People of the Deer

by Farley Mowat

  We must first of all—and immediately—help the Eskimos and Indians escape from their now chronic condition of malnutrition and even outright starvation, and we must do this not as a dole, but by helping them to feed themselves. Charity is as fatal to a primitive people as it is to civilized ones. The continuous giving of basic sustenance brings about a dependency which is often mortal to the spirit. Furthermore, the kind of food we have so far provided for native peoples has not been food, but rather a slow poison which destroys the body through malnutrition almost as certainly as outright starvation would. No, we must not give “food.” What we must do is to give the natives the means of procuring their own food from the land which is theirs.

  It should be clear enough that flour and baking powder are no substitutes. The northern lands do not themselves provide foods of this nature. The kind of food they can provide is meat. The question is: how can we ensure that the northern people have meat—in plenty?

  Let us see what has happened to the once abundant supplies of red meat in the North. The fate of the deer has been the fate of all. Some of the most important animals have already almost vanished: the muskoxen, the narwhals and right whales. As for the rest, they have all been terribly diminished so that the land and sea no longer raise their food crop for men as they once did. The land has been bled so freely that it now can lay just claim to that ominous name—the Barrens. The sea, too, has been bled, and is being bled. The sealing fleets along the eastern coasts have done yeoman work; the whalers have long since destroyed the great mammals which once came into Hudson Bay and into all the narrow waters at the top of the continent, and with the passing of the whales whole tribes of Eskimos have also vanished.

  Nor is the bloodletting at an end. The walrus which were once the most important of the sea beasts to the coast Eskimos have been seriously reduced in numbers, largely by the RCMP, by traders, and by missionaries who annually slaughter fantastic numbers of walrus in order to feed dog teams that are three or four times as big as they need to be. At Churchill a commercial plant to process white whales—“beluga” they are more often called—was established as recently as 1949 with full government approval. The meat of these beasts is to be shipped south to feed foxes on our fur ranches, or to provide fertilizer for our gardens. On the islands of the arctic many Eskimos have been forced to subsist largely on fish because of the disappearance of sea mammals, and now even the fish are being taken from them. In 1949 a new fishery was opened by Nova Scotian ships in an area where the Eskimos were almost completely dependent on fish. Had it not been for the presence of army personnel, who took a determined stand against this flagrant robbery, this fishery, which was also fully sanctioned by the government despite the outraged protests of several arctic specialists, would have brought famine to these Eskimos.

  The picture is the same throughout the North. When any financial advantage can accrue to us through the destruction of the lifeblood of the northern people, we do not scruple to destroy. The authorities talk of “conservation” while at the same time one branch of government is accepting thousands of dollars from sportsmen to fly them—in government planes—to the heart of the caribou country where they can kill the people’s food for sheer sport alone. The authorities enact game laws which reserve the dwindling numbers of meat-producing wild animals for “recreational” use by white men—for sport and trophy hunting—while effectively denying the use of these animals to the native people who need them for sheer physical survival.

  In support of the decimation of the mammals in the North, certain experts claim that the Eskimos and Indians must, in the long run, learn to eat our food if they are ever to become part of our way of life. This justifies the wanton destruction of the arctic food. But does it? Eskimos and Indians will always live largely in the North, and so they will always be able to maintain their eating habits as they are, providing there is meat to eat. More important, they will always need the specific nutriments found in fat and meat. It is senseless to say the northern natives must change their diet—as senseless as suggesting that our race should abandon the basic products of our land in favor of strange foods to be imported from a far-distant region.

  The question is, what can we do to restore the food we have stolen from the mouths of the northern peoples? And the answer is that we can do everything needful. The caribou provide a clear example of what might be done. If it were possible to overrule the selfish interests of white men, it would be relatively easy to make the Barrens plains again produce the food which men must have if they are to survive in that land. At the moment, and by the tacit admission of the government, the deer are close to the fatal level beyond which a further reduction in numbers will doom them to extinction. But they have not yet passed the point of no return. They could still be preserved, and I know this to be true, for I spent two years studying this problem in the field and as a scientist. There are enough deer left so that, if given full protection, the species could stage a quick comeback, and there is no good reason why this resurgence should not take place. The true value of the caribou lies not only in their contribution to the well-being of the Barrens Eskimos, but in the fact that they are of equal importance to the continued survival of about forty thousand high-forest Indians, and to the majority of the eight thousand surviving Eskimos across the whole Canadian arctic. All modern Eskimos are descended from caribou-hunting people, even though many Innuit now depend largely on the products of the sea. In fact, almost all Eskimos of our time would willingly and gratefully turn to the deer for their support, if the deer were available.

