Arctic Justice: On Trial for Murder, Pond Inlet, 1923

by Shelagh D. Grant

Despite the fact that Nuqallaq was following Inuit customary law in carrying out a collectively sanctioned act to defend the community from the dangerously crazed trader Robert Janes, Canadian authorities made the unprecedented decision to put him and two accomplices on trial for murder. Grant shows how this decision was motivated by Canada's international political concerns for establishing sovereignty over the Arctic and how the outcome of the trial - Nuqallaq's sentence to ten years of hard labour in Stony Mountain Penitentiary and subsequent death from tuberculosis - was determined more by fear than evidence. In what amounts to a social history of North Baffin Island in the twentieth century, Grant offers telling portraits of the people involved, including the victim, Robert Janes of Newfoundland; Captain J.E. Bernier of the CGS Arctic, explorer and friend to the Inuit; English trader and entrepreneur Henry Toke Munn; the investigating RCMP officer Staff-Sargeant A. H.; Judge L. A. Rivet, and others. Most importantly we meet the remarkable Nuqallaq, his wife Ataguttiaq, and the Inuit of North Baffin Island. Arctic Justice will appeal to anyone interested in the Arctic and its indigenous peoples, contact history, anthropology, legal history, and RCMP history.

Genres: Canada

368 pages, Hardcover

First published November 5, 2002

About the author

Shelagh Grant is the author of the award winning book, Arctic Justice: On Trial for Murder, Pond Inlet – 1923 (MQUP, 2002). An adjunct professor in the Canadian Studies Program at Trent University, she is now retired from regular teaching but gives guest lectures and supervises the occasional graduate student. Previous publications include a book on government policy in the Canadian North during the war and post war years, titled Sovereignty or Security? (UBC Press 1988), as well as numerous scholarly articles on Arctic related topics, such as sovereignty and environmental issues, historiography, and Inuit oral history. More recently, she supervised a translation into Inuktitut of her yet unpublished 400 page manuscript “Mittimatalik-Pond Inlet: A History,” donating the copyright for the Inuktitut version to the Baffin Island Teacher’s Learning Centre for use in their schools. The Inuktitut book was published in the summer of 2008.

Shelagh has presented numerous papers at home and abroad, including international conferences such as: the Northern Research Forum in Akureyri, Iceland (2000); the Circumpolar Universities Conferences in Aberdeen, Scotland (2000) and Tyumen, Siberia (1991); the International Congress on the History of the Arctic and Sub-Arctic Regions in Reykjavik, Iceland (1998); and the Canadian Studies Conference in Brisbane, Australia (1986). She has traveled extensively throughout the Canadian Arctic and Greenland, including visits to the U.S. Air Base at Thule and the Danish Research Centres at Meistervig and Station Nord.

In 1997 she became the first historian and first woman to receive the Northern Science Award sponsored by the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs. She has sat on a number of editorial boards, been actively involved in the adjudication of northern scholarships and acted in various advisory capacities with regard to Inuit policies. Aside from history, other interests include northern education, Inuit culture and environmental issues.

Shelagh is a white water canoeist, wilderness canoe tripper, both downhill and cross-country skier, long time spouse of Jon K. Grant, a mother of three, and grandmother of five “grandkids.”

Reviews

[Bruce Butler · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book as it mentioned a family friend who was one of the RCMP officers who took part in the trial (Jake Jakeman).

This book is a very thorough reconstruction of the events before, during, and after a collision of Inuit and Canadian justice in the 1920s. Unfortunately it is so thorough I found it very hard to read and hold my attention.

While the author does a credible job of presenting the Inuit perspective on crime and punishment, one criticism I have is her phrasing which reflects the colonial attitude that still pervades Canadian culture: referring to the imposition of Canadian law and justice as a more benign "introduction."

All Canadians interested in how Canadian justice was imposed on the native population should read this book.

[Joseph Mckenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Using a single trial as a backdrop, Grant gives a great survey on the tenuous hold and disastrous actions of the Canadian government on the indigenous communities of Baffin Island.