Inuit Studies

This essay discusses imitation coral reconstruction workshops based on a recipe from a sixteenth-century "book of secrets" that took place in three different educational contexts: Columbia University, Nunavut Arctic College, and Universität Hamburg. It reflects on the utility of reconstruction and material literacy as present-day history of science meth-odologies in which scholarly textual interpretation meets physical research. It also considers the nature of cultural heritage in shaping material practice through an Inuit cultural context, in which the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge is not rooted in textual traditions, but bodily embedded in oral histories, craft technology, and land stewardship. The essay also presents suggestions for new collaborative practices between humanists, artisans, and scientists that can be facilitated by reconstruction methodology.

PREFACE Per Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution, which provides constitutional protection of indigenous and treaty rights, the Government of Canada has a fiduciary duty to the indigenous people of Canada. This duty is compounded by contractual settlement agreement obligations and international laws. Sadly, Inuit Elders who have chronic health needs are removed and relocated to distant non-Inuit communities and institutions for long-term palliative and hospice care. There is an obvious systemic problem where governments with limited funding, in harsh and complex environs, are unable to provide the requisite health care, housing, and other social services and infrastructure Inuit communities and people direly need. Reminiscent of subjugation and oppression, these socioeconomic failings show that vestiges of colonialism still exist. This essay does not intend to appropriate the voice of Inuit people. It seeks to incorporate the views of Inuit people from their documents and external sources to describe the tragic irony that the system of Inuit Elder long-term residential care represents. It is only they who can truly judge, in the wake of Residential Schools and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, how well they have progressed or achieved their goals of self-determination and self-governance.

Beginning in the late nineteenth century around the Bering Strait, ornate pieces of carved fossil ivory bearing decorations unlike anything previously known from the Eskimo region began appearing in museum collections. These small, deeply patinated artifacts, which originated from ancient village sites across the region and passed from the pockets of Indigenous collectors to American whalers, teachers, traders, and museum curators, were evidence of a distinctive and scarcely known prehistoric maritime culture of northwestern Alaska and neighboring Siberia. Beautifully incised harpoon heads and socket pieces, animated zoomorphic drum and box handles, anthropomorphic figures inscribed with tattoos and body ornaments, and other objects of “unknown use” largely comprised the “high fossil ivory culture” of a society that appeared to have been centered on St. Lawrence Island,
parts of the adjacent Asiatic coast, the Diomede Islands, and portions of the Seward Peninsula of Alaska (Hrdlička 1930:174).

By the mid-1920s anthropological interest in the origins of these Paleo-Eskimo peoples peaked (Collins 1937:iii), resulting in a series of archaeological expeditions to the Bering Strait that continues to the present day. On St. Lawrence Island and the neighboring Chukotka Peninsula of Russia, excavations revealed a succession of closely
related and partially overlapping cultures—Okvik/Old Bering Sea (~50 to 800 CE) and Punuk (800 to 1200 CE)—whose settlements and cemeteries exhibited some of the finest art ever produced by a hunting society.1 Lured to the Bering Strait by vast herds of ivory-bearing sea mammals like walruses and large whales, these maritime peoples from Asia were led by shamans, whaling captains, and notable warriors. Both men and women of these peoples tattooed their bodies and crafted human figurines, or “dolls,” that often displayed ornate and naturalistic personal adornments, including amulet straps, beaded headbands, and permanent body markings that have counterparts in recent history and practice.

Abraham Ulrikab fournit, avec son journal 1 , une précieuse perspective autochtone sur le phénomène des zoos humains du XIXe siècle. Inuit du Labrador converti au protestantisme par les missionnaires moraviens, il est engagé en 1880 par l'explorateur norvégien Johan Adrian Jacobsen pour participer, avec sa famille (sa femme Ulrike, leurs enfants Maria et Sara, son neveu Tobias), ainsi que l'Inuit païen Terrianiak, sa femme Paingo et leur fille Noggasak, aux spectacles anthropozoologiques de l'homme d'affaires allemand Carl Hagenbeck. Son journal, qui inclut une brève correspondance avec le frère moravien Elsner, fut écrit essentiellement entre octobre 1880 et janvier 1881, peu de jours avant sa mort. On y suit le périple des Inuits à travers quelques grandes villes d'Europe, avant qu'ils ne meurent tous de la vérole entre le 15 décembre 1880 et le 16 janvier 1881. Parallèlement, Johan Adrian Jacobsen tient lui aussi un journal personnel de son expédition au Labrador. Dans cette économie du regard organisée autour du spectacle de l'altérité, les écrits d'Ulrikab et de Jacobsen s'échangent des impressions à la fois adverses et complémentaires où se mêlent curiosité, étonnement et incompréhension. Nous ferons tout d'abord une brève histoire de la représentation des Inuits du Labrador (les Labradormiut) chez les explorateurs européens avant d'aborder la généalogie du discours scientifique qui a permis aux exhibitions anthropozoologiques de prendre leur 1 Les citations tirées des journaux d'Abraham Ulrikab et de Johan Adrian Jacobsen seront identifiées directement dans le texte par le nom de famille des écrivains. Les références complètes des deux ouvrages se trouvent dans la section Corpus principal de la bibliographie.

