Nunani
June
29, 2001
Working at play
 RACHEL
ATTITUQ QITSUALIK
Anyone who thinks that Inuit childhood was always carefree has
never been to a spring camp.
Competition could be fierce. There were many children of different
ages living together and trying — perhaps not hard enough
— to get along. There were some particularly competitive
personalities, but I think friction mostly stemmed from the fact
that the kids tended to form strange alliances based upon common
ages — those of one age against those of another.
Alliances were also based on the interests of the day, or who
was getting along with whom (much like "Survivor").
Competition was permitted, if not exactly encouraged. Inuit are
not an especially martial culture, but these were little people
in survival training. The games were not only entertainment, but
were developing faculties that would later contribute to practical
skills.
The very first game of the day, for example, was based around
waking up. It was important to get up early, to be alert. The
last kid to wake up was yanked outside by his or her hair, naked
and groggy, for the others to laugh at. It was cruel, but it sure
got you up. Laziness, as an adult hunter, could spell the death
of yourself or others.
Many games involved pain endurance. Everyone would line up in
a row so that a designated kid could step on our toes. Then we
would have our knees stepped on. Then our thighs. Those who cried
out were eliminated, so that the victor would get to be the next
stepper.
There were many games of stealth. There was harpoon tossing,
sling-shooting, and — of course — marksmanship (only
possible once we were strong enough to hold a .22, all we were
allowed to touch at camp).
Rivalries entered the picture once skills were developed
to the point of being considered useful. Children were often compared
to one another. X was not considered a good shot, but boy could
she run fast. Yesterday, Y caught a large fish — he must
be a lucky fisherman. Wait until my boy grows up, and then you’ll
see who gets the most young seals. My daughter may not be very
pretty, but she sure can sew boots now. Excellence in anything
was noted and encouraged.
In my case, I tried to use my siblings and other kids as living
lessons. My half-sister, for example, was having difficulty shooting,
so I vowed to become the best shot I could. One of my youngest
brothers always got dragged out of bed by his hair. I wanted to
avoid that. I decided to focus on the things I was best at —
especially those skills others were deficient in. I noted that
many boys had difficulty with pain endurance. I did not, so I
focused upon such games until I could bear the weight upon my
calves without flinching.
It wasn’t until much later that I realized others were also
using me as the same sort of model, trying not to repeat my mistakes,
just as I had done with them.
And it wasn’t until adulthood that I realized such games
offered us a chance to develop strong individuality in an otherwise
very egalitarian, communal existence. Strangely, even though the
experience served to individuate us, we came away from it with
a deeper awareness of the group — perhaps because we now
knew the strengths and weaknesses of all its members. Our heightened
individuality, ironically, forged us into a better community.
Instead of a mass of people, we were taught to be individuals
working together.
Everyone has a talent, and there is great joy in contributing
it. One might even say this is the whole point of being human.
And I think that is why even adults would sometimes jump in to
play at our games — not so much to have fun, but to remember
how to "work at play."
Baseball, anyone?
Pijariiqpunga.
TOP
June
22, 2001
The
unspeakable tradition: part two
RACHEL ATTITUQ QITSUALIK
(Continued from last week.)
I have noticed Inuit elders becoming less reticent about discussing
shamanism. Perhaps they feel increasingly alarmed as they see
their traditions gradually eroding before their eyes, inspiring
a sort of desperation, a hitherto nonexistent willingness to break
the code of silence. It is better, some elders seem to feel, to
talk about even unpleasant traditions rather than lose them altogether.
If I am right and this is the thinking of the elders, I agree
with it. Frankly, I don’t like to see traditional culture
misrepresented. I worry about the increasing number of kooks I
run into, with their own home-brewed versions of shamanism —
always a mish-mash of actual Inuit cosmological beliefs (from
different areas), beliefs drawn from First Nations peoples, and
the usual smattering of New Age ideas.
In my opinion, such re-invention of shamanism is dangerous. The
practices of angakkuit comprise a vital aspect of Inuit folklore,
and many of us don’t realize the importance of folklore (or
mythology) until we actually lose it. Folklore is like the air
— such a pervasive influence in our lives that we fail to
notice it until it is gone.
Just as a human needs air, so does a culture need folklore, which
acts as an invisible social glue. Not only does any culture tend
to disintegrate when deprived of its folkloric traditions, but
a drastic shift in folkloric perspective can spawn very real cultural
catastrophes.
Between the mid 15th century to the late 17th century, Europe
was consumed by witch hysteria. Many thousands of people were
tortured and killed, having been suspected by the churches and
local authorities of practising witchcraft. Much persecution was
financially motivated — many "witches" were killed
so that church and state could confiscate their belongings. But
it was enabled by perverse interpretations of local folklore.
