The Northern Copper Inuit - A History

Traveling

Rene Taipana: When I first remember. My first memories--like when I first woke up myself. People in the spring would gather at the coast. It was in the spring-–like this time of year. We would travel to a lake and stay there until late spring waiting for the land to dry up so we could hunt caribou. We would fish and get an occasional caribou for meat while waiting for the hair of the caribou to become good for clothing. That's how people lived back then. And when the land was good to travel on and when the caribou hair and skin were good, we traveled inland hunting for caribou - for clothing and food. We fished along the way, going to where there are kiidjiyuq [ fish that sit in warm water] in the mouths of rivers and along the shores of lakes. We lived inland until it started to get dark out. We used to live on the land that way throughout the summer. And when it was around the end of August or September, we would start our gradual trip back to the coast. When the caribou hair is thick, we would hunt for those caribou with a thick hair for the outer parka called qullitaq. That's when the weather is starting to get cold. That's when we started our walk back to the ocean.

At that time, the beginning of a trip back to the coast was called hivuqamuyuq. When the lakes started to freeze over, then we would know it was around the Fall season. We made sleds where they are caribou skins which were called uniutik [skins dragged on the ground] rather than alliak. And then it's late fall. That's when the ground starts to freeze over and we leave our trip from hunting Caribou with the thick hair and descend to the coast. That trip was called ataupluta. That was our way of life.

When we got to the coast, we built our igloos. We finished building our igloos at a place where we left our spring caches of seal fat from seals caught the previous winter. Our caches were for the specific time of year when we head back for the coastline. That's where we camped while we sewed clothing to use when the sun starts to shine again after Christmas. That clothing was to be worn then.

Sam Oliktoak. In the fall, when the ocean first freezes up along the coastline, we built snow houses and later clothing. At the end of Christmas, when we have done our clothing, we headed out on the ice. Before we left for the ice, we spent a day playing games and feasting. Food of all kinds was gathered and prepared. That's how we feasted then.

Renee Taipana: Nattiqut. That's what we called the platform on which the food was placed on top of a sealskin. We feasted in a snow house built for that purpose every year.

Sam Oliktoak. We built three snow houses. In the middle to connect the three, we built a large snowhouse. This is where the dancing took place and the playing of games--in the center of the igloo. Some akhunaaq [thongs made from sealskin] were put up for people to swing on.

Renee Taipana: My parents would talk about those times. Those are the times that I remember. They danced with a qilaut, an Eskimo drum.

Sam Oliktoak: They would gather there to play games and dance for one bit one day. They danced until late at night and after that day, we were all ready to travel down onto the ocean. We had to wait for the sea ice to be covered with hard packed snow so we could build snow houses out on the ice. We also had to wait until the snow on the ice was good for drinking water.

Renee Taipana: That's right. We had to wait until our snow wasn't salty-tasting for snow water. Even without any doctors, people knew back then that the snow on the sea ice is salty with the first snowfall. So they didn't go out on the ice right away.

Jenness did not make it to Prince Albert Sound But he had satisfied his curiosity that the Prince Albert people were as to language and culture very similar to The Copper Inuit of Dolphin and Union Strait. Toward the end of the summer Jenness and his adopted family made the slow migration back to the southern coast fishing and hunting caribou along the way. At that time of year food shortages were common and the Inuit would go for days without sighting caribou or catching fish. Jenness was impressed by the endurance and patience of his traveling companions the experience [of starvation] was no novelty in their lives they merely tighten their belts trudge steadily forward a dozen or 15 miles and said smiling smiling lately if we sight no Caribou today we will tomorrow or if not tomorrow certainly the day after (Jenness 1928:219).

After his extended research visit to the land of the copper Inuit, Jenness wrote two definitive books about the people with whom he lived and traveled: The Life of the Copper Eskimo(1922) and The People of the Twilight(1928). Stefannson, working to the north, and Jenness, to the South, documented well the traditional culture of the Copper Inuit. The scholarship was completed just in time, for the isolation of the Copper Inuit was soon shattered permanently by the activities of traitors, missionaries, and other representatives of southern culture. As Jenness wrote years later in his epilogue to The People of the Twilight:

Even as we sailed away traders enter.e their country seeking fox-furs; and for those pelts so useless for real clothing they offered rifles, shot-guns, steel tools, and other Goods that promise to make life easier so the Eskimos abandoned their communal seal hunts and scattered and isolated families along the coast in order to trap white foxes during the winter when the fur of that animal reaches its prime. Their dispersal loosened the old communal ties that had held the families together. The men no longer labored for the entire group, but hunted and trapped each one for his family alone... The commercial world of the white man had caught the Eskimos and its mesh destroying their self-sufficiency and independence, and made them economically its slaves. Only in one respect did it benefit them: it lessened the danger of those unpredictable famines which had overtaken them every 10 or 15 years, bringing suffering and death to young and old without distinction (Jenness 1928:240).

