Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples

Canada and the World

Current Events with a Canadian Perspective

Last update

19 November 2010

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Inquiry into

Mistreatment of Aboriginals

More than a decade ago, in 1996, the federal Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples agreed that the mistreatment of Aboriginal people is the cause of many of the social problems Native communities have today

The Royal Commission said the uprooting of Aboriginal people often was the result of government policy to move communities for administrative or development purposes. The Commission specifically referred to cases in High Arctic relocation (among others) that were just plain wrong, reflecting abuses of authority and power.

“We heard testimony from people who showed that the Inuit were not given enough information about the move (to places such as Grise Fiord and Craig Harbour on Ellesmere Island and Resolute Bay (below) on Cornwallis Island in the early 1950s) or about the conditions they would face.

Ansgar Walk

“We concluded that they could not be said to have given their informed consent to the move. Promises made by government officials were not kept, the relocation was poorly planned and executed, and there was little monitoring of its effects afterward.”

More than half a century later, survivors of the ordeal, who were children at the time, still have vivid memories of being dumped in the remote regions “without facilities, without housing, without food.”

Government’s Empty Promises

The government had promised there would be plenty of game and fish, which victims say was not true. They were given canvas tents to live in, with buffalo hides for insulation. And they were told, if things didn’t work out, they would be able to return home in two years, but that too was a lie.

“We believe that relocations must be seen as part of a broader process of dispossession and displacement, a process with lingering effects on the cultural, spiritual, social, economic, and political aspects of people’s lives. We are troubled by the way relocations may have contributed to the general malaise gripping so many Aboriginal communities and to the incidence of violence, directed outward and inward. As we noted in our report on suicide, the effects of past oppression live on in the feelings of anger and inadequacy from which Aboriginal people are struggling to free themselves.”

Negative Effects of Relocation

The Commission says the effects of such relocations are not unique to Canada with international research showing many of the same consequences, which include:

Severing Aboriginal people’s relationship to the land and environment and weakening cultural bonds;

A loss of economic self-sufficiency, including in some cases increased dependence on government welfare payments;

A decline in standards of health; and,

Changes in social and political relations in the relocated population.

“The results of more than 25 studies around the world indicate without exception that the relocation, without informed consent, of low-income, rural populations with strong ties to their land and homes is a traumatic experience. For the majority of those who have been moved, the profound shock of compulsory relocation is much like the bereavement caused by the death of a parent, spouse, or child.”

“. . . In talking to these bright young people, I learned that they had watched my release (from prison in 1990) on television and were familiar with events in South Africa. ‘Viva ANC’ (African National Congress) one of them said.

“The Inuit are an Aboriginal people historically mistreated by a white settler population; there were parallels between the plights of black South Africans and the Inuit people.

“What struck me so forcefully was how small the planet had become during my decade in prison;

it was amazing to me that a teenage Inuit living at the

roof of the world could watch the release of a political prisoner on the southern tip of Africa.

“Television had shrunk the world, and had in the process become a great

weapon for eradicating ignorance and promoting democracy.”

Nelson Mandela, former President of South Africa,

in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. Mr. Mandela was behind the setting up of a truth and reconciliation commission in South Africa in 1995, which heard from people who had suffered at the hands of the country’s racist government between 1948 and 1994. Mr. Mandela

had been imprisoned for opposing the policy of racial segregation called apartheid.