Hopedale, Labrador

In 1958, the Moravian church decided to close its mission at Hebron the following year to save money. Then the provincial government ordered its supply depot at Hebron closed in August 1959. It was determined that the relocation would take place between July 1959 and the following August to allow sufficient time to construct homes in Makkovik and other, more southern, communities.

The Hebronimiut were told they would be dispersed among three communities. Five families would be moved to Nain, 10 families would go to Hopedale, and 43 families would go to Makkovik. Their only choice in the matter was to decide how relatives and families would be separated according to these quotas. This separation of family members – some of whom did not see each other again for long periods of time – caused considerable grief among Hebronimiut after the relocation.

Many of the Inuit went initially to Hopedale because it was the only community that came close to being able to accommodate a rapid increase in population. Besides the five houses constructed by the government that summer for relocatees, ten temporary structures were erected and two empty houses rented. Thirty-seven families – 148 people – were jammed in for the winter.

When they arrived, the Hebron Inuit discovered they were to be segregated into little "Hebron" villages away from the core of the southern towns. Being strangers in these new towns, and having no knowledge of the lands surrounding them, intensified the difficult adjustment period. Nor did the host communities have any choice in this relocation process; they were simply expected to accommodate the influx of new people.

Sufficient houses to accommodate the Hebron population were not completed until 1962. At this time, 30 Hebron families were moved again, this time from Hopedale to the new houses built in Makkovik, a town populated predominantly by people of European or European-Inuit ancestry who spoke mainly English. This meant that, within a period of three years, Hebronimiut had to reorient themselves a second time to a strange social, cultural and geographic environment.

Although Inuit from Hebron were given new houses at Makkovik, a house was not sufficient compensation for the economic and social losses that families experienced in the alien environment. Hebronimiut grieved not only for their former community but also for summer camps along the northern Labrador coast, accessible from Hebron. Insult was added to injury as Hebronimiut watched non-Inuit using their homeland for recreational purposes.

The officials who planned the move assumed that the transition to new locations would be "effortless, because they believed that Inuit hunters and fishers could transfer their activities to any environment so long as they had wild game." This mistake was also made by the proponents of the High Arctic and other Inuit relocations. Those implementing the relocation also operated on the erroneous assumption that all Inuit were alike and that they would be able to get along when thrown together in southern communities. This ignored the cultural differences between the people of Hebron, Nain, Makkovik and Hopedale.

As newcomers at Hopedale and Makkovik, Hebronimiut were interjected in communities with established social and economic patterns, leadership and norms of behaviour. Each community had its own particular features, just as had existed at Hebron, and Labrador coastal inhabitants recognized and respected the privileges that were rooted in being members of a community. Hopedale and Makkovik residents had already arranged a system of land use regarding harvests of resources which had commercial value and they had vested claims to the best fishing, sealing and trapping areas.

As in the case of the High Arctic relocation, officials failed to consider the vital link between Inuit and their land. "It's not the same, not even near the same," Hebron relocatee Sem Kajuatsiak said in describing the difference between his former home and Nain, where he now lives. Paulus Nochasak put it simply: "We had to move to a place that's not our land."