Canada’s Indigenous and Northern Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett apologizes to Manitoba’s Sayisi Dene for Ottawa’s role in the devastating forced relocation of the indigenous community in 1956.

Canada’s Indigenous and Northern Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett apologizes to Manitoba’s Sayisi Dene for Ottawa’s role in the devastating forced relocation of the indigenous community in 1956.
Photo Credit: CBC

Ottawa apologizes to Sayisi Dene First Nation for forced relocation

Canada’s federal government has apologized to Manitoba’s Sayisi Dene for Ottawa’s role in the devastating forced relocation of the indigenous community from its ancestral lands to the barren tundra on the shores of Hudson Bay 60 years ago.

Canada’s Indigenous and Northern Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett fought back tears as she delivered the government’s formal apology to survivors of the 1956 relocation on Tuesday afternoon in the remote Dene community of Tadoule Lake in northern Manitoba.

‘We are sorry’

The relocation of the Sayisi Dene into unfamiliar territory uprooted and decimated the community.

“Today I stand humbly before all of you and offer the following words: We are sorry,” Bennett said.

“Sixty years ago, the government of Canada made a tragic and fatal decision that continues to impact all Sayisi Dene First Nation members to this day.”

In the early 1950s, Manitoba’s provincial government was worried the Sayisi Dene were overhunting too many caribou around Little Duck Lake in northern Manitoba and convinced the federal government to move the entire community away from its traditional hunting grounds.

On Aug. 17, 1956, the government sent a plane to Little Duck Lake, to pick up more than 250 community members and fly them to the barren tundra outside Churchill, Manitoba, with the promise of food, shelter and jobs.

None of the promises were kept.

No caribou, no life
John and Mary Ann Thorassie and family in Duck Lake, Manitoba, 1947. Before their forced relocation, the Sayisi Dene lived in their traditional territory along the migratory path of the caribou.
John and Mary Ann Thorassie and family in Duck Lake, Manitoba, 1947. Before their forced relocation, the Sayisi Dene lived in their traditional territory along the migratory path of the caribou. © Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Archives of Manitoba, HBCA 1987/336-I-76/5

There was little food, no shelter and no jobs.

Uprooted and separated from their lifeblood – the caribou – the community suffered poverty, disease and death. Many drowned their woes in alcohol. The booze-fuelled despair set off an epidemic of deaths, murders and rapes.

By the time the government agreed to relocate the people to Tadoule Lake in 1973, the damage was done — of the more than 250 members who were originally moved, 117 had died.

“It is unbearable to consider what you lost during the years in Churchill,” Bennett said Tuesday.

“No one, and no people, should have had to experience such treatment in Canadian society.”

‘Shameful chapter’

Bennett also acknowledged that Ottawa failed in its duty to provide for the relocated community.

“Decades later, we recognize that the impacts of the relocation were catastrophic,” she said.

“This shameful chapter in Canada’s history is one that stemmed from the pervasive legacy of colonialism, a legacy of disrespect, lack of understanding and unwillingness to listen.”

The federal government’s mea culpa follows the 2010 Manitoba government’s formal apologiy for its role in the original relocation.

Along with the apology, the federal government is providing the Sayisi Dene First Nation with $33.6 million in compensation.

Chief Ernest Bussidor, who was born one month before the relocation, said many people have suffered post-traumatic stress.

“I probably witnessed a lot more tragic events than I should have … and most of us of that generation have that same notion,” Bussidor told The Canadian Press.

“A lot of children died. That kind of stuff never leaves you…. People freezing to death, fires, you name it.”

With files from CBC News and The Canadian Press

Categories: Indigenous, Politics
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