As her car winds along one of Iqaluit’s few roads, Alethea Arnaquq-Baril points to one of the few buildings that dot the treeless tundra.



It’s a weathered, wooden house on the shores of Frobisher Bay. Its white peeling paint facade is punctuated with a red door and the words “Hudson’s Bay Company”.

It was at this former trading point, Arnaquq-Baril says, that an incident occurred that helps explain how so many Inuit – the northern indigenous people who make up the bulk of Canada’s Arctic population – went from their nomadic lifestyles to settling in this unlikely city, in one of the planet’s harshest climates.

A friend’s grandfather had stopped in at the trading post, leaving his dogs and sled outside with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). As he haggled inside, gunshots rang out. He ran outside to find his dogs dead. “He tried to tell the RCMP that his family was across the bay and now he had no way of getting to them,” she says.

The man’s story is common: many Inuit say they were trapped in permanent settlements after their dogs, their only means of transport, were killed by police. The RCMP claims some dogs were lawfully destroyed over concerns about public health and safety; many Inuit say it was to urbanise them.



And yet minutes later, we come to a very different example of how Inuit coexist with southerners. A modest grey building, raised on stilts like most others in the city, but with a tall minaret topped with a white crescent moon – all that identifies it as one of the world’s northernmost mosques, built to serve Iqaluit’s 100-strong Muslim community.

Last year, Muslim leaders presented Inuit elders with a freshly slaughtered lamb. “They wanted to show that in their culture, too, sharing food is really important,” says Arnaquq-Baril. But they were quick to stress the difference between the lamb and Inuit staples, such as seal meat, caribou and arctic char. “They told them, ‘Do not eat this raw. You have to cook this meat,’” she laughs.

Iqaluit’s population is now only about 50% Inuit, and English has replaced Inuktitut as the city’s de facto language. Photograph: Stephan Savoia/AP

This is life in Canada’s youngest and fastest-growing capital city: a diverse mix of cultures, piled atop an Inuit civilisation that stretches back millennia. Nearly two decades after Iqaluit stepped into the limelight as the capital of Nunavut, Canada’s newest territory, its residents – many of whom were forcibly pushed into an urban lifestyle that sharply contrasted with their own traditions and cultures – continue to grapple with a key question: how do you carve out a modern city that pays tribute to ancient traditions?

“There’s an extreme amount of intergenerational trauma that the next generation has inherited through their ancestors,” says Malaya Qaunirq Chapman, a 27-year-old tour guide in Iqaluit. “Now it’s the decision of, ‘Do I live out the traditions of my ancestors, or do I live out the modern lifestyle that we are forced to conform to?’ And how do you meet in the middle, and how do you make the two work together? How do you belong?”

Nunavut was not created so that southern Canadians could find high-paying jobs Anubha Momin

Hints of this tension are strewn about town, from the intricate Inuit sculptures that sit among the city’s crop of space-age fibreglass buildings – built without windows at the height of the 1970s oil crisis to save on heating costs – to the igloo-shaped Anglican cathedral.

Iqaluit shot to national prominence in 1995 after it was chosen by referendum to become the capital of Nunavut. The territory, finally formed in 1999, gave Inuit in the region self-rule and control over their institutions. It made Iqaluit the political, cultural and economic hub of a bold Canadian endeavour in indigenous self-government. Amid some of the highest unemployment, suicide and poverty rates in the country, Inuit leaders envisioned Iqaluit as a place from which “made in Nunavut” strategies could counter decades of top-down, western European approaches.

Some 17 years later, says the mayor, Madeleine Redfern, it’s still a work in progress. “I think sometimes we get a little bit stuck. We keep doing things the way that they’ve been done in the south. We could have Nunavut be as culturally distinct as Quebec is to the rest of English Canada, but from an Inuit perspective. It’s all up to us.”

She points to an initial promise by the territorial government to have Inuktitut, the principal language spoken by Inuit in the territory, as the working language of government by 2020 – a radical reversal of the Canadian government’s persecution of the language and its dialects decades earlier. “That clearly is not going to happen,” she says.

Since it became a capital, Iqaluit’s population has soared from some 3,000 people – most of them Inuit – to around 8,000, about 50% of them Inuit. While Inuktitut is spoken by three-quarters of Inuit, English has become the de facto language of Iqaluit. Redfern says knowledge of Inuktitut is eroding quickly: “It’s happening from one generation to the next.”

