The reason why Inuit initially needed to join the commercial sealing market is one of those horrific parts of Canadian history that we rarely learn about. "We were herded into communities throughout the 1950s and '60s in various ways. Sometimes it was the RCMP shooting sled dogs so the families lost their transportation and ability to live totally full time in a self-sufficient way on the land," Arnaquq-Baril says. People began to depend on snowmobiles, so they needed fuel unlike with sled dogs which ate seal meat, she said. That's why the sealskin market became so important — it let the Inuit hold on to some small piece of their traditional lifestyle. The sled dog slaughter remains a painful issue. While the Quebec government admitted its own role in the killing of Inuit dogs without consent on the northern part of the province, and doled out $3 million in compensation, the federal government has not admitted culpability. In fact, the RCMP cleared itself of all wrongdoing in 2005, claiming it destroyed the dogs for public health and safety reasons. CBC reports that as many as 20,000 sled dogs were alleged to have been killed in what is now Nunavut as well as northern Quebec and Labrador, a figure that the RCMP also denied. Arnaquq-Baril says people like her grandparents, who once roamed the southern tip of Baffin Island, lost their traditional lifestyle because "[the federal government] wanted Inuit living in sedentary communities, they didn't want us to be semi-nomadic anymore, so that we can be more easily administered."