  Unlike the buffalo, who were fated to become extinct because they contended with us for lands we coveted, the deer live in a land no settler will ever wish to seize. The Barrens will never grow wheat or beef cattle. They will grow one food crop, and one alone—the deer. The Barrens can support a tremendous population of deer, perhaps as high as five million head. Once they were this numerous, and in order to return to this high level they need only protection. Not from wolves, not from the legitimate and normal appetites of the natives, but from us. Directly, they need protection from white trappers and hunters, and indirectly they need protection from the manufacturing companies who make a good part of their profits from the sale of astronomical amounts of ammunition, and from the sale of repeating rifles. If we were to place an absolute prohibition on the killing of deer by white men, and if we were to restrict the sale of ammunition and the types of weapons sold to the natives, the deer would do the rest. We should go farther and absolutely prohibit sport hunting of any species of animal in any region where these species could contribute to the well-being of native peoples. There might well be a period of increased hardship while the Indian and Eskimo hunters adjusted to a limited killing potential, but they are not fools, and they would adjust so that their kill became a valid one.

  The futile and expensive stopgaps that we now advocate would no longer be required. The idiotic system of paying bounty on wolves would not be needed. The periodic disease epidemics which wipe out overly large populations of natural predators in the North would do the job for us, as it has always done. Nature can, and does, manage this control very well. We are the one predator she cannot control. We must control ourselves.

  Many agents of government have complained sadly that it seems impossible for the Indians and Eskimos to accommodate to the modern world.

  The Aklavik Eskimos at the mouth of the Mackenzie River are an exception. Fortuitous circumstances (not any direct help from us) gave those people a fair chance to adapt themselves to our way of life—and they made the most of their opportunity. But why have not all the northern natives been as successful? Because men with starved bodies have starved minds as well. Starved intellects do not respond well to difficult tasks, and the adjustment of a primitive race to our civilization is exceedingly difficult. But well-fed men are capable of understanding, and of coping with new and unfamiliar problems. The Eskimos stand out as being particu
larly adaptable people with a remarkable aptitude for absorbing new ideas, mechanical and otherwise. Freed of the incubus of malnutrition and its handmaiden, disease, our Eskimos are capable of quick and sane adjustment to the conditions of the white man’s world, as the Aklavik people have abundantly demonstrated.

  They cannot, of course, step from igloo into office overnight even supposing that this was what they wished to do. The northern natives as a whole can be made part of our scheme of things only by the expedient of employing them as brute labor—“slave labor” would be a better term—and in many cases this is what we have attempted. The better answer lies in a gradual transition, based on a solid foundation of economic independence of a sort that is compatible with the present knowledge and experience of the people.

  It sounds like a tall order, yet a solution to it has been known to the governments of Canada and the United States for the last thirty years, and was actually developed by them! I am referring to the Reindeer Grazing Scheme, which was originally begun in Alaska, and which was copied by the Canadians. In brief the plan was to import Asiatic reindeer—very similar to caribou—and to train natives to act as herdsmen. Each native village was to have its own herd, and these herds were to make the people independent as far as a supply of protein was concerned, while at the same time providing them with a salable cash crop.

  The scheme developed rather strangely. In Alaska it fell into the hands of certain white men who exploited it for their own gain. In Canada it was begun purely as an experiment, and has remained no more than an experiment limited in its effects to a tiny handful of Eskimos near the Mackenzie Delta. Nevertheless it has shown that it could be an answer to the problem of economic independence for every Eskimo in Canada. There is only one really valid reason why it has not been extended. It has been strenuously opposed by important interests whose voices are clearly heard in high places. These opponents, the strongest of whom are connected with the beef industry, have held the field with their contention that Canada could not afford a reindeer industry. Yet it can be easily demonstrated that the initial cost of extending the reindeer industry—and “industry” it could well be—would be rapidly repaid, both in direct returns and in the indirect returns which would result from the money we might save, and which we now largely waste, in blind efforts to assist the Eskimos with charity.

  There are approximately two million square miles of the arctic which are completely, or largely, suitable for reindeer raising. The caribou occupy much, but not all, of this area; but the preservation of these wild deer would not provide a serious obstacle to the introduction of reindeer.

  The introduction of reindeer herding as an industry throughout the arctic would accomplish two things. First, it would assist the caribou and the sea mammals in providing northern men with the kind of food they require. Secondly, it would provide a sound economic basis for the inevitable transition which the northern people must undergo—or perish. The Eskimos (and many northern Indians) would be producing salable commodities. The world today is a meat-hungry world, and will remain one for as far ahead as we can see. In Alaska, reindeer meat is widely used by white men, and was even shipped south to Seattle, where it was distributed and sold as a luxury food until the pressure of the U.S. meat lobby forced the trade to be discontinued. The Eskimos of the Canadian arctic could do as well, or better, for they have access to a great ocean port (though one that is at present so little used as to be a serious financial embarrassment to us) at Churchill. From Churchill runs the shortest sea route to Europe, and in Europe animal protein is desperately needed. It might prove economically sound to establish a meat-packing plant at Churchill, not to prepare beluga for fox food, but to prepare reindeer and perhaps caribou meat, if the herds prosper, for shipment abroad. The plan seems reasonable, for at this moment we are canning horse meat in the central Canadian prairies, shipping it a thousand miles by rail, then transshipping it by lake and ocean freighter to Europe, where it is sold for human consumption at a good profit.

  More than that, we could arrange to ship meat south from Churchill on the Hudson Bay Railway, which operates its southbound trains at heavy loss, and make the refrigerated meat available throughout Canada.

