"I could survive all winter," Dr. West retorted. "I spent an entire year with the last primitive hunters in Alaska."
"I'll be back for you in a week. Be ready." The pilot started the squealing propjet, and the Turbo-Beaver taxied across the ice, its fuselage dimpled with two decades of dents. Screaming faster and faster, it lifted itself, fleeing, shrinking away to the west.
Because Dr. West had ninety pounds of concentrated foods, plus rifle, sleeping bag, camera, notebooks, binoculars and other whitemen's paraphernalia, he didn't walk to meet the sled. Discouragingly, it had halted on the ice. The specks were clustered beside it. Are they arguing what to do about me? Theoretically, they've been segregated from whitemen for twenty years.
He hoped they would greet him with shy grins and outstretched hands like those last Alaskan wanderers, whose daily lives resembled Canada's First Alternative for her Eskimos. They trapped a few furs and were in debt to whitemen. Seasonally pious, they hung around missions and suddenly were gone. The Canadian Eskimos of the First Alternative reappeared at Government Posts to collect their Family Allowances. With much flour and bacon, and harmonicas playing and raisins fermenting and old women dancing, they celebrated all winter. The Canadian Government still hoped the other Four Alternatives would end this alternative or at least tidy it up.
The Second Alternative encompassed the Eskimos permanently working at Government Posts or at Arctic airfields and mines or in the growing Arctic transport industry. Their children more regularly attended school.
The Third Alternative had grown from the Second. Eskimos with more education migrated to the cities. There was a Professor of Sociology at McGill who had been born in an Eskimo village. These Eskimos simply were vanishing into the Canadian melting pot. Their Eskimo cultural heritage was lost.
The Fourth Alternative was Canada's pride. Eight years ago, Dr. West had lived for a year with the Co-Op Eskimos of Bylot Island and Baffinland. But the first Co-Ops had begun far back in 1958 at Ungava Bay, near Labrador. During the next thirty years these Eskimo Co-Operatives had spread throughout the Northwest Territories. In spite of its ponderous bureaucratic title, the Cooperative Development Section of the Industrial Division of the Department of Northern Affairs and Natural Resources shrewdly and patiently had helped these Eskimos learn enough self-confidence to begin making their own group decisions. From carving soapstone art objects, the early Co-Ops expanded to quick-freezing fish, to breeding reindeer, to shipping meat, to renting shops as sales outlets in cities. After guiding sportsmen, Eskimos cooperated to construct tourist airtels. From investing Co-Op self-help funds in new Eskimo ventures, Co-Op Eskimo groups ventured into the stock market. They owned houses, boats and ice cars and watched TV and smoked cigars. The Co-Op Eskimos had created a strong subculture, which no longer was Eskimo.
"The true Eskimos are vanishing," an Assistant Professor of Ethnology at McGill University had cried out before a Parliamentary Committee more than twenty years ago.
A Fifth Alternative for Canada's Eskimos was needed, Hans Suxbey had pleaded; and an excerpt from Hans Suxbey's speech even had been published in California in a 1968 Sierra Club Bulletin , intensely read by a thin high school sophomore named Joe West. "We try to preserve species of trees and animals from extinction," Hans Suxbey was quoted. "But we extinguish mankind's distinctive ways of life. What is a man? He is his way of life. Preserve him from extinction. In this increasingly homogenized world, any independent way of life has increasing value for its own sake. Think of Eskimo culture as 5000 years of the hardiest men ingeniously creating a distinctive way of life which survived the worst blizzards. But one hundred years of cultural erosion from our kerosene and rifles, our bacon and flour, Family Allowances and outboard motors, transistor radios and so-called schools propagandizing our way of life has almost erased the Eskimo's heritage. Eskimo culture must not die!"
The Fifth Alternative for Canada's Eskimos officially began in 1970 when Parliament voted a small appropriation to indemnify existing private interests in the North and to administer the vast new Eskimo Cultural Sanctuary.
