Northern News Services

NNSL (Jun 22/98) - Throughout the late 1950s there were recurring reports of Inuit starving in the Eastern Arctic. In 1958, 53 people starved to death in Garry Lake.

While one of the common explanations for this disaster was the decline of the caribou population, the reasons are still controversial and unresolved.

What remains is the fact that, in a country that took pride in the progress it was making in a post-war economy, First Nations people in the North were dying from lack of food.

The administration of the North at that time was divided among the Federal government, the Hudson Bay Company and the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches. One of the solutions to the crisis of the starving Inuit was the relocation program, a policy that remains a source of debate.

The following is a first-hand account of those gruesome days. It was written by Uriash Pukiqnak, who currently lives in Gjoa Haven. It was translated from Inuktitut by Mikle Langenhan.

News/North encourages comments and responses from our readers on this subject.

I remember in the spring of 1957 at age 12, we experienced starvation near the Wager Bay area. All the people who lived at that time around Wager Bay were near starvation and there were, I think, about 9 families altogether in a camp.

It was either March or April and people started dying of starvation. My name is Uriash Pukiqnak and of the nine families that lived in the camp, I am one of the people who survived starvation in 1957 around Wager Bay where we lived at that time.

I had a stepfather (Angangaittuq) and he also had a stepdaughter (Tuamiliattiaq) and she was around 14 years old.

When my mother (Pala), stepfather and myself went out fishing I remember quite well that we used to walk and pull a sled because our dogs died of starvation so we had to try and hunt for food by ourselves.

I think it was in April, we were alone as a family. Others left the camp in search of fish around Wager Bay, looking for abundant areas for fish. And I also remember at night there were siksiks. People would hunt them, and some families would go out to get their previous summer's cache.

A small number of families would head out to sea and we were left alone in camp: my stepfather, his stepdaughter, my mother and my older brother (Kamingmalik). My older brother and I started out to go fishing at a lake because he knew of some kablunaat that worked near the lake and he wanted me to come with him to see if we could find some fishing hooks. I remember going with him, walking and pulling a sled because we no longer had dogs, they died from starvation.

I remember my stepfather became snowblind and his eyes hurt tremendously and he couldn't keep them open any longer. Before we reached the lake I became very tired and lay down and fell asleep. Before I fell asleep I remember my older brother saying to my stepfather and mother that he would continue on to the lake to look for anything that he might be able to find.

When I fell asleep, I kept on dreaming that I was eating. I suppose I was dreaming about eating because I fell asleep wanting to eat, and I knew the rest of my family felt the same way because their stomachs were empty as well. While sleeping I could hear noises close by -- perhaps it was my brother because I went to sleep thinking about him -- I could hear him walking and the noise would seem far away. When I actually thought I heard him, I called out to my mother "atika, atika (that's what I called my mother) my older brother is coming" (I called my older brother "anigarjuit"). My mother told me that my older brother wasn't coming yet because he had walked quite far from where we were hunting for caribou.

I called to my mother again, "I can hear him coming," but a few hours passed before he finally came back.

Kablunaaq Food

When my brother came back he brought back some hard biscuits in his backpack, just enough for us to eat.

Soon after we went to another part of the lake looking for more fish but when we got there, there was nothing to eat day and night for a few days. While at that part of the lake, two families came by, Inukshuk and family, who is my stepbrother and Ilisittuq, my brother-in-law, my sister's (Sivia) husband and my other sister who was expecting a baby and Ilisittuq's son-in-law and his two brothers, Ujarait and Puvala. They just stayed for a bit and went on their way because we didn't have any food. Without overnighting, they left to fish in the lake.

I remember Inukshuk wanting my sister to come along with them so my older brother and sister went along with them. My mother, myself and the rest of the family stayed. I don't remember how many days we stayed, perhaps two days.

We were going to stay another day but, my parents decided to follow the men who headed out few days before (Inukshuk & Ilisittuq).

The weather got bad and I remember holding my mother's hand because there was a blizzard by that time. I also remember next time my mother stopped walking, we were alone. My stepfather and sister were no longer with us.

I remember walking around everywhere with my mother looking for my stepfather and sister but we could not find them in the blizzard. We searched a long time for them, going back and forth but we did not find them. My mother kept on searching while she held my hand but we couldn't find them. We stopped for awhile then continued searching and gave up looking for them.

