The Inuit

Ever since white men first made contact with the Inuit, they have grappled with the perplexing and monumental problem of trying to ascertain the origins of these unique people, who have inhabited the arctic regions of the world for 5,000 years, not only surviving in this inhospitable environment, but living satisfying, creative lives under conditions unacceptable and almost intolerable to much of mankind. For more than two centuries, anthropologists, archaeologists, ethnographers and cartographers have pursued exhaustive studies, have completed many successful excavations, and have established some exciting conclusions as far as the dim recesses of antiquity allow. A composite of the studies of such authorities on Inuit history allows us to separate the development of the Canadian Inuit into four distinct phases, preceded by the original parent culture called the Denbigh Flint Complex.

The Denbigh Flint Complex
Circa 2500 B.C. to 900/800 B.C.

The Denbigh Flint Complex was discovered and named by J. Louis Giddings, the American archaeologist, and covered a span of about 1500 years in the area of the Bering Sea coast of Alaska. Although it cannot be proved that the Denbigh Flint people were Inuit, it is reasonably certain that the Inuit culture developed from these origins. The artifacts uncovered by Giddings suggest that the Denbigh people were nomadic hunters who moved with the seasons, hunting seal and probably walrus, and surely taking advantage of the abundance of fish readily available to them. Perhaps some of the Denbigh people remained in the coastal areas, living on seal meat, fish, birds and whatever small animals inhabited the tundra. Others may have lived inland, relying on caribou for their staple diet. It is also possible that they alternated between coast and inland, benefiting from a change of diet and having a choice of raw materials for clothing - sealskins for summer, caribou skins for winter, just like the Inuit have done up until very recent times. The Denbigh people were highly skilled in making flint and obsidian tools such as harpoon heads, side blades and points for setting into arrow shafts and spears. There is no evidence that they had boats, but anyone who has seen an umiak, the traditional Inuit large boat, which is so beautifully constructed of bone and driftwood, covered with the skin of the seal and sewn so expertly with caribou sinew, can easily imagine the earliest Inuit people doing likewise. No skeletons of the Denbigh people have been found to show whether or not their physical structure was Inuit, nor of course was their any record of their language, but recent linguistic studies have suggested that the Inuit language is at least 5000 years old, and so it is reasonable to surmise that the Denbigh people spoke an ancient form of Inuktituk.

The Pre-Dorset Period
Circa 2500 to 900/800 B.C.

The first phase of Canadian Inuit history is known as the Pre-Dorset period, and it embraces a 1,600 year span. While the Denbigh Flint Complex was flourishing on the west coast of Alaska, it was also sending out migrations of nomadic hunters. These people moved eastward from Alaska to Canada, and then on to northeastern Greenland, which they reached about 2000 B.C., developing their own distinct culture in the process. The hunters and highly skilled craftsmen of this period, like the Denbigh people, left a heritage of burins, microblades, side blades, and knife and weapon points to those of the parent culture. In some areas of the Canadian Arctic, the Pre-Dorset people also left distinct traces of their habitations. These take the form of roughly rectangular hollows which were the foundations of their dwellings, and rings of stones which anchored the skin tents of their summer camps. It is established that they lived in small, widely scattered groups, motivated by their own traveling needs and the movements of the animals which they hunted. Sporadic evidence of cooking hearths appears: heat-shattered, blackened stones, where the people cooked fish, meat or bones. Such domestic signs help to bridge the years, and make one feel close to and familiar with the people, in much the same way as do the throwing ribs of a handmade pot, when one feels the potter's finger impressions made a thousand years ago or more.

The Dorset Period
Circa 900/800 B.C. to 1300 A.D.

