Canada honours Qapik Attagutsiak, 99, wartime Inuit bone collector – Nunatsiaq News

Revered elder from Arctic Bay took part in World War II salvage effort

29 January 2020

The Second World War was already well underway in 1940, when Qapik Attagutsiak, then aged about 20 and living at a camp in the Igloolik area, first heard about it from a Roman Catholic priest.

“We were afraid that our husbands would be killed if they encountered anyone who had jumped from an airplane. We would think that they will never come back,” she said, in a transcript of an interview that Parks Canada did with her in 2018 and translated into English.

That year, the federal government ordered that Inuit in the eastern Arctic should start gathering animal bones for use in war-related industries, part of a nationwide effort that began with the passage of the Department of Munitions and Supply Act on Sept. 10, 1939, Parks Canada said in a backgrounder.

During that campaign, people across Canada salvaged bones, fats, metal, rags, paper and rubber products through a public campaign led by the Department of National War Services.

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