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Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History
Nov. 28, 1986 – Inuutersuaq Ulloriaq dies in Qaanaaq

KENN HARPER

Inuutersuaq Ulloriaq, the famous hunter and guide from the Thule District in Greenland, recorded his memories in a journal that was published in 1976. (PHOTO COURTESY OF KENN HARPER)

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For as long as I can remember, people have been bemoaning the fact that little is done to record the stories of Inuit elders. A few major efforts such as the Igloolik Oral History Project stand out for their uniqueness as well as for their excellence.

It’s often said that the death of an elder, with his or her memories and wisdom unrecorded, is the equivalent of a library being destroyed. Yet little is done to rectify the situation, and the elders continue to die, taking with them the cultural and linguistic richness of Nunavut.

In Greenland, a remarkable man took matters into his own hands. A lifelong diarist, he wrote down his own memories and published them in his own language, Greenlandic, in 1976.

This remarkable man was Inuutersuaq Ulloriaq, well-known to Inuit residents of northern Baffin Island and Grise Fiord. It was my pleasure to know him for the last decade of his life, to visit him at his home in isolated Siorapaluk, the northernmost village in Greenland, and to enjoy his company at my home in Qaanaaq on his frequent visits to that community.

Inuutersuaq had family connections to Canada. He was the grandson of the famous Meqqusaaq, who emigrated from Baffin Island to northwestern Greenland — to what is now called the Thule District — in the 1860s as part of a migration led by the powerful and charismatic shaman, Qillarsuaq. It is because of that migration that Inuit in Igloolik and the High Arctic count many of the Inughuit of the Thule District among their relatives.

Inuutersuaq was born on Dec. 28, 1906 to Kassaaluk and Ulloriaq, in Uummannaq, near the present-day American military base at Thule. In his long and varied life, he lived throughout the district as a hunter, a catechist of the Lutheran Church, an outpost store-keeper for the Royal Greenland Trade Department, a member of the Thule Hunter’s Council, and a guide to numerous expeditions.

He was as much at home hunting in Ellesmere Island as in Greenland, for much of Ellesmere is the traditional hunting ground of the Inughuit — the Polar Eskimos of exploration history — a fact that Canadian officialdom has never recognized. Inuutersuaq spoke with me often about the unfairness of Canadian regulations which deprived Inughuit of access to their ancestral hunting territory.

In the early 1930s Inuutersuaq worked as a guide for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Ellesmere Island, in search of the lost Krueger Expedition. In 1934-5 he was with the Oxford University Ellesmere Land Expedition under Edward Shackleton. And in 1939-40 he worked with the Danish Thule and Ellesmere Land Expedition. In many of his travels he worked with, and learned from, the famous Nukappiannguaq, an Inughuit hunter who served many expeditions.

Edward Shackleton described Inuutersuaq as “a man of about twenty-nine, with nothing like the experience and skill of Nookap [Nukappiannguaq] as a hunter and dog-driver. Nevertheless he was a most efficient fellow, and like quite a number of the younger men had a smattering of learning, having been taught to read and write in Eskimo at the little school in Thule. He was a very bright and intelligent person and rapidly picked up ideas.”

Shackleton tried to teach Inuutersuaq English, and Inuutersuaq tried to teach the Englishman Inuktun. “We both conscientiously wrote down the words which we taught one another,” wrote Shackleton, “and though he could not speak much, he managed to understand a good deal of English.”

Inuutersuaq was unusual for a hunter of his generation. He kept a journal, and his writing combined daily observations with reminiscences of the legends of his people and the history of the area. He often expressed to me his one regret, that he was unable to read the many books written in English and Danish about the history of his district. His sister, Navarana, had been married to another writer, the famous Dane, Peter Freuchen.

In 1927, Inuutersuaq married Naduk. Shackleton wrote that she was a good seamstress “and therefore valuable to her husband, since this is the real life-work of the Eskimo women.” Her grandmother, Ittuksarjuaq, lived with the couple in Siorapaluk during the declining years of her long and adventurous life. Born in what is now Canada, she was a baby on the Qillarsuaq migration. Before her death in 1939, she recounted her stories to Inuutersuaq. These formed the basis of the book of which he was so proud, The Narrative of Qillarsuaq.