Negotiating Personal Autonomy offers a detailed ethnographic examination of personal autonomy and social life in East Greenland. Examining verbal and non-verbal communication in interpersonal encounters, Elixhauser argues that social life in the region is characterized by relationships based upon a particular care to respect other people’s personal autonomy. Exploring this high valuation of personal autonomy, she asserts that a person in East Greenland is a highly permeable entity that is neither bounded by the body nor even necessarily human. In so doing, she also puts forward a new approach to the anthropological study of communication.
An important addition to the corpus of ethnographic literature about the people of East Greenland, Elixhauser‘s work will be of interest to scholars of the Arctic and North, Greenland, social and cultural anthropology, and human geography. Her conclusion that, in East Greenland, the ‘inner’ self cannot be separated from the ‘public’ persona, will also be of interest to scholars working on the self across the humanities and social sciences.

The ethnographic account of an Inuit man manufacturing a knife from his own frozen feces to butcher and disarticulate a dog has permeated both the academic literature and popular culture. To evaluate the validity of this claim, we tested the basis of that account via experimental archaeology. Our experiments assessed the functionality of knives made from human feces in controlled conditions that provided optimal conditions for success. However, they were not functional. While much research has shown foragers to be technologically resourceful, innovative, and savvy, we suggest that this ethnographic account should no longer be used to support that narrative.

En este trabajo se lleva a cabo una revisión bibliográfica de los trabajos especializados que se han realizado lo largo de las últimas décadas para caracterizar el sometimiento del reno durante los últimos milenios del final del Paleolítico y todo el Holoceno. Para ello además de analizar el tratamiento del reno a lo largo del tiempo, se analizan también tres grupos humanos actuales que tienen una sociedad basada en el reno. Como resultado de este estudio bibliográfico y etnográfico, se puede llegar a la conclusión de que el sometimiento del reno debe ser visto como un proceso de larga duración, en el que la relación entre humanos y estos animales ha ido cambiando a lo largo de este dilatado periodo. Se produce una transición desde un tipo de sociedad que estaba basada únicamente en la caza a otra sociedad en la que se añade cierto control en forma de pastoreo. En segundo lugar se puede decir que, además de las causas económicas tradicionalmente propuestas podemos citar también algunas causas de tipo religioso y cosmológico. Por último, el control del reno, en forma de una explotación económica completa habría surgido de manera independiente en Siberia y en Escandinavia aproximadamente entre los siglos IX y XVI d.C.

Booklet on the meaning and use of the North Slope Iñupiaq postbase 'niq'. Popular scientific version of MA thesis on the semantics and pragmatics of the North Slope Iñupiaq postbase 'niq'.

The booklet is based on knowledge shared by:
Lollie Hobson
Tuuqłak Diaz
Dr. Edna Ahgeak MacLean
Janie Snyder
Ronald Aniqsuaq Brower
Lucy Ahvaiyak Brower-Richards
Doris Hugo
Uumiñaq
Beverly Faye Aqaŋŋiq Hugo
Etta P. Fournier
Dick Weyiouanna
Fannie Akpik
and two anonymous.

ABSTRACT
Inuit storytelling in the Ungava Bay region of Northern Quebec, Canada is a mode of communication that has rapidly decreased over the last decade. Many myths and legends which contain information about the natural, physical, and spiritual environments of the region are no longer being passed on to young generations. In an effort to revitalize knowledge that is embedded within Inuit stories, a virtual building has been designed, at the conceptual level, to serve two functions: (1) as a storytelling space for the Inuit residents of Ungava Bay and for those interested in the North; and (2) as a facility to communicate Inuit stories of the region that the Smithsonian Ethnologist, Lucien McShan Turner (1847-1909) documented between 1882 and 1884. A virtual storytelling space representing the Ungava Bay region is likely to be more accessible to Inuit across the North than is a physical space.

As non-Inuit and local Inuit pass through the virtual doors of the storytelling space they gain an appreciation of the mythological and spiritual importance of the surrounds of Ungava Bay. By engaging with the virtual storytelling space, non-Inuit visitors gain an appreciation of the Ungava Bay region as a living landscape where Inuit hunters and fishers are interacting with their ancestors through narratives and stories. The storytelling space captures the human and spiritual elements of the Arctic landscape and seascape.

