A different place

By NUNATSIAQ NEWS

JOHN AMAGOALIK

The Inuit of the circumpolar world, totalling about 150,000, in comparison to other peoples might be looked at as being vulnerable.

How can such a small population not be overwhelmed by others who are “as numerous as the mosquitos we see in the summer?” In the early days it was assumed that it was only a matter of time before Inuit were quietly “civilized” from a pagan and savage culture and assimilated into mainstream society. It was assumed that the Arctic homeland of the Inuit would also be taken over by settlers, either by sheer numbers or conquest, like the rest of North America had been taken from other aboriginal peoples.

But it was soon discovered that this was not the western plains where colonial settlers came riding on horseback and shot everything in their way. The would-be colonizers had to arrive by dog teams and soon discovered that their fingers were so numb from the cold that they couldn’t even unzip their own pants. Many older Inuit smile and chuckle as they tell stories about having to unzip the pants of the “big boss policeman” so he wouldn’t pee in his pants.

It was soon clear that conquest by force was not a pleasant option. The Inuit were not warlike and had already been warned by their seers that challenging the newcomers would only bring more with deadly weapons. So, war was out.

The newcomers decided that they would educate the Inuit away from their way of life. The governments of the day had a very clear policy of assimilating their new wards. By this time, a more enlightened society was beginning to realize that what they had been doing to aboriginal cultures was wrong.

The new thinking was that no one had the right to dominate and colonize other peoples as had happened in places where the likes of Columbus had travelled. This new thinking has taken decades to work itself into society, and is now beginning to be put into practice in places like Nunavut.

The aboriginal peoples of the southern parts of North America sutfered hundreds of years of colonialism, war, and assimilation policies. But the Arctic was a different place. The colonialism and attempts at assimilation lasted decades and not hundreds of years. They couldn’t overwhelm us because of our climate. They couldn’t wage war because their policemen couldn’t even unzip their own pants.

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