As the Inuit of the Holman region developed a taste for trade items such as tea, sugar, tobacco, and flour, they began to rely more heavily on fur trapping as a means to purchase these items. The transition from traditional ways was undoubtedly assisted by the Copper Inuit's contact with the western Inuit (or Walliningmiut), who had developed a reputation for being superb trappers. Increased dependence upon trapping, however, changed the Inuit economy. Since trappers had to tend their traplines during the winter, they had less time to devote to midwinter subsistence activities such as sealing, caribou hunting, and polar bear hunting. The more involved people became in trapping, the more dependent they became upon goods purchased at the trading posts. Moreover, the size of dogteams increased. In the early part of the century, anthropologist Diamond Jenness had noted that the typical Copper Inuit family rarely owned more than two or three dogs (Jenness 1922:118). Trapping, however, required greater mobility and hence a larger number of dogs per active trapper. Inuit families trapping for the fur trade had a larger number of dogs to care for and feed. Fortunately for them, the introduction of rifles and fishnets helped to increase their efficiency and trapper families were able to feed both themselves and their dogs.

This process of economic change occurred at different rates for the Holman and Coppermine regions. The Copper Inuit around Coppermine and Read Island made the transition much earlier than the people of Prince Albert Sound. By the 1940s, however, trapping was firmly entrenched in the Holman region.

Although the trading posts provided Inuit trappers with valued goods which presumably made their lives easier, the relationship between trapper and trader was not always to the benefit of the trapper. As Peter Usher (1965:62) notes:

The relationship of the Eskimo to the trader became virtually that of a bonded servant. To trap initially the Eskimo had to be supplied with traps, and generally a rifle and other gear. Having no means to pay for this outfit, he went in "debt" to the trader, and settled his account the following spring by bringing in his catch of furs. Both the availability of the white fox and its market price fluctuated considerably, and in some years the Eskimo was unable to pay his debts. This indebtedness prevailed for almost thirty years, until other sources of cash became available to the Eskimos.

Early chroniclers of Copper Inuit culture were also impressed with their energy, patience, and endurance. As Jenness (1922:235) wrote:

The Copper Eskimos think nothing of spending 24 hours on a hunt, tramping continually over stony hills without a morsel of food, and with only a few short halts to rest their limbs and look about them. In Spring I've seen them spend whole days fruitlessly digging one hole after another through the thick ice of the lakes and drinking their lines without ever getting a bite. In Winter they sit for hours over there seal holes even in howling blizzard where the temperature is 30 and more below zero Fahrenheit. The patience instilled in them by hunting become so ingrained in their very natures and permeates all their social life, so that tolerance and forbearance are two of the most marked features in Eskimo Society.

As early as 1927 and 1928, an influenza epidemic killed half the Inuit population of Bernard Harbour. The onset of this epidemic coincided with the arrival of the HBC supply ship Baychimo, which also brought the Reverend J. Harold Webster, who converted many of the Inuit of the Holman-Coppermine region to the Anglican faith. Other fatal epidemics occurred throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Tuberculosis, especially, was a chronic health problem from the early 1930s until the 1970s.

From the 1930s, tuberculosis was one of the major illnesses affecting all of the Inuit, throughout the Canadian Arctic. Systematic tuberculosis X-ray surveys, however, did not begin in the Holman-Coppermine region until the spring of 1953. After 1953, these surveys, carried out by plane throughout the Kitikmeot region, were an annual event, taking advantage of the usually good spring traveling conditions and the, by then, deploy ingrained habit of the Inuit to gather for a couple of weeks around the missions and trading posts at Easter (Dr. Otto Shaefer, personal communication). Patients found to have advanced tubercular infections were flown out immediately to TB sanatoria, first in Aklavik, and later to Sir Charles Camsell Hospital in Edmonton.

Traditionally, Inuit children were breast-fed for three to five years and sometimes into the sixth and seventh years. Prolonged breast-feeding was practiced by many precontact hunting and gathering populations to ensure the survival of offspring. Recent research has shown that prolonged breastfeeding inhibits ovulation, making for longer intervals between children. With the introduction to the Arctic of bottle-feeding in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the traditional strategy of birth control and birth spacing was disrupted. This, in turn, led to an increase in live births, resulting in a significant shortening of birth intervals.

These evacuations, although necessary, often proved to be very stressful and disruptive to Inuit families, who might find themselves without a mother or a father for years on end. The duration of TB treatment could vary, from several months to several years, depending upon the severity of the infection. One man from Holman was forced to spend almost ten years in Edmonton separated from family and friends. By and large, however, the Inuit from the Holman region were not as dramatically affected by TB as Inuit in the Coppermine region. Between 1962 and 1966, only 4.2 percent of the people from the Holman region were evacuated for TB; this is to be compared with 11.3 percent for the Coppermine region. Dr. Otto Schaefer(personal communication) believes that this lower rate for Holman families was due to a better and more traditional diet, compared with the Coppermine Inuit, who relied more heavily on southern foods from the HBC store.

These diseases, plus a high infant-mortality rate, had a significant impact upon the numbers of Copper Inuit.