Original subtitles

Some people call it "the Roof of the World."

For others, it's the North Pole.

This is where I grew up,

in the northernmost inhabited place in Canada,

Grise Fiord.

We came here when I was just a little girl -

me and my family.

That was many years ago,

so some of my memories are clouded.

But others are still vivid.

So that's how I will tell my story -

with some chapters crystal clear and others a bit hazy.

My name is Martha -

or "Maata," as we say in Inuktitut.

I was born in 1950

in Inukjuak in northern Quebec,

on the shore of Hudson Bay.

Not many people have heard of Inukjuak.

But they've seen it.

The famous film "Nanook of the North,"

directed by Robert Flaherty,

projected images of Inukjuak on screens all over the world.

Back when the film was made,

the Inuit had very little contact with white men

beyond the fur trade.

The rest of the world barely knew the Inuit existed.

"Nanook of the North" is still considered

one of the greatest films of all time,

a cinematic masterpiece.

"Nanook" introduced the world to the magnificent,

untrammelled wilderness of the North

and its hardy, cheerful inhabitants.

The film has been translated into many languages

and been shown on every continent.

"Nanook of the North" premiered in New York in 1922

and was an immediate hit,

turning its creator, Robert Flaherty,

into an international celebrity.

- Hi.

1922 is also the year my father was born

in the small settlement of Inukjuak.

My father was called Josephie, or "Josepie."

Josephie grew up to learn about the land

in the exact location where "Nanook" had been filmed.

- My father spent his first few years

in the bosom of his maternal family,

mainly with his mother,

Maggie Nuyurlutuk.

He was still a toddler

when she fell ill and died very young.

Then, his stepfather,

Paddy Aqiatusuk,

adopted my father, who was now an orphan.

Paddy was known as an amazing carver.

His works have been exhibited in Europe

and have a prominent place in major collections of Inuit art.

- Paddy was also a skilled hunter.

He taught my father everything an Inuk man needs to know

about hunting and fishing and his ancestral land.

When Josephie grew up

and started a family with Rynee, the two men stayed close

and were always there for each other.

- My father knew the lay of the land

like the back of his hand. He had travelled

every square inch of it by kayak, dogsled and on foot.

- He was a very good hunter.

He could run like the wind.

When I walked with him, he was so quick,

I had a hard time keeping up.

- Like the other men,

my father would return from the hunt with plenty of game,

happy to be able to feed his family.

Being a good hunter is a necessity,

as well as a source of pride for the Inuit.

In Inukjuak, when I was small,

I loved to go blueberry picking with my mother.

On Sundays, we'd all go visit family members

who all lived within walking distance.

I used to have lots of fun with my cousins,

and play with the dogs.

We also loved to look after the younger ones.

In those days,

we were a happy family.

My parents were a fun-loving couple.

I remember my father's laugh and the way he smiled.

He smiled a lot back then.

But life in Inukjuak was never easy.

The winters were long and harsh.

In "Nanook,"

Robert Flaherty praises the courage of the Inuit.

- Robert Flaherty also pointed out

that in Inukjuak and across the Ungava Peninsula,

the climate is so severe that our people

are the only ones who can survive there.

And as he said,

"they do it with a smile."

This film may well have been instrumental

in convincing the world that only the "Eskimos,"

as they were called,

could ever cope with the harsh conditions in the far North.

It may have just been a coincidence,

but the same year "Nanook" was released, 1922,

a project began to take shape to move Inuit families

from northern Quebec to the high Arctic.

- But it wasn't until the early 1950s

that the RCMP officers approached families in Inukjuak

to tell them about the project.

In 1953, my cousin John's family

was one of those asked to undertake the "experiment."

- They told us that it was for our own benefit,

for our own good.

That our lives would improve

and that we would be living in a better place.

- Family and community

are the heart and soul of Inuit life.

Moving far away from loved ones and familiar territory

must have been frightening even for the most adventurous.

The RCMP reassured the worried Inuit

they were being relocated to a place chosen by people

with expert knowledge of the Arctic.

A place where game was plentiful.

- They told us that there were a lot of animals,

and that we would have an opportunity

to catch a lot of foxes

and make some money if we wanted to.

So they described it in very glowing terms.

- Paddy, my dad's stepfather,

also took up the offer to go north.

He left with his wife

teenaged Minnie and little Larry.

- I was not quite four

when we got moved,

I was just about four.

