{"id":646728,"date":"2026-05-04T07:40:50","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T07:40:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/646728\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T07:40:50","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T07:40:50","slug":"forced-relocation-impacts-sanikiluaq-more-than-50-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/646728\/","title":{"rendered":"Forced relocation impacts Sanikiluaq more than 50 years later"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former residents of Belcher Islands\u2019 South Camp moved north in 1970s under federal coercion<\/p>\n

Sometime in the spring of 1970, eight-year-old Jonasie Emikotailuk along with a dozen other kids was taken on a trip from one end of the Belcher Islands to the other.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The impact of a forced federal relocation of Inuit from a camp on the southern tip of the Belcher Islands to Sanikiluaq in the north is still causing tensions in the hamlet, more than 50 years after it happened. (Photo by Arty Sarkisian)<\/p>\n

The group, accompanied by several adults, didn\u2019t have enough food or drinking water for the 70-kilometre journey.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of my buddies, he was so dehydrated his tongue turned black,\u201d Emikotailuk said.<\/p>\n

The Belcher Islands are an archipelago in the southeast of Hudson Bay. There used to be two main Inuit hubs on the islands \u2014 South Camp (Emikotailuk\u2019s home) and North Camp (modern-day Sanikiluaq).<\/p>\n

In the late 1960s, the federal government decided to shut down the South Camp and relocate its roughly 50 residents, including Emikotailuk, to the north.<\/p>\n

Sanikiluaq was established as a hamlet shortly after, in 1976. Now as it turns 50, the community\u2019s roughly 1,000 people have a lot to celebrate.<\/p>\n

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Sanikiluaq Inuit are unique in that they rely on eider ducks<\/a> \u2014 not caribou \u2014 for clothing and tools. It\u2019s a community of basketmaking and hard-to-beat beluga sausages<\/a>. It\u2019s also home to schoolkids who recently found themselves shooting for the stars<\/a>, as they were among the few selected to pose questions to the astronauts on the Artemis II moon mission.<\/p>\n

But for Emikotailuk, it\u2019s a community he joined through federal coercion and intimidation.<\/p>\n

A community where to this day, he doesn\u2019t truly feel at home.<\/p>\n

Inuit have inhabited the Belcher Islands for centuries, mostly in small camps scattered across the islands. Until the 1950s, the federal government provided few services to the island\u2019s population.<\/p>\n

In 1960, the government opened a school in South Camp, along with a hostel. These were later classified as a residential school by the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.<\/p>\n

By the end of the 1960s, South Camp also had an Anglican chapel, a small co-op store and a power plant, according to the Qikiqtani Truth Commission.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe had everything we needed,\u201d Emikotailuk said. \u201cIt was home.\u201d<\/p>\n

But soon the two camps on Belcher Islands presented the federal government with a problem \u2014 an \u201cEskimo problem,\u201d as Alan R. Marcus refers to it in his 1991 book, Out in the Cold.<\/p>\n

Sparsely populated lands were hard to manage. This led the government to shut down smaller settlements, relocating their residents to centralized communities.<\/p>\n

In the late 1960s, the federal government put \u201cpressure\u201d on Belcher Island\u2019s southerners to move north. Some \u2014 like Emikotailuk\u2019s parents \u2014 were promised a better home. Others didn\u2019t understand that the move north was permanent.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t even know we were relocating here,\u201d Emily Takatak, one of those relocated, later told the Qikiqtani Truth Commission.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t take any belongings. Even my babies didn\u2019t have anything \u2014 nothing to comfort them. During the night, my children were cold.\u201d<\/p>\n

A lot of hunters were \u201ccompelled\u201d to kill their dogs before moving because they wouldn\u2019t fit in the canoes. Lottie Cookie told the commission that she was 15 when she watched her father kill his dogs ahead of the relocation.<\/p>\n

While Emikotailuk\u2019s parents moved to North Camp, he stayed at the federal hostel in South Camp for a few more years with about a dozen other schoolkids until they took that boat trip north in 1970.<\/p>\n

The hostel\u2019s supervising adults were not kind, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey hit me. And they hit me. They hit me right here,\u201d he says, showing the back of his hands.<\/p>\n

He also recalls suffering sexual abuse from one of the supervisors.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Locals on Belcher island meet an RCMP officer in 1949. (Credit: S.J. Bailey \/ Department of Indian and Northern Affairs \/ Library and Archives Canada)<\/p>\n

In the past two decades, the federal government has issued multiple apologies for mistreatment of Inuit over the years, including in February 2025 when Gary Anandasangaree, northern affairs minister at the time, apologized for the forced relocation of Inuit from Kinngait to Dundas Harbour<\/a>\u00a080 years ago.<\/p>\n

There was never a formal apology specifically for South Camp, but in 2019 former Crown-Indigenous Relations minister Carolyn Bennett issued an apology for all mistreatments of Qikiqtani Inuit between 1950 and 1975.<\/p>\n

That apology included relocation of South Camp, department spokesperson Eric Head said in an email.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t say whether there are plans to make an apology for South Camp similar to the Dundas Harbour apology.<\/p>\n

However, Emikotailuk, says he doesn\u2019t care for federal apologies.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy home was already taken from me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

To this day, there are tensions in Sanikiluaq between southerners and northerners, said Johnny Appaqaq, the hamlet\u2019s mayor and one of the relocatees.<\/p>\n

But he declined to talk further about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust leave me out of it,\u201d he said in an interview in January.<\/p>\n

As for Emikotailuk, who is 64 years old now, he still feels out of place in Sanikiluaq.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to go home,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

His dream is to one day build a cabin in what used to be South Camp and move back.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was my spot. And it was taken from me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In the 1960s, Belcher Island had two main hubs: South Camp and North Camp (modern-day Sanikiluaq) that were about 70 kilometres away from each other. (Map by Nunatsiaq News)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former residents of Belcher Islands\u2019 South Camp moved north in 1970s under federal coercion Sometime in the spring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-646728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}