Kent Driscoll
News Services

Iqaluit (Oct 24/05) - They say it just didn't happen.

The RCMP have released their preliminary report into the slaughter of dogs from the 1950s to the 1980s, which says that there never was a slaughter.

The report blames the drop in dog population on disease, hunger and snowmobiles, not a slaughter. See RCMP Report

The interim report released by the RCMP last week states, "To date, the RCMP review team has found no evidence to support the allegations that the RCMP conducted an organized slaughter of Inuit dogs in the Eastern Arctic between 1950 and 1970."

Sytukie Joamie - chair of the Amarok Hunters and Trappers Association - believes the RCMP team is playing games with words.

"The RCMP to this day have based their statements on those two words: 'no systematic'. There was a slaughter, it night not have been systematic, but there was, nonetheless, a slaughter. They are political words," said Joamie.

Terry Audla is executive director of the Qikiqtani Inuit Association (QIA), which has been developing its own report on the dog slaughter since 1997.

"From day one, it's been filtered. There are two opposing views," said Audla.

He favours the approach his group has been taking, talking to elders and getting their recollections.

"It is a sad day when I have to rely on the RCMP for my history," said Audla.

Audla thinks the report is too focused on the specifics of the claim - the numbers of dogs and bullets - while ignoring the bigger issue of RCMP officers slaughtering dogs.

"Some people have said that there were 20,000 dogs killed. That is an exaggeration. It wasn't a one time cull, it happened over decades," said Audla.

This is an interim report, the conclusion calls for "much more research, analysis and documentation," he added.

"The interim report is just that, interim. I don't put a lot of weight in it," said Audla.

"This is open court, the accused have pleaded innocent, based on their own evidence. If the RCMP keep saying there was no dog slaughter, they are on thin ice. They could find themselves in open water and we are on solid land," said Joamie.

He also criticizes the RCMP method of contacting former members and other southern people who were in the area. The report contains no mention of Inuit elders, except to say they should be interviewed before the final report is issued.

"The Inuit are the eyewitnesses, we were right there," said Joamie.

More than 40 individual members of the RCMP were interviewed and the report states, "no reports were found that referred to the alleged mass slaughter of Inuit sled dogs by the RCMP."

RCMP special constables - Inuit people lending their local knowledge to the force - were interviewed for the report.

"Snowmobiles became the main form of transportation and many sled dogs were abandoned," said Special Constable Johnny Lyall.

Lyall worked for the RCMP from 1964 to 1984, in Cambridge Bay and Iqaluit.

"During the 1950s there was vast starvation throughout the North and people killed and ate their dogs to survive," said Lew Philip, a retired RCMP member who worked in Nunavut.

These claims don't impress Joamie.

"I'm saddened to hear a couple of Inuit on pension from the RCMP forced to say those things. They may not have had a choice but to answer the way the RCMP wanted," said Joamie.

Joamie was quick to add, "My disagreement is with the officials, not against the men and women that protected the community. They are all getting brushed by the same paint, I have no beef against the day to day officers," said Joamie.

Other RCMP Special Constables contributed, saying that they did destroy dogs, but only in cases of rogue animals or diseased dogs.

The interim report tries to address the facts on record. "The systematic killing of 20,000 sled dogs would have required an equal number of rounds of ammunition... an average of two teams of 10 dogs would have been destroyed every week for 20 years in a row," states the report.

It also says RCMP members inoculated their own dogs and the dogs of Inuit people to prevent the spread of disease, that RCMP members gave dogs to families that had lost theirs.

The report quotes Calvin Alexander - a retired RCMP member who served in the eastern Arctic from 1954 to 1976 - as saying, "A number of surplus RCMP dogs from Baker Lake and Eskimo Point (Arviat) were donated to the Pangnirtung Inuit."

The media earns special criticism in the report, which states, "Most newspaper articles and media reports are sympathetic to the Inuit concerns regarding the allegations concerning the Inuit dogs."

The final RCMP report is due for release in May 2006. Both Aulat and Joamie hope to combine the QIA study with that information for a comprehensive report.

"The RCMP and the Inuit have to combine this information. At that point, we'll see who is in the water," said Joamie.