- I remember that time. We were getting ready to go -

people were busy packing and families being left behind.

There was a lot to do,

because we were taking all our belongings with us,

even our dogs.

As well as the plentiful game,

the Inuit were promised

they could return home within two years

if the new place wasn't to their liking.

And since the group was assured they would be settled together,

they could continue their age-old custom

of "lending a hand."

- Inukjuak wasn't very developed at the time,

but there was a health clinic,

a store, a school.

We left all that behind.

- On July 26, 1953,

seven Inukjuak families boarded the CD Howe,

an enormous icebreaker,

for the 2,000-kilometre journey north.

♪ Left our home on Hudson Bay

♪ On a ship that took us all the way ♪

♪ Sailing through the broken ice ♪

♪ Towards the shores of paradise ♪

♪ Where they say our new life will begin ♪

♪ I can't wait until my ship comes in ♪

- From the moment they were separated,

Paddy must have started to miss Martha's father,

Josephie.

He thought about him all the time,

and within a few months,

he sent a message asking Josephie to join them.

He wanted him by his side.

To honour his step-father's request,

Josephie agreed to make the trip to the Arctic.

- In July 1955, my parents and we three children -

Peter, six months old; Mary, three years old;

and myself, aged five - boarded the CD Howe,

the same ship that took Paddy

and the other Inukjuak families away two years earlier.

- I had no idea what to expect. But I wasn't worried.

I brought along

our tent, pots and pans, blankets.

- Several other families

were also going to join relatives

who'd been relocated to the Arctic.

They'd all been told

their relatives were eager to see them again

and wanted them to share in the bounty of this new home.

- But no one could tell us

the name of the place we were going.

- All they said was that it was great

and there was lots and lots of game.

- Like most Inuit, we didn't own much,

so there were few material possessions to worry about.

The main thing we left behind were the people,

people who were dear to us.

♪ Left our home on Hudson Bay

♪ On a ship that took us all the way ♪

♪ Sailing through the broken ice ♪

♪ Towards the shores of paradise ♪

- As we sailed away,

I watched the land where I was born disappear.

♪ I can't wait until my ship comes in ♪

♪ Landing on the edge of Ellesmere ♪

♪ Wondering if we could survive here ♪

♪ We were told that half would stay ♪

♪ The rest of us were on our way ♪

♪ Will I see my family again

♪ I can't wait until my ship comes in ♪

- The heaving ship made everyone seasick.

We all felt vulnerable.

And in stormy weather, things got even worse.

- I remember the ship listing from side to side

and being tossed around

in the storm.

Dishes flew all over the place and everyone was throwing up.

All our dogs were chained up on deck.

We could hear them howling.

- On the long journey north,

people looked for ways to break the boredom.

One RCMP officer thought it was a big joke

to pretend to throw me overboard.

He'd grab me and dangle me

over the railing above the raging waters.

I screamed and I struggled for dear life.

The fear of open water stayed with me for a long time.

As did my mistrust of white people.

I was scared to death of the ship's doctor.

I wouldn't let him near me.

- You screamed and cried.

You ran away.

He wasn't a very nice man.

You ran and hid under the bed.

- I have horrible memories of that crazy doctor.

He was so afraid of a lice infestation,

he decided to shave off all the kids' hair.

I ran for my life.

I was the only one to escape with my braids intact.

But I was about to lose something much more precious.

- When the boat docked at Churchill,

they made us all get chest X-rays

and they said that three of us

me, my little sister

and Martha's little sister, Mary.

I cried my heart out

when we were separated from our family.

My parents had to get off the boat

to make camp at Churchill.

I had to stay on the boat with my sister and Mary

until we were taken away.

I was only 10.

It still hurts when I think of it.

- Nobody told my parents

when or if we'd ever see Mary again.

I didn't understand.

All I knew was, when the white men were around,

no one could protect us, not even our parents.

When we got to Cornwallis Island,

we found out that the group of Inuit who'd left in 1953

had been divided and dropped off in two different locations.

- That was always in their plan,

but they lied to us...

when they told us that they would not separate us,

that we would all stay together.

That's what they told us before we got on the ship.

But they finally told us

that one group would be dropped off at the next site

and the other half would be taken to another place.

One group, including John and his family,

had been left at Resolute Bay,

while the rest were taken 400 kilometres further,

to Ellesmere Island.