Folklore, re-invented, became an excuse to kill. Midwives, who
had practised herbalism since time immemorial, were suddenly accused
of concocting "witch’s brews." Community folk dances
suddenly were interpreted as "Black Sabbaths." Any Celtic
or Teutonic good-luck symbol (other than one resembling a crucifix)
inscribed on a door was surely a mark of the devil.
In October of 1999, Indonesian police arrested 22 people suspected
of killing 20 villagers, who were thought by locals to be shamans.
This was thought to be the direct result of superstitious paranoia,
concerning shamanistic beliefs, that had escalated to a dangerous
level among the local Muslim population. The victims were killed
out of fear rather than fact.
In sub-Saharan Africa, anthropologists have spent years trying
to understand the relatively modern phenomenon of "witch-hunting"
that occurs, in seasonal cycles, across countless villages. It
seems that villages faced with dissolution of their native cultures
build up a kind of paranoid tension that travelling bands of professional
witch-hunters capitalize upon. The witch-hunters coax the villagers
into looking for "signs" of witches in their village,
after which they grab whomever is least popular in the village,
execute them brutally, and move on to the next village. Until
next season.
I am presenting such horrors in order to illustrate the sort
of extreme behaviours sometimes occurring in societies that have
broken with their folklore. And while ours seems like a society
too stable for such catastrophes, the loss of our folklore is
still a threat. This is because the rapid erosion of folklore
invites its re-invention; it invites unscrupulous individuals
to pervert older beliefs in order to serve their own agendas.
How many times has folklore been re-interpreted, even by missionaries
in the North, to serve the ends of theocrats? How many times has
it been re-invented to serve as a weapon of assimilation?
With this in mind, the coming forth of elders to discuss actual
shamanism becomes all the more vital to the health of Inuit culture.
While oftentimes distasteful, the presence of angakkuit was indisputably
one of the strongest influences upon pre-colonial Inuit culture.
It is by comprehending what our ancestors thought and felt that
we lend them practical immortality, and thus does the culture
have a firm base upon which to stand.
For Inuit can no longer count upon their isolation in the North
to define them as a culture, and it is only by living generations
acting as custodians of past knowledge — speaking the unspeakable
— that Inuit will remain the magnificent people they are.
Pijariiqpunga.
TOP
June
15, 2001
The unspeakable tradition:
part one
RACHEL ATTITUQ QITSUALIK
"But their magic arts are degenerating and growing more
and more simplified. The Polar Eskimos are well-to-do folk; there
are animals enough in the sea and meat in abundance; they are
strong, healthy, energetic people, possessing a sufficiency of
the necessities of life as demanded by an existence which is,
according to their ideas, free from care. This state of things
is doubtless the reason why the Angakoq system is not so highly
developed there as, for instance, it has been on the East coast,
where the struggle for existence seems to be much more severe,
and where the failure of the fishery, and as a consequence famine,
have been more frequent. The Polar Eskimos do not require to make
constant appeals to the supernatural powers, and that is why their
magicians have gradually forgotten the magic arts of their fathers."
— Knud Rasmussen (from the Reports of the Fifth Thule Expedition,
1921-24. Copenhagen)
Since the time that Occidental explorers first began poking around
the Arctic, and especially into Inuit culture, they have consistently
exhibited a fascination with shamanism. Even today, shamanism-related
questions are those most commonly asked by southerners. Today,
especially, urbanites crave simpler spiritual answers than many
organized religions are willing to provide.
They often look to the cosmological systems of tribal peoples,
hoping to discover paths toward peaceful unity with their environment,
the unconditional societal approval they lack, something exotically
stimulating and elitist, or (in rare cases) a "genuine"
source of magical power.
In the case of Inuit shamanism, the aforementioned drive is terribly
ironic, since shamanism is the one topic that Inuit traditionally
will not talk about. The tendency of Inuit to avoid the subject
has been a source of frustration to ethnologists from the time
of Rasmussen (1920s) onward. While some literature on the practices
of angakkuit has been collected, it is far from complete, and
in many cases seems contradictory (at least, until one realizes
that the beliefs are similar, but vary from area to area).
Most ethnologists, in their notes, admit that the information
was very difficult to wring out of people, and many have expressed
disappointment that they did not gather more than they could.
Still, the reticence of Inuit to come clean on the topic has only
served to make it more alluring to southern scholars. Everybody
loves a mystery, so the saying goes, and institutions still crank
out fresh young anthropologists who each believe that they will
be the one to finally "crack" the code of silence around
shamanism.