This article explores the ethnographic and design processes that were undertaken to generate the virtual storytelling space. The design vision is based on fieldwork and interviews that have been carried out with Inuit experts on myths, legends and hunting knowledge. With the form and function of the building based on local stories, the proposed centre offers a way to mingle with the ancestors and for Inuit knowledge to be shared through design.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries most explorers, whalers, and ethnographers perceived Inuit traditions, especially shamanism, to be in a state of decline. The assumption that Inuit culture was on the brink of disappearance constituted a classic topos in anthropology obscuring the dynamics of Inuit culture and society. This perspective was enhanced by focusing too much on the person of the shaman and underestimated the importance and strength of the ideological system and values involved. Qallunaat (white people) perspectives of decline contrast with Inuit perspectives valorizing the integration and incorporation of qallunaat culture. We compare classic descriptions of shamanism with recent testimonies of elders and demonstrate that, even today, shamanism is for many Inuit part of a wider cosmology that is dynamic, open to innovation, and marked by strong continuity.

Using an ethnography of speaking approach, this article discusses the ideological aspects of language practices, as they are played out in a traditional Yupik (Eskimo) village in Chukotka, in the Far East of the Russian Federation. The article shows how local linguistic practices and language choices of individual speakers intersect with purist language ideologies, which frame certain beliefs about languages and ways of speaking, making them appear more normal and appropriate than others. Placing the " work of speaking " within the context of cross-cultural dynamics and purist language economies, this article challenges the basic assumption of linguistic purism about language and identity being intertwined.

Like their American Girl doll counterparts, Canadian Maplelea Girls offer entertainment and education to the well-to-do consumer. Through an analysis of the cultural and geographical backgrounds of the six existing Canadian Girl dolls, we will explore how “banal nationalism” is at work (and play) through girlhood toys in the settler-invader colony of Canada (Billig 1995). We will focus on the most recent additions to the collection, the French-Canadian-themed doll (Léonie from Québec City), and the Inuit-themed doll (Saila from Iqaluit), to show how the dolls serve as example of large-scale political and rhetorical concerns around the Canadian policy of multiculturalism reframed by a conservative ideology.

Although Nunavut and Québec have both been recognized as distinct nations within the Canadian state in 1999 and 2006, respectively, the Maplelea Girls website declares that their dolls all “think Canada is one terrific country.” Furthermore, the dolls are marketed as “a distinctly Canadian play experience featuring a collection of premium play dolls that celebrate our country's spirit and identity.” This highlights how disparate identities are accommodated in the Canadian framework only when such inclusion is celebratory and commercially viable. We interrogate the popularity of the Maplelea Girls as objects of play and tokens of identity within the Canadian framework in the context of internationally popular nationally-based dolls.

In an intense postcolonial context such as that of the Canadian Arctic, cultural and social tensions are such that they are bound to permeate many works of art, whether because they indirectly reveal those tensions, or because they are used as a direct means of expressing them from one viewpoint or another. The films studied in this work are two masterpieces, each in its own way, and both connect particular aesthetics with particular politics of Inuit/White relations. The emphasis is put on the relevance of audiovisual media to reinvent a modern Inuit orality.

"My Father Was Told to Talk to the Environment First Before Anything Else" Arctic Environmental Education in the Language of the Land, Chapter 16 (pp 285-298)
in
Fields of Green: Restorying Culture, Environment, and Education”
by Marcia McKenzie, Paul Hart, Heesoon Bai, and Bob Jickling (Eds.).
Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, Inc.

The scars left by the death of Siasi Tullaugak and Sharon Barron, two Inuuk women, are still deep. They were part of the homeless Montreal Inuit community who gathered for a vigil in September 2017 to remember the young women . Their cases are not isolated, as the death of Indigenous women happens unfortunately too often. They are 12 times more likely to be murdered than any other women in Canada . Thus, it is important to recognize the origins of the issue by listening to Inuit voices. In this paper, it is argued that the prevalence of Inuit homelessness is rooted in historical and ongoing colonialism and must be addressed with the community members by honoring the stolen lives and following Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit . The research will begin by drawing a portrait of the situation with a focus on Montreal and Nunavik realities in reference to academic research and institutions’ reports. The diversity of social realities lived by people impacted by homelessness will be considered and contextualized. The Nunavik history of colonialism will be related to the question: Why is an Inuk more likely to experience homelessness? Both risk factors and ongoing colonialism will be addressed in association with community organizations’ actions in Nunavik and Montreal.

This study outlines the evolution and impacts of the Inuit co-operative movement in Canada's North from its beginnings in the late 1950s through to 1968.  In 2009, the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, through the Minister of Environment, designated the movement as an event of national historic significance.

This article casts light on the last segment of Knud Rasmussen’s “grand expedition,” his trip to Chukotka,
in the Russian Far East, in September 1924. He spent somewhere between 18 and 48 hours in Chukotka
before he was deported back to Alaska, and it is doubtful that he was able to bring any significant local
objects back with him. Yet the Fifth Thule Expedition’s Siberian Collection at the National Museum
of Denmark includes about 1,000 items. Most of these objects were purchased by Rasmussen after his
return and donated to the museum as an extension of the Fifth Thule work. The article discusses the
significance of Rasmussen’s trip to Chukotka and the origin of the expedition’s Siberian collection. It is
also an attempt to challenge our traditional understanding of an “expedition” as a purposeful journey
with a definitive beginning and end.

