History

The process by which Canadian Inuit became a sedentary people was closely related to the increasing economic, political, and social integration of the Arctic natives with the Western world. The first contacts between the Inuit and Europeans may have occurred in southern Labrador and northern Newfoundland, which were visited by the Greenlandic Norse colonists around 985 C.E. But it seems more likely that the native skraellingar (“pagans”) encountered by these visitors were rather of Amerindian stock.

If such is the case, it was not before the sixteenth century that Inuit/European contacts really began. At first, these tended to be hostile. In 1566, for instance, an Inuk woman and her child, most probably kidnapped in Labrador the preceding year, were exhibited in several European fairs. A decade later, when the British explorer Martin Frobisher discovered the bay that now bears his name, the local Inuit killed some of his crew, and in retaliation he captured three persons who were brought back to London.

Relations with the Inuit continued to be rather hostile till the beginning of the eighteenth century, when Dutch, Basque, and French whalers and fishermen – groups that had been regular visitors to Strait of Belle-Isle and southern Labrador for two hundred years – succeeded in establishing a trade in blubber and furs with the northerners. Contacts became so frequent that, in order to improve communication, an Inuit-French-Basque pidgin language soon developed.

In 1771 the Moravian Brethren, a German Protestant church already present in Greenland, established a mission and trading post at Nain, in northern Labrador. A semi-settled community soon developed there, as well as around a few other Moravian congregations. In what was to become Arctic Quebec and the Northwest Territories, permanent contacts only started around 1830, when the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) began establishing trading posts at the fringe of Inuit nunaat . It was not until the 1900s that the HBC opened stores more to the north, in the very heart of Inuit country. Long before that, however, Scottish and American whalers had already entered into contact with the Arctic natives, conducting trade with them and hiring them on their ships, in the Hudson Bay, Baffin Island, and Mackenzie Coast waters. By the end of the nineteenth century, most Canadian Inuit already possessed guns and steel traps and knew about tea, sugar, flour, and tobacco.

The traders and whalers were followed by missionaries. In 1876 the Anglican Edmund J. Peck established a mission at Little Whale River, on the eastern shore of Hudson Bay. He later moved to Blacklead Island, in the southeast Baffin area. At about the same time, missionaries were beginning to contact the Mackenzie Inuit. From these various locations, Anglicanism spread rapidly. Peck had transcribed parts of the Moravian translation of the Bible into the syllabic script devised half a century earlier by a Wesleyan missionary among the Ojibwa, James Evans. This script was easy to learn, and, in many regions of the eastern Arctic, it enabled the Christian message to be disseminated among the Inuit without the physical presence of European priests. After 1910, the Roman Catholics followed in the Anglicans’ footsteps, so that by 1940 almost all of Canadian Inuit had become Christians.

On the eve of World War II, the Inuit lived in semi-nomadic hunting-trapping camps, except in Labrador, where permanent settlements were to be found. Their economic activities were principally oriented towards the fur trade. They possessed guns and motor boats, wore store-bought clothes, and ate biscuits and bannock. Most adults were literate in their own language (often in syllabic characters), and in Labrador and the Mackenzie delta their children went to mission schools. In some areas, however, the population had greatly diminished because of epidemics and famine.

At this time, the federal government, whose sole representatives were a handful of policemen, was just starting to bring some aid to the Inuit. Only in the late 1940s did Ottawa become fully involved in Inuit administration. The war had disclosed the strategic and economic importance of the Arctic regions, and consequently the governmental attitude of laissez-faire was not relevant any more. Within a few years, a complete system of educational, social, administrative, and health services was established throughout the Canadian north. Since such services had to be centralized in a limited number of locations, the Inuit were strongly encouraged to become sedentary, and, as already mentioned, the hunting-trapping camps disappeared during the 1960s and 1970s.

The adoption of a sedentary lifestyle, along with schooling, entailed the emergence of a generation of young bilingual Inuit knowledgeable about Western ways. It was this generation who, during the 1970s and 1980s, worked at redefining the relationship between Canada and its Arctic natives. Territorial and administrative agreements (James Bay, Inuvialuit, Nunavut) were signed and new Inuit-run organizations were established.