- It was a complete surprise and shock to us

when they told us

that we were being divided into two groups.

- On this trip, we were the only family

going all the way up to Ellesmere Island,

because that's where Paddy and his family had been put.

But we did have a one-night stopover

in Resolute Bay. It was a short visit.

But one thing I remember is walking in mykamiks

over the sharp rocks of Cornwallis island.

I cried with the pain.

I already missed the soft grass of Inukjuak.

At Resolute, we found relatives we hadn't seen

since they left two years earlier.

Among them was my cousin John,

who was so skinny and pale he looked like a ghost.

- Well, the two first years were very, very difficult,

because we didn't know this new environment.

It was totally new to us. We didn't know

where to go hunting for certain species of animals.

We were used to a wide variety of different things

that we could harvest. But up there,

there was almost no vegetation, it was very, very cold,

and all the animals that they had described to us

were not there.

There were hardly any animals.

And the only animals that we initially saw

were starving musk ox and that was about it.

What they had described was a total lie.

- The people were in bad shape

and their stories of their first two years

terrified us.

We didn't know what to expect on Ellesmere Island.

At last, after one month at sea,

we finally reached our destination.

It was not the wonderful spot they'd described;

it was a wasteland of ice.

In Inuktitut, the word for this place

is "Aujuittuq," the place that never melts.

- In Inukjuak, there's no ice in the summer.

You can even swim in the sea.

The families who had been settled here for two years

were waiting on the shore to greet them.

- I remember the day Martha's family arrived.

I was so happy they'd come to join us.

- When we landed, the dogs weren't tied up;

they were running all over the place.

I remember I was afraid of the dogs.

Aside from the small RCMP post,

no permanent housing had been built.

And the people didn't look any healthier

than those they'd met at Resolute Bay.

- They told us the winter had been tough.

Those people had really suffered.

They were miserable.

They spent the winter

living in tents made of musk-ox hide.

- But as we looked at the people who came out to greet us,

Paddy, the person we had come to join,

was nowhere in sight.

Paddy Aqiatusuk had died

exactly one year after arriving on the Island.

- We learned that on reaching Ellesmere Island,

Paddy had become so discouraged,

he'd quickly requested to return home.

- The only reason and the main reason

why we went willingly was the two-year promise.

Because the promises made it sound so simple

and we would only be gone for two years.

They promised us two years and we believed them.

In stark contrast to the promise,

Paddy was informed that if he wanted to go home,

he would have to cover the cost of the return trip

for himself and his family.

Which would simply have been impossible.

- If you want to ask me what was the RCMP like,

in terms of the relocation,

they were the government agents.

Ottawa dictated how they should treat us

through the RCMP

that was their own administration.

And they were not very good that way.

They were very condescending,

they were very bureaucratic.

So the first two RCMP that were involved

with our coming up...

No, I have very little respect for them.

- From the start, Paddy was not himself.

He had no one to tell his troubles to.

He fell silent and stopped carving altogether.

- My father must have known, you know,

"Oh, my God, I'm in a situation I'll never go back to Inukjuak."

And I'm sure that was contributing

to his short life up there, you know.

- Like Paddy, I wish I'd never got off the ship.

I would have liked to turn right around

and go back where we came from.

For a long time, I was numb.

Many of my memories are lost in a thick fog.

Like the others, Martha's family

would have to spend their first months in the Arctic

in a canvas tent.

And the deep cold had already set in.

- In Inukjuak, at that time of year,

it was summer. It was warm.

There was grass growing and flowers.

We thought about it all the time.

- In northern Quebec,

we were used to living in a tent for a few months of the year.

But it's much warmer in Inukjuak

than it ever gets north of the Arctic circle.

The average temperature

in their new environment

is 15 degrees Celsius colder than Inukjuak.

Even in summer, it rarely gets above freezing.

The terrain, the animals and hunting methods

are also entirely different.

- The men from Inukjuak

were used to having plentiful game to hunt,

just like in "Nanook of the North."

They were renowned as excellent providers.

That's an important part of their identity.

Ellesmere Island

is 200,000 square kilometres in area.

It is a land of mountains, glaciers and fjords.

Even seasoned hunters

struggled to get around in this inhospitable terrain.

- Despite the severe conditions, the men got busy hunting

and trying to store up as much game as possible

before winter set in.

It seemed that life might get back to normal.

But many other obstacles soon thwarted

the good intentions of the new settlers.