This paper explores a set of drawings produced by Inuit children in Nunavik. The territory of Nunavik – formerly Rupert’s land – was incorporated within the Boundaries of Canada in 1867. The population of 9,200 Inuit is housed in 15 coastal villages in the northern reaches of Quebec, Canada. The drawings describe their systems of way-finding in a landscape that is difficult to decipher for those who
do not live there.

The Inuit, as with many traditional semi-nomadic societies, have developed a variety of ways in which to orientate and navigate through the vast landscape of the arctic. Students in the Kativik School Board are taught Inuktitut until the third grade, after which they learn a second language. The mother tongue language retention in Nunavik is 95% among Inuit. The School Board has developed an educational module on “survival”. One component asks students to draw orientation and navigational elements of the arctic.

These drawings indicate the way in which Inuit children observe and translate the navigational features around them. They illustrate that the children are adept at rendering scale, form, distance, perspective and colour – an ability that perhaps stems from their unrestricted interaction within an infinite backyard; a playground that is a perfect breeding ground for developing acute perception skills.

The Inuit of Kangiqsualujjuaq have maintained functional and spiritual connections with the landscape and waters of Arctic Quebec (Nunavik) for over four thousand years. While ethnographic studies about this ocean-going population have revealed their pragmatic relationships with the arctic milieu, less is known, however, about their perceptions of terrestrial and aquatic realms. Three fieldtrips to Kangiqsualujjuaq were undertaken between 2003 and 2005 to explore how three generations of Inuit perceived the land-water interface, a geographical setting regularly frequented and considered spiritually important to the Inuit. Surveys were carried out to determine whether Inuit regarded the sea as an extension of the “land”, a way of thinking about space that is common among indigenous islanders in southern latitudes. The research reported in this thesis involved the participation of thirty-four Inuit men and women from six families, whose ancestors once lived in separate hunting camps along the Ungava Bay coast. Using an intergenerational approach to explore whether perceptions of the land-water interface were consistent or inconsistent across and between generations, the cohort responded to questions about spatial concepts, travel patterns, traditional narratives, senses of place, and hunting knowledge. A series of drawing exercises, which were designed to understand how the cohort perceived the land-water interface pictorially, were performed by 13 Inuit participants and 14 Inuit adolescent students from the local School. Traditional methods of Inuit learning and transmitting knowledge about the land-water interface were also investigated to ascertain the extent to which pedagogical instruments underpin and mould Inuit perceptions of this setting. A series of knowledge-maps/trees were subsequently created for each family unit to illustrate the flow of traditional knowledge both among and across Inuit generations. The data derived from interviews and the drawing sets indicated that Inuit perceptions of the land-water interface are changing at a rapid rate. The ninety drawings offer a tangible view of the Inuit knowledge base of the land-water interface being wrought by changes to the physical landscape, to patterns of social interaction, and to new and non-traditional pedagogical methods. If efforts are not made by the Kangiqsualujjuamiut in the near or immediate future to resurrect traditional forms of knowledge that pertain to the land-water interface such as knowledge of traditional placenames, nomenclature and mythologies, then young and future generations will likely become spiritually disengaged from the land and sea.

Jordanna Max Brodsky's 2019 historical fantasy novel The Wolf in the Whale follows a young Inuk named Omat in 1000 CE as they encounter a band of Norse colonists led by the bloodthirsty Freydis Eriksdottir (of the Vinland Sagas), communicate with Inuit and Norse gods, and form a romantic relationship with a lone Norse man named Brandr. Brodsky's centering of an Indigenous main character disrupts the traditional Viking viewpoint seen in many popular depictions of the medieval north Atlantic. We see the Norse and their gods through an outsider's perspective, challenging the conventional narrative of medieval European discovery and conquest. By bridging the gaps between the Indigenous arctic and the Viking diaspora, Brodsky creates a fantastical work of global medievalism that constructs a multi-ethnic, multi-religious medieval past. However, Brodsky occasionally perpetuates racial and cultural stereotypes throughout her novel, evidence that colonialist conceptions of the Middle Ages still pervade popular imagination. Is more leniency granted to media about the faraway past rather than the too-fresh present? By placing her novel in the medieval past, Brodsky was not forced to directly engage with current issues of Indigeneity. She instead used the elusive 'distance' of the Middle Ages to relegate her story to a reassuring medieval realm of comfortable multiculturalism.

This essay describes the potential for using ethnographic evidence and mummified tattooed skin to reflect on past therapeutic tattoo practice in the Arctic. It also considers the ways in which circumpolar concepts of disease emerged in relation to the agency of nonhuman entities. I argue that specific forms of curative tattooing offer interpretive models for the paleopathological and bioarchaeological study of care through an ontological framework of analysis.

