"What really happened to the Inuit sled dogs?" asks a July 9 story in Canada's national newspaper The Globe and Mail.
Almost 50 years ago the indigenous sleddog population in northern Québec and what is now called Nunavut began a precipitous decline that brought its numbers from estimates well in excess of 20,000 down to a few hundred in the course of a few decades.
Arctic natives now insist that RCMP police officers systematically slaughtered their dogs to force them to adopt the white man's lifestyle. The RCMP denies the charges. And once again, Canada is faced with the unedifying spectacle of its national police farce (oops) investigating itself to clear itself of charges of wrongdoing. Canada's scandal-beset Liberal minority government has decided not to proceed with a public judicial inquiry, despite recommendations of a parliamentary committee and the Nunavut legislature.
Posted by jjeffrey at August 6, 2005 01:44 PMSome information - unfortunately not much - may be found by searching the archives of Nunatsiaq News
http://www.nunatsiaq.com/results.php
Posted by: Kenneth Beattie at August 11, 2005 07:23 PM