Now, wait a minute, isn’t jigging an Irish thing? Or, a Métis thing? Since when is it an Inuit thing?
There are lots of “Inuit things” that aren’t widely known to people outside of the North. That seems to be changing, however, as people like Becky Qilavvaq and others bring authentic portrayals of Inuit life to a global audience. Who are the Inuit? As is so often the case, the best people to ask, and listen to, are the Inuit themselves.
Eleven years before Qilavvaq’s toe-tapping ode to Inuit jigging, Zacharias Kunuk brought an ancient Inuit story to life on the big screen in Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner.4 The actors are all from Kunuk’s home community of Igloolik, and the entire movie is in Inuktitut. This film, rooted in Inuit language and culture, provides a compelling portrayal of precontact Inuit life without spoon-feeding it to the non-Inuit audience. To give just one example, there are aspects to the film that will be a bit confusing if you are unaware of Inuit naming practices.5 Nonetheless, it is a universal story of love, ambition, and revenge that unfolds gorgeously against the backdrop of the Arctic tundra.
Kunuk went on to work on two more films, which form the Fast Runner trilogy. In The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, Kunuk depicts the way in which Christianity replaced traditional Inuit spirituality in a very short period of time during the 1920s.6 In the final film of the trilogy, Before Tomorrow, written and directed by the Arnait Video Productions Women’s Collective, the transmission of smallpox from non-Inuit traders creates a truly Inuit post-apocalyptic setting for a story about the sole survivors, a grandmother and her grandson.7
To date (and in my opinion), no other Indigenous peoples in Canada have so successfully seized hold of modern technology to tell authentic, Indigenously rooted stories as the Inuit. I am a bit biased, though, because I am an Indigenous-language fanatic. The fact that so much of what the Inuit produce is in their own language, rather than translated into English or French, makes me extremely happy and provides me with a concrete example of something to strive for.
Through Inuit-language films, to websites, to social media, Inuit presence is becoming much harder to ignore in Canada. I know that when I first saw Atanarjuat, I was filled with an exhilaration unlike anything I’ve felt since. Here is how we revitalize our languages and traditions! Here is how we combat the stereotypes and invisibility we experience! So much of the information about Inuit peoples, territories, and experiences are being transmitted by Inuit people themselves. This is becoming more common all across Canada as other Indigenous peoples find or create the tools needed to accomplish the same.
Okay, but maybe list some digestible facts about the Inuit
Three quarters of Inuit people live in Inuit Nunangat, often translated as “the Inuit homeland.” The term Inuit Nunangat includes land, water, and ice.8
In 2011, the census pegs the total population of Inuit in Canada at almost 60 000, which is 4.2 percent of the total Aboriginal population, and 0.2 percent of the total population in Canada.9
Inuit Nunangat is comprised of four regions: the Inuvialuit Settlement Region of the Western Arctic, the territory of Nunavut, Nunavik in northern Quebec, and Nunatsiavut in northern Labrador.10 Within Inuit Nunangat, Inuit are the majority population, which is a unique situation among Indigenous peoples in Canada. The Inuit also have strong ties to other Inuit peoples in Alaska (United States), Greenland (Denmark), and Chukotka (Russia) through the international Inuit Circumpolar Council.11
As explained in chapter 3, the Inuit are considered Indians only in the sense that, according to constitutional division of powers, the federal government is responsible for Inuit peoples.12 Inuit are not subject to the Indian Act and, in fact, are specifically excluded from it.13 However, in Baker Lake v. Canada, Justice Mahoney stated:
[T]he term Indians, in Canadian constitutional law, includes the Inuit…in the absence of their exclusion from that term, either expressly or by compelling inference, decisions relevant to the aboriginal rights of Indians in Canada apply to the Inuit.14
Therefore, when laws are passed, or court decisions made, and the Aboriginal rights of First Nations are addressed, these laws and court decisions also affect the Inuit. The only way to make sure not to include the Inuit is to say, “This does not include the Inuit.”