But why are Inuit so quiet about practices that, supposedly,
served as the basis for their very cosmology and religion? After
all, Christians are not shy to talk about Biblical miracles.
Well, firstly, the modern mistake has been in thinking that shamanism
was a religion at all. It wasn’t — it was considered
a skill that only certain individuals (having the propensity for
it) could learn. Shamanism did not dictate Inuit cosmology, either.
The way Inuit viewed their relationship to animals, supernatural
beings, anirniit (miscellaneous souls), land (mysterious Nuna),
and sky (life-giving Sila) was completely independent from the
practices of angakkuit.
Angakkuit have mistakenly been portrayed, over time, as priests.
Perhaps, in time, Inuit might have developed a religion (probably
based on the worship of Sila), and angakkuit might have taken
on a role similar to that of priest. But they did not. Angakkuit,
instead, were more akin to tradesmen — those who specialized
in the most dangerous, unseen powers of the world.
Because an angakoq dealt with the most dangerous of powers, his
(or her) own power was by extension dangerous. No one wanted to
become the target of his wrath.
In old Inuktitut thinking, will is the wellspring of action,
the means by which all things occur. The combination of intent
and expression (ie., vocalization) could warp reality to make
it reflect the mind of an individual. That which was concrete,
or corporeal, was most difficult to influence, while that which
was ethereal (such as a spirit) was more fluid and therefore could
be accidentally influenced with an errant thought or word.
For this reason, an Inuk was very careful not to speak of shamanistic
practices — and thus of the unseen powers dealt with by shamans
— lest his idle chatter attract such forces and bring their
possibly malign influence to bear against him.
(Continued next week.)
TOP
June
8, 2001
Down In the Dumps
RACHEL ATTITUQ QITSUALIK
Down in the dumps, there was always nagvaaqtat ("found stuff")
to be had. Qallunaat threw out the oddest things: good china,
medicine bottles, barely used clothing, barely damaged furniture.
My cousin and I had a blast until nursing station staff discovered
we were using old needles as water pistols.
Other dumps were not as well supervised. At the beach, after
the supply ship came in, "beach-combing" was a regular
summer chore. Whatever got tossed from the ship’s galley
washed up on shore. Soggy onions, carrots and celery were recognizable
as food; but who knew what the green, heart-shaped things were?
I once opened one up with my trusty pocket knife, and found clumps
of seeds concentrated in the middle. To me, they resembled maggots,
and I wondered if that was how they had gone bad. I still don’t
like bell peppers.
Close to where we often camped was the grandmother of all dumps:
the DEW Line dump site. Everywhere about the place lay the carcasses
of old machines. Partially demolished industrial vehicles leaned
into each other in the soft, sandy pit. Empty barrels lay rusting
under the ever-present sun, next to leaky vehicle batteries, and
drums of what looked like white mould. Sticky tar and oils covered
the ground. Something glassy shone evilly, beautifully, emitting
a sickly sweet smell.
It was not quite kerosene, not quite gasoline, but something
else — something bad for you. Here and there, like crushed
pale flowers, were dots of antifreeze. It all rested against the
backdrop of innumerable barrels, like brownish-red hills across
the horizon.
I remember standing silently, staring at that landscape,
as though waiting for a garbage pick-up that never occurred. There
was the cry of a gull in the distance, and the sound of the wind
as it picked up sand to bury forgotten treasures.
Some of the best items were bits of plywood (wood being scarce)
and polypropylene. My father even fashioned an agvik (flensing
board) out of a sign, with the red letters "PROPERTY OF ..."
still on it. Polystyrene made a fun toy. You could make boats
out of it that would actually float.
One year, we were gifted with big yellow sheets of x-ray paper,
which got turned into planes, hats, and patterns for sewing (although
pilot biscuit boxes provided the best material). I made my own
colouring book, and cut-outs of people and dogs. Such figures
stood out in jarring red and, somehow, when a black crayon was
applied to the yellow-orange paper, the dogs took on a sickly,
grey appearance.
One time, we found a new can of sardines — a real treat,
since we had run out of store supplies, and were getting bored
of eating meat. I remember thinking that it was unfair how we
had to save the sardines for my youngest brother, only a baby.
Now, I shudder at the thought of all the contaminants we had
inadvertently exposed ourselves to. One of my friends, who works
in the field of contaminants, once informed me about the leftover
PCB’s still saturating the soil and sands at the DEW line
dumps. Who knows what health risks we took when living, for any
time, next to such hazardous materials?
