"them two Kangmalik"

Alikomiak and Tatimagana, Inuit hunters from the central Arctic, were the first of their race to be condemned and executed (February 1, 1924) under Canadian law. They had murdered four Inuit at Coronation Gulf in August 1921 in a dispute over women, and Alikomiak, while under arrest at Tree River, had shot and killed W.A. Doak of the RCMP and Otto Binder of the Hudson's Bay Co.

A judicial party travelled from Edmonton to Herschel Island in the summer of 1923, and the two men were convicted for murder and sentenced to death. It was decided that the earlier policy of leniency had not sufficiently impressed the Inuit with the seriousness of such offences; thus, despite appeals in the press, for the first time in such a case the sentences were not commuted, and the men were hanged in the transport shed of the RCMP detachment at Herschel Island.

Author: W. R. Morrison