Arctic Justice

Although there was no Canadian law enforcement in the Eastern High Arctic in 1920 when a crazed white fur trader was killed by an Inuk, authorities put Nuqallaq and two other Baffin Island Inuit on trial. The Canadian government saw Robert Jane's death as murder; the Inuit saw it as removing a threat from their society according to custom. Nuqallaq was sentenced to ten years hard labour in Stony Mountain Penitentiary where he contracted tuberculosis. He died shortly after being returned to Pond Inlet. Shelagh Grant's Arctic Justice is a reconstruction of tragic events at the intersection of Inuit and Canadian justice and a social history of Baffin Island in the twentieth century. Combining Inuit oral testimony with archival history, Grant sheds light on the conflicting values and perceptions of two disparate cultures and shows that the Canadian government's decision was determined by fear of Inuit violence and political concerns for establishing sovereignty over the Arctic.