This culture, spanning 2,000 years, was the discovery of Diamond Jenness, chief of the Anthropology Division of the National Museum of Canada. In 1924, a collection of artifacts found by Inuit at Cape Dorset and Coats Island was sent to the Museum to be analyzed, and during his examination, Jenness found some items which were clearly of a period called Thule. However, Jenness also found some items in the collection which were foreign to those already accepted and classified as Thule; his continued studies enabled him to deduce and establish yet another culture quite separate from, and older then, Thule culture, and probably extinguished by it. He called this newly discovered period the Cape Dorset Culture, which in general reference is abbreviated to the Dorset Culture. Although there has been some disagreement amongst archaeologists concerning the origins of the Dorset people, it seems most likely that they developed from the Pre-Dorset culture, which shows many similarities to the Dorset culture. The Dorset people were nomadic hunters moving over the land from coast to interior in search of their daily food. They were skilled in chipping of weapon heads of chert and quartz, and they also made use of caribou antler, bone, and ivory for a variety of implements. The runners of their sled, for example, were sometimes shod with ivory plates. In addition to their quartz and chert weapon points and tools, the Dorset people used slate for blades of one sort or another. This fact gave rise to some speculation about Alaskan or even Indian influence, as the use of slate has no apparent connection with the Pre-Dorset culture. In many ways, the Dorset people's way of life and their methods of survival seem similar to those of Inuit today. It is known that they built stone weirs for trapping fish, that they used spears for fishing, and that they had a version of bird-dart, which is a long shaft with a barb at the tip and several forward-pointing barbs halfway down the shaft. Although they lived in skin tents and in partly underground houses, some of which probably had skin roofs, the Dorset people are given credit for the possible introduction of the snowhouse, which is also partly underground, in that the wall bricks are cut out of an area which then becomes a lower floor level. It is generally agreed that they had boats of some sort, but precisely what kind of boat is not known. Neither is there any evidence of their having dogs, and they may well have pulled their sleds themselves. The Dorset people are also accredited with the introduction of a very important tool. a portable fireplace called a kudluk. The kudluk as we know it today is a shallow, half-moon shaped dish made of stone. In it, lumps of blubber or fat were beaten down with a bone hammer to release the oil, and a wick was made of caribou moss. This was the only source of light and heat with which to partially cook fish or meat in stone pots, to give some heat in the house and to dry clothing. It was, along with stone cooking pots, the biggest and heaviest item of the family, and of course was taken along on all journeys. It is from the Dorset period that we have our first exciting examples of Inuit carving. From such widely separated areas such as Mansel Island in eastern Hudson Bay, Victoria Island, Igloolik, Bylot Island north of Baffin, and Bathurst Island, come superb small carvings of antler, bone, wood and ivory. The largest of these are several inches long and the smallest are as tiny as three-eighths of an inch. The subjects include animals such as bears and walrus, extraordinary spirit figures, and delicately balanced birds, many engraved with linear patterns. It is difficult to reconcile such delicacy of design with the apparent limitations of Stone Age tools. Human figures, items of human adornment such as amulets, pendants, and combs, and exquisite miniature masks were also carved. The experience of viewing such a collection is exhilarating and humbling. The vitality and force of these tiny gems of primitive art is almost indescribable. The variety of materials and the wide spectrum of moods displayed by the works suggest that these artists of long ago were people with perception and sensitivity. Spending hour after hour at an exhibition, one experiences an array of emotions which leave one feeling overawed, perplexed, frustrated and uplifted.

The Thule Period
Circa 1000 A.D. to 1700 A.D.

