"From a distance it would have looked like violence."

eskimo poetry

Here I stand,

Humble, with outstretched arms.

For the spirit of the air

Lets glorious food sink down to me.

Here I stand

Surrounded with great joy.

And this time it was an old dog seal

Starting to blow through his blowing hole.

I, little man,

Stood upright above it,

And with excitement became

Quite long of body,

Until I drove my harpoon in the beast

And tethered it to

My harpoon line!

Recorded and translated from the Inuktitut by the Danish ethnographer and explorer Knud Rasmussen in Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, 1921-24.

Here i go again, trudging through more arctic tundra cold...what can i say? It's a bit of an addiction. I'm not sure what it is about these books that draws me in so thoroughly, other than an evocation of my childhood, and a connection with my lost eskimo foster sister. There is also something about the epic nature of cold, and for that matter many kinds of endurance books (but cold especially~and have i ever told you with my obsessive reading of mountain climbing account books?) This time it's Consumption by Kevin Patterson (his first novel, or so i'm told.) This is really not cheery stuff, but i still found it a good read. The action itself covers about a generation of life in the Canadian Yukon starting when industrial western world truly began its encroachment on that land and its peoples in the early sixties and ending a little after the turn of the century.

The focus constantly shifts between a number of main characters, mainly centering around Native American Victoria and her family: her white husband Robertson; their children, Emo, Marie, and Justine; her parents; the village doctor Keith Balthazar; two village teachers; as well as the rest of the eskimo village in Rankin Inlet. Amanda, Balthazar's niece in New Jersey is included, although i often had to wonder why~maybe to show his connection (or lost connections to the white world). Maybe to show the disconnectedness in families? She did allow a shoutout for one of my favorite bands (and one that is quite nostalgic for me) The Monks and their album Bad Habits so that's always a plus. I did like her story i just sometimes wondered what it was doing there.

Victoria is sent away as a child to a Montreal sanatorium for because she is consumptive. When the pills don’t work she must have surgery then she is sent to a foster family. When she finally returns to her village she is almost a stranger to her family and has nearly lost her language. She feels more comfortable with the white men than with her own people.

eskimo poetry

I will walk with leg muscles

Which are strong

As the sinews of the shins of the little caribou calf.

I will walk with leg muscles

Which are strong

As the sinews of the shins of the little hare.

I will take care not to go towards the dark.

I will go towards the day.

Recorded and translated from the Inuktitut by the Danish ethnographer and explorer Knud Rasmussen in Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, 1921-24.

This book is interspersed throughout with Dr. Balthazar’s medical notes which provide a fascinating picture of epidemiology among other medical topics if you’re into that sort of thing, with i am (by the by, consumption~so called because of the way it seems to consume its victims from the inside, is what we now call tuberculosis~just in case you didn't know.)

Although Robertson is at first somewhat tolerated for his attempt at learning the people’s ways when he is part of the South African conglomerate wishing to (and eventually succeeding in) bring a diamond mine to town things come to a head. Most of the characters in this book are quite tragic and most come to a tragic end (not to give it away or anything) The reading can get a little dense at times (and i wish some of the Inuit terms had received a little more gloss than they did~though a bit of contextual intuition can go a long way) but i found it well worth the time i put into it.

eskimo poetry

Hard times, dearth times

Plague us every one,

Stomachs are shrunken,

Dishes are empty . . .

Mark you there yonder?

There come the men

Dragging beautiful seals

To our homes.

Now is the abundance

With us once more

Days of feasting

To hold us together.

Know you the smell

Of pots on the boil?

And lumps of blubber

Slapped down by the side bench?

Joyfully

Greet we those

Who brought us plenty!

Recorded and translated from the Inuktitut by the Danish ethnographer and explorer Knud Rasmussen in Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, 1921-24.