Canadian Store (CAD)
You are currently shopping in our Canadian store. For orders outside of Canada, please switch to our international store. International and US orders are billed in US dollars.
The following is excerpted from In Twilight and in Dawn: A Biography of Diamond Jenness by Barnett Richling.
Great excitement marked the early weeks
of winter as the Inuit hurriedly prepared for the transition from their nomadic
existence on the land to the more settled life of seal hunting camps atop the
ice-bound sea. Families from both sides of Dolphin and Union Strait descended on
Ukullik, the population of their snow-house settlement eventually reaching some
seventy-five. Jenness remained with them for the better part of December and
January. Unlike his reception at Harrison Bay, his presence here and elsewhere
caused a great sensation, people coming forward to shake hands – an affectation
apparently acquired from Joseph Bernard – exchange names, and raise a “perfect
babel … We are friendly … the people are friendly … the people are glad.” But
as had happened earlier at Bernard Harbour, he soon tired of their unbridled attentions,
men and women alike examining his possessions, vying for admittance to his
lodgings, pressing demands for barter, and occasionally pilfering an item or
two when opportunity arose. Diary entries reveal the resultant volatility of
his mood, passages peppered with caustic comments about the persistence and
mendacity of this or that person and with meditations on peace and quiet, the
Inuit seeming to have “no conception apparently of a man’s wishing to be
silent.” In his estimation the Puivlirmiut, summer inhabitants of southwestern Victoria
Island, were the worst offenders, the beleaguered anthropologist unashamedly
confessing to have stayed “with [them] as long as I did only because I was
securing ethnological material – but I could not stand it much longer.” “They
were rather getting on my nerves … I believe only the fear that I should refuse
to buy anything at Ukullik later – prevented any extensive stealing.”Complain as he might, these annoyances
underscored the considerable sway he held among the Inuit, influence derived
from his capacity to cut them off from trade whenever circumstances warranted.
Compounding the people’s anxieties was their wide-spread belief that Jenness had
the ability to “magicize” them in revenge for alleged wrongdoings. Indeed, they
took for granted that all qallunaat possessed such powers, an endowment that,
as with their own great shamans, included the capacity to cure illness or visit
misfortune, even death, on others. This foreboding spilled over in dramatic
fashion when the anthropologist found himself threatened by a man who had
seized his steel knife when a proposed trade for the prized item was refused. A
bystander intervened before any harm was done, persuading his belligerent
compatriot to relinquish the weapon and thus bring the standoff to a bloodless
end. “Things looked very awkward at one moment,” Jenness wrote at the time,
adding only some equally terse thanks to the brave fellow who stepped in on his
behalf. But in print, the story acquired a more heroic denouement, the author
describing the “magical” effect his sternly spoken warnings in English had had
on opponent and onlookers alike. “The natives … thought them a curse that would
bring some dire calamity upon their heads,” he imagined, assuming that their
uncertainty was focused on his putative mastery of powerful familiars such as
the spirits of animals or the shades of dead qallunaat.
MQUP cordially invites you to join
Barnett Richling at the launch of his book,
In Twilight and in Dawn
Monday, November 5th, 2012, 7:00 pm
In the Atrium of McNally Robinson Booksellers
Grant Park Mall
1120 Grant Avenue, Winnipeg
To learn more about In Twilight and in Dawn, or to order online, click here.
To arrange an interview with the author, contact MQUP Publicist Jacqui Davis.
No comments yet.