In the Iqaluit region the summer sun sets around midnight, only to rise a few hours later, and temperatures rise to a balmy 10C. Photograph: Ashifa Kassam/The Guardian

Overshadowing all this is the immense task of running a city at the whims of the Arctic. During winter, temperatures in Iqaluit regularly drop below -50C with windchill, while darkness reigns for months. On this year’s summer solstice, the sun set around midnight only to rise a few hours later, and temperatures rose to a balmy 10C – prompting all but tourists (and myself) to wander around in T-shirts.

To make matters more difficult, Iqaluit is the only capital city in Canada with no road or reliable ship connections to other parts of the country. For much of the year, all supplies must be flown in, sending the cost of living skyrocketing. In Iqaluit, two litres of milk can cost around C$6.50. A one-litre bottle of Coca-Cola goes for $10.

Three or four times a year, depending on ice conditions in Frobisher Bay, a sealift boats in bulk supplies. In recent years, an estimated 300 cars have arrived in the city every year this way, as well as furniture and building materials for new homes.

As little can get into Iqaluit, little can get out. The city’s sprawling open-air dump sits near the causeway, piled with everything from household garbage to plastic pop bottles and discarded construction materials. As Iqaluit marked the longest day of the year, fire crews worked overtime to battle a blaze in the landfill. Some wondered if this was a repeat of the 2014 inferno, an unstable fire raging in a four-storey mountain of rubbish that the locals dubbed “Dumpcano”.

As a weary authority struggled to keep up with a city whose population has more than doubled, climate change began to set in.

Iqaluit is built on permafrost, with most buildings perched on stilts to avoid any heat transfer between the home and frozen ground; many sewage and water pipes are buried in the frozen ground. Warming temperatures are now shifting the active layers of the permafrost, leading to costly breaks in the pipes. “It’s really tough,” says Redfern, who estimates that $1bn of the community’s assets are now at risk. “We need everyone to really understand that climate change is more than changing ice conditions and polar bears.”

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A traditional campsite and fishing base used by Inuit for thousands of years – the word “Iqaluit” means place of many fish – the origins of the first permanent settlement in the area can be traced to an American air base, built in 1941 to provide a stopover and refuelling site for aircraft travelling across the Atlantic during the second world war.

Malaya Qaunirq Chapman and 87-year-old Inuapik Sagiatuk, whose family was ordered by the government to settle in Iqaluit. Photograph: Ashifa Kassam/The Guardian

Iqaluit’s population climbed steadily in the 1950s as construction workers and military personnel were brought to construct a Distant Early Warning line, a network of radar stations that turned Iqaluit into an outpost against potential Soviet intrusions.

Some Inuit began to move into the community, hoping to take advantage of the economic opportunities being created by more than 5,000 American personnel.

Others were forced to move into the settlement. The Canadian government was convinced that Inuit needed to be formally educated and integrated into the wage economy. “Lots of us – adults and children – were brought here to populate this area,” says 87-year-old Inuapik Sagiatuk, who was a young girl when her family was ordered by the government to settle in the community. “There was not one building. There were army tents lined up along the shore.”

By 1975, most of the area’s Inuit – celebrated around the world for their specialised and extensive knowledge that enabled generations to live off the land and thrive in one of the world’s toughest climates – had been moved into crowded, poorly planned communities and forced to adapt to a western European way of life.

It was a jarring change, but the turbulent times were eased somewhat by the rich culture, says Sagiatuk. She now worries about what’s in store for future generations. “I worry they will forget how to be Inuit and lose their traditional language. Since lots of people from around the world have come here in great numbers, the Inuit way of life has changed drastically,” she says through a translator.

Her comments hint at the tensions that underlie life in Iqaluit. The capital was conceived to be an exception among Canadian cities. But today a wide chasm exists between the city’s Inuit residents and the thousands who flood into the city from around the world, seemingly reinforcing the very notion of southern dominance that Nunavut was meant to combat.

In 2015, the median age of the Nunavut territory hadn’t yet eclipsed 25. The Arctic is young. Photograph: Leyland Cecco/The Guardian

While Iqaluit-specific figures are hard to come by, 2014 figures for Nunavut put the median income for non-Inuit residents at $86,600 a year, while for Inuit it stood at $19,900. The unemployment rate for Inuit across the territory hovers around 20%. University graduates are in high demand by the various levels of government, despite high school graduation rates of 57%.

The resulting overstock of high-paying jobs and ample opportunities attract a large number of transient residents from across Canada. Many of them simply float through life in Iqaluit as though on a permanent vacation, says Anubha Momin, a transplant from Toronto who arrived in Iqaluit four years ago. “They’re not rooted, they’re not integrated and they don’t want to be.”