Cet ouvrage collectif ambitionne de présenter un état des lieux des relations, passées et présentes, entre êtres humains et ursidés. Il mêle les communications de vingt-six chercheurs du CNRS, du Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle et autres institutions et universités, des spécialistes non-statutaires, des photographes et doctorants en ethnologie et éthologie, tous réunis par leur intérêt porté aux ursidés ou aux relations homme animal.
En 2017, on compte huit espèces d’ursidés, grands mammifères plantigrades, réparties en cinq genres distincts  : Ailuropoda, Helarctos, Melursus, Tremarctos, Ursus. Ces espèces vivent dans des habitats très distincts, entre la banquise, les forêts boréales d’Amérique du Nord et d’Asie, les forêts tempérées d’Europe, les forêts tropicales ou équatoriales d’Asie du Sud-Est et d’Amérique du Sud, aux exceptions notoires de l’Afrique et de l’Océanie.
Tous les peuples au contact avec l’ours lui ont accordé une place particulière dans leurs bestiaires, mythes et croyances. Pour de nombreuses sociétés, l’ours, vu comme frère ou double de l’homme, est admiré et vénéré car s’il a la capacité d’hiverner, qui étonne, plantigrade, il ressemble à l’être humain  : tous deux sont omnivores et ont le gros orteil non-opposable, permettant la station debout. Mais, l’ours est aussi redouté et symbolise le « sauvage » qui subsiste en tout homme. Chasser l’ours, c’est également tuer cet élément bestial, plus spécifiquement les pulsions imprévisibles que l’homme porte en lui.
Aujourd’hui, l’ours sauvage est menacé de manière planétaire, victime de chasses illégales, du déboisement, de la pollution, de l’expansion démographique, de l’urbanisation, de l’industrialisation, du dérèglement climatique, c’est-à-dire de la mondialisation et, plus largement, de l’anthropisation du monde, de même que son « frère » humain victime de ses propres errances inconséquentes. Les ours sont objet de haine et de fascination, poursuivis jusqu’à l’éradication, défendus et protégés, offerts aux petits et grands sous forme de peluches. Quelle place réelle, imaginaire, fantasmée ou rêvée, peut encore espérer avoir ce prédateur considéré comme une sorte de roi des forêts, et qui est-il vraiment ?

LES AUTEURS : Karen Hoffmann-Schickel, docteur en anthropologie sociale de l’université de Strasbourg, étudie la relation homme-animal chez les Sâmes du nord de l’Europe. Pierre Le Roux, spécialiste de l’Asie du Sud-Est, professeur à l’Institut d’ethnologie de l’université de Strasbourg, y enseigne notamment l’ethnozoologie. Éric Navet, professeur d’ethnologie émérite dans le même institut, s’intéresse aux relations entre environnements visibles et invisibles chez les Amérindiens Ojibwé (Canada) et Teko (Guyane), tous trois membres du laboratoire SAGE (UMR 7363 CNRS & université de Strasbourg). Ils ont fait appel à des praticiens de diverses disciplines (archéologie, eth-nologie, éthologie, histoire, droit, naturalisme, photographie, psychanalyse) : Rose-Marie Arbogast (archéozoologue, directrice de recherche au CNRS, chargée de cours à l’université de Strasbourg et membre du laboratoire ARCHIMEDE, UMR 7044 CNRS & université de Strasbourg), Romane Batut (diplômée d’un master 1 de l’EHESS, étudiante en master 2 d’ethnologie, université de Strasbourg), Sébastien Baud (docteur en anthropologie sociale et en ethnologie, chargé de cours à l’université de Strasbourg, chercheur associé à l’Institut d’ethnologie de l’université de Neuchatel (Suisse) et à l’Institut francais d’études andines-IFEA, Lima, Pérou), Philippe Bobola (docteur en phy-sique, biologiste, anthropologue et psychanalyste), Sophie Bobbé (ethnologue, chercheur associé au Centre Edgar Morin http://www.iiac.cnrs.fr/cetsah/ sous cotutelle du CNRS et de l’EHESS), Laine Chanteloup (maître de conférences en géographie à l’Institut universitaire de technologie de l’université de Limoges et membre du laboratoire CNRS Géolab UMR 6042), Karen Hoffmann-Schickel, Marie-Françoise Guédon (anthropologue, professeur à l’université d’Ottawa, Canada), Arthur van Hoey (chercheur en anthropologie, histoire de l’art et droit), Nicolas Lescureux (chargé de recherche CNRS, ethnoécologue, membre du Centre d’écologie fonctionnelle et évolutive-CEFE de Montpellier), Gérard Leser (historien et folkloriste spécialiste de l’Alsace, président de la Société d’histoire du val et de la ville de Munster, Pierre Le Roux, John Linnell (écologue, chercheur au Norvegian Institute for Nature Research-NINA, Trondheim, Norvège), Colette Méchin (ethnologue, directrice de recherche émérite au CNRS), Pierre Morère (planteur de café et producteur de miel au Vietnam chez les Mnong Cil, directeur de la société Jangala, commerce équitable), Éric Navet, Zoltán Nagy (professeur et responsable du Département d’ethnographie et d’anthropologie culturelle, Faculté des humanités, université de Pécs, Hongrie), Jean-Noël Passal (ethnozoologue, diplômé en droit, diplômé de l’Ecole des Hautes études en sciences sociales de Toulouse, spécialiste de la chèvre, du loup et de l’ours), Jérôme Pouille (spécialiste du panda géant Ailuropoda melanoleuca, ambassadeur des pandas géants de Chengdu fondateur du site internet www.pandas.fr dédié à cette espèce), Vladimir Randa (ethnologue, chargé de cours à l’Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales, membre du laboratoire des langues et civilisations à tradition orale du CNRS), Philippe Ricordel (naturaliste, photographe), Herman Roote (Amérindien Ojibwé, membre de la première nation de Saugeen dans l’Ontario, ancien policier et administrateur foncier dans sa communauté, photographe), Cécile Sarabian (doctorante en écologie comportementale et biologie évolutive à l’université de Kyoto, Japon), Bernard Sellato (ethnologue, directeur de recherche émérite au CNRS), Jochen Sohnle (professeur de droit public à l’université de Lorraine) ~ Préface de Raymond Pujol, professeur émérite au Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, fondateur des études d’ethnozoologie en France (avec Roland Portères et André-Georges Haudricourt).

