In 1923, Nuqallaq, following Inuit customary law killed a fur trader Robert Janes, originally from Newfoundland, in the small hamlet of Pond Inlet following the hamlet's collective decision to sanction Janes for his dangerous behaviour. Janes had "reportedly threatened the Inuit and their valuable sled dogs". Nuqallag was tried according to Canadian law and his wife's testimony in his defense was recorded by Father Mary-Rousselière. Nuqallaq was found guilty and sentenced to ten years of hard labour in the Stony Mountain Penitentiary. In her 2002 non-fiction, "Arctic Justice: On Trial for Murder, Pond Inlet, 1923", Shelagh Grant said that the trial and sentence were motivated by "Canada's international political concerns for establishing sovereignty over the Arctic." In his 2017 non-fiction "Thou Shalt Do No Murder: Inuit, Injustice, and the Canadian Arctic", Kenn Harper said that the trial "marked a collision of two cultures with vastly different conceptions of justice and conflict resolution...It hastened the end of the Inuit traditional way of life and ushered in an era in which Inuit autonomy was supplanted by dependence on traders and police, and later missionaries".