Inuutersuaq and Naduq preferred to live in the peace and quiet of tiny Siorapaluk In the late 1970s and early 80s, they often visited Qaanaaq during the annual spring visits of Canadian Inuit from Grise Fiord, Arctic Bay, and Pond Inlet. Inuutersuaq revelled in meeting elders from those communities, and looked forward to increasingly close ties between Canada and his part of Greenland.

Unfortunately those annual visits almost never happen any more. Officialdom has gotten in the way once again, with the need for passports generally preventing the visits. One would hope that international Inuit organizations could do something positive to solve this problem.

Inuutersuaq Ulloriaq died peacefully in his sleep in the hospital at Qaanaaq at 8 a.m. on Nov. 28, 1986. He and Naduk, who survived him, had no children.

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History recounts a specific event of historic interest, whose anniversary is in the coming week. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History
Nov. 24, 1865 - The First Inuktitut Language Conference

KENN HARPER

In the 1970's, under the auspices of Inuit Tapiriksat of Canada, the Inuit Language Commission embarked on a major study of Canadian Inuit writing systems. This resulted in a standardization of the way Syllabics are used and the adoption of a parallel alphabetic system.

What is less well known is that over 100 years earlier a meeting had been held in London, England, with the same purpose - to standardize the writing of Inuktitut in Canada. Although no Inuit were in attendance - in fact there were only two participants - this was the first Inuktitut language conference ever held. This is the story of that important meeting.

The Syllabic writing system was created by James Evans for use among the Cree Indians. The credit for adapting it to use in the writing of Inuktitut is usually given to the Reverend Edmund James Peck, who arrived in James Bay in the sub-Arctic in the 1876.

But the work of adaptation had in fact been done twenty years earlier by two missionaries of the Church Missionary Society, the Rev. John Horden working at Moose Factory, and E. A. Watkins at Fort George and Little Whale River.

At the time Moose Factory, as well as being the trading centre of James Bay, was an intellectual hotbed, largely as a result of Horden's presence and his sincere interest in the Indian and Inuit people who traded there. Moreover, he had a printing press on which he published religious items for the instruction of the native people. He was a strong supporter of the Syllabic system as the means of bringing the Gospel to his parishioners.

In the winter of 1855-6 Horden printed a small book in Inuktitut for Watkins to use among the Inuit at Fort George. This book was written in Syllabics - the only Inuktitut Syllabic publication to come from Horden's press. It was, in fact, Inuktitut words written in Cree Syllabics. In letters to the mission headquarters back in London, Watkins expressed some difficulty in bending the Cree system to fit the needs of Inuktitut. Horden, too, had written that the Inuit language placed a "very great strain on the system," and another missionary, T. H. Fleming, noted that "there are difficulties connected with it." In 1856 Horden and Watkins began to formally revise Syllabics to better suit Inuktitut, but their work was cut short when the missionary society transferred Watkins to Red River the following year.

In 1864 Henry Venn, the dynamic secretary of the Church Missionary Society, took the bull by the horns and decided that Syllabics should be formally adapted, once and for all, to the Inuktitut language. He proposed a conference of Horden, Watkins, and a third missionary, Joseph Phelps Gardiner, who had worked among Indians and Inuit at Churchill. The conference would be held in London and its purpose was "to promote an important object, the fixing of the Esquimaux language."

But the ship on which Horden was to have left for England sank in James Bay in 1864, and the conference had to be postponed for one year. Unfortunately this meant that Gardiner could not be present. Nonetheless, in November of 1865, Horden and Watkins met under Venn's direction. The minutes of that mini-conference have survived. They are as follows:

"1. It appears to us very undesirable that any changes, except such as are absolutely necessary, should be made in the Syllabarium as now used; though we quite agree that the system is not so scientifically accurate as could be wished...

"2. In reducing the Esquimaux language into syllabic writing, we think that a change may be advantageously made in the final symbols. Instead of the arbitrary signs now in use for the Cree, we would propose the adoption of half-size characters of the same forms as those employed for the consonants in combination with the vowel a...

"3. The additional consonants, b and d, found in the Esquimaux, may... be represented... by the characters for p and t respectively...

