Saqiyuk - Stories from the lives of three Inuit Women by Nancy Wachowich

Résumé du document

Saqiyuq is a collection of stories from the lives of three Inuit women: Apphia, Rhoda and Sandra. It consists of biographies and accounts from these three generations. This book enables the reader to see the great evolution of the Inuit lifestyle during the twentieth century. The author, Nancy Wachowich, is an anthropologist. In this book, she uses the lives of three Inuit women to illustrate her research concerning arctic anthropology. This research was ordered by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. She went in person to the Baffin Bay in order to meet these women and collect their accounts. Indeed, the reader can be the witness of the dramatic (and definitive?) changes which occurred, in only sixty years, in this region. Apphia, the grandmother, was used to a traditional Inuit way of life and she is the narrator during the main part of the book. She lived almost exactly like her ancestors did; she had eleven children, traveled by foot or with dog team in the land, was sewing caribou skin or cooking seal meat while the husband she did not choose was hunting. But little by little, everything changed.

Extraits

[...] The author does not transform the comments and therefore stays faithful to them. So even with the style, she does not want to show an opinion and to reflect a particular culture. In fact, this work is really an historian's work: the point is not normative. It is a neutral account so that everyone is able to make the parallel with the rest of the Canadian society. Indeed, this book totally fits with the course. Apphia is born in 1931, which corresponds to our starting point 1929. [...]

[...] They were baptized whereas they did not even know exactly what it means. They were told to believe in God and in Jesus, some are Catholics and others are Anglicans. And they obeyed. Apphia and Rhoda are very religious. They did believe in what Qallunaat said because they represented authority and took advantage of their position to impose their religion. But one thing interesting with Sandra is that, thanks to her western education, she is more able to have a critical eye on that. [...]

[...] So one can argue that the end of these kinds of adoptions (not even definitive!) and forced marriages is a progress. However, from an Inuit view, it is maybe not a progress: young generations are now much more autonomous and free so they can feel lost. Sandra explains that it would have been easier if her parents chose a husband and a job for her: “Sometimes I almost want them to choose a husband for (page 254), even if she recognizes that it was probably hard not being allowed to choose. [...]

[...] It totally reorganized their habits and their values. Rhoda is really clear-sighted about that: is only when we started having modern things in our life that we started caring about not having things. That is when we started leaving our culture behind” (page 86). The Inuit society was not materialistic before the arrival of the Qallunaat. In fact, Inuit were imposed new values and norms by the colonists. The most significant example is probably religion. Inuit had to renounce their traditional religions and the shamans had to deny their faith in order to be converted to Christianity. [...]

[...] Nevertheless, it is not the only lesson of this book. Despite of all these negative impacts, other consequences can be considered as positive. That is really the strength of the book: the author does not want to caricature white colonists as evil or saviours. Objectively, one is forced to admit that the white presence was not only synonymous with the decline of the Inuit culture. The forces of modernity and later, globalization, were also a progress. Inuit people are now well educated, they have an easier life. [...]