The opening scene of the National Film Board documentary “People of the Rock” tells the story of an Inuit family who had hired a boat to take them from “their own people on the edge of the world” to “join the people who get the rock.” As the boat rounds a point, the workings of a mine come into view — the North Rankin Nickel Mine (NRNM). The film, released in 1961, emphasized the remarkable transformation of the Inuit newcomers at Rankin Inlet, who had, according to the narrator, gone “from the nomadic life of a hunter, to mechanized hard-rock mining, sort of in-between breaths.” The documentary used its spare, fourteen-minute run time to depict Inuit as modern industrial workers, highlighting their ability to operate heavy machinery, work underground, acquire the skills of the prospector, and experience the rewards of hard work when a cargo ship brings such modern luxuries as washing machines, metal bedframes, mattresses, and insulation.
The documentary also insists that Inuit at Rankin Inlet had choices about whether to embrace the life of a miner or stay with the older world of hunting and fishing. One scene depicts two Inuit surface worker abandoning their jobs suddenly as news of white whales calls them to the hunt. The mine managers, the film hints, had adapted to Inuit as much as Inuit had adapted to life as miners, having “several men trained for the same job” in cases where hunting opportunities pulled workers off the job. The film concludes with the idea that Inuit are “determined to live off (the land) the best they can — our way, their way, and with luck, both ways.”
In truth, the Inuit embrace of mining was born out of desperate economic and ecological challenges that the film only hints at. The decline of Arctic fox fur prices in the early 1950s and variable success with caribou hunting among the inland Inuit of the eastern Arctic had created a dire situation. At the time, the federal government actively discouraged Inuit from migrating to settler communities or newly built military installations, worried that a growing dependence on “handouts” would lead to chronic relief bills. Instead, the government relocated Inuit to remote lakes where they could fish and apparently find more wildlife. These projects failed miserably, and one became a national scandal when 33 Inuit died of starvation at Henik and Garry Lakes in 1957 and 1958, an incident widely reported by Farly Mowat in magazine articles and his book “The Desperate People” (1959).
When the NRNM opened in 1957, the government soon shifted its policy and began to actively recruit Inuit from Chesterfield Inlet and the Kivalliq (Keewatin) interior to work at the mine. Although Indigenous people had worked at various mines throughout the territories since the 1930s, most often it was in secondary roles (such as the ore carriers at Port Radium) rather than as underground workers. The NRNM president, W.W. Weber, and the mine manager Andrew Easton, strongly favoured Inuit labour, in part to side-step the challenge of attracting and retaining southern workers amidst period of booming mineral production. By the end of 1957, NRNM employed eighty Inuit workers at the mine.
“People of the Rock” paints a picture of a happy and smiling workforce at NRNM, but the reality was not so rosy. Inuit lived in two sections of town — “Old Eskimo Settlement” consisting of tents and makeshift shelter, and “New Eskimo Settlement” with more modern housing — that were segregated from the non-Inuit population. Such division along racial lines stemmed from the paternalism of government officials, who wanted to protect Inuit from the vices of liquor and sex (non-Inuit men were prohibited in the “Eskimo” settlements), while steering Inuit use of their wages toward necessities. Some Inuit found the experience of town life and mine work disagreeable enough that they de-camped for life on the land after only a short time.
Inuit who stuck with mining found that conditions improved over time. The company quickly adjusted initial wage disparities between Inuit and non-Inuit workers, for instance, and offered more opportunities for higher paying work underground. Slowly, as language barriers fell and segregation policies were revoked, Inuit became much more socially integrated with the population of outsiders. As hinted at in the film, the company developed flexible staffing policies that allowed Inuit to spend time on the land, and Inuit remember Easton as a kind manager who treated them very fairly. An oral history study conducted in Rankin Inlet in 2011 by geographer Arn Keeling and historian Patricia Boulter revealed that Inuit were proud of their identity as miners, citing their ability to adapt to a sudden transition from hunters to industrial workers, yet still retain their Inuit identity.
Indeed, many Inuit mine workers at Rankin suggested that the most difficult period of adjustment came when mining came to an end in 1962. Because NRNM was the primary employer in a town of approximately 600 people, closure was devastating for Inuit workers and their families. Keeling and Boulter quote Veronica Manilak, who recalled starkly that, “we became extremely poor after the mine closed. We were, as a matter of fact, very hungry at times.” Those who attempted a return to hunting often lacked equipment, or ready access to good wildlife areas. Others found employment in commercial fishing and canning, or the burgeoning Inuit handicraft industry. Some wanted to continue with mining and moved (with financial help from the government) to mines at Lynn Lake, Yellowknife, the Yukon, and northern Quebec.
Today at Rankin Inlet, the visible remains of the mining operation — ore cars, milling equipment, and old buildings — are scattered around the town. For Inuit, the detritus serves as a constant reminder of the rapid period of colonial change that accompanied the introduction of nickel mining. But it is also a reminder of their remarkable resilience in the face of rapid change; how, as a people who survived as hunters on the land for centuries, they were able to take advantage of the opportunity for a new life as “People of the Rock” when circumstances demanded sudden change.
Note: The film “People of the Rock” can be viewed by searching for the title on the National Film Board website. Keeling and Bouter’s study “From Igloo to Mineshaft” is printed as a chapter in “Mining and Communities in Northern Canada,” which is available as a free e-book at the University of Calgary Press website.
John Sandlos is a professor in the History Department at Memorial University of Newfoundland and the co-author (with Arn Keeling) of “Mining Country: A History of Canada’s Mines and Miners,” published by James Lorimer and Co. in 2021. His new book, “The Price of Gold: Mining, Pollution and Resistance in Yellowknife” (also co-authored by Arn Keeling), will be released with McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2025.