An abandoned Iglu

We were still walking at night, we came across an abandoned iglu and my mother said that we should sleep there that night. She still expected my stepfather and sister. I remember the iglu having lichen on the bedding. When I woke up, I was alone. My mother was not around and when I looked around I could see that the iglu's entrance was blocked from the outside with snow.

Eating fish with my mother

I pushed the snow from the entrance way and went out. I didn't see anyone but I saw two snow shelters. I walked toward the shelter and spotted someone fishing surrounded by the shelter and it was my mother. She had caught one small fish. So when I got to my mother, I told her she could eat more than her share because I did not want her to starve and we ate that day, the guts and all. We stayed and my mother fished some more, waiting to see if my stepfather and sister would show up. In the evening, we started to walk toward the open sea, towards the direction where my older brother had gone.

I remember after a long while we spotted people and tents and it was Inukshuk's and Ilisittuq's family. They had a few fish, but after awhile that was gone too, so Inukshuk and his family and the rest headed down to the sea ice to hunt for seals and we were soon left behind again with the other family.

My mother wanted to stay behind, still expecting my stepfather and sister to find us. So once again my older brother and Ilisittuq's family headed for the open sea to hunt seal although it was quite a distance. They returned without a catch because they encountered bad weather while hunting. We stayed for awhile and decided to walk again to another place.

As we walked, we would find snow shelters where people used to fish along the way and I would find fish bones and try eating them and they didn't even taste like meat because they were all bone.

On our walk searching for food, we ran across Inukshuk's family again. We would walk until we were tired and sleep for awhile. Inukshuk still had three dogs but our dogs by then starved to death a while ago. After waking up one day, we headed out again walking with Inukshuk family toward the open sea. Inukshuk and my older brother and Illisittuq got one seal each and that was a first good meal we had in a long time. We stayed for awhile. A storm came and we ran out of food again so we headed in the direction of Gjoa Haven and we came to an island.

Eating plants (edible leaves)

On this island we ate edible plants (some parts are white and some parts are brown -- they grow close to salt water, close to shore) by mixing them with seal blubber. While there my brother-in-law, Ilisittuq, killed a seal and we had food for awhile.

From there we started walking toward Gjoa Haven. We camped while the men hunted for seal and we saw some people coming towards us; it was Sipasitiak Alak accompanied by a priest. They were travelling by dog team searching for people starving out on the land. When they came to us we were able to have tea and biscuits again.

This is what I remember from when I was 12 years old. If it was not for starvation at that time, I would still be with my stepfather and sister; we would all still be together.

I remember well during starvation, things I would try to eat to survive. Old caribou bones, fish bones are all things we kept in our mouth to survive starvation.

I also remember people without food would gather caribou droppings to eat.

But I don't remember my family and me ever eating dog meat, but there's an incident I remember when I was seven years old. My mother was gathering up puppies that were three or four months old for her children to eat and I remember she cooked them for a long time before she fed them to her children (myself included) so we would survive -- that was when I was seven years old.

Stories written about 1957 starvation

I read a story about the 1957 starvation written by an RCMP member, but I would like to know whether the story was told accurately or not. But I'm not really convinced the story was told accurately. The story took place between Baker Lake and Wager Bay. Apparently an RCMP member ran into people around there at the time they were starving and there was a news article that said that people there at that time were eating dog livers and some died from eating dog liver.

I know that around 1957 people were starving around Back River, that's OK. But if the story that was told is not the truth, that's not OK with me. I feel that the story has been exaggerated.

I know for a fact that if you try to eat dogs that starved to death, they have no meat.

I feel that people like myself and others who have experienced starvation should tell the real story. We felt the hunger in our bodies and muscles, especially our parents. They endured hardships and experienced starvation.

I know that people who have not experienced hardship and starvation don't know what it feels like, but they want to tell a story and exaggerate to make it sound that they have lived it, but they haven't.

If I can speak for the people who experienced starvation in 1957, I would be satisfied then, but to hear RCMP members writing about starvation we endured and for them to exaggerate about it makes me feel for the people that were there starving and it makes me upset for someone else to tell stories that are not true, especially thinking back to 1957 when we lost my stepfather and my sister and how hard it was for my mother and myself when my mother endlessly searched and hoped for them to come back while at the same time experiencing starvation and trying to survive.