“What Is to Become of the Native Peoples of the North?”: Social Science and the Politics of Northern Development, 1954–73

This article examines the history of the Northern Coordination and Research Centre (ncrc), a semi-autonomous research group within the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources. From 1954 to 1973, the ncrc coordinated government social research in the North, distributed funding to northern studies programs at Canadian universities, and commissioned social scientists, especially anthropologists, to evaluate government programs aimed at “modernizing” Indigenous communities in the North. Researchers soon came into conflict with government officials, however, and began openly critiquing government social policies related to subjects such as resource extraction, community development, and the influence of transient workers from southern Canada. ncrc researchers were gradually isolated from policy-making circles, and the centre was shut down. Drawing from reports of the ncrc and correspondence from the Department of Northern Affairs, this article depicts tensions between social scientists and government policy-makers as representative of deeper rifts between academic and government research. These rifts highlight the government’s evolving antipathy towards social research as a foreshadowing of major social and political developments of the 1970s.