There is also no such thing as Inuit status and, unlike the Métis, there is not a lot of discussion about who is and who isn’t Inuit. In fact, finding any reference to definitions of who the Inuit are (administratively speaking) is difficult. In 1978, federal Northwest Territories Fishing Regulations included a blood-quantum definition of the Inuit (and the term Eskimos) that required at least one-quarter Inuk blood. This was changed in 2010 to the following definition: “Inuk means a person who is a direct descendant of a person of the race of aborigines commonly known as Inuit.”15
Although there is no such thing as an Inuit status card, from 1941 to 1978 Inuit were forced to wear “Eskimo” identification discs similar to dog tags. This was for ease of colonial administration, as bureaucrats had difficulty pronouncing Inuit names, and the Inuit, at this time, did not have surnames. For a while, Inuit were officially defined as “one to whom an identification disc has been issued.”16
The discs were circular, about 2.5 centimetres in diameter, and made of pressed fibre, or leather, or, sometimes, copper. Each disc was stamped with one letter, representing whether the wearer lived east or west of Gjoa Haven, followed by a series of numbers. Official government correspondence often used only these disc numbers to refer to individual Inuit. The discs were phased out after Operation Surname, undertaken by Inuk Abe Okpik. He visited every Inuit home and asked each family to choose a surname.17
The administrative category Inuit is not as tightly controlled as status Indians, not as ignored as non-status Indians, and not as fraught with competing definitions as the Métis; however, certain terms get used with respect to all Aboriginal peoples in Canada that have the potential to impact how identity is defined in legislation and court decisions. I thought this would be a great time to switch gears a bit and discuss some of those terms in the Inuit and First Nations context.
NOTES
1.Robert J. Flaherty. Nanook of the North, directed by Robert J. Flaherty (1922; Pathé Exchange), Theatrical Film, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0013427/. The film was directed by Robert Flaherty who left his half-Inuk son, Joseph Flaherty, behind when the film was completed. Joseph Flaherty was one of the three dozen Inuit who were forcibly relocated to the high Arctic and abandoned in the harshest conditions imaginable. To read more about this story: Melanie McGrath, The Long Exile: A Tale of Inuit Betrayal and Survival in the High Arctic (New York: Vintage, 2008).
Inuk throat singer and complete badass Tanya Tagaq was commissioned to create a new soundscape for the film: http://www.cbc.ca/news/aboriginal/inuk-throat-singer-tanya-tagaq-on-reclaiming-nanook-of-the-north-1.2508581.
2.Becky Qilavvaq, Feel the Inukness. YouTube video. Released 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iawDXQGQsr0.
3.Sarah Rogers, “Feel the Inukness on Iqaluit Filmmakers Short Film,” accessed October 13, 2015, http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/stories/article/65674feel_the_inukness_on_iqaluit_filmmakers_short_film/.
4.Available for viewing on IsumaTV: https://www.isuma.tv/atanarjuat. While the film can be viewed for free, please consider donating whatever you can afford to support the work of IsumaTV, “a collaborative multimedia platform for Indigenous filmmakers and media organizations.” They have amazing content.
5.Pelagie Owlijoot, and Louise Flaherty, eds., Inuit Kinship and Naming Customs: Inuit ilagiigusinggit amma attiqtuijjusinggit, trans. Pelagie Owlijoot (Iqaluit: Inhabit Media, 2014).
6.The Journals of Knud Rasmussen are available to view for free (or preferably for a reasonable donation) at IsumaTV/Arnait Productions: https://www.isuma.tv/isuma-productions/journals-knud-rasmussen.
7.Zacharias Kunuk, Before Tomorrow, IsumaTV/Arnait Productions, https://www.isuma.tv/isuma-productions/before-tomorrow.
8.
“Maps of Inuit Nunangat,” Inuit Tapirit Kanatami, accessed October 14, 2015, https://www.itk.ca/publication/maps-inuit-nunangat-inuit-regions-canada.
9.“Stats Canada: Aboriginal Peoples in Canada,” Statistics Canada, accessed October 14, 2015, http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-011-x/99-011-x2011001-eng.cfm#a1.
10.An interactive map, showing the four Inuit regions and all communities, can be accessed from Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada: http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/Map/irs/mp/index-en.html.
