"Lost" children: crossing indigenous cultural borders in the Canadian Arctic

Kimberley L. McMahon-Coleman, University of Wollongong

Abstract

This paper focuses on artistic representations of the cultural loss faced by Indigenous children when removed from their traditional lands and homes. It frames the mission project in Canada as being an integral part of the assimilation process, and one which effectively produced diasporic sensibilities within Indigenous cultural groups, and is part of a wider project which compares the Inuit experience with those of the Australian Murri from Queensland. Key tools of assimilationist agendas included evangelism, the loss of traditional languages and the removal of children from their families and traditional lands. These are also key features of genocide as defined by the United Nations in 1948 (Armitage 6), as well as by-products of residential schooling programs. They are also significant contributing factors in the lives of the Inuit artists whose work is examined here.