CANADIAN $2 BILL INUIT SCENE BACKSTORY

If you’re a Canadian of a certain age, you’ve likely seen the Idlout family. In fact, you’ve probably carried them around in your back pocket.

The reason: they’re featured on the back of the 1974 two-dollar bill.

Part of the Scenes of Canada series, the discontinued bank note depicts a group of six Inuit men preparing their kayaks for a hunt.

One of the men is Joseph Idlout, the grandfather of Canadian musician Lucie Idlout. On a recent episode of the CBC Radio program DNTO, she revealed how the photograph of her grandfather and his relatives came to be taken.

“My grandfather was known to be an excellent hunter,” said Idlout.

“He was one of the first few Inuit to receive the Coronation medal from the Queen - I kind of view him as a superhero, even though I never met him.”

Based on a photograph taken by documentarian Douglas Wilkinson, the bill features Joseph Idlout and his relatives hunting nearby the Baffin Island community of Pond Inlet.

On its surface, the bill appears to reflect nothing more than an innocent scene of daily Inuit life. But dig a little deeper, and the story behind the photograph becomes much more complicated.

In the 1950s, the Canadian government relocated a number of struggling Inuit families from Inukjuak (Quebec) to the communities of Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord - hundreds of kilometres to the north.

Ostensibly done to improve their standard of living, the realities of life in the High Arctic proved difficult for families accustomed to the warmer temperatures and more fertile tundra of Quebec. To ease their transition, Joseph Idlout was hired to instruct the southern Inuit on life in the unforgiving northern climate.

As the transplanted Inuit struggled to adapt to their new surroundings, the motivation behind their relocation became increasingly clear.

“The sad story is that we were basically human flagpoles, so the Canadian government could assert sovereignty over the high arctic.”

In 2010, the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development issued an apology to Canada’s Inuit people, expressing regret “for the hardship and suffering caused by the relocation.”

To read the complete article, see: 'Human Flagpoles': Dark story behind Inuit scene on $2 bill (www.cbc.ca/news/aboriginal/human-flagpoles-dark-story-behind-inuit-scene-on-2-bill-1.2632380)

Wayne Homren, Editor

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