The Cape Dorset culture waned about 1300 A.D., and the compass of years from 1000 A.D. to 1700 A.D. emerged as the Thule period, showing a cultural overlap of some 300 years. The Thule period was brought to light by the work of Therkel Mathiassen, a Danish archaeologist who undertook the archeological studies during his travels with Knud Rasmussen on the Fifth Thule Expedition, 1921 to 1924; in so doing he made one of the most radical and significant finds in Arctic archeology. The birth of the Thule culture was occasioned by a new migration, once again drifting eastwards from Alaska over the Canadian Arctic, and into Greenland. These travelers brought with them the traditions derived from a culture known as Birnirk, which existed on the north coast of Alaska, and which itself was a product of the constant progressions and developments of the cultures in the area of the Bering Strait. These changes are linked directly with the Denbigh Flint Complex of 2500 B.C., although some other influences existed also, but it does establish a faint and somewhat tenuous connection between the people of the earliest times and the present Inuit. It is estimated that the Thule people, traveling from northern Alaska along the Arctic coast and through the high Arctic islands, reached northwest Greenland around 1100 A.D. Moving south, they came in contact with Viking settlers on the southwest coast of Greenland. Further movement of Thule people drifted southwards, to Ungava and down the Labrador coast to the Strait of Belle Isle. Although the Thule people lived a nomadic hunting life similar to the Dorset people, and had comparable tools and weapons, they also had dogs for pulling sleds, hunting and packing loads. Further to this development, they established themselves as whale-hunters, and thus put themselves in a superior position to that of their forebears,by obtaining a new material resource for food, artifacts and building supplies. Three hundred years later, Inuit artists across the Canadian Arctic reaped the benefit of the Thule ancestors' enterprise and industry, in having available to them old whalebone for use as a sculptural medium. The whaling activity of the Thule people distinguishes them more than any other characteristic from all earlier Canadian Arctic cultures. Although whaling was practiced in Alaska even long before the Birnirk culture, the Thule people rediscovered for themselves this source of survival material. The tools used by the Inuit today and in very recent times are very similar to those of the Thule people. The Thule people had snow knives, shovels and probes made of caribou antler, tools which are still used today in the construction of snowhouses. A variety of harpoons with detachable heads of caribou antler or ivory, trident fishing spears, dog whips and harnesses made from sealskin, and bird-darts have been excavated from Thule sites. Thule people also had heavy equipment such as umiaks, kayaks, and komatiks (sleds) made from a variety of materials. Stone oil lamps, stone cooking pots, women's equipment such as ulus (the half-moon shaped, all-purpose knife), needle cases of ivory and bone, with ivory or bird needles, skin buckets, cups and dippers, sun goggles of bone or ivory - all such articles excavated from old Thule sites are very like those in recent common use. In matters of housing, the Thule people show substantial advancement over their Dorset predecessors. The Thule villages were somewhat larger, containing as many as thirty houses, whereas the Dorset villages were generally confined to perhaps half that number. The Thule people used the stone of the land more extensively, making low walls of stone and earth sods, supported by frames of whale rib and jaw. They also used flat stones inside their houses for flooring, and for making cooking and sleeping platforms. Thule houses had a passage at the door which served as an insulator between weather and actual entrance into the house. This entrance passage, which has been standard practice in snowhouse construction for a very long time, is still used today. The vestibule area can be used to beat snow from clothing before going inside and can also shelter dogs in violent weather. It seems that the very late Dorset people copied and adopted this practice from the earliest Thule people, during the period of overlap and before the Thule culture obliterated the Dorset culture. Both Dorset and Thule houses were built partly below ground level, the remaining visible depressions pinpointing the locations for archeologists. The Thule people camped in skin tents during the summer, like their Dorset ancestors, and almost certainly adapted from the Dorset people the practice of building snowhouses for temporary winter quarters, as snowhouses were not part of the Alaskan way of life. It is concluded that the present-day Inuit have emerged over the last 250 years from the Thule people, bringing with them much of the Thule way of life, using similar weapons and tools and utilizing the same methods of survival.

