INUIT LIFE IN THE EASTERN CANADIAN ARCTIC, 1922–1942: CHANGE AS RECORDED BY THE RCMP

• Published in: The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien
• Main Author: Weissling, Lee E.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 1991
• Subjects: Arctic; Baffin Island; Pond Inlet; Baffin; inuit
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1541-0064.1991.tb01621.x; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Fj.1541-0064.1991.tb01621.x; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1541-0064.1991.tb01621.x

RCMP reports of the Pond Inlet detachment on northern Baffin Island from 1922 to 1942 are used as sources of information about Inuit life during those years. Descriptions in the reports provide accounts on a local level about the increasing reliance which Inuit had upon government agents and commercial enterprises. Inuit relied on RCMP officers for health care and welfare relief. There were few families who were destitute, however, and rarely were there hardships which the RCMP had to alleviate directly. The most pervasive reliance which Inuit had was on retail commodities. Items such as ammunition, tea, flour, and especially tobacco were essential to the Inuit by the late 1920s. The RCMP reports provide evidence that, in the Pond Inlet area during the 1922–1942 period, the transition into a market economy resulted not so much from overt, direct government planning but by the desire for retail commodities which motivated Inuit to trap and travel to HBC posts to sell fox skins