Nunani: In the bones of the world (Part nine)

RACHEL QITSUALIK

Inuit are extremely loyal to their oral traditions, always reluctant to alter story details. This tendency becomes stronger as one looks further west, with Alaskan storytellers refusing to even tell a story if they cannot remember a minor character’s name.

Even in the east, it was normal for a storyteller who had forgotten part of a tale to end it prematurely, rather than substituting his or her own imaginings. This explains the segmented feel of many Inuit stories — most tales are actually only chapters of much larger epics. For example, the beloved Kiviuq (the wayward shaman culture-hero) is spoken of in many short adventures, but all “Kiviuq stories” are actually part of a larger, overarching epic, having a distinct beginning and end.

Thanks to such fidelity, we can use Inuit folklore as a kind of murky, cultural lens, snatching glimpses of the very real past. Tales are always drawn from the real experiences of their inventors — consciously or not. Ideas are shape-shifters, but they originate from somewhere.

In the case of the Tunit, the folklore would immediately seem to conflict. As already mentioned, some of the Tunit tales tell of their incompetence — others of their wisdom. Most stories portray them as a peculiar paradox, stupid in some ways while clever in others.

So which version is true? I think that we can detect the truth by setting folklore side-by-side with archaeohistory. We know that Inuit are of the Thule culture, while Tunit are the Dorset. We also know that the Thule, in order to adapt to an increasingly colder Arctic, developed ingenious technologies that enabled them to hunt sea-mammals efficiently. The Thule then moved into Dorset lands.

Try to imagine, then, what these people must have experienced, and what they must have thought of each other. The Thule/Inuit would have had admirable tools and hunting methods; but as newcomers, they would not have known the land. The Dorset/Tunit would seem more primitive by comparison, having far less efficient hunting techniques and technologies — but they must have had the advantage of wisdom, of knowing the land and the seasons in their part of the world, of knowing when specific animals come and go, of how to read the weather.

Many Inuit tales state things like, “The Tunit were incompetent, but they taught Inuit many things.” This sounds almost insane, and yet it may actually be the honest truth.

It seems likely to me that the reason for this Inuit folkloric perception (also note the lack of open warfare between Tunit and Inuit) results from the fact that there was an exchange of knowledge between the two peoples from the time that Inuit first arrived in Tunit lands.

As newcomers, Inuit would not have known the land very well, and would have depended upon the Tunit — who knew it then as well as Inuit know it today — to teach them about the geography, weather patterns, and animal migratory patterns. In this way, the Tunit would have seemed knowledgeable to Inuit. And yet Inuit would immediately have noticed that the Tunit didn’t think to use toggles on their harpoons, to build boats, to have dogs pull their sleds, et cetera. In this way, the Tunit would have seemed stupid to Inuit.

Then this would make the folklore true — to Inuit, the Tunit were at once wise and inept.

Before I end, I should note that Inuit are far from unique in having such folklore — that of shy, short-yet-robust beings, odd in their nature, possessing ancient wisdom. Many cultures around the world mention such beings in their folklore, the most well-known perhaps being from Europe, and especially Scandinavia.

Many archeologists and folklorists believe that these beings, like the Tunit, derive from older, primitive peoples that faded away in the face of migratory waves of technologically advanced peoples. As a land’s older occupants dwindle into obscurity, so do they take on folkloric status to its current occupants. They are the long-ago ones, those who dwell in the bones of the world.

So Inuit are fortunate, for the last of the Tunit did not live so long ago. Not so much of them has been lost as otherwise might have been, remaining preserved in that loyal, wonderful, oral tradition. It is not much of a monument to the Tunit culture, but it will have to do.

Pijariiqpunga.