The Arctic Islands had been decreed a wildlife reserve.

Therefore, it was forbidden to kill musk ox,

and the caribou hunt was strictly regulated.

There was a quota

of only one caribou per family per year.

- I guess everyone was afraid of the huge fines

and of the RCMP officers stationed on the island,

because even starving families obeyed those crazy rules.

Rules which no one mentioned

until the Inuit had arrived.

- When the ships were being unloaded,

the government official voluntarily said,

"By the way, the caribou season is finished.

No more hunting caribou now,

it's late,

you're gonna have to live with seal skin out of clothing."

My uncle said, "What?! No!

Not good enough. We'll freeze!"

In extreme cold temperatures,

like those found in the polar regions,

humans require three times the standard caloric intake

simply to survive in the harsh conditions.

- Seals were our main source of pelts and food

for a good part of the year.

And often our only source.

But they were never enough.

Even the families who'd been there for two years

were hard put to find enough food for themselves.

Josephie was determined

not to become a burden.

He borrowed dogs to go seal hunting

and tried to get to know this daunting new terrain,

so different from the land he knew so well.

But even the best of hunters, like the famous Nanook,

need help to catch a seal.

- My father couldn't hunt for seal alone.

My little brother Peter was too young,

and my mother too busy looking after him

and managing all her other chores.

So I became my father's hunting partner.

I was only six or seven.

He and I took on the responsibility

of feeding our family.

We spent long hours in the cold crouched over a breathing hole.

My father never got used to the new environment.

He stopped smiling and started shouting.

And I usually bore the brunt of his tirades.

When we went out hunting,

he never wanted to return empty-handed

and he'd fly into a rage if I dared to ask to go home.

If, as often happened, we went home

with nothing to show for our efforts,

he couldn't look my mother in the eye.

He couldn't bear to see her disappointment.

He was mortified,

seeing his dignity wither away.

I wanted to help, so in my childish way,

I did my best to shoulder part of my parents' sorrow

and helplessness.

- She had a very difficult childhood.

You know,

she was the oldest child of that family,

and she had to take on heavy responsibilities

when she was still young.

And being in a place like Grise Fiord

makes it that much more difficult.

The people who'd been moved to Resolute Bay

were somewhat less isolated,

because they were close to the military base.

But game was even more scarce at Resolute

than on Ellesmere Island.

- Our friends who lived there,

like John and Dora and their family,

didn't have any more to eat than we did.

My older sister and I would walk along the shore

looking for anything we could find to eat.

Because there was nothing

no game and nowhere to buy food.

There was only the RCMP garbage dump.

The RCMP didn't let us go there, but at night, in the dark,

we'd sneak over and root through their trash

looking for food scraps.

To this day, I can't figure out how we managed to survive.

"Qausitaluk" means the long polar night

that descends north of the Arctic Circle.

On Ellesmere and Cornwallis Islands,

there are three full months of complete and utter darkness.

- Where we come from, there are days and nights.

The sun rises and sets every day.

Here, it's always night.

We didn't know what to do,

where to go, or where to hunt in the dark.

- This long period of continuous darkness

begins in mid-October and lasts until February.

It makes life even more difficult.

With no sun, the temperature plummets.

It's much too cold to live in a tent.

But in the early part of the winter,

fierce winds prevent snow buildup,

so there's not enough snow on the ground to build igloos.

In the meantime, the Inuit would put up qarmaqs,

dwellings covered with hides that provided better shelter

against the incessant, bitter winds.

- Our first winter there,

two families lived in one room with no window.

It was about 10 feet square.

It was dark and stuffy,

but we were very grateful to the family who took us in.

- We had to lend each other a hand.

It was the only way to survive.

When there was finally enough snow,

each family was able to build their own igloo.

- So we kept moving like that,

from one makeshift shelter to the next,

depending on the season.

I may not remember all the details

of the different places we lived in,

but I remember exactly how cold and hungry I was.

All the time.

There was no milk for my baby brother,

so my mother had to fill his belly

by feeding him flour and water.

She'd pack a baby bottle full of snow

and melt it in her armpit.

Water was a constant worry

for the Inuit.

It required tremendous effort to get,

especially during the winter.

Fresh-water icebergs can be identified by their colour,

but in the dark,

they are hard to distinguish from those made of salt water.

- Sometimes we'd even mistake a rock for an iceberg.

We'd often break our tools

or cut ourselves.

