Relocating Eden: The Image and Politics of Inuit Exile in the Canadian Arctic

by Alan Rudolph Marcus

Overview

In the early 1950s, a number of Inuit men, women, and children were loaded on ships and sent to live in the cold and barren lands of the Canadian High Arctic. Spurred by government agents’ promises of plentiful game, virgin land, and a lifestyle untainted by Western Influences, these “voluntary migrants,” who soon numbered nearly ninety, found instead isolation, hunting limited by game preserve regulations, three months of total darkness each winter, and a government suddenly deaf to their pleas to return home. The question, still unresolved forty years later, is whether these “experiments” were a well-intentioned governmental attempt to protect the Inuit way of life or a ploy to lure innocent people to exile, hunger, and deprivation in order to solidify Canada’s Cold War sovereignty in the far North.

Alan Rudolph Marcus outlines the motives behind the relocation, case histories of two settlements, and the aftermath of the migration. Relocating Eden provides a timely and provocative inquiry into issues of continuing importance to Canada and all native peoples.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780874516593
Publisher:	University Press of New England
Publication date:	06/28/1995
Series:	Arctic Visions Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	290
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.67(d)

About the Author

ALAN RUDOLPH MARCUS, presently Lecturer of Film Studies at University of Manchester, England, did his Ph.D. work at Scott Polar Institute, University of Cambridge.

Editorial Reviews

"The principal merits of this well-researched and well-referenced book are its evenhanded treatment of an emotional topic and its refusal to set aside scholarly inquiry for apolitically inspired explanation of how and why Eden did not occur." —Choice

From the Publisher