November 14, 2008
Taissumani
Charles Dickens and the Inuit
KENN HARPER
Charles Dickens was one of England's best-known and most-respected novelists of the mid-nineteenth century. His works are still widely read and studied in schools throughout the English-speaking world. But he didn't think much of Inuit.
In 1854, John Rae returned to England with news of the fate of at least some of the men of the lost Franklin expedition. Rae reported what he had learned from Inuit, who had heard the information second-hand from other Inuit who had seen the bodies of some of the white men.
The following passage in Rae's report attracted considerable attention: "Some of the bodies had been buried...; some were in a tent or tents; others under the boat, which had been turned over to form a shelter; and several lay scattered about in different directions... From the mutilated state of many of the corpses and the contents of the kettles, it is evident that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last resource - cannibalism - as a means of prolonging existence..."
In a letter to the Times, he added: "Some of the corpses had been sadly mutilated, and had been stripped by those who had the misery to survive them, and who were found wrapped in two or three suits of clothes."
Charles Dickens, who at the time was editor of a periodical called Household Words, took immediate objection to the suggestion that Englishmen would resort to cannibalism. He wrote, "...it is in the highest degree improbable that such men as the officers and crews of the two lost ships would, or could, in any extremity of hunger, alleviate the pains of starvation by this horrible means."
Dickens thought that the Inuit reports which Rae had conveyed to the British authorities and the public showed only the "loose and unreliable nature of the Esquimaux representations (on which it would be necessary to receive with great caution, even the commonest and most natural occurrence.)" He referred again to the "improbabilities and incoherencies of the Esquimaux evidence."
All this from a man who had never met an Inuk and never set foot in the Arctic. From the comfort of his desk in London he challenged the reliability of the interpreter whom Rae used, claiming, on the basis of no evidence at all, that he was "in all probability, imperfectly acquainted with the language he translated to the white man."
Dickens claimed that "ninety-nine interpreters out of a hundred, whether savage, half-savage, or wholly civilised, interpreting to a person of superior station and attainments, will be under a strong temptation to exaggerate. This temptation will always be strongest, precisely where the person interpreted to is seen to be the most excited and impressed by what he hears; for, in proportion as he is moved, the interpreter's importance is increased."
Gestures also played a part in the information the Inuit communicated to Rae, and Dickens seized on that information. "The gesture described to us as often repeated - that of the informant setting his mouth to his own arm," he wrote, "would quite as well describe a man having opened one of his veins, and drunk of the stream that flowed from it."
He considered also the possibility that the bodies had been mutilated by bears or foxes, even by the ravages of scurvy, anything but the possibility that good and proper Englishmen would resort to "the last resource" - the euphemism often employed for cannibalism.
Finally Dickens considered the Inuit themselves: "Lastly, no man can, with any show of reason, undertake to affirm that this sad remnant of Franklin's gallant band were not set upon by the Esquimaux themselves." Savages, as Dickens considered the Inuit, were only respectful of white men when the white men were strong and in control. When they showed weakness, "the savage has changed and sprung upon him."
He generalized about the character of those he considered savages: "We believe every savage to be in his heart covetous, treacherous, and cruel; and we have yet to learn what knowledge the white man - lost, houseless, shipless, apparently forgotten by his race, plainly famine-stricken, weak, frozen, helpless, and dying - has of the gentleness of Esquimaux nature."
Dickens went on to analyze a number of cases where English explorers and adventurers had endured incredible hardship without resorting to cannibalism. He felt that "the vague babble of savages" which John Rae had reported should not be used to impugn the integrity of British officers and men. Dickens was wrong, of course, and in a subsequent issue of Household Words, John Rae himself wrote to defend the Inuit among whom he had travelled and whose words he had faithfully reported.
Ironically, when Dickens was buried in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey, the inscription on his tomb read in part: "He was a sympathiser to the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed." But his sympathies definitely did not lie with the Inuit.
(To be continued next week)
Taissumani recounts a specific event of historic interest. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.
November 7, 2008
Taissumani
The Closing of Padloping – Part 3
KENN HARPER
Spring 1968. In last week's article, I had been summoned to Frobisher Bay for a meeting with the regional director on plans to close Padloping Island, where I was teaching. The meeting continued.