"We must stay out." Even Director Hans Suxbey's specially trained Cultural Instructors, a dozen graduate students of Eskimo ethnology, were withdrawn from the Eskimo Cultural Sanctuary as planned after the first winter. "The natural environment is the true teacher of Eskimo culture," Hans Suxbey had announced nineteen years ago. "Not even I will violate the Eskimo Cultural Sanctuary."
Dr. West wondered how the 112 Eskimos who happened to be on the Boothia Peninsula then had reacted when their rifles or cooking pots were taken away by earnest graduate students. Evidently Parliament didn't think democratic choices extended this far north. These abruptly isolated Eskimos' only opportunity to vote had been with their feet. Now there was antipersonnel radar along the invisible boundary. The windows in the Guards' patrolling helicopters reportedly had one-way glass. Dr. West wondered what these approaching Eskimos thought had happened to the world.
At this distance the Eskimos appeared faceless. Spreading out, they left the sled behind. There were twelve of them, seeming short and stocky in their shapeless parkas.
Dr. West opened his hands. Desperately he smiled. He thought Hans Suxbey had reported to Parliament every fifth year about these Eskimos, barely enough details of their "cultural progress" as observed from his helicopter to support another appropriation for his Guards. Theoretically, for nineteen years no whitemen had talked with these people.
They were returning his smile! With the hoods of their summer parkas turned back, their shaggy black hair gleaming, their wide-cheeked faces smiled so youthfully that Dr. West kept turning his head, expecting to discover a more weathered face, a leader. A young man hurried forward and extended his hand, smooth as a child's. Beginning with a whiteman's handshake, elaborating it into a ceremony, the young Eskimo raised his clasped hands as high as his forehead and then down to knee level and peeked up through his unkempt locks at Dr. West. Shyly they both smiled.
"This person," Dr. West began speaking about himself in halting Eskimo, "has come with open hands as a friend."
"Eh! One of us? All men speak the same?" The Eskimos crowded around him, all shaking his hand, laughing as if with relief. "That old Peterluk lied."
Dr. West realized this one with the smallest hand was a girl. Her lustrous black hair was tied back in a bun. As if casting aside conventional female shyness, she smiled up at him. He laughed with pleasure. They all laughed as if they had been friends forever.
"This person's name is Edwardluk," the young leader laughed, shaking his hand again.
It was reassuring that this Eskimo was willing to expose his name to a stranger, Dr. West thought, laughing inwardly at the Director of the Cultural Sanctuary. Hans Suxbey would be outraged by such an un-Eskimo name as Edwardluk. Ever since the nineteenth-century invasion by the whalers and missionaries, for over a hundred years Eskimos had been donning the most powerful Biblical names and adding Eskimo endings. But Edwardluk ?
With the ultimate in hospitality, Edwardluk was murmuring: "You must live with us forever."
Dr. West picked up his camera and rifle and reached for his sleeping bag, but Edwardluk insisted on carrying it. As if showing off the power of his manhood, Edwardluk shouted at the girl to carry the big pack. Dr. West watched her bend, squat and heft the ninety pounds of supplies weighing nearly as much as she, but she staggered stolidly across the ice toward the sled. Edwardluk shouted encouragement after her with such pride of ownership that Dr. West thought she must be his wife.
"Ha! We go!" Edwardluk insisted that Dr. West sit on the sled and ran alongside shouting: "This person -- has killed -- a poor little seal -- unworthy of a hunter." Edwardluk grinned with so much pride that Dr. West suspected it was a large and fat seal, and he began looking forward to sinking his teeth into seal meat again.
Ten years ago, his summer with the wandering Alaskan Eskimos had been the happiest of his life, and now he felt excitement like a child returning to
a summer cottage. Shouting, laughing, romping, these Eskimos seemed to radiate happiness as they manhandled the sled across ice ridges. Now trotting beside them, Dr. West warmed to the exercise, feeling better all the time.