Catapulted into positions of authority, some southerners scarcely understand the distinctive history of the population they are now serving, says Momin. She cites social media posts that complain of being “trapped” in Iqaluit or describe trips home as a return to civilisation. “It’s not right, especially for a place that is so dear to people and that a people fought for,” she says. “That wasn’t what Nunavut was created for. Nunavut was not created so that southern Canadians could find high-paying jobs.”

Do I live out the traditions of my ancestors, or do I live out the modern lifestyle we are forced to conform to? Malaya Qaunirq Chapman

Other non-Inuit blend seamlessly into the fabric of the city, their plans for a short-term stay stretching to decades as they embrace the city’s singular culture and learn to echo the Inuit’s deep reverence for the land around them. They’re part of a community that gives Iqaluit its charming, small-town feel, even as it battles social issues on a big-city scale.

Home to just 30,000 people, Nunavut sees more than 1,000 suicide attempts each year. A 2011 report averaged the suicide rate across the territory at 63.9 suicides per 100,000 people, making it one of the highest in the world.

Rates of domestic violence rank among the highest in the country, while a 2014 report revealed 40% of Inuit adults in Nunavut had experienced severe sexual abuse as children.

Filmmaker Arnaquq-Baril points to recent history to explain why a people, known around the world for their resilience, are now faltering. “There are just so many horrible things that happened within a 20 to 30-year period,” she says.

Starting in the 1950s, the slaughter of hundreds – if not thousands – of dogs left many Inuit with few options but to settle into permanent communities. Others were forcibly relocated north by a Canadian government keen to claim sovereignty over the high reaches of the Arctic. Some Inuit were also sent away to residential schools, described by a recent truth commission as a church-run tool of cultural genocide, rife with abuse.

Activists protest the seal hunt at the Canadian embassy in Tel Aviv. Photograph: Ariel Schalit/AP

Much like other aboriginal peoples across North America, Inuit were left reeling, says Arnaquq-Baril. “But we’re doing it in one of the harshest climates on the planet with the fewest economic options.”

The sealskin industry became an anchor during the traumatic upheaval: many Inuit found solace in a return to the culture of their ancestors, and a solution to their hunger and limited incomes. “It kind of became a stable source of income that allowed us to transition from a semi-nomadic lifestyle into sedentary community lives.”

The brief respite was soon shattered, however, by the anti-sealing campaigns of animal rights activists. Sealskin bans were passed in the US and EU; Arnaquq-Baril’s latest and critically acclaimed film Angry Inuk explores the devastating effect these bans have had on the Inuit.

A 1983 ban on sealskins, passed by what was then the European Community, led to the collapse of the market. In Nunavut, poverty became the new normal, the already high suicide rates soared and some seven out of 10 Inuit children were left going to school hungry.

Inuit men, in particular, were left scarred by the collapse of the industry. “Our men are really struggling … It was so recent that all of our men were hunters, that it’s part of a young Inuk man’s identity that you’re supposed to be a hunter,” she says. “It’s very frustrating when the organisations that are putting us in this position live in some of the richest parts of the world, with the richest farmland in the world, and the easiest temperatures to live in – those are the people running the campaigns that affect us.”

Much of what happens today in Iqaluit and Nunavut is now in the hands of animal activists who live a world away, she says, echoing the tumultuous decades when life in Iqaluit was governed by distant dictates, issued by those with little understanding of Inuit culture or the challenges they face.

Glimmers of hope come from the many in Iqaluit who are beginning to fight back, cultivating an Inuit voice that builds on the work of previous generations to seize on the opportunities offered by the territory’s groundbreaking experiment.

Some of the solutions conceived are practical, such as the Inuit’s challenge of the EU sealskin ban, the launch of the city’s first Inuktitut-language daycare, or the push for a performing arts centre in Iqaluit to bolster the resurgence of once-persecuted Inuit arts such as throat singing, drum dancing and storytelling.

Other solutions are deeply personal, such as that found on the walls of Karliin Aariak’s dining room, which is wallpapered over with the pages of an Inuktitut-language magazine dedicated to Inuit music in the 1980s. “When Inuit lived in sod houses, when paper started becoming more available, Inuit used it as insulation. I wanted to do today’s version of that,” says Aariak.

She enlisted her daughter to put it up. “It was a way to show my daughter something that was the norm for my grandparents and my great-grandparents.” For the mother of two, it was a way to blend her culture into modern-day life in Iqaluit.

“For so many years, our society and the way we live has been pushed around,” says Aariak. “In this generation, we’re aware of what happens. But we’re not willing to just stand by.”

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