The Present Contemporary Period
Circa 1700 A.D. to the Present

No specific cultural label has been given to the span of years from 1700 A.D. to the present time, and it could be given any convenient name such as the Historic Period, the Present Contemporary Period or simply the New Period. The eighteenth century saw the beginnings of contact with the outside world, as whalers, traders (notably the Hudson's Bay Company), and explorers gradually invaded the Inuit world. Missionaries, archeologists, anthropologists, and finally government workers came on the scene, bringing with them their interests and beliefs; hence this phase of Inuit history is not marked so much by one strong cultural pattern as by a mixture of foreign elements, which have inevitably diluted and dissipated to some extent the traditional Inuit way of life. In the last two decades, particularly when the Inuit have made their significant contribution to fine art, many people have become interested in the origins and lifestyle of the Inuit people. I am often asked how it is that Inuit artists, who are totally without training, can draw and sculpt so magnificently and professionally. Based on observation and some knowledge of Inuit history, this talent would seem to spring, in part, from the lifestyle of the Inuit, and in their continuing closeness to those talents and skills which have maintained that lifestyle throughout their history. Even as recent as 1950, some Inuit were still living in showhouse camps in winter, and in skin tents in the summer. They were living off the land, pursuing their old way of hunting, fishing and surviving in a manner no different from that of 500 or 1,000 years earlier. In such circumstances, consider the birth of a baby, a birth perhaps taking place as the Inuit moved from one camp to another. They would stop their dog teams, put down on the snow many thicknesses of caribou or seal skins on which the pregnant woman would kneel. Then the traveling party would stand close together facing outwards, giving the expectant mother privacy and protection from the bitter winds, while the midwife delivered the child. She cut and tied the cord, and ministered to the needs of the mother, who immediately took her tiny baby, climbed back on to the komatik and journeyed on. The total world of that Inuit child, as he grew into adulthood, remained as it had been when he was born. It was a world containing just a few human beings: his father and mother, his brothers and sisters, his grandparents and the other children and adults of the camp. The child grew up observing and imitating the actions and movements of his elders. He observed and absorbed the shapes and movements of the seal, walrus, caribou, bear, fox, wolverine and hare; and not only did he learn what they looked like from the outside, but he also was shown what they looked like from the inside, when the elders expertly butchered the animals. Thus he grew up with an intimate knowledge and understanding of the fauna and flora of the land, knowledge he needed in order to survive. At a very early age he was taught how to make and use a caribou bone bow and arrow, how to make a bird-dart, a snow knife and a harpoon, how to cut thong for a dog harness, and how to build a komatik, a kayak and an umiak. As he learned these demanding crafts, he also learned to read the land, the sea and the sky in summer and in winter. By adulthood he had served a long apprenticeship which permitted no ignorance or ineptitude, and he had acquired therefore great skill with mind and hands. The manual and artistic skill, and the intelligence and imagination required to build a kayak frame are as great as that required to carve a human or animal form from a piece of stone. Too often many of us draw a rigid line of demarcation between the two, dismissing the former as a rough kind of carpentry job which most people could do, while glorifying the latter as being achievable only by a very few. The Inuit confound and contradict by demonstration much of what we have been taught to believe about the arts, proving over and over again that they can carve a superb mother and child, a powerful musk ox, or an evocative spirit figure in stone, bone or ivory, just as easily and successfully as they can carve the difficult and complicated components of a walrus harpoon. They believe that the same talents are required to do either task, which is so, provided that one's mind is photographically familiar with the subject, and one's hands are skilled with a lifetime's practice. For those of us who have been able to travel in the Arctic and who have had the privilege of gaining at least a glimpse and taste of Inuit life as it used to be, it is saddening to see the vital, natural function of strong, handsome dogs usurped by snowmobiles with their attendant noise, smell and litter of discarded parts as they wear out and are abandoned. The elegant kayaks and the large skin umiaks (one of the most exciting and magnificent tools of the Inuit) are now replaced by small aluminum, wood and plastic craft, all of course powered by outboard or inboard motors which intrude their raucous, staccato cacophony into a beautiful, vast and otherwise peaceful land. Many other elements detrimental to the Inuit