NFB Collection
Broken Promises - The High Arctic Relocation
199552 min 34 secFilm: Documentary
Direction: Patricia Tassinari
Production: Barrie HowellsGeorge HargraveDon HaigErica Pomerance
Script: Erna Buffie
Co-produced by Nutaaq Média Inc. and the NFB with the participation of Telefilm Canada and Société générale des industries culturelles - Québec.
In the summer of 1953, the Canadian government relocated seven Inuit families from Northern Quebec to the High Arctic. They were promised an abundance of game and fish, with the assurance that if things didn't work out, they could return home after two years. Two years later, another 35 people joined them. There they suffered from hunger, extreme cold, sickness, alcoholism and poverty. It would be thirty years before any of them saw their ancestral lands again. Interviews with survivors are combined with archival footage and documents to tell the poignant story of a people whose lives were nearly destroyed by their own government's broken promises.
Availability
Subject categories
- Politics and Government - Canada > Government Agencies, Programs and ServicesIndigenous Concerns
- Indigenous Peoples in Canada (Inuit) > Health and SafetyNorthwest Territories, Nunavut and YukonSocial Problems
- Social Issues > Indigenous Peoples
Credits
- director
- Patricia Tassinari
- producer
- Barrie Howells
- George Hargrave
- executive producer
- Don Haig
- associate producer
- Erica Pomerance
- script
- Erna Buffie
- narrator
- Erna Buffie
- photography
- Stephen Reizes
- sound
- Esther Auger
- editing
- Teresa de Luca
- sound editing
- Louis Dupire
- Lucie Fortier
- Frédéric Grenon
- François Dupire
- re-recording
- Shelley Craig
- music
- André Vincelli