I asked the remarkably ill-informed Mr. Davies how he proposed to close Padloping. His response was outrageous. He would send in a team to meet with the community sometime in the next few months.
They would convene a community meeting. They would explain to the people, honestly and fairly, the pros and cons of moving to Broughton Island. But it would be up to the people to decide.
Then what, I asked. Well, since we will already be there with a plane, he replied, and Broughton is only 60 miles away, we'll just move them up that same day.
I was flabbergasted. Aren't you forgetting one thing, I asked. What's that, he replied. What if they say no, I asked. A puzzled look came over his otherwise expressionless face. The thought that the Inuit of Padloping might possibly say no had never dawned on him.
And in fact, they didn't say no. In the 1960s, in the face of qallunaat who held all the power and the purse strings, Inuit seldom said no. But neither did they say yes.
My grand audience in the northern halls of power was finished. Having extricated me from Padloping on a direct though unexpected charter flight to Frobisher Bay for a session of what he viewed as "consultation," Mr. Davies declined to send me back home in similar comfort. Instead, I went to Broughton Island by DC3, and from there made my way back home by skidoo.
The dreaded community meeting happened later in the spring of 1968. The "team" came in from Frobisher Bay via Broughton Island. It was led by Larry Elkin, assistant regional director, and Bob Pilot, area administrator in Broughton Island. A few others accompanied them. The meeting took place in my classroom and all the adults in the community turned out.
The message was a masterpiece of coercion. It was delivered by Larry Elkin through an interpreter, and it went something like this.
The virtues of Canada as a free nation were extolled. Its citizens, and that included the Inuit, were free to exercise their own free will. The government, as you know, would like you to move to Broughton Island. All the predictable reasons were trotted out in support of that. A better standard of living. Better housing. A store. Better medical care. Better transportation if you needed to go to the hospital in Frobisher Bay. An education for your children.
They spent some time on this one, as they explained that the school would be closed and I would be transferred somewhere else. Of course, you can stay in Padloping if you choose, but the world is changing rapidly and your children may grow up unemployable if they don't receive an education.
When we close the school, of course we'll close the power plant as well, since it only provides electricity to the school. With no power plant, there will be no job for Jacopee Kokseak, but we will guarantee him a job in Broughton Island. And with no electricity in Padloping, there will be no way of calling the nurse in Broughton on the radio if your children should get sick. And sick, untreated children often die. But, we reiterate, it is a free country and you can make your own decision.
The Inuit listened somberly. They asked if there would be adequate housing in Broughton Island. But they had few questions. They raised no arguments. It was as obvious to them on that day, as it had been to me a few months earlier in Frobisher Bay, that a decision to withdraw government services from Padloping had been made without them, and was irreversible.
No conclusion was reached at that meeting. It simply ended. The plane left without anyone making the offer to move the people that very day, as David Davies had naively suggested. The people went about their lives. Things had closed in Padloping before. The Americans had left in 1946, the Royal Canadian Navy in 1956. How different could this be?
But it was different. The community had been progressively decreasing in size for some time. The year before it had been about 50 people. Now it was 38. Next year it would be zero. Unsubtle, blatant, in-your-face coercion worked. The people moved.
But they moved themselves. The government might as well have moved them, though, for the result was the same. They left for their summer hunting camps in June. And at the end of the summer, they packed up their personal effects in their boats and they moved to Broughton Island.
In late summer, the government sent a carpenter and a crew of Inuit to Padloping to dismantle the houses and move them to Broughton for reassembly. Later the school itself was dismantled and moved. No physical infrastructure would remain in Padloping that might encourage people to ever return.
I accepted a transfer back to Broughton Island as well, and taught there for one more year.
The westerly winds still blow almost constantly off the cliffs on the far side of the little inlet near where the community stood. But they are not the winds of change. Padloping ceased to change in 1968.
A traditional camp, Crystal III weather station, Royal Canadian Navy weather station, community with a school, it ceased to exist except in the memories of those for whom it was once home, a comfortable and secure home that needn't have closed.
(To be continued next week)
Taissumani recounts a specific event of historic interest. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.
