toronto Globe & Mail in a Christmas 2012 profile of the realities of life near Santa Claus’ alleged home near the North Pole.

Racing to rebuild dog population

“Numbering an estimated 20,000 two decades earlier,”  D’Aliesio said,  “their population had dwindled to about 200.  Their perilous state sparked action.

“In 1972,  biologist William Carpenter and John McGrath,  then a government economic development officer in the Northwest Territories,  began a breeding project with the help of the federal government and the Canadian Kennel Club.

“In the northern Manitoba community of Churchill,  Brian Ladoon also started breeding Canadian Eskimo dogs in the 1970s,”  D’Aliesio mentioned.

The Nunavut Quest and other Far North sled dog races that exclude huskies and Malamutes have helped to rebuild the Canadian Eskimo dog population since then.

The Inuit races differ from the much better known Iditarod and Yukon Quest endurance races held in Alaska and the southern Yukon Territory in that the routes are much shorter,  typically completed in two to three days,  rather than 10 days to a month,  and the teams are smaller.

While Iditarod and Yukon Quest competitors typically start with teams of 16 to 18 dogs,  anticipating injuries that often whittle the teams down to a dozen by the finish,  Inuit teams usually start with just 12 dogs.

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