- Martha was really close to her mom.

She followed her everywhere.

She felt she was in a strange place,

very desolate,

where there was nowhere to go,

so she stayed glued to her mother's side.

- I tried not to show it, but most of the time,

I felt as helpless as my little baby brother.

When the igloos were no longer habitable,

families had to move back into tents,

frail protection against the elements and their fears.

- After our qarmaq was destroyed by fire,

my family moved close to the RCMP barracks.

The RCMP post was deliberately located

a good distance from the little community.

That meant we were now quite far from the other Inuit families.

In exchange for a roof over our heads,

my father would do odd jobs for the RCMP.

Sometimes he'd take them by dogsled to Resolute Bay.

He might be gone for weeks

and my mother and I would be all alone

and worried sick the whole time he was gone.

We were stuck living two or three hours' travel

by foot or dogsled from the Inuit community.

With no other kids around, I felt lonelier than ever.

Not far from where Martha was living

was a site where ancient human bones had been found.

- I believed that the spirits of these people

were still around

and that the noises we heard at night were their groans.

I was little and I was terrified.

I'd talk to myself for hours or to imaginary friends.

My mother was worried about me.

And about my father.

He was beginning to frighten us

with strange, unpredictable behaviour.

My mother said that the place drove people crazy.

- Whenever he got sick like that,

his personality changed.

He heard voices.

I stayed out of his way, but I made sure

there was always somebody with him.

- I'd also started to spend a lot of time with the dogs.

Then one day, I got my very own puppy.

I felt invincible.

Like I'd sprouted wings.

But that didn't last long.

One afternoon, a chunk of ice

fell on my little puppy and killed her.

I was beside myself.

I cried my heart out.

But I knew that no one could feel sorry for me.

What's the life of one little dog

when everyone's life was hanging by a thread?

Eventually,

the Kayaks.

The father was an RCMP special constable

and the whole family was hired

to help the officers at the post.

One of the children

was a little girl about Martha's age.

- I was so happy to have a friend to play with.

Lili Kayak and I were inseparable.

We spent all our time together, as long as we could.

But they lived across the river from us,

so when it thawed in the summer, we couldn't get together.

When the river was too wild to cross,

we'd tie a note around a rock with string.

We'd throw the rock across to the other shore.

That's how we communicated.

The CD Howe was the little community's

only tangible link with the outside world.

It came once a year, in August,

the only time it could weave a passage through the ice.

- It was the event of the year.

But it was sad, too.

- The summer when the ship came,

I have hard memories of it,

because you saw your parents changed.

They'd be wishing to go back.

I think they always asked to go back

and they always say no. Years to years.

And to see their faces so sad.

As a child, you know these things.

As it made its way north,

the ship dropped off supplies to the various camps

and mail for the RCMP officers.

Occasionally, there'd be letters for the Inuit

or messages from loved ones.

Along with the yearly medical visits

and shipments of flour, the CD Howe brought news -

both good and bad.

- I remember seeing the pain on my mother's face

when she heard that her father had died.

I think her pain was as great as the distance

that separated her from her family.

My mother was never one to talk about the hardships.

- That was the way it was.

I tried not to think about it.

- We felt we'd been forgotten by the universe

and betrayed by the people who brought us here

with false promises of a better life

or of the possibility of returning.

It was a hard life for everyone,

and no doubt even harder for the children.

Two boys, just a bit older than Martha,

drowned trying to bring food back to their family.

- They were my... one year older than me,

the other boy was three years older than me.

After they're gone, I have no one.

On the death of a child,

Inuit custom requires that the body be buried

and all the clothes be burned.

It's a solemn ritual that helps the people cope with their loss.

- Our family still had no news of my little sister, Mary,

who'd been taken away.

We didn't have her body to bury

or her clothes to burn.

Mary remained alive in our thoughts,

like a ghost haunting us.

More than two years after she'd been spirited off

to hospital, she finally came back to us.

- Yes! They told us a plane would be coming,

bringing Mary.

It was one of the very first planes to land here.

- And I remember a little bit going on the plane,

from Resolute to Grise Fiord.

But I don't remember seeing my parents...

uh...

meeting me.

- She didn't want anything to do with us.

She wouldn't let me hug her.

She wanted to get back on the plane

with the white people.

She didn't remember who we were.

- My sister Mary was so young.

She doesn't remember much of what happened.

