Times of hardship and changes

By Matthew and Rosina
Secondary 3-4 English

Times of hardship and changes

In the past, many Canadian Inuit dogs were used as transportation. They were very helpful because the Inuit used them to go hunting and used them to travel. The dogs were good at knowing things that were dangerous for them also to their owners and knew where to go even when the weather was really stormy. The Inuit treated their dogs well because they were an important asset in their survival. The affection in their life started at that time. They had no more transportation also had no more choices to go and find food by foot. It became much harder for them to find animals to kill. They became hungrier and had difficulties to save food for future days. The lost of almost all the good dogs also affected their community. The Inuit’s way of living started to change in many ways they would have imagined. The most important part of their survival and culture was now gone. They had to be ready for new ways, a change in their long, untouched culture.

In between the 1950’s and 1960’s, white people started to come to George River. They wanted the Inuit to live in one place, not spread out along the lands. The white people wanted the Inuit to live in a community because they wanted to help the Inuit improve their lives. That way it would be easier for the Inuit to get help from others and also help other Inuit. At that time, white people thought they were helping the Inuit, but they weren’t helping them.

One day, the RCMP started to kill most of the Inuit dogs because they thought the dogs were sick and might attack people. Around 1959, the government established a permanent settlement in our town. While killing the dogs, both Inuit and some RCMP officers didn’t know what the reason was for doing so. The Inuit didn’t even have a clue why their dogs were being killed by whites. The Inuit people started to think about their future, how they were going to live and what would happen to them when they would have no dogs. They realized hunting would become more difficult. How could they carry the caribou they had shot? After the sled dogs disappeared, some Inuit starved to death. They could never have dreamed that it would be almost half a century before the sled dogs come back to George River.