people and their culture have insidiously crept in, too depressing and pointless to mention; but in fairness and honesty, one must also consider the gifts and advantages which come from the inevitable marriage of primitive society and the modern world. In place of the indescribable harshness of winter traveling, hunting and living in snowhouses, Inuit families now have some comforts in their small, oil heated timber houses, where clothes can be washed and dried, young children can tumble about naked on the floor, and families can relax and sleep in safety and comfort. No longer can the stark horror of starvation strike a village, reducing the people to eating first their dogs and then their fellow beings in order to survive, as fearful weather conditions or other factors drive game beyond their reach. The death toll from diseases like botulism, the endured pain and crippled results of broken limbs from hunting accidents, and legion physical ailments no longer give the Inuit people a life expectancy of some thirty years. Now every community in the North has trained and caring medical services. While the Inuit have gained some measure of material comfort and security from contact with the outside world, it is outsiders, and particularly those involved in fine art, who have truly benefited from the opening up of the north. For this, credit must go largely to James and Alma Houston, who had the wisdom and foresight to perceive the immense artistic value of Inuit art, and the courage and conviction to see their vision made real. James Houston, a talented young Canadian painter, with a great interest in the Arctic and its people, felt instinctively that the Inuit had a considerable fine art potential. He spent some time in the low eastern Arctic in areas around Port Harrison, and had his thoughts and hopes confirmed in the small fine carvings which he found there. With the approval of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, he finally elected to settle in Cape Dorset with his wife Alma, and there he introduced the Inuit to the art of stonecut printmaking, which he had studied in Japan. Because of his sensitivity and respect for the Inuit, James Houston did not impose his personal tastes upon them, but simply taught them the mechanics of the art: how to select and prepare the surface of the stone, how to draw the design on it, how to cut it, how to prepare and apply the colors, and how to transfer the image from the stone onto the paper. Having taught them the practical procedures, he wisely allowed them to express their own thoughts, dreams and legends. Alma Houston, who shared her husband's project in Cape Dorset, has also made a great contribution to the Inuit, and has been responsible for much of the world's awareness of the art. She was the driving force for the establishment of Canadian Arctic Producers in Ottawa, and she worked tirelessly as Fine Art Director, planning and arranging exhibitions of sculpture and prints in the United States and Europe. Canadian Arctic Producers Limited was established in 1965 as a Crown Corporation, whose purpose was to collect, channel and distribute the sculpture and prints of the Inuit. It was established with a view to it becoming an Inuit Cooperative, which it did in the early 1970s. Of all those involved at a high level in the field of Inuit art, Alma Houston had the most vision, intelligence and grasp of the unique situation. Her drive and conviction was not simply because of a love of Inuit art but came also from a deep and genuine love for the Inuit people. Although the Inuit are still in touch with the lifestyle of their ancestors, they are, like any aboriginal people, threatened by the modern world with its influences, customs and habits which are totally foreign to them, and often destructive. However, an ancient way of life and a unique philosophy of life are not easily annihilated, especially in the case of the Inuit, where climatic conditions have perhaps swung from being an enemy to becoming an ally, protecting them, at least to some degree, from the inroads of modern society. In addition, the Inuit are showing themselves very capable of controlling their own destiny and already, in many ways, are realizing the folly of adopting the less desirable habits of southern society. For example, they have taken a tough stand in several places against alcohol because of the damage and degradation they observed, and have had liquor licenses removed. There is proof, too, that small bands of Inuit are breaking away from some of the settlements, living on the land in their own camps, in skin tents and in sod and stone houses, hunting for their food in the old way, wearing traditional caribou and sealskin clothes, and making it quite clear that they do not want outsiders to visit them. This keen awareness of the past and a desire to keep in touch with it, coupled with the availability of indigenous materials, ensures that the artists will continue to develop their style of carving, and there is ample evidence that their sculpture is getting better and better all the time.

In closing I would like to express my deepest appreciation to Alistar MacDuff, author of "Lords of the Stone" for graciously allowing me to use his work for this section.