As they approached the camp, an amazing number of children swarmed out on the ice to meet them, laughing and skylarking and running alongside Dr. West, looking up at him as if he were a giant. Ahead of him in the camp he saw that many of the dark spots were not tents. They were piles of beach stones and driftwood, elevated caches to separate the meat from the dogs, but there were surprisingly few dogs. Beside the largest tent, an Eskimo hurriedly was tying dogs to another sled.
Dr. West noticed no kayaks or umiaks, and he suspected boatbuilding was one part of traditional Eskimo culture Hans Suxbey had not encouraged them to re-create.
As Dr. West walked across the thawing gravel shore, up in the camp dogs yelped. The Eskimo behind the largest tent was whipping his dogs. Yelping, they dragged the loaded sled across the slope in front of the cliffs, surging north along the ice foot, that dangerous ledge of ice clinging to the foot of the cliffs. One shapeless Eskimo lay on the sled. As the man ran alongside, Dr. West saw the long glint of metal in his hand. And Dr. West smiled, imagining Hans Suxbey's outrage because this departing Eskimo was carrying a rifle.
In the camp, Dr. West realized the actual number of sagging caribou skin tents was only about fifteen. At five Eskimos per family, that would be seventy-five Eskimos. But so many children were running back and forth, there seemed more like 175, he thought, smiling down at the brash little boy who kept grabbing at the stock of his rifle and being dragged along. The boy stopped. Smiling, he looked back at the sky.
A distant whining sound in Dr. West's ears grew to a screech as the F-111B appeared from the west. With its swing-wings spread, the obsolete fighter flew relatively slowly over the sea ice from Franklin Strait on over the Boothia Peninsula, heading east. Presumably it was returning to the main Cultural Sanctuary Guard Station on the east coast of the peninsula. Dr. West was not pleased to see the jet fighter returning from the direction in which his English pilot's Turbo-Beaver had gone.
"Whiteman's skua bird," Edwardluk remarked, evidently unimpressed as he stared after the vanishing jet fighter.
This comparison further disturbed Dr. West. "Why do you call it a skua bird?"
"Chases other whitemen's birds," Edwardluk answered as Dr. West was afraid he would. "Old Peterluk says its beak has many rifles. Old Peterluk says there are two white men inside. Is this another lie?"
Dr. West looked around, expecting to see an old man in the camp. "Where is Peterluk?"
Edwardluk's smile widened as if in embarrassment. "Peterluk has gone hunting." Edwardluk glanced north along the ice foot where the sled had disappeared around the point. "This person thinks Peterluk has gone to pray for more power. This person thinks Peterluk is afraid of you. Eh-eh, Peterluk even took his old wife. He said you would be a whiteman and we would not be able to understand you, but he lied."
"Have you ever seen a whiteman?" Dr. West supposed Edwardluk must have been a baby twenty years ago when the Cultural Sanctuary was established.
"Peterluk said you would be a whiteman," Edwardluk side-stepped the question, his smile more embarrassed, and he murmured: "You are so much taller. Are you going to -- You are a whiteman?"
Dr. West answered softly. "My name is West." Trying to explain the meaning of his name, Dr. West pointed with his own boldly un-Eskimo nose in the direction the afternoon sun was sinking. "West is a good man's name and Edwardluk is a good man's name and we speak the same language," Dr. West's voice rose hopefully. "We are friends forever."
Edwardluk's smile gleamed like the morning sun. "We are brothers, all of us." His hand trembling on Dr. West's arm as if with excitement, Edwardluk guided him into the low-straddling tent of ancient caribou skins.
Children scrambled on an unsteady pavement of flat beach stones. Dr. West stumbled over the bloody carcass of a seal. In the dimness of the tent, another young woman smiled from behind the cooking lamp. "Cut meat!" Edwardluk shouted proudly, and she giggled but obediently snatched up a crude saw-toothed stone and chopped at the bared ribs of the seal.