"4. In the Esquimaux language there are some double consonants which will need to be represented. For these we have adopted signs which combine as nearly as possible the two separate consonants."

Horden and Watkins signed the minutes of this conference on November 24, 1865. The major revision adopted for Inuktitut was the standardization of the representation of syllable-final consonants, an adaptation which remains to this day.

Had Henry Venn not called this conference, it is doubtful that Inuktitut Syllabics would look like it does today, for in 1875 Horden wrote these words: "If the correction and improvement of the Syllabarium had been undertaken by me, as an individual, I would not say a word in its favour. I wished for no change, and only undertook the duty, in conjunction with Watkins, at the request, or rather command of Mr. Venn, who approved of the work when we had completed it."

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History recounts a specific event of historic interest, whose anniversary is in the coming week. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History
Nov. 11, 1930 – Canada secures High Arctic sovereignty

KENN HARPER

On their return to Norway, Nansen began making plans for an ambitious adventure which would see a ship specially designed to withstand the force of Arctic ice, drift with the Arctic current. The vessel was named Fram — Norwegian for “forward” — and Otto Sverdrup oversaw her construction, which took three years.

In September of 1893, the Fram was beset by ice north of Russia and began her planned drift westward. But things didn’t go according to plan — the drift did not take the ship as far north as Nansen had expected, so he and another Norwegian left the vessel and travelled by dog-sled over the Arctic ice. Sverdrup remained aboard as captain of the Fram, and supervised the expedition’s scientific programme. The ship finally emerged from the ice north of Svalbard in August of 1896.

Immediately upon returning home, Sverdrup began making plans for another Arctic expedition. This time he would sail, not in the shadow of Nansen, but as an expedition leader in his own right. The vessel would again be the Fram.

In June 1898, Fram left Norway. Sverdrup’s intention was to take her through the channels separating Greenland and Ellesmere Island, to the northern coast of Greenland. But impenetrable ice thwarted his plans, and he instead wintered the vessel on the eastern coast of Ellesmere Island at a harbour, which he named Fram Haven. During that winter and spring, Sverdrup and his men explored Bache Peninsula and central Ellesmere Island, and one sledge party reached the island’s western coast.

The next summer ice again blocked Sverdrup’s way north, and he was forced to abandon his original plan. Instead, he decided to focus his research on Ellesmere Island and the seas around it. He took Fram south, then west into Jones Sound where he passed three consecutive winters, the first at Harbour Fjord and the next two at Goose Fjord.

From these bases, Sverdrup and his party explored and mapped most of the west coast of Ellesmere Island and a group of islands known collectively as the Sverdrup Islands. This accounts for the liberal dose of Norwegian names on islands of the Canadian Arctic, for the islands included Axel Heiberg, King Christian, Amund Ringnes, and Ellef Ringnes, as well as Cornwall and Graham islands. Arctic historian William Barr has called this “one of the most impressive feats of polar exploration ever achieved.”

Incidentally, one of the place names bestowed by Sverdrup on the south coast of Ellesmere Island was Grise Fjord, which means “Pig Fjord” in Norwegian.

When Sverdrup returned to Norway in 1902 he informed King Oscar that he had taken possession of all the lands he had discovered in the name of Norway. But Norway was not up to aggressively pursuing its claim for ownership of the High Arctic at the time, as it was still striving to gain its own independence from Sweden. Canada took little interest in the claims until the 1920s, when it finally woke up to the fact that another nation professed ownership of much of what it considered its own, albeit neglected, Arctic.

The dispute was settled amicably, through negotiation. Sverdrup’s maps were the key to the settlement. A biographer of Sverdrup wrote: “Without them Ottawa would have remained ignorant, for who knows how long, of the simple fact that the islands were there, in need of ‘saving’ for Canada. If Sverdrup had not discovered the islands when he did, they would almost certainly have been found and claimed by explorers of a country much better able than Norway to follow up the matter.”

On Nov. 11, 1930, the Norwegian government formally relinquished its claim to the land explored by Sverdrup, and at the same time Canada paid Sverdrup for his original maps and documents related to his expedition. During the negotiations, Canada had considered paying Sverdrup an annual payment for the rest of his life.