11.“Inuit Circumpolar Council Canada,” ICC International, accessed October 14, 2015, http://www.inuitcircumpolar.com/icc-international.html.
12.Crommunist, “Black History Month: Re Eskimos (1939),” freethoughtblogs.com, last modified February 4, 2013, http://freethoughtblogs.com/crommunist/2013/02/04/black-history-month-re-eskimos-1939/. This blogger offers a very clear and well laid-out summary of Constance Backhouse’s book, Colour Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada, 1900–1950, as it pertains to the context of Inuit peoples becoming “Indians.”
13.Section 4(1) of the Indian Act states: “A reference in this Act to an Indian does not include any person of the race of aborigines commonly referred to as Inuit.”
14.Baker Lake (Hamlet) v. Canada, 1997, 107 DLR (3d) 514 (1979, FCC, Trial Division).
15.Northwest Territories Fishing Regulations, CRC 1978, c 847, §2.
16.Natasha MacDonald-Dupuis, “The Little-Known History of How the Canadian Government Made Inuit Wear ‘Eskimo Tags,’” (blog), last modified December 16, 2015, http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/the-little-known-history-of-how-the-canadian-government-made-inuit-wear-eskimo-tags.
17.Ann Meekitjuk Hanson, “What’s In a Name?” accessed December 30, 2015, http://www.nunavut.com/nunavut99/english/name.html.
6
Hunter-Gatherers or Trapper-Harvesters?
Why Some Terms Matter
The Inuit make no bones about it. Theirs is still very much a hunting culture. But what does that mean?
Most Inuit still eat a solid diet of country food, which is just like it sounds – traditional foods such as caribou, whale, seal, fish, and so on.1 Hunting remains a central practice in Inuit communities. So, is that all it takes to be a hunting culture?
Actually going out and hunting is a pretty important part of a hunting culture, but the act itself is not everything. The focus on hunting informs the language, the traditions, the stories, the music, and the art. According to the Inuit Art Foundation:
The hunting theme can be found in every aspect of Inuit culture, especially art. Many of the tools and weapons used in the past were decorated with hunting images, as were objects used by shamans. Many stories revolve around hunting. Alootook Ipellie, formerly of Iqaluit, Nunavut (now deceased), wrote that so many Inuit are good carvers because “…they come from a very visual culture. Their very livelihood depended solely on dealing with the landscape every day during hunting or gathering expeditions. They were always visualizing animals in their thoughts as they searched the land, waters, and skies for game.”2
Culture informs our interactions with the world around and inside us. It informs our pedagogy. When you look at some of the principles of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ),3 which is traditional Inuit knowledge (I avoid the term epistemology because, holy cats, that’s an annoying word), it is not difficult to see how these principles have been shaped by hunting. Also, it should not be so difficult to see how these traditional ways of knowing are absolutely applicable to the modern era:
Inuuqatigiitsiarniq: concept of respecting others, relationships, and caring for people
Tunnganarniq: concept of fostering good spirit by being open, welcoming, and inclusive
Pijitsirarniq: concept of serving and providing for family/community
Aajiiqatigiingniq: concept of decision-making through discussion and consensus
Pilimmaksarniq: concept of skills and knowledge acquisition
Qanuqtuurungnarniq: concept of being resourceful to solve problems
Piliriqatigiingniq: concept of collaborative relationship or working together for a common purpose
Avatimik Kamattiarniq: concept of environmental stewardship
As with other Indigenous peoples, these hunting principles were eroded by the introduction of fur trapping. As noted on the Inuit Art Alive website, when discussing the changing nature of work among Inuit:
Previously, work and profit had been shared among community members, but with the advent of trapping, hunters worked alone for a private income. In the early 1900s, posts were commonplace in most areas of the Arctic, as were guns and traplines. Their widespread use greatly changed northern practices as the trapping way of life was in direct conflict with the old way of hunting, which was done in groups with proceeds being shared.4
New principles were introduced and had a profound effect on Inuit relationships with one another, and with the land. Nonetheless, when modern Inuit articulate foundational cultural principles and apply them to present-day issues of governance, law, pedagogy, and so on, they do so within the framework of the “Inuit Way,” which continues to be rooted in a hunting culture, not a trapping culture.5
Is the difference between hunting and trapping at all important?
