The High Arctic relocation (French: La délocalisation du Haut-Arctique, Inuktitut: ᖁᑦᑎᒃᑐᒥᐅᑦᑕ ᓅᑕᐅᓂᖏᑦ Quttiktumut nuutauningit) took place during the Cold War in the 1950s, when 87 Inuit were moved by the Government of Canada to the High Arctic.
The relocation has been a source of controversy: on one hand being described as a humanitarian gesture to save the lives of starving native people and enable them to continue a subsistence lifestyle; and on the other hand, said to be a forced migration instigated by the federal government to assert its sovereignty in the Far North by the use of "human flagpoles", in light of both the Cold War and the disputed territorial claims to the Arctic archipelago. Both sides acknowledge that the relocated Inuit were not given sufficient support to prevent extreme privation during their first years after the move.
Read more about High Arctic Relocation: The Move, New Communities, Re-evaluation, In The Media, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words high and/or arctic:
“Behind one high mountain lies yet a higher one.”
—Chinese proverb.
“Does the first wild-goose care
whether the others follow or not?
I don’t think so he is so happy to be off
he knows where he is going
so we must be drawn or we must fly,
like the snow-geese of the Arctic circle.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)