THE ESKIMO

Evening Star, Issue 19520, 30 March 1927, Page 2

THE ESKIMO

CARE OF THE MCE HAND OF CIVILISATION What is regarded as the most notable achievement in the care of an indigenous race is the establishment of an Infants’ Refuge, under the supervision of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, at Coronation Gulf, for the purpose of checking; infanticide by Eskimo mothers, (writes the Vancouver correspondent of the Wellington ‘ Evening Post'), With the depletion of furbearing animals in the Arctic, and recurrent periods of famine, the burden of rearing infants has become more than Eskimo mothers can bear. They would not do away with their children if they could see another course open to them. It is intended that the infants will be put in charge of Eskimo women at the Mounted Police post at the Gulf until they are old enough to return to them parents. The Eskimos now number 6,000. Widely scattered over the northern areas of Canada*, only once a year can supplies bo shipped into certain central points, .from which distribution is made by dog teams. In the Mackenzie Delta, where they have reasonably close touch with civilisation, the Eskimos are living under satisfactory conditions. but elsewhere they are passing througn a serious shortage of food. The deflection of the path of migration of the great cariboo herds has deprived the natives in the Coronation Gulf country of a food supply, as well as clothing. They have not yet located the haunts of the herds, and the police are encouraging them to turn their attention to securing a big catch of fish, which can be dried for consumption by human beings and dogs during the long winter. Fish nets have been procured, ns well as materials for making fresh ones, and the police are instructing the natives in their use and proper methods of storage. In Ungava, many of the natives are living m a territory now practically desc-'ed by fur-bearing animals, on which they, too, depended for food and clothing, and a new means of livelihood must he found for them.

The majority of the Eskimos, except those in the vicinity of the bigger posts, are still ignorant of any conception of the law. They follow the dominant primordial instinct, and kill any alleged or suspected offender. To counteract this, simply-worded i esters, in Eskimo dialects, have been circulated by the police, explaining the rudiments of the law, with a vw to assisting in the gradual education of the natives to adapt themselves to standards utterly foreign to their past modes of living.