Sled dog slaughter

Indian Country Today ^ | February 15, 2005 | Stephanie Woodard

[DGray]

KUUJJUAQ, Nunavik - ''I have nothing, I have nothing,'' Johnny Munick cried out, remembering the day in 1960 when his team of sled dogs, in their harnesses and ready for a hunting trip, was shot by government authorities. The incident was part of an extermination of Inuit huskies - and, as a result, the abrupt end of their owners' ability to provide for their families - that took place from the mid-1950s until the late 1960s.

Arms flung wide, an anguished figure in a heavy black parka, the elderly Inuk was standing on the auditorium stage following the Jan. 19 premiere of ''Echo of the Last Howl,'' a film that includes both documentary material and reenactments of the slaughter. One by one, he and two dozen other older men walked to the microphone to recount their experiences of the cataclysm to an audience of about 800 community members and visiting politicians, including Canadian opposition leader Gilles Duceppe.

[DGray]

I've had the same experience. Not with the "average" Canadian - my impression of them is of a warm, friendly folk - but some of them who more politically active on the left side of the spectrum. It's as if they resent being on the same continent as the US - as if it's an embarrassment which lessens them in the eyes of the European countries they look up to. In fact, I had one guy - a mathematics professor at McGill University - tell me just that.

You never hear about this side of Canadian history in this country. It's all "we're unhappy that Bush won so we're moving to that paradise with no problems whatsoever, Canada." But this story is as brutal as anything I've ever read about the mistreatment of natives by US authorities.

[PistolPaknMama]

millions came North in the 1940s and 1950s

And most came back in the 80's and 90's, with obnoxious accents.

Who in their right might would contract two words that aren't a contraction? Y'all is a contraction of "you all". "You'all" is just mispelled.

[muawiyah]

It's a compromise, not a mis-spelling.

You're just lucky I didn't grow up speaking German. It used to be the legal language in my homestate of Indiana. Didn't stop those Souvrn'rs from movin' in though.

We used to get beat up on the playground if we didn't say "we'uns", "you'uns", "whuth", and "Ye'all gonna'go to Hell if'n ye don' tek up serpents".

And you guys think the illegal alien immigrants are bad ~ 'shoulda' seen those guys ~ LEGAL immigrants, alien as could be.

Today, though, they are all good Yankees.

[mercy]

Yeah only we were brutal over a hundred years ago in a brutal world in brutal times. The Canucks are obviously a hundred years or so behind in their development. Which would explain a lot of things.

[Salamander]

My kin landed in Philly in the late 1600s an skedaddled down the spine of the Appalatchies as fast as their Scots-Irish/Welsh feet would carry them.
They've been in the hills of W.MD and WV ever since.
['cept for 2 small bands that went on down to Culpeper VA & TN]

Thank God somebody made that blessed Mason-Dixon line...;))