Ottawa to compensate Inuit in Nunavik for mass sled dog slaughter

The federal government says it will offer financial compensation to Inuit in Nunavik for the devastation caused by the mass slaughter of their sled dogs decades ago.

More than 1,000 of the dogs that Inuit relied on for their livelihoods were shot to death by Mounties, employees of the Hudson's Bay Company and other authorities during the mid-1950s and late 1960s across Nunavik, the Inuit region of northern Quebec.

Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Gary Anandasangaree told CBC News he will soon travel to the region to apologize on behalf of the federal government for the slaughter. He's expected to make the trip before the end of the month.

"It destroyed the way of life," Anandasangaree said. "It decimated people's self-confidence.... And the impacts of that continue to linger today."

Pita Aatami, president of the Makivvik Corporation — the organization representing Inuit in Nunavik, launched an investigation into the slaughter when he first heard about it in 1999.

"It hurt me so much," Aatami said. "The pain that people went through with the loss of their mobility, the loss of their independence.... It's something that is in my heart to try to resolve."

Aatami has been calling for a federal apology and compensation ever since.

At the time, he said, authorities justified the slaughter by claiming the dogs presented a safety risk.

But Aatami said the dogs were killed to force the nomadic Inuit to remain in settled communities, where many turned to alcohol to numb the pain and became sick from losing their traditional way of life.

Aatami said the dogs were not pets. They were wolf-like animals the Inuit had used for hunting and transport for centuries.

In 2011, the government of Quebec apologized for the slaughter and gave former sled dog owners $3 million in compensation. Ottawa hasn't offered compensation before now.

"It'll mean a lot for the people that are still alive," Aatami said. "It's going to bring a little bit of a closure to a painful trauma that they went through with that, losing their livelihood."

For many, Aatami said, it feels like the killings happened yesterday. The pain remains raw and the trauma is intergenerational, he said.

The slaughter was carried out across all communities in Nunavik. Inuit were not consulted. The dogs were killed in front of families and crying children, said Aatami.