Abstract

Archaeologists frequently utilize ethnographic analogies in their interpretations of prehistoric households. Rarely, however, are analogies derived from the archaeological record used to interpret contemporary aboriginal households. In the 1950's, the Canadian Government attempted to assimilate Inuit families into a broader Canadian economic and social reality through the introduction of family allowance, health care, education, and housing programs. The Euro-Canadian prefabricated houses constructed in many arctic communities, for example, were designed around the concept of the nuclear family, which had emerged after the Second World War as a dominant socioeconomic form in southern Canada. When such houses were first introduced into the Canadian Arctic, however, the extended family still functioned as a basic socioeconomic unit of production in Inuit society; a fact that is reflected in the spatial organization of many traditional Inuit dwellings. In this paper, I use archaeological and ethnoarchaeological data to argue that Euro-Canadian house designs and housing programs effectively undermined the solidarity of the traditional Inuit extended family, and fostered the ascendancy of the nuclear family, a household form favored by the Canadian Government for administrative purposes.