Книга посвящена проблемам сохранения языков и культур малых народов и теории и истории социокультурной антропологии (этнологии). В частности в ней впервые анализируются многие сюжеты, связанные с исчезновением коренного населения в Новом Свете, произошедшим в результате европейской колонизации; становлением научного описания и изучения коренных американцев {американистики); направлением в антропологии, получившем название «антропология спасения»; влиянием идей и методов «Исторической школы» в американской антропологии (школы Ф. Боаса) на мировую антропологию, в особенности на развитие ранней советской американистики (Ю. П. Аверкиева и др.). В издание вошли, как публикуемые впервые работы автора, так и изданные ранее.
Адресуется специалистам и широкому кругу читателей, интересующихся культурой и историей народов мира, а также методологическими проблемами истории науки.

This essay discusses the place of shamanism within the Eskimo and Inuit culture and the conversion of arctic peoples to Christianity in Alaska, the Canadian arctic and Labrador.  The paper is broken into four sections: Shamanistic practices of the Alaska Eskimo and their conversion to Russian Orthodox Christianity.  The second section will examine the practices of Inuit’s shaman and the Moravian Brethren missionary conversions of the Inuit to Western Christianity.  Next I will compare the differences between the religious practices of the Alaskan Eskimo and Eastern Inuit as they relate to the first Christian encounters with these peoples.  The final section will focus on the status of modern shamanism and Christianity within the Eskimo and Inuit.

This chapter contributes to the academic study of the cold war Arctic by centering Inuit resistance to the militarization and of the Arctic. To properly understand the extent of Inuit resistance to cold war militarization, I argue, we must consider the close relationship between the nuclear industry and cold war militarization. Indeed, for many Inuit politicians, these two issues were inseparable. My focus is on discursive resistance – what Inuit call Kiumajut (‘talking back’), and what western
activists sometimes call ‘speaking truth to power’ (Kulchyski & Tester, 2007). I examine statements made by Inuit politicians which criticized the way the cold war manifested in Inuit Nunangat (the Inuit homeland).

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive presentation of regular sound correspondences between well-established reconstructed Proto-Uralic and Proto-Eskimo roots, supported by numerous lexical examples. The sources referenced and cited for the Proto-Uralic and Proto-Eskimo roots are restricted to those considered the most reliable and authoritative in their respective fields: Sammallahti’s 1988 article “Historical Phonology of the Uralic Languages” and the Comparative Eskimo Dictionary. The paper presents regular sound correspondences not only for the initial consonants of all Uralic and Eskimo roots cited here, but also for the first vowels and medial consonants of all of these same roots. Each of the 100 Uralic-Eskimo lexical comparisons presented in this paper is effectively cross-listed three times, by three separate classifications: first by initial onset correspondence (pp. 9-26), then by first vowel correspondence (pp. 27-45), and finally by medial consonant correspondence (pp. 46-66). The paper presents precisely defined rules governing the comparison of medial consonant clusters in the medial consonant correspondences section. The primary main rule is that in most cases, it is the first medial consonants in the respective root forms which correspond.