But the bureaucrats decided that the amount suggested might ultimately turn out to be a very large sum if Sverdrup lived to an advanced age, though he was already 76 years old. They opted instead for a lump sum payment of $67,000. Settling the dispute with Norway was certainly a wise decision for Canada and clinched Canada’s claims to sovereignty in the far north. But the lump sum payment proved to be a poor financial decision on Canada’s part. Fifteen days after the settlement was announced, Otto Sverdrup died.

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History recounts a specific event of historic interest, whose anniversary is in the coming week. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.

November 4, 2005

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History
Nov. 9, 1906 – Inuit Get a Lesson in Citizenship

KENN HARPER

Capt. Joseph-Elzear Bernier.

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Once in the North, Bernier pushed the Arctic into Lancaster Sound, then around Bylot Island’s northern coast, south through Navy Board Inlet and east through Eclipse Sound to the Scottish whaling station at Albert Harbour. Retracing his route northward, he forced his way through Barrow Strait and formally took possession of many islands in the Arctic Archipelago, before reaching his farthest west at Melville Island.

Bernier felt passionately that the Inuit who lived on the land he claimed must be made to realize that their land had been alienated and that they were Canadian citizens. He realized, too, that he would need their assistance in achieving his goals. For his journey west to Melville Island, he hired two Inuit men, one old and one young, to accompany him. They were Miqqusaaq and Qamaniq, but Bernier called them Monkeyshaw and Cameo.

He described his purpose in having these Inuit men accompany him: “I wanted them to tell their friends what they had seen to the West. If I had taken only a young man, his story would not have been accepted unreservedly by his tribesmen, but with corroboration by an older man his statements would be unquestioned. Besides which, as a broadcaster the young man would live longer. I also wanted them to get acquainted with government officials and to get used to the notion that they were now wards of the government, and must accordingly begin to adopt the ways of white men, especially in observing the laws of the country. These men on their return would be very important individuals in the tribe, so that we were at pains to treat them well in order that they might enlist the tribe on the side of law and order.”

The process of acculturation of the Inuit of the High Arctic had formally begun. Bernier’s official orders make no reference to the Inuit, only to land. The government had not yet realized that effective sovereignty over an isolated territory required something more than the erecting of cairns and the reading of proclamations. More prescient than the bureaucrats in far-off Ottawa, Bernier himself had taken the initiative to explain the ways of his country to the Inuit.

Returning eastward, Bernier again entered Albert Harbour and began making plans to winter.

On the King’s birthday, November 9, a royal salute was fired and Bernier took official possession of Baffin Island. The captain reported, “A speech was made to the men and the natives, by myself; calling [to] the attention of the natives that they had become Canadians, and that we expected them to live in peace and respect one another, and conform themselves to the laws of the Government of the Dominion of Canada.” On Christmas Day, Bernier hosted about one hundred and twenty Inuit for Christmas dinner aboard ship, afterwards giving them another lecture on good citizenship.

A few years later, in addressing the Empire Club of Canada, Bernier stressed the importance he placed on letting the Inuit know what his flag-raising activities should mean to them:

“...In annexing those lands we have annexed probably in the neighbourhood of eight thousand Esquimaux... I told them that they had become Canadians and therefore they were subject to our laws. Well they could not see that, but I tell you they saw it when they came on board my vessel to a dinner to which I had invited them, and they had everything they wanted, and then they commenced to realize that it was a good thing to be a Canadian.

“I told them, ‘If you want to exchange your products we will give you guns and ammunition, and we will treat you kindly, but for that, you have to respect this great man that I showed them, whose photo was in my cabin — Sir Wilfrid Laurier.’ ...I said, ‘That man holds in his hand today everything that belongs to Canada; whatever he says goes... He is exactly like a captain when he is on board ship; he can do what he likes but you must remember that he must give an account of himself when he comes home.’”

The Inuit of northern Baffin Island had had their first taste of white officialdom, along with their first civics lesson. It may have been a mystifying experience, but under Bernier’s beneficent approach, it had not been an unpleasant one.

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History recounts a specific event of historic interest, whose anniversary is in the coming week. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.

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