Seven Inuit are suing the Canadian government for forcing them into a so-called "experimental Eskimo" project that tried to assimilate them into European culture in the 1950s and 1960s.
Four men and three women are seeking an apology and compensation from the federal government for the project, which they said removed them from their eastern Arctic homes — in what is now Nunavut and the Nunavik region of northern Quebec — when they were children, sending them to foster homes in the southern provinces.
"They were part of an experiment to turn them into little European children," Steven Cooper, an Edmonton-based lawyer representing the seven, told
One of the three women, Leesee Qaqasiq of Pangnirtung, Nunavut, said she and two others were taken from their parents in 1966. Qaqasiq said she was sent by herself to Nova Scotia, where she lived with a woman who had once taught in Pangnirtung.
"I was excited … I didn't know any better. I was six or seven [years old]," Qaqasiq said in an interview.
"But I really always remember this woman who was crying for her child," she said. "As we were going towards the plane, I could hear her."
Qaqasiq said she stayed in Nova Scotia for two years, becoming attached to the woman she called "Aunt Helen."
But Qaqasiq's return north was a shock: She recalled being appalled by conditions in her community, which she described as having "shacks with no plumbing." As well, she said, she could no longer speak Inuktitut or communicate with her own mother.
"It was hard for me because I couldn't tell her how I was feeling or what I needed. And yet she was my mom," she said tearfully. "I'm still angry about that."
Cooper said the federal government's native residential school system is well known in Canada, but its "experimental Eskimo" projects are not.
The government felt free to send Inuit children away to the south without any explanation to their parents, he said.