I was reminded of those dumps again recently, when I caught part
of a television show concerning poverty in Nicaragua. It was about
whole families who live within, subsisting wholly upon, incredibly
vast dump sites. There was a little girl who had found a chick
hatched from among some discarded eggs. She had cleaned it off
with an old handkerchief, keeping the castaway as her pet. The
two sickly little things, girl and bird, looked so much alike
that the image haunted me for days.
It has always been a popular political view to see the Arctic
as a great wasteland, a "safe" dumping ground for the
most virulent of pollutants, a "practical" place for
nuclear tests. But we are already beginning to see that Arctic
ecosystems — and remember, human communities are certainly
a part of the ecosystem — are affected even by airborne waste
from as far away as Argentina. My mind hesitates even to contemplate
overlong upon such horror.
We no longer have to go to the dump; the dump has come to us.
Waste is inevitable, but are we destined to live with, or within,
our dump sites?
Pijariiqpunga.
TOP
June
1, 2001
The imaginary Inuit:
part three
RACHEL ATTITUQ QITSUALIK
(Continued from last week.)
For many southern media types with dreams of making it big, Inuit
culture is manna from heaven. Perhaps it was always so, since
people have been making bad films misrepresenting Inuit for a
long time now (Anthony Quinn screaming and packing his face with
bloody meat comes to mind), but the international attention drawn
by the institution of Nunavut has especially meant that the Southern
world craves facts about Inuit of late.
Why?
First, there is plain old curiosity; with all the talk about
Nunavut, people are bound to wonder what it’s all about.
But there other factors.
There is the folklore and mythology, for example. I get a lot
of e-letters from European folks who, after reading my discussions
of Inuit stories and cosmology, encourage me to write as much
as possible about such things. One German writer explained to
me that European peoples are fascinated by their own pre-Christian
roots, feeling that when they read about those who still remember
their traditions (ie., Inuit), it gives them a glimpse into what
their own ways might once have been like.
Then there is what I call the "Anne of Green Gables"
outlook — those who look to Inuit in hopes of seeing an ideal
culture based upon the noblest traits of humanity. Once, when
I was interviewed over the phone, the interviewer expressed that
she was disappointed at my assertion that space exploration held
no spiritual significance for Inuit. This led us to talk
about social problems in Inuit communities, whereupon she sighed
and told me she had simply been hoping that there was a, "better,
happier existence out there somewhere."
Inuit are the world’s cultural media darlings right now.
Many consider Inuit to be an enigmatic and largely unspoiled culture
— and they will pay big bucks to anyone who will offer them
a privileged viewing of Inuit traditions.
This has, dangerously, invited a number of southerners to ride
the gravy train, furthering their own careers by producing any
number of media products that supply the need for Inuit culture.
Such individuals, however, are simply hoping to cash in on what
they perceive to be a trend.
Therefore, they must produce quickly. And in the rush to produce,
who has time for actual research? Who cares if you produce a film
with an Inuk speaking an Eastern dialect while wearing Western
clothes? Who cares if the character in your children’s book
refers to the "sacred directions" or his "eagle
totem," as only a First Nations person might?
I care. Too often do such productions count upon the supposition
that there will be no one to police them. The thinking is that
you might as well make up whatever you want about Inuit, because
no one in the South knows anything about Inuit anyway.
But misrepresentation is misrepresentation — no matter how
you cut it. While the old style of misrepresenting Inuit involved
portraying them as childish and stupid, with barbaric traditions,
this new style is shielded by the very rejection of the old. The
thinking is that, as long as Inuit are portrayed in a positive
light, it is perfectly fine to confabulate nonsense about their
traditions. It is like someone telling you, "Quit complaining
just because we said you eat whale fat. At least we said Inuit
were smart. Didn’t you like that?"
It is the Inuit "ennoblement" business. You can say
what you want about Inuit — even if it’s untrue —
as long as you say it nicely. And so this business has spawned
stories and "facts" on a culture that never was, a culture
of Inuit that are all equally enlightened, wise, spiritual, peaceful,
live an easy life, and are generally perfect.
But they are the imaginary Inuit, Inuit that just represent a
dollar value, and are no more real than the waving Eskimo on an
old soda-pop banner. Personally, I prefer the real thing: the
human beings who love and hate and suffer and persevere, giving
it their all to try to make a better life for themselves —
just like people everywhere.
But I’m not as worried anymore. The southern media carpetbaggers
are only right about one thing: they had best hurry. The brilliant
success of Atanarjuat has proven that Inuit are more than capable
of showing themselves to the world. And don’t audiences usually
prefer the real thing?
Pijariiqpunga.
TOP
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Nunavut 99
