History Of Canadian Inuit Art

History Of Canadian Inuit Art
By Simon Letourneau

The North has been Canada's last frontier. Until the Second World War - it had remained largely ignored by the rest of Canada, except for the very bold and adventurous. Since the mid-1700s a succession of explorers looking for the Northwest Passage, of whalers looking for oil, Hudson's Bay traders looking for fox pelts as well as missionaries looking for souls ventured into the North and met its inhabitants, the Inuit.

Although these visitors to the North introduced some new trade goods, especially rifles and tea, tobacco and flour, the nomadic lifestyle of the Inuit hunters remained fairly untouched by the intruders. In the late 1940s most Inuit still lived in small family camps, used dogsleds for travel, lived in igloos during the winter, and divided their time between trapping white fox and hunting.

All this was to change dramatically over the next two decades. For a variety of political and strategic reasons the federal government of Canada started to take an active interest in the welfare of its northern citizens. In 1939 a ruling of the Supreme Court had accorded Inuit the same rights to health, welfare, and education as Canadian Indians. In 1947 family allowance cheques began to be issued, administered by the Hudson's Bay Company or the RCMP, followed by old-age pensions in 1948. During the 1950s annual visits by a government ship administered medical surveys and tests for tuberculosis. In 1956 a program of low-cost housing was introduced. In 1955 a selection of children were sent to Chesterfield Inlet to be taught by the Grey Nuns until, in 1959, federal day schools were built across the North. By 1970 the process of giving up a nomadic lifestyle and moving into permanent settlements was completed.

One of the reasons the Canadian government felt compelled to intervene was the receipt of reports from visitors to the North about the deteriorating conditions among the Inuit, partially caused by the fact that the price for white fox had plummeted on the world market. Consequently, the main means for procuring cash had dried up for Inuit trippers. Although as hunters they lived largely off the land, they had become dependent on cash to buy their rifles and ammunition. With nothing to trade, families experienced severe deprivation and periods of starvation.