Redressing the redress of the High Arctic exiles: The limits of recognition in a white settler state

At the height of redress politics in Canada following the 1988 historic agreement with Japanese Canadians, a lesser known grievance came from a small group of Inuit who had been relocated to the High Arctic from Northern Quebec in the 1950s. The reasoning for their relocation, and the relocation of many Inuit between the 1930s to 1960s, has been largely disputed among researchers as a question of asserting state sovereignty, but this study approaches the state’s justification for relocation as inextricable from ongoing colonial realities that exacerbate socio-economic inequalities which induced Inuit into cycles of poverty before reducing Inuit reliance on relief support through experimental relocations. The aim of this research is to explore how official memories including state apologies are not delivered equitably, especially in the case of High Arctic relocatees, who repeatedly compared their campaign to Japanese Canadian redress, but only ever received negotiated settlements over reparative gestures of atonement. I argue the devaluation of relocatee memories are due to a number of intertwined factors that begin in colonialism’s overt dehumanization process and persist through ongoing socio-economic inequalities and a lack of political power in a settler colonial society. By centering the efforts of aggrieved communities, this research challenges the dominant narrative where gestures of material and symbolic benevolence by the liberal settler state often become the end of the story. In such instances, the root causes of systemic discrimination and colonial attitudes are transformed into ahistorical anomalies within a unified, inclusive narrative promoting the strengths of the nation. To challenge the moral benevolence of the apologetic settler state, this research aims to illuminate the sequence of events prior to political recognition by valuing the role of community memories and the socio-historical context of how recognition for some grievances was withheld before it was given.