Inuit settlement
Our First Wooden Home, Egevadluq Ragee, 1979. Canadian Museum of History, CD 1979-002 (LS) S90-5942
1953 to 1965
For centuries, the Inuit had lived in small seasonal camps and villages across the Canadian Arctic, from Labrador to the Alaskan border. In the early 1950s, embarrassed by several tragic starvation episodes in Keewatin and the Garry Lakes area, the Canadian government began moving Inuit “off the land” and into permanent settlements. The rationale was to make it easier for the federal government to provide education, health care and social welfare services. Not consulted in the process, the Inuit had to adapt to a radically changed way of life.
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