Fitting Eskimos into modern society

Press, 18 September 1976, Page 13

Fitting Eskimos into modern society

The People's Land: Eskimos and Whites in the Eastern Arctic. By Hugh Brody. Penguin Books. 240 pp. and maps. $3.15.

(Reviewed by John Wilson)

' The.encounters between people from more advanced civilisations and those from simple, primitive societies have provided history with some of its saddest chapters. The primitive people have gained usually sdme material benefits, but at a cost of severe demoralisation, and the loss of what was good as well as what was bad in the traditional primitive society. Thisbook recounts one of the more recent chapters in this sad history. The setting is the bleak Canadian Arctic, best known, in the popular mind, as the scene of the exploits of explorers and fur trappers. A new breed of whites has flowed into the region in recent years — Government officials, teachers and such — as part of* the Canadian Government’s efforts to draw the tiny Eskimo population of the area into the mainstream of Canadian life. The nature and purposes of the white “invaders” had changed; the effect of the invasion on the native peoples has, Mr Brody argues, been

cumulative and continuously the same. The Eastern Canadian Arctic was once the home of a considerable number of people who were economically self-reliant, and whose ways of life were well-adapted to the rigorous environment. The self-reliance of the Eskimo people and their ability to wrest a living that satisfied them from the barren wastes and freezing seas were first sapped by the furtraders. Now they are being sapped still further by the whites who are in the region as the agents of a benevolent but blind Government. The Eskimos still handker, if Mr Brody has read their minds correctly, and he seems to have, to regain their autonomy and preserve, or revive if necessary, the old ways and attitudes which made them a distinct, self-proud people. But they are confused and uncertain how to go abolt this in the face of the determination of individual whites to stamp out customs, attitudes and ways of behaviour regarded as backward and primitive. The fixed policy of the Government is to transform the Eskimos so that they fit into the “modern” social and economic system which is seen as best for the Eskimos (and, not incidentally)

for the companies which want to exploit the region’s mineral riches. This is a classic case of internal colonialism surviving long after colonialism on the international level has been superseded in most places. Mr Brody is well versed in the formal, theoretical critiques of colonialism. But he avoids excessively theoretical discussion and ideological invective, although he is indignant against the white, middle-class community which, with the best of intentions has inflicted such, damage on Eskimo culture.

■ “The People's- Land” describes individuals in situations where the whites and the Eskimos confront each other. Mr Brody tells how Eskimos and whites see each other and themselves, and biends pleasantly historical material,- and the knowledge he has gleaned from his own residence in small Arctic communities.

Mr Brody’s book is a devastating criticism of the policies of the Canadian Government, policies which are insensitive to the actual wishes and preferences of the people, they are intended or proclaimed to serve. Mr Body asks that the Government sponsor a “sustained enclave” which would give the Eskimos an alternative to uncertain and degrading status as wages labourers in the extractive industries or as recipients of government welfare — a status to which present policies will, if unchanged, soon consign them. In a “sustained enclave” Mr Brody suggests, a mixed economy would give Eskimos who wanted it a chance to choose to be “inummarik” — * a real Eskimo. Few members of most traditional “primitive” societies have been given this chance. The Eskimos are adjusting to pressures put on them to change their ways. But because the pressures have come so late they may yet be able to preserve the traditional ways that have made them distinct and which they al! admire and respect. ;*