Nunani: War (Part one)

RACHEL ATTITUQ QITSUALIK

As everyone knows, Inuit have always been the most gentle, peaceful people in the world. Right?

Well, as with most things, the truth regarding such a topic resides within some shade of gray. Just as there are no true absolutes in life, so there is no absolute truth to the idea that Inuit are strangers to violence, or even warfare.

The need for organized violence in any society is of course shaped by necessity, the environmental and social parameters within which varying forms of violence become options.

Violence is always in origin a “problem-solver.” Whether effective or not, it is always intended to right a wrong, to address a lack — whether deemed defensive (resisting assault, theft, or invasion), acquisitive (taking food, slaves, territory, etc.), retaliatory (avenging murder, rape, vandalism, or insult), or merely as a cathartic expression of frustrated rage.

The simple fact is that Inuit, over the broad range of peoples who lived from one end of North America to the other, actually engaged in a startling amount of violence, much of which was organized. In this series of articles, I’m going to be using my own definition of war, which is essentially that of organized violence. Webster’s defines war as “armed conflict between nations, tribes, or other groups,” which doesn’t necessarily refute my own, so I’m sticking to my guns.

Also, I’m going to cite a lot of examples of Inuit violence — tastefully, of course. The examples will derive from peoples ranging across the North. Naturally, I don’t want to put a bee in anyone’s bonnet by dredging up some unsavoury fact about their ancestry.

All of our ancestors — this is addressed to non-Inuit out there as well — have displayed some sort of depravity at one time or another. So, wherever possible, I intend to omit references to specific peoples, whether they be Igloolik, Netsilingmiut, Copper, or Aleutian. These articles are intended to inform and evoke thought, not to make some readers ashamed of their ancestry.

With all of that out, I’d first like to admit that you will have to look pretty hard among Inuit histories and folklore in order to find anything that obviously resembles war as it is fought today.

After all, Inuit have always been nomadic. In its most recognizable and organized form, war derives from stability. It is based upon the principles of land, territory, and cultural solidarity. It is necessarily launched from a base-point, a home ground, and most often involves the specific goals of seizing ground from an enemy, who also campaigns to do likewise from his own base.

Having had no permanent bases, and lacking even the concept of land as property to be held or defended, the culture of war took no root in any Inuit society. The very idea of territorial warfare might have been laughable to pre-colonial Inuit.

As I’ve pointed out before, the Land – Nuna – was always considered an environment within which animals and people resided, not as an object with distinct parts that could be divided up and actually owned. There were therefore no constant bases from which to launch campaigns, nor was there any ground to take even if there had been.

So what about resources? Again, resources — such as food or slaves — were no reasons for Inuit to go to war. Inuit tended to follow their food (caribou, for example) to wherever it was seasonally available. The caches and larders of other peoples were rarely worth stealing, since this sort of theft would invariably have taken up too much time, energy and risk for what amounted to a very small prize, especially when compared to the availability of animal prey.

Slaves, a very real reason for raiding among most cultures, were kept by Inuit only rarely. They were not highly valued, since they merely represented another mouth to feed. In the south, you can make a slave tend a crop for you, but you can’t send him out hunting, since this is tantamount to setting him free.

Instead, the most common reasons for Inuit conflicts tend to derive from the most ancient and primal human characteristics, old like the culture itself: passion. In fact, the recognition of this fact by ancient Inuit offers us some clues as to why various traditions have come to exist.

We’ll have a look next week.