The other girl finally staggered into the tent carrying Dr. West's ninety-pound pack. With a gasp she tried to lower his heavy pack to the stones without dropping it. Dr. West stepped forward, almost reaching out to help her, but this might be a social error which would offend her pride. So he simply watched her. As she straightened up again, breathing hard in her tattered caribou-skin parka, she looked him straight in the eye, which startled him, and he grinned. To his surprise, she grinned back, not at all shyly, her white teeth gleaming, her dark eyes sparkling. Her gaze was unflinching. Not exactly the traditional self-abasing Eskimo woman, he thought, beginning to suspect these isolated Eskimos might be rather different from the traditional Eskimo ideal Hans Suxbey had in mind.
"Cut meat!" the other woman said loudly to her, and both women crouched beside the seal carcass. They giggled in traditional female fashion, and the other woman returned to the lamp, which was the female command center of the tent.
Dr. West stared at the cooking lamp because it was not the traditional shallowly hollowed soapstone slab. Dr. West thought it might have been smashed out of a whiteman's white porcelain bathroom fixture. But it had such a shallow curve it couldn't have been broken from an ordinary toilet or urinal. Nearly two inches thick, two feet long and nearly as wide, its whiteness was disguised by gummed seal oil and soot. Its shape was a jagged oval so shallow he thought it could have been a fragment of -- even a gigantic hollow ceramic ball. He gave up speculating for the moment. His main desire was that these people should like him. He didn't want to start asking questions like a nosy ethnologist, which he was not. He grinned, thinking Suxbey wouldn't approve of this un-Eskimo seal oil lamp.
In the framework of sticks above the cooking lamp hung a square soot-blackened artifact. Boiling inside this ancient five-gallon gasoline can, the chunks of seal meat began to bubble their rich aroma, whetting Dr. West's gustatory memory. While Edwardluk courteously made small talk about the early summer, so early the open leads surely would freeze again, Dr. West equally courteously asked no questions of his host. He watched the woman behind the strange ceramic lamp using a bone splinter to press down the long floating wick of cotton grass into the seal oil, shortening the smoky line of flame. He realized these Eskimos had added a wall of clay inside the mysterious concave ceramic object to separately contain the chunks of seal fat. Warmly melting, the fat seeped oil replenishing the lamp.
Since the lamp was the female power center of the household, Dr. West thought the woman tending it must be Edwardluk's wife. With a forked stick she prodded from the can a steaming chunk of meat. Smiling, she dropped it on a floor stone to cool. The other young woman, who had carried his pack, promptly picked up this hot chunk. Smiling down at it instead of up at him, she handed Dr. West the fat-dripping meat. "Best piece for you."
Having lived in Alaskan Eskimo hunting camps, Dr. West unhesitatingly sank his teeth into the juicy meat. Slicing in front of his nose with his stainless steel hunting knife, he chewed heroically, gulped and swallowed, his eyes squeezing shut with delight. "Good!"
With savage joy he filled his stomach with more meat than he'd eaten for five years. To his surprise, he realized he was even outeating Edwardluk. This is impossible. An Eskimo can outeat any whiteman. Perhaps he's just being polite, allowing me to seem the more impressive eater.
With unrestrained Eskimo pleasure, Dr. West belched cavernously. Delightedly, the housewife urged more meat upon him until he leaned back on the sleeping platform. The other young woman's folded knees had provided his backrest. "This person will chew your boots," her voice said against the back of his neck.
Dr. West laughed the way Edwardluk laughed. "This person is so pleased that you think of him. But the skin of my boots is always dry and does not need to be chewed. It is called silicone r
ub-ber . It breathes out air from the foot. But it does not breathe in water."
Now the boys were being fed, six of them. The two largest were teen-agers, apparently too old to be the children of the young woman behind the lamp. Then both the young women and five little girls like stairsteps ate, but amazingly little, Dr. West thought.
Smiling like any matron at the end of a successful dinner, the woman withdrew her arm inside the wide sleeve and reaching around inside her parka brought the baby to the front. Its fuzzy head nursed vigorously.
The Eskimo Invasion Page 2