Yes and no. Yes, in that trapping is an activity focused on the individual, commercial aspect of one particular form of hunting. As discussed above, trapping tends to be an activity that is more individual, rather than collective. The values of a hunting culture are not necessarily the same as the values of a trapping culture.
That is not to say that trapping must be incompatible with values such as those expressed through Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit or other Indigenous peoples’ principles. The ethnogenesis of the Métis, for example, is linked to the fur trade, yet our collective values are not so widely divergent from those of our First Nations relations. Commercial transactions between Indigenous nations were happening long before contact with Europeans, so the commercial nature of trapping does not automatically render it untraditional.
An estimated 25 000 Indigenous peoples and 35 000 Canadians continue to participate in the fur trade through trapping, though antifur campaigns have put a serious dent in the industry.6
However, if trapping is just one activity within the broader category of harvesting, then the difference may not be important at all. Indigenous peoples trapped fur-bearing animals before the fur trade, though never as an end in itself. It can be viewed as just another hunting practice.
The way in which the Canadian state treats hunting versus trapping is important to examine. In Treaty 8 territory,7 for example, Alberta treats trapping as a purely commercial right and “regulates it accordingly.”8 Blanket trapping regulations are applied to Indigenous trappers on the basis that commercial rights under Treaty 8 were extinguished by the Natural Resource Transfer Agreement.9 Licensing, fees, quotas, regulations about the building of cabins for trapping, and so on are all applied to Indigenous trappers. In addition, trapping is often seen as a “weak right” to land in comparison to hunting.
Worse, Peter Hutchins points out that “the very existence of traplines has been used to deny the survival of aboriginal rights or titles” based on the notion that traplines are a form of individual tenure extinguishing collective Aboriginal or treaty rights.10
So, what is going on here?
In essence, there are two views of what trapping is. Canada tends to take the view that trapping is an imported, specific activity. It is different from Aboriginal hunting in that it is individual and commercial in nature, not rooted in indigeneity. Most Indigenous peoples see trapping as a subset of hunting, which is, itself, integral to our cultures.
This “subset of hunting” approach can be seen in practice by neighbours of the Inuit of Nunavik, the Eastern James Bay Cree of Eeyou Istchee.11 Under the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement (JBNQA), of which the Cree and Inuit are both signatories, provision was made for the creation of a Cree Trapper Association (CTA).
12
The name and focus would seem to be on trapping alone: “One of the many goals of the CTA is to promote sales and assist in the orderly collection and marketing of wild furs by its 5000 members.”13 It is very clear, however, that as envisioned by the CTA, trapping is an integral part of the collective culture of the Crees of Eeyou Istchee:
The role of the Cree Trappers’ Association is an important one, it is to protect and maintain a way of life that completely identifies who we really are as Eeouch who depend and continue to depend on the land for survival.14
More fundamentally, the CTA and its members are guided by the Eeyou Indoh-hoh Weeshou-Wehwun, the traditional Cree hunting law.15 The trapping of fur-bearing animals is treated as a subset of this wider Cree hunting law, all of it part of Indoh-hoh (hunting activities).
What is most interesting to me is the difference between the Cree and the English in this situation. Eeyou Istchee is divided into many irregularly shaped trapping territories. According to customary law, each trapping territory has a tallyman who is in charge of managing the resources within his or her territory. The name tallyman is defined in various pieces of legislation applying to the Eastern James Bay Cree as “a Cree person recognized by a Cree community as responsible for the supervision of the activities related to the exercising of the right to harvest on a Cree trapline.”16
Originally, of course, the tallymen tallied up furs for the fur trader. The informal Cree word for this person is ouchimaw (in my dialect, it’s okimâw), often translated as “chief,” or “boss” – someone put in a position of authority over something; in this case, the management of the land. The job of the ouchimaw is not just to keep an eye on trapping in his or her territory, but also to ensure the health of the territory as a whole. The formal title for a tallyman is Kaanoowapmaakin, which can be translated as “hunting leader,” and in English is defined as being “the steward, guardian and custodian of the territory.”17
Indigenous Writes Page 8