À partir de différents matériaux ethnographiques, cet article s’intéresse à l’actualisation des traditions chez les Inuits de l’Arctique de l’Est canadien. La réflexion est menée à partir d’une comparaison de plusieurs pratiques rituelles qui se sont récemment implantées dans ces régions : les cercles de guérison, ainsi que des pratiques d’inspiration chamanique et néo-chamanique. L’article explique comment, sur le plan symbolique, l’exogénéité de ces pratiques a été réduite dans le cas des cercles traditionnels de guérison, alors qu’elle pose problème dans le cas du néo-chamanisme. Les auteurs font l’hypothèse que, dans le contexte de la sédentarisation et de l’urbanisation contemporaine, les cercles de guérison actualisent des dispositifs chamaniques tandis que le néo-chamanisme semble incompatible avec les traditions locales. Le modèle de la quête individuelle volontaire qui fonde le néo-chamanisme offre peu d’attraction pour les Inuits. En somme, le chamanisme ne demeure sans doute pas assez moribond pour faire l’objet d’une réactivation et est trop vivace pour qu’on accepte sa folklorisation.
ethnographic sources. It presents a comparison of various ritual practices that flourished in Nunavik and Nunavut in the last decade, and more particularly healing circles and practices inspired by shamanism and neo-shamanism. The paper explains how their foreign origin does not constitute a problem for the practices of the healing circles, whereas neo-shamanic ones are not yet accepted or used by the Inuit. The authors raise the question to what extent healing circles illustrate the revival of Inuit spiritual traditions in the new socio-political context of the North marked by the transition to a more urbanized way of life in the so called permanent communities as well as by the recent emergence of political autonomy. The model of the individual and voluntary shamanic quest that characterizes neo-shamanism appears not to be very attractive to Inuit. The tradition of shamanism is still too much alive to be revitalized and too controversial to be considered as folklore.

Archaeological evidence from three sites in southern Labrador excavated or tested between 2009 and 2013 is shown to be valuable for interpreting the diverse nature of the early Inuit-European contact zone. Beginning in the late 17th century, French and then English archival records for the region describe relations with Inuit that were motivated by trade but that repeatedly devolved into violence. Indeed, if only the historical records were available we would learn little of the range of Inuit responses to colonialism other than its context of aggression. The archaeological data, in contrast, decolonize this history and point to a more nuanced contact landscape than suggested by the written records, with clues to varied cultural intersections, and Inuit resilience and persistence.
IN:  Etudes/Inuit/Studies 2015, Vol. 39, no. 1.  The Inuit in Southern Labrador. Editors, L. Rankin, M. Stopp, A. Crompton

The Inuit activist and Nobel Prize nominee Sheila Watt-Cloutier mentioned in her memoirs that the newly built school she had to attend at the age of six, in 1959, “was bigger than most buildings in town.” (Watt-Cloutier 2015). The town was New Fort Chimo, then a “tiny community” in Northern Quebec, now renamed Kuujjuaq and the administrative centre of the territory of Nunavik. Watt-Coutier’s account documents the rapid transformation of the Canadian Arctic during the period covered in this article, a time in which schools were built, rebuilt, and expanded to answer the growing demographic needs of the region. The story of these schools is also that of the development of a modern Arctic, where in one generation “ancient traditions gave way to southern habits.” Built to educate, their design informs us about the intentions of the various stakeholders involved in their establishment, but also about their users, who lived “both in the ice age and the space age.”

There is now an extensive body of academic literature examining how the environmental movement contributed to the colonization of Indigenous peoples and development of capitalism in northern Canada. This paper contributes to these discussions by considering how environmental assessment (EA) helped enable hydrocarbon extraction in the Qikiqtani (Baffin Island) region of Nunavut in the 1970s and 1980s. When exploration activities began to threaten the Inuit harvesting economy, communities protested with letters and petitions. The federal government responded to Inuit resistance by referring proposed exploratory drilling and extraction to its new EA process. While Inuit won significant victories during some assessments of proposed exploratory drilling and extraction, federal EA ultimately helped create the conditions for Inuit to consent to oil extraction. EA helped impose material compromises between Inuit and hydrocarbon industries, including preferential hiring of Inuit, a reduction in the scope of proposed extraction, and the rejection of especially controversial proposals for offshore drilling. These concessions, combined with a collapse in the market for sealskins due to international boycotts, persuaded several Qikiqtani communities to support oil extraction in the 1980s. The ensuing extraction and export of oil from the High Arctic accelerated processes of colonial dispossession and reinforced colonial political dynamics.

In this study, the project team systematically analyzed publicly-available reports, media coverage, and academic commentary on the Canadian Rangers as well as broader Government of Canada and CAF Arctic priorities. It also drew significant insights from focus group conversations and community-based interviews with a diverse group of Rangers from across 1 CRPG. In general, our research confirms that metrics of Canadian Ranger success must measure not only the organization’s contributions to DND/CAF priorities but also contributions to collective and individual resilience that benefit communities, help to meet broader government objectives (at federal, territorial, hamlet, and Indigenous government levels), and promote Crown-Indigenous reconciliation. Applying various concepts of resilience to frame the Rangers’ myriad contributions, we propose metrics and indicators of success that embrace the Canadian Rangers’ distinct forms and terms of CAF service as relevant members of the Defence Team with extensive experience operating in austere conditions who are willing to share their local and traditional knowledge about lands and waters, whilst providing practical support for activities in what many Southern Canadians consider to be “extreme environments.” As members of their local communities, the Rangers also provide a robust and immediate response to the broad spectrum of security and safety issues facing isolated communities.

