Are Canada’s Eskimos Indians?

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXVIII, Issue 12915, 9 December 1939, Page 6

Are Canada’s Eskimos Indians?

X3-:W ZEALAND ANTHROPOLOGIST FINDS THAT 3IEMBERS OF l-LIGH RACE HAVE SIMILAR CHA RACTERISTIC S

Ottawa —Arc Eskimos Julians? Thu< 2- Canadian provinces would like* to have definitely settled, for Li' they aio Indians, then they conic under the Dominion and not the- provincial governments. Hoping to have some light shed upon this moot question. a correspondent •sough.t out Diamond Jenness, Canada’.; noted anthropologist. She I'oimd him in his office- at the National Museum of Canada, alert, wiry, and keen-eyed, and, he amazed his visitor by pointing to a photogiaph and remarking, “They are my father and mother!” a smiling Eskimo and his cheerful, fat wife, at least fat in Arctic attire. He explained that they adopted him as their son when he spent many months in the Arctic. A native New Zealander, Dr. Jenness has masters and honorary degrees from Oxford and New Zealand University. His anthropological researches have resulted in authoritative hooks on both Indians and Eskimos, while long sojourns , among primitive peoples have placed him | in the foremost rank of scholars, j To-day he is Chief'of the Division of Anthropology of the National Museum of Canada and consulting Antropologlst of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Approachable and genial, Dr. Jenness explained in detail his Eskimo “parents” Ikpuck and Icehouse. It was when he spent two years at Coronation Gulf in the Far North that these two adopted him and he liyed season in and season out with his Eskimo family which also included Jennie, his “sister,”’ named after him, and her brother. From autumn round to autumn he followed their migrations from sea to land and land to sea,'living in snow huts in the winter and when these melted, in tents. Ikpuckhuak, Dr. Jenness explained, means the “dirty,” but he ally asserted that Ikpuck was clean and that the name is a “famous” family title he inherited, while Icehouse is a translation of Higilark, a kind of cellar, in which Eskimos commonly store meat.

Although he went north to learn about Eskimos, Dr. Jenness said he was as great a curiosity to them as they t to him. They decided white just like themselves. In winter when the caribou migrated south, when twilight hours were brief and nights long, the natives banded into tribes to wrest food from the frozen seas, by sitting hours over a. hole in the ice fishing. When the sun returned, they broke up into families and wandered after caribou. Because .Ikpuck and Icehouse wished him to be a“worthy son,” he became expert in seal fishing and in hunting tor food. So he shared their fortunes and their diet, the latter often including flesh and fish. And that, according to Dr. Jenness. seemed to connect Eskimos with the Naskapi Indians of the Labrador Peninsula as their digt also is chiefly flesh and fish. ' ® The comparison was intensified as Dr. Jenness told how family counted most, the tribe least, that Eskimo dances had a superficial resemblance to open-air meetings .of a church army band, save that the Eskimo’s only instrument is a drum. He said the occupations Of the parents are the pastimes of the children, who learn in play their- duties of after years, such as enclosing make-believe deer with fences of turf and digging 1 shallow pits from which to shoot their arrows. Sometimes they would mark out a line of snow huts with pebbles and fill a dance house with imaginary people. Dr. Jenness explained that some of the Eskimos, among them the Copper Eskimos, of Coronation Gulf; I to which Ikpuck, Icehouse, and Jennie belonged, have almost certainly some Indian blood in their veins, although in temperament they, are different. > • . According to Dr. Jenness he found the Eskimo invariably a jolly* person, with a smile and a laugh always quivering on his lips. He laughs away the greatest • hardship with a joke and will follow you any-

I where as long as you smile at him, j and an Eskimo only remembers a I wrong occasionally. Some Indians on the contiary brood over a hurt a time and are serious without much sense of humour, Dr. Jenness explained, adding that he was speaking of the Naskapi and Montagnais [ Indians of Labrador and the Mackenzie Ri*vei’ Valley, and not the Blackfeet and tribes on the Pacific Coast, who have a keen sense of humour and witty repartee. To-day, Dr. Jenness said there is “no isolated region in Canada where either Indians or Eskimos live untouched by civilization. My Eskimo friends all have rifles and shotguns instead of bows and arrows. They call at the Government wireless station at the mouth of the Coppermine River to hear world news. They watch a ’plane land and take off during the summer months. The price of fox furs is more important to them now than the number of caribou. Two or three of their maidens have married white trappers, and before 50 years have passed there will not be many pure Eskimos anywhere in Arctic Canada, just 'as there are very few to-day ou Baffin Island, in Labrador, and in Greenland.” From what Dr. Jenness said it seemed that environment and not a common stock gave Eskimos and Indians some similar characteristics and that Eskimos really are Eskimos and Indians.