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