  Perhaps it would provide a certain amount of competition with our cattle-raising industry, but I hardly think this would cause much annoyance to our general population.

  The interior Barrens on the west coast of Hudson Bay could support a minimum of 200,000 reindeer, and the annual crop of meat from such a herd would be quite large enough to bring a full measure of economic independence to the entire present Eskimo population of the Central Arctic.

  Before I leave this point of economic stability I must mention the fact that the need for this condition is apparently accepted in principle by the authorities who have throughout the years suggested such ideas as an eider-duck industry or white-fox fur ranching on the Barrens. These suggestions, and others, have been put forward over the last two decades, but no serious attempt has been made to implement any one of them. They have been purely and simply “cover schemes.” I cannot honestly guarantee that reindeer and caribou plans are certain of meeting all requirements. But they are a potentially effective method for achieving the results which the government has so frequently insisted it wishes to achieve.

  With the establishment of a sound economy, the passageway from the world of the natives to our world would be open, and they could cross the void which now separates them from us, if they so desired. To date, we have tried only one method of bridging this gap, and that is to carry the northern peoples into our complex and unfamiliar life at one gigantic leap. Missionaries, for example, go to the arctic and suffer like martyrs so that in a year, or a decade, they can make professing Christians out of some heathen tribe. It is too great a leap. The so-called converts have no more idea of what lies behind the ideas they mouth than we have of what lies behind the eyes of God. Brave men, but dangerous men, the missionaries were also entrusted by the government with almost all the meager educational work being done in the North. In most of the church schools the Eskimos were taught the singing of hymns and the saying of prayers, but they learned little else and what they did learn was useless to them for it was not applicable to the physical realities of their present lives. Confused and baffled, they suffer for this attempt to “educate” them, since they learned only enough to make them feel vague dissatisfaction, without understanding how to bring about the changes which were needed. However, the missionary school system is advantageous to us, for it relieves the government of the need of spending tax money on the project, and it is beyond normal criticism, since few of us dare or wish to criticize the selfless efforts of the dedicated men who are our missionaries. Clearly what is required is to provide native teachers who have been rationally and intelligently trained and who can then go back to a healthy, unfettered people and teach what they have learned. The essence of the matter is to use no force. The northern natives should be in a position to embrace voluntarily and with understanding the white men’s religious, economic and political creeds, if they so desire. Then the churches in the North could at least claim their new members were just that, and not the bemused dupes which native Christians now represent.

  It seems to me that this is a sane point of view, but it is not shared by the Missions, for they have fought, and are fighting still, to keep the education of the northern natives in their own hands. It is a fight which is made more dangerous to the Eskimos by the violent competition between opposing religious groups, who often engage in most un-Christian strife, using the souls—and bodies—of the natives as their pawns in their strange battles.

  Certainly the northern races can hope for little real opportunity to come to terms with our civilization until we extend to them the purely material facilities which are needed. Proper schools, proper medical facilities, preferably with native doctors, and a fair and honest economic treatment—these are the essentials.

>   To give a dying man a cup of water may be laudable; but to let that man die, when it is in our power to prevent it, is despicable. In effect we have been doling out cups of water to a dying people in the arctic, and have been free with self-praise of this benevolence. Surely we must possess a peculiarly facile turn of mind when we can virtuously condemn the cruelties perpetrated in other countries, while at the same time we avert our eyes from the cruelties we ourselves continue to condone in our own land. Certainly we are stupid and short-sighted, for the harm we do is not done alone to the Eskimos and Indians but it is done to ourselves as well.

  20. The Days to Come

  The ideas I have put forward in the preceding chapter are by no means the nebulous and rosy visions of an idealistic dreamer. For the most part they are originally not even my own ideas, but have been propounded by men who are more competent than I am to understand the dilemmas which face us in the arctic. And, fortunately, I have the proof that these ideas are not only realistic, but can be implemented readily enough if we sincerely wish to see them realized. I can tell you of a place where all I have asked for the natives of the arctic has already been granted to an Eskimo people. This place is Greenland, the far eastern outpost of the Innuit, where the Danish government has for many years followed an enlightened policy of native administration, a policy which pitilessly exposes our blundering efforts for the thin shams they are.

  In Greenland today there are no people called Eskimos. There are only Greenlanders. Some carry pure Eskimo blood in their veins; some carry a mixture, and some are of pure Danish blood—but all are of one people. In that land there are men of Eskimo stock who teach in schoolrooms built for the children of all bloods. Native Greenlanders not only teach and are taught, but no limits are imposed upon their education. It is quite possible for a pure-blood Eskimo to pass through the Greenland school system, then go to Denmark (at government expense) to complete his education in a university. When such men return to Greenland they become the teachers of those who remain at home, and in this way the gap between the ancient past and our times is quickly bridged. And it is worthwhile at this point to explode the carefully perpetuated fallacy that if we tried to bring the Eskimos south to our schools, they would all contract our diseases and die. It does not happen in Denmark, nor has it happened in North America when the Eskimo travelers were healthy to begin with.