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A second look at early Frobisher Bay

One anthropologist's findings were rejected, but the photos and recordings remain on the public record

GREG YOUNGER-LEWIS

CLICK PHOTO TO ENLARGE
The renowned hunter, Arnakallak (far left), with a group of people who are being entertained by a clown from southern Canada. (PHOTO COURTESY OF TOSHIO YATSUSHIRO)

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Toshio Yatsushiro, an anthropologist from McGill University, got a pretty raw deal when he came to study the Inuit of Frobisher Bay, about 50 years ago.

He was hired by the federal government to find out how the "Eskimos" were adapting to the settlements. When he told the world the truth, Ottawa fired him.

The dismissal lead Yatsushiro to abandon the project, and with it, his recorded interviews and hundreds of photos of Inuit in Iqaluit, then called Frobisher Bay, and Apex.

Now, the photos and recordings are back.

This week, one of Yatsushiro's former assistants projected digitized versions of the photos onto a screen at the Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum.

Nelson Graburn, an esteemed anthropologist in his own right, said the collection shows a community - and entire people - in transition, moving from igloos into tiny wooden houses, and abandoning hunting trips for government jobs.

"Iqaluit was quite different than anything else," said Graburn. "Iqaluit was like the training ground for the Inuit to get into modern living."

Graburn saw the changes first-hand when he came to Frobisher Bay in 1960. At the time, the settlement was completing its transformation from a U.S. air base to a community run on Canadian government programs.

Yatsushiro, Graburn's mentor and professor, had been hired two years earlier, through a federal government research program, to survey the Inuit about their views on federal health care, schooling and housing.

Yatsushiro found many Inuit were clashing with the new system. One source of tension came from federal administrators threatening to withhold family allowances from Inuit, if they didn't send their children to school.

A truck delivers fresh water to people living by the beach in Iqaluit. (PHOTO COURTESY OF TOSHIO YATSUSHIRO)

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"He found a lot of misunderstanding," Graburn said in an interview before his presentation on May 5. "At the time, Inuit were not likely to complain. But [the allowance] was a big part of their income. It was much more significant to Inuit than people down south."

However, Graburn said the biggest conflict came when RCMP officers started shooting Inuit sled dogs.

Inuit families were migrating from surrounding settlements, where they weren't in the habit of tying up their dogs.

Graburn said the loose dogs often scrapped around the community, and "occasionally swallowed a child," a fact that he claims many Inuit confirmed at the time.

To make matters worse, the canine disease known as distemper was raging through the region, in part, by transfer through the untied dogs. Graburn estimates the disease wiped out nearly 90 per cent of the dog teams.

The late Akeeshoo Nowdlak in 1958 or 1959. One of Iqaluit's early community leaders, he founded an outpost camp at Allen Island in the 1970s. (PHOTO COURTESY OF TOSHIO YATSUSHIRO)

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But Inuit were frightened by the RCMP, regardless of their reasons for killing dogs.

"They were left wondering 'if they don't like our dogs, are we disposable too?'" Grabrun said. "Some people said 'are they going to shoot us next?' You could see an absolute transfer of fear."

Graburn said Inuit in Frobisher Bay usually experienced modern trends and government policies sooner, and in a more severe ways, than the smaller communities.

Hundreds of Inuit came to Frobisher Bay from more traditional settlements, in search of jobs as U.S. personnel built the airstrip in 1942. The migration nearly emptied communities around the region, like Kimmirut (then known as Lake Harbour), Cape Dorset and Pangnirtung.

In Iqaluit, they found copious amounts of food and housing material thrown away by the U.S. visitors, and built shacks with tar-paper roofs to replace their qammaqs and igloos.

Later, in the 1960s, the federal government became a larger presence, setting up schools, and a tuberculosis rehabilitation centre in Apex. That came with a bar in the main settlement, known as the "East Coast Lodge," where Inuit were only allowed three drinks per day.

"That was another of the problems," Graburn said. "There would be people fighting terrible fights in the streets, and women doing unspeakable things; men too, for that matter."

Graburn recalls that southerners used to mock Inuit for being dirty because they put raw meat from hunting trips in their bathtubs.

But that's because Inuit didn't have large porches or anywhere else to store their traditional food.

But Yatsushiro would have taken closer note of larger social trends, like Inuit jostling for jobs and housing, which consisted of buildings that weren't adapted for local needs.

CLICK PHOTO TO ENLARGE
Oo Alainga (centre), with Pauloosie, and Neevee Suluk, a federal government interpreter. (PHOTO COURTESY OF TOSHIO YATSUSHIRO)

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Even if Yatsushiro put this in his findings, they got little publicity after he shared them with an international group of anthropologists in 1959 - without government approval. He was fired immediately.

Yatsushiro is now 87 years old, ill and living in Hawaii. Graburn said his mentor's age and poor health inspired him to pass on his Frobisher Bay collection.

Since then, Graburn has committed himself to identifying as many people in the photos as possible.

He'll be based at the Nunavut Research Institute until mid-May, when he returns to teaching at the University of California. His e-mail address is graburn@berkeley.edu.

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