She hardly ever speaks about those years.

- I thought they were not my parents.

- Mary didn't recognize me, either.

It was very upsetting.

But it was normal for a child who'd spent

half of her short life separated from us.

What we didn't know then

was that since she'd been taken away,

she had endured a series of painful separations.

Little Mary had been kept

in the TB sanitarium for only six months.

Once recovered,

she was taken to Montreal for several months

to await the once-yearly departure

of the C.D. Howe,

which would return her to her family.

The ship dropped her off by mistake in Inukjuak.

But, of course, the family wasn't there.

The following summer,

a full year later,

the C.D. Howe picked her up in Inukjuak

and dropped her off in Resolute Bay,

where her family was thought to be living.

Wrong again.

Months later, she was finally put on a plane

for the last leg of her journey to Ellesmere Island.

- She was gone for two years.

And not once in all that time did we have any news of her.

We didn't know she'd been taken to Inukjuak,

and then to Resolute Bay.

- We still can't understand

how the people who had uprooted us

and brought us all the way up here

didn't even know where they'd put us.

Their incompetence and indifference

made my little sister a stranger in her own family.

- I was not speaking Inuktitut, I was speaking only English.

So there was no food, I guess,

and all I said was "water, water,"

and they understand what water means.

- She eventually got used to us,

but she called us dirty.

- I called everybody "dirty."

Maybe I was down south and...

maybe they had no power, nothing.

"dirty."

"Dirty" and "water."

- I thought that Mary's return would mean

that I'd have a playmate at last.

But like the child and the trapped fox

in Robert Flaherty's film,

we came from two different worlds

and it took a while to learn to get along.

- She'd gotten used to the way the white people live.

You and Mary didn't get along very well.

- We fought over two dolls

she'd brought from down south.

She'd let me play with the blonde one,

but she would never let me have the one with dark hair.

- She was a tiny thing, but she managed

to get that doll back every time.

- I don't know what happened to it.

There was no toys.

- At Christmas, the only plane that came this far north

overflew Grise Fiord and dropped a bag

full of different things - toys for the children.

They were usually broken.

- Sometimes the RCMP would invite us all

to their post

for a Christmas party.

- I don't remember the party,

but I remember the food.

For once we had lots to eat.

- I can't remember how many shacks,

qarmaqs and igloos my family lived in

between the time we arrived in 1955

and the early '60s.

It wasn't until 1962

that a permanent settlement

was established.

The Inuit village and the RCMP post,

until then several hours apart,

were moved to the site

now known as Grise Fiord.

Small prefabricated houses were shipped in and assembled.

- The houses were small and very basic,

but they meant a great improvement

in living standards for the Inuit in the community.

Our family kept on growing, so things got pretty crowded,

but at least we had a real house.

And that wasn't the only change in 1962.

Okay, once again.

The hamlet of Grise Fiord got a school.

Two teachers came up from the south

to teach all the school-age children.

- It was the major turning point of my childhood at Grise Fiord.

We, displaced children,

deprived of education for all those years,

were finally going to learn to read and write.

For me,

it was a refuge.

School meant I didn't have to go hunting,

to be yelled at by my father.

When Martha turned 15,

she was informed that she was being sent

to high school in Carcross, in the Yukon.

- Even if no one asked me my opinion,

I'll admit I was delighted to get away.

Later, all alone on the journey

with nothing to eat and only a few words of English,

I quickly realized that getting out of hell

doesn't guarantee a ticket to heaven.

I spent a long year in Carcross,

homesick and bullied by other kids.

There, and in the two residential schools

I attended later,

I learned more about racism and cruelty

than I ever did about academics.

I spent a lot of time wondering

if there was anywhere on earth

where an Inuk girl had the right

to live without dying of cold or hunger,

without being bullied and battered

by the elements or by human beings.

Most of the children relocated to Grise Fiord

or Resolute Bay endured similar hardships.

Many died young.

And more than a few committed suicide.

Some families were cruelly hard hit.

- The Kayaks, our former neighbours,

saw over half their children die before the age of 30.

Including my dear friend Lili.

Why such a waste?

What were all those broken lives for?

For survivors,

there are still many unanswered questions.

- Why bring somebody way up there?

Why didn't they send geologists or armies

to look around first

to see if it's safe?

Why bring families?

- They used us and forgot about us.

They gave us nothing.

They didn't care about us.

They just plunked us down on the land.

