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rfmcdonaldThis morning on CBC Radio One's Sounds Like Canada, Shelagh Rogers interviewed two women--Yvonne Kisoun in Edmonton, Rhoda Inuksuk in Ottawa--for the show "Urban Inuit" (RealAudio format). Baby boomers, Kisoun and Inuksuk were among the first Inuit to leave their homeland for the cities of southern Canada. Concerned that Inuit newly arriving in the metropolises of the south faced complete culture shock, and aware that Inuit don't share a common identity with other Canadian First Nations, they've since been involved in setting up orientation centres, language classes, and community organizations.
Rogers likened their efforts to those made my immigrant orientation groups. She was right. Statistics Canadareports that the forty-five thousand Inuit of Canada are a rapidly growing population, with high fertility rates and high mobility. Nine-tenths of Canada's Inuit live in the four jurisdictions which include their traditional homelands (Nunavut, Québec, Newfoundland and Labrador, and the rump Northwest Territories), though Statistics Canada doesn't indicate whether or not these Inuit live in their traditional territories (Nunavik versus southern Québec). In their different homelands, the Inuit appear to enjoy a fair measure of cultural stability.
Economic stability, though, is another matter. Nunavut, a Canadian territory since 1999, has a relatively fragile economy, the modern segment of the economy requiring massive investment in infrastructure to function and the traditional segment likewise needing modernization. More, all of the Inuit lands are far from world markets and dominated by an inhospitable climate. The scattered Inuit settlements may be the closest approximations to space colonies that Canada is likely to have for some time, doomed to be very small open markets with exports of raw materials and cultural goods exquisitely vulnerable to fluctuations in foreign demand.
What if the fundamentals of the Inuit lands' economies collapse one day? I wonder if anyone has begun to plan in any detail the managed depopulation, in part or in full, of all the Canadian Northlands and their peoples.
Rogers likened their efforts to those made my immigrant orientation groups. She was right. Statistics Canada
Economic stability, though, is another matter. Nunavut, a Canadian territory since 1999, has a relatively fragile economy, the modern segment of the economy requiring massive investment in infrastructure to function and the traditional segment likewise needing modernization. More, all of the Inuit lands are far from world markets and dominated by an inhospitable climate. The scattered Inuit settlements may be the closest approximations to space colonies that Canada is likely to have for some time, doomed to be very small open markets with exports of raw materials and cultural goods exquisitely vulnerable to fluctuations in foreign demand.
What if the fundamentals of the Inuit lands' economies collapse one day? I wonder if anyone has begun to plan in any detail the managed depopulation, in part or in full, of all the Canadian Northlands and their peoples.