The report blends descriptive, explanatory narrative (with extensive first-hand quotes providing the insights of Canadian Rangers in their own words) with specific, measurable outcomes. The concluding chapter provides suggestions for proposed next steps.

Alikomiak and Tatamigana were the first Inuit tried and executed for murder under Canadian law. The case was the third in a series of killings of outsiders by Inuit in the western Arctic which had begun in 1912; the first two had resulted in more lenient treatment. The trial of these two men, which took place in the summer of 1923, was in the nature of a show trial, designed by the federal government to show the Inuit that the authorities would no longer tolerate such acts of violence. It was also meant to be a demonstration to the world of Canada’s sovereign rights in the Arctic, rights which had an uncertain foundation in international law. The conviction and execution of Alikomiak and Tatamigana caused controversy at the time; sentiment for clemency was based on claims (made then and subsequently) that Inuit were simple and primitive, and did not understand the principle of execution for murder. The purpose of this collection is to bring together and make publicly accessible primary documents related to this landmark trial. Our hope is that teachers, students and scholars will use this material to discuss and debate the legal aspects of the case, the media coverage of it, and the interactions between the legal cultures of Inuit and the Canadian state.

This study offers a rationale for the need to engage with Inuit communities in Ontario by various provincial, federal, and municipal stakeholders. Although Ontario has strengthened their engagement efforts and initiatives with First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities,
Inuit in this province continue to face specific challenges that relate to a range of factors, comprehensively outlined in this study.

The research is informed by multilevelled analysis, with policy, program, and organizational considerations in mind, and includes interdisciplinary methodology, with a mix of referencing sources (e.g. demographic data, scholarly articles, community work, government policy and reports etc.). It offers thematic insights into engagement practices and challenges
in areas such as research, labour and employment, education and youth, health and poverty, culture and language, or family. In the context of strengthening public processes with Indigenous peoples across Canada, these are areas of interest for municipal, provincial, and federal governments, as well as for organizations and other stakeholders with a say in the well-being of Inuit communities, in the sustainable development of cities in Ontario, and in the prosperity of the larger Canadian society.

While acknowledging the disempowering colonial-structures within the education systems of Canada’s Arctic regions, this study seeks to understand how youth volunteer abroad programs may serve as a tool of empowerment by which Northern Indigenous young people are given opportunities to experience and observe potential possibilities and alternatives to their future. Since the 1950s, youth volunteer abroad programs have been a growing phenomenon that has allowed young people in North American and European societies to engage with cultures in the developing world. This case study examines the before and after experiences of five Indigenous youth from Nunavut and the Northwest Territories that took part in an eight week volunteer program in Costa Rica in the summer of 2017. This paper argues that such programs provide Northern Indigenous students with a means to enlarge their personal capacity to aspire towards alternative futures that were once unknown to them.

Articles Les Inuit face aux changements climatiques et environnementaux La résurgence de chocs cosmopolitiques ? FRÉDÉRIC LAUGRAND Résumés Français English Español L'auteur propose une lecture anthropologique et critique de quelques débats actuels sur l'écologie et les enjeux environnementaux dans l'Arctique canadien. Il montre qu'à partir du moment où la société moderne ne reconnaît plus que sa légitimité découle de sources transcendantes, elle tend à y substituer ses propres valeurs, ce qu'elle effectue par l'intermédiaire de dispositifs éthique et juridique qu'elle souhaite aujourd'hui imposer aux populations locales. Dans le contexte des débats sur le réchauffement climatique, la transcendance de la science écologique et du droit paraît de plus en plus évidente, mais les politiques qui en résultent suscitent des résistances locales, donnant lieu à des chocs cosmopolitiques. ``

The author presents a critical anthropological reading of some current debates regarding ecological and environmental issues in the Canadian Arctic. When modern society ceases to acknowledge the transcendental source of its legitimacy, it tends to substitute its own values and to impose them upon local populations by way of ethical and legal frameworks. Within the context of ongoing debates on climate warming, it is becoming more and more evident that Ecology and Law are acquiring a transcendental nature and that the policies they foster are giving rise to local resistance, thus creating the issue of a "cosmopolitical shock."

El autor propone una lectura antropológica y crítica de algunos debates actuales sobre la ecología y los desafíos medioambientales en el Ártico Canadiense. Él demuestra que a partir del momento en que la sociedad moderna ya no reconoce que su legitimidad deriva de fuentes trascendentes, esta tiende a sustituir sus propios valores, lo que realiza a través de medios ético y jurídico que desea imponer actualmente a las poblaciones locales. En el contexto de los debates sobre el calentamiento, la trascendencia de la ciencia ecológica y del derecho parece cada vez más evidente aunque estas políticas provocan resistencias locales, dando lugar a choques cosmopolíticos.