- It was decades later

that we learned that the real reason

why they wanted...

to relocate us to the high Arctic

was to affirm Canadian sovereignty on those islands.

An international tribunal had ruled

that only the presence of permanent citizens

could affirm a country's sovereignty

in a given territory.

Relocating Inuit from Northern Quebec

to the High Arctic

seemed an ideal way to deal with the issue

of the vast, uninhabited Canadian north.

- Finding out that we had been used

to affirm Canada's Arctic sovereignty

ignited the anger that had been smoldering for years.

- The government people who did it are no longer living,

but others have replaced them.

They ought to come up here when it's cold and dark

to see what it's like to live here.

- Not many people know what we've been through.

And trying to portray reality, especially of the past,

is no easy task.

Even for the most accomplished filmmakers.

Robert Flaherty set out to present

a faithful portrait of Inuit life,

but he was not a documentary filmmaker.

People still mistakenly refer to "Nanook of the North"

as a documentary.

Few would argue its greatness, but a documentary it is not.

The man who plays the valiant hunter

is not really named Nanook,

nor is he the father of the children in the film.

- It's obvious that the filmmaker

often idealized Inuit life.

But in every frame,

you can feel the love Robert Flaherty had

for my people.

The woman who plays Nyla in the film

is Maggie Nuyurlutuk.

In real life, she was not the hunter's wife.

In fact, after the day's shoot,

she took the filmmaker to her bed.

- Maggie Nuyurlutuk was my grandmother.

For over a year,

she was the companion of the strangekablunak,

which is our Inuktitut term for white people.

When filming finished,

she was pregnant with a son, my father,

whom she named Josephie Flaherty,

in honour of Robert Joseph Flaherty.

Once the film was finished,

Robert Flaherty never returned to the place

where he'd created a classic and fathered a son.

- So my father only ever saw his biological father

in a photo.

And I didn't learn of my own connection

to the famous filmmaker until I grew up.

I think Josephie forgave Robert Flaherty

for abandoning him.

And, today, I can understand

that my father's aggression that scarred my childhood

was the result of years of pain and misery.

He was shattered, psychologically broken

by separation from his loved ones

and by guilt at having brought us here.

The doctors said he died of lung cancer.

We believe his lungs were destroyed by the cold

and by his relentless efforts to keep us alive.

What is certain is that he died

without ever returning to Inukjuak,

the beloved land of his birth.

In 1987,

a full 34 years after the relocation,

the government finally allowed people

to visit their families of origin.

- When my mother saw her family again in Inukjuak,

it was very emotional.

In addition, all the displaced Inuit

were allowed to resettle wherever they chose.

- What should have been good news

once again tore the small community apart.

- Like, my kids were born and they grew up...

they've grown up there and I don't want to uproot them.

- I live here with my husband; he doesn't want to leave.

My kids don't want to leave, either; they were born here.

- My immediate family all moved back to Inukjuak.

I'm the only one left in Nunavut.

- My sister, brother and my step-sister,

and their families, they all moved back down.

We got left behind.

Martha's mother left Grise Fiord,

along with the entire Flaherty family.

Rynee settled in Iqualuit, as did a number of her children.

- Even in her old age,

she still looks after Peter,

who has been intellectually challenged

from infancy.

Some believe his condition

is a result of poor nutrition as a baby.

That is one of the many questions

that will never be answered.

In 1993,

partly as a result of pressure from young Inuit activists

like John, Larry and Martha,

the Royal Commission on the Inuit Arctic relocation

was created.

Forty years after the fact,

these hearings made public the multitude of injustices

that occurred in the autocratic deportations of the 1950s.

- There was a financial settlement

for the relocated group,

but an apology from the government of Canada

was something that was very important to us.

And it hasn't come.

They have not apologized.

Robert Flaherty died in 1951,

and so he never knew about the deportations.

But it's ironic that the descendants of the man

whose work made the Inuit known and beloved around the world

ended up victims of one of the greatest injustices

in recent history.

- I hadn't been back to Grise Fiord

since my father's death in 1983,

and I was apprehensive.

But while working on this film,

I've learned that revisiting the past and talking about it

are essential to the healing process.

I can now reclaim

the breathtaking beauty of this place.

But it's hard to forget

that in the shadow of these mountains,

on the jagged edges of these glaciers,

at the tender age of five,

my childhood was taken away.

CNST, Montreal