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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS
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MONTH: January/February 2007
Shooting dogs is a sensitive subject in the Canadian far north
WINNIPEG--"The solution," to
attacks by stray dogs on Native American reservations in northern Canada,
"is to cull the dog population, and provide spay and neuter services
to native communities at the same time," Winnipeg Humane Society
executive director Vicki Burns told Brookes Merritt of the Edmonton Sun
on November 19, 2006.
Though Burns apparently said nothing about
shooting dogs, her remark was summarized in the headline of the resulting
article as "Annual dog shoot proposed," and in the lead sentence
as "An annual 'dog shoot' would help keep dog packs on native reserves
from killing any more helpless children, says an animal welfare worker
in Manitoba."
Further distributed by the National Post
and then posted to several British animal rights e-mail lists, the article
hit raw nerves in both Europe and Native communities.
Brookes Merritt interviewed Burns, known
for "lobbying the Manitoba government to bring better vet services
to native communities," he wrote, "after five-year-old Lance
Ribbonleg was killed by a pack of stray dogs at the North Tallcree First
Nation's reserve near Fort Vermilion."
In Manitoba, Brookes Merritt continued,
"a two-year-old boy was mauled at the Hollow Water First Nation in
July 2006, and a three-year-old boy met the same fate on the Sayisi First
Nation in June. Some communities there have 'dog shoot days,' in which
stray dogs are culled."
The strays are typically non-working offspring
of sled dogs, or retired sled dogs, left to fend for themselves around
the edges of settlements. Historically, pariah dogs patrolling the perimeters
of encampments helped to protect the Inuit from polar bears--but that
was when the threat from bears was far greater than in recent times.
The children were killed by dogs as a
House of Commons committee completed a year-long investigation of longstanding
Inuit allegations that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police massacred sled
dogs between 1950 and 1970 to force the Inuit off their land, into tribal
reserves.
Published on November 29, 2006, the House
of Commons report "found that police officers did kill many as 20,000
sled dogs, but for health and safety reasons," summarized Bob Weber
of Canadian Press.
"What we found is not inconsistent
with the Inuit oral history," RCMP Chief Superintendent Mike Woods
told Weber. "If we can work with the community and explain why the
dogs were killed," Woods said, "we're hoping that there will
be understanding on the part of the Inuit community and we can put the
conflict to bed."
"Members of the Nunavut legislature
have spoken about the alleged plot as if it were fact," Weber noted.
"In 2005, the Makivik Corporation, which represents Quebec Inuit,
funded the production of a movie called The Last Howl, which purports
to tell the story. Makivik and the Qikiktani Inuit Association, which
are conducting their own investigations into the charges, refused to supply
information or co-operate with the RCMP review. An interim RCMP report
released last year that reached a conclusion similar to the final version
was declared a whitewash by many in Nunavut.
Woods told Weber that in every instance
where specific facts were available from more than 40,000 relevant documents,
the dogs were killed for humanitarian, security, safety and health reasons.
"Investigators also found cases where RCMP officers supplied distemper
and rabies vaccines to communities, even supplying some of them with puppies
to rebuild dog teams," Weber wrote.