A detailed description of Baffin Island and the Inuit way of life, with an appendix of Eskimo deities, including the vampiric Aipalookvik who 'Has a large head and face, human in appearance but ugly like a cod's. Is a destroyer by desire and tries to bite and eat the kyakers.' (p.266). His account is also notable for descriptions of euthanasia: a blind man is willingly led to an ice hole where 'He went right under, then and there under the ice and was immediately drowned and frozen. A handy piece of ice served to seal the death trap, and all was over. Nandla had died on the hunt, and had entered the Eskimo heaven like the other valiant men of his tribe, and taken his place with the doughtiest of them, where there would be joy and plenty for evermore.' (p. 153) [From John Bockstoce collection catalogue, item 10, from McGahern Books, 2019.]
Among Unknown Eskimo: An Account of Twelve Years Intimate Relations with the Primitive Eskimo of Ice-bound Baffin Land: with a Description of Their Way of Living, Hunting Customs & Beliefs.
- Arctic Reading: Inuit and other indigenous people
Tammarniitt (mistakes): Inuit Relocation in the Eastern Arctic, 1939-63.
- Arctic Reading: Inuit and other indigenous people
Examines government involvement in Northern Canada which led to relocation of Inuit from the east coast of Hudson's Bay to the high Arctic, the Henik Lake and Garry Lake famines, the establishment of Whale Cove in response to inland famines in the Keewatin, and the second wave of state expansion in the 1950's.
Ice and Esquimaux
- Arctic Reading: Inuit and other indigenous people
A series of articles on his 1864 voyage to Labrador on the Benjamin S. Wright with artist William Bradford. Passengers included a Colonel: A Greenland voyager, and better read than any man I have met in the literature of Northern travel.
Hunting with the Eskimos: The Unique Record of a Sportsman’s Year among the Northernmost Tribe….
- Arctic Reading: Inuit and other indigenous people
Whitney traveled with Peary to Greenland in 1908 and spent the year only with Eskimos north of Etah at Annootok, while Peary was making his north pole attempt. Whitney is the complete hunter, rich and well-provided, and demonstrates some intellectual curiosity about the natives and about the natural resources, and does try to master their language, but he evidently reads little except under the duress of prolonged inactivity.
Battle for the Soul: Métis Children Encounter Evangelical Protestants at Mackinaw Mission, 1823-1837.
- Arctic Reading: Inuit and other indigenous people
This deals mainly with a US phenomenon of attempted religious colonialism with relevance to Métis in Canada. It seems a good example of indoctrination requiring a degree of literacy devoid of independent thinking. An Anglo-Métis at Lake Leech in 1833 describes the house he built: Now comes the Door; next to which and hanging up is a frock coat. Then comes other articles in regular rotation, an old straw Hat, a violin with all its appendages; a small shelf upon which are the few books we possess; one or two cossets, an ax, a spade, Tobacco pouch etc.etc. (p. 12).
The Eskimo of Baffin Land and Hudson Bay….
- Arctic Reading: Inuit and other indigenous people
Boas’s work says nothing about Inuit reading but is included here for his lengthy accounts of oral tales from Cumberland Sound (81) and from the West Coast of Hudson Bay (30). Here is one brief example chosen at random:
Eskimo Realities.
- Arctic Reading: Inuit and other indigenous people
A beautiful evocation of the Inuit culture, its orality, its spiritual essence, and its pictorial sensitivity.
Eskimo Doctor.
- Arctic Reading: Inuit and other indigenous people
A simple and charming book about a doctor’s year in Thule and environs [1938-39], providing medical services to the Inuit. There with his wife, he found the Inuit “The truly good people.”
Arctic Justice: On Trial for Murder, Pond Inlet, 1923.
- Arctic Reading: Inuit and other indigenous people
Fascinating book on the introduction of European-based law into a culture that had no reason to understand it, given its communitarian consensual approach to justice. Well-written and badly proofed, but worth the read.
In Search of the Magnetic North: a Soldier-Surveyor’s Letters from the North-West 1843-1844.
- Arctic Reading: Inuit and other indigenous people
Overland scientific expedition in mid 1840s written by a staunch Anglican gentleman, concerned about the spiritual welfare of natives but fairly bigoted about it.
Looking both ways: Heritage and Identity of the Alutiq People.
- Arctic Reading: Inuit and other indigenous people
p. 60-61: “Forgotten Literacy” by Lydia Block: Literacy in the Alutiq language developed in the early 19th century thanks to Russian American schools, parish and secular (1741-1867). Some youth were taken to Okhotsh and Irkutsz in Siberia and a school started in Kodiak by monks of the First Mission. A text of the Lord’s Prayer in Alutiq survives (printed 1816); a Catechism of 1847; also a primer and Gospel of St Matthew (parallel Alutiq and Slavonic, printed in St Petersburg in 1848).
Ice Window: Letters from a Bering Strait Village 1892-1902.
- Arctic Reading: Inuit and other indigenous people
p. 55, April 1893: I have learned a great deal about the Natives and their language and customs. Mr. Lopp preached his illustrated sermon all the way up and once on the way back. The folks asked for it twice, but once his throat was too sore to give it. We had two charts illustrating the life of Christ—two quarters’ lessons. Everyone who saw them was interested and gave good attention. We read from the Bible and had prayer every time and sang sometimes.
Kalli, the Esquimaux Christian: A Memoir.
- Arctic Reading: Inuit and other indigenous people
p.23: Some books and prints were placed in the hands of the youth, and he expressed the greatest delight in seeing views of ships in the ice, and the figure of an Esquimaux watching for a seal. After gazing for a few minutes at the latter, he uttered a cry of pleasure and said, ‘This one of my people!’ [p. 24 shows an engraving of a seal hunter. Among other places, Kalli was taken to the British Museum, the Crystal Palace (1851), the Horse Guard’s Stables, and finally enrolled at a missionary college in Canterbury, St. Augustine’s.]
Eskimo Life.
- Arctic Reading: Inuit and other indigenous people
This work is best seen as Nansen’s defense of the Greenlanders against the onslaughts of “civilization.”
When God Came to the Belchers.
- Arctic Reading: Inuit and other indigenous people
On the Belcher murders connected to a religious frenzy by hunters who thought they were God and Jesus: