Changing Way Of Life For Canadian Eskimos

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27874, 24 January 1956, Page 16

Changing Way Of Life For Canadian Eskimos

PARIS. The Great Sea has set me in motion. Set me adrift, And I move as a weed in the river . . . These are the opening lines of a traditional Eskimo song depicting life as it was in the Arctic wastes of Canada. But today, the future of the Eskimo is no longer left so completely to the whims of nature. His life is changing. There are young Canadian Eskimos at school planning careers as teachers, while others are studying for technical posts in Canada’s Arctic weather stations. The development of Arctic Canada came much later than that of other northern lands. In fact, until the arrival of whalers early in the nineteenth century, many Canadian Eskimos never dreamt that other men existed. They called themselves Innuit, meaning The People—the only people Their isolation began ‘to end in the eighteen twenties when the first British ships ventured north through Davis Strait to Baffin Island, and when, a decade later, United States whalers turned their attentions to the west, coming into touch with the nomadic Eskimos of Canada’s north-western reaches. End of Eskimo Stone Age Gradually, the long, dark night of the Eskimo stone age came to an end. The hunters and fishers of the hostile Arctic shores laid aside their bows and arrows. The women were given cooking utensils, knives, needles and matches. The men obtained firearms (which of all innovations was the one that made the greatest change in their lives), and some even became owners of whale boats. Also, the use of tobacco became general. But after a century of hunting, the demand for whale bone declined.

Whaling days ended and, although the Eskimo emerged better equipped from his contact with the whalers, he was again haunted by the spectre of starvation. Then, in 1909, the Hudson Bay Company opened its first trading post in the barren land of the Eskimos, and hfe in the Arctic took another turn. Furs, not whales, were wanted, and by 1923 a chain of trading posts had been established in northern Canada. It took the Eskimos some time to change over from hunting to trapping. Hunters they were by instinct and tradition; they considered that trapping was fit only for women and children. Even today, the Eskimo man remains essentially a hunter and it is only when he has some important object in view, such as a new rifle, that he will take trapping seriously. Food, Shelter and Clothing Son of a frugal, barren land, the Canadian Eskimo has always faced death with a deeply-rooted fatalism. Yet the dread of starvation, the common lot of his ancestors, still leaves its imprint on a generation for whom the. cause of this fear has disappeared. But saving for a day of scarcity is apparently a concept quite outside the understanding of the Eskimo. If there is plenty of food, he is inclined to eat it all at once. With the exception of the caribou hunters in the interior, seals have always been the mainstay of the Eskimos. The majority still live in igloos during the winter and in tents during the summer. Seal blubber provides them with light and fuel, though in some areas primus stoves have been introduced. Clothing and tents • come from seal and caribou skins. Nowadays, however, imported garments have taken the place of seal skins for summer wear.

Thus the Canadian Eskimo is no longer self-sUfficient. Firearms, boats, clothing, food and equipment are all imported and, in the more populated areas, there is a slowly-growing trend to give up the nomadic way of life and settle permanently where wood and other materials are available. But the primitive culture of the Eskimo has not disappeared. By tradition and inclination the Canadian Eskimo is a carver. Unfamiliar with the tools of modern sculptors, he has shaped forms—strikingly similar to the work of contemporary European artists—out of the lifeless rocks that surround mm. His work is characterised by a simplicity of design and a smallness probably made necessary by his seminomadic existence. He is intimately acquainted with the subjects he portrays, for the most part human forms or graphic stories of the hunt. Human emotions and expressions are often attributed to animal subjects which are either mythological or ritual, for there is a belief that the carved image of an animal will evoke the living animal itself.

Eskimo art is not limited to sculpture. The women, too, do highly original design on baskets and clothing and, with awl and sinew, stitch silhouette skin pictures on bags and tents. Until recently, there was no market for Eskimo art but, in 1950, the Canadian Handicrafts Guild received the first of a series of Government grants to assist its development, and today these handicrafts provide an additional source of income. The transition of the Canadian Eskimo from his primitive Condition to his preasent situation has been a gradual one, lasting a little more than a century. There are now resident doctors, nurses and teachers in the Arctic. Family allowances were introduced in 1948, and in 1952'the Government set up an Eskimo Committee—with a sub-committee on education—which, it is hoped, will plan long-term programmes.

Conservation studies are also in progress. The Eskimos are being taught that their natural resources are exhaustible and that they must make the best possible use of them. They are being encouraged to develop local industries such as whaling, boatbuilding, reindeer herding and the manufacture of certain types of clothing. In this connexion, a loan fund has been established to assist in projects that will improve the standards of living. The Canadian Department of External Affairs views the future with confidence. “There is every prospect,” says a recent report, “that this assistance from the Government, together with the Eskimos’ pride in their own ability, will see them through their present and future adaptation to the new ways of life with which they are coming more and more in contact.” (UNESCO)