Word: inuit
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Ironically, the price would have to be paid by another proud tradition. The Cree Indians-and still smaller groups of Inuit Eskimos, who inhabit the vast subarctic regions of northern Quebec -numbered about 10,000. When word of the James Bay Project filtered along the trap lines and river banks, the Cree sent a delegation to Montreal to protest. They gathered in an overheated courtroom with a lawyer named O'Reilly to argue that damming the seven great rivers of their "garden" would not only cut off their livelihood but destroy their culture...
Paper Promises. By any historical standard, the outcome of the Indian case could have been worse. Last month the Cree and Inuit agreed to relinquish all claims to their vast lands in return for $225 million, plus specific hunting, fishing and trapping rights and some voice in the governing and development of the region. But there remain Indians still un satisfied by the deal - and who can wholly blame them? It is one of the laws governing the balance of human nature that paper and promises erode much faster than real estate...
...summer. The rest of the year is too cold for precipitation, for vegetation and, one would suppose, for human life. Yet a few hundred nomadic polar Eskimos prowl the icy region, always shadowed by the imminence of death from cold or starvation. They describe themselves simply as Inuit...
Aside from learning how to survive, Inuit are schooled only in tradition. Their courtly language lacks pronouns-Papik refers to himself as "a man" -and the same selflessness marks their customs. "Be one!" Papik says, urging another hunter to share his wife. In fact, Inuit share everything from basic emotion to their most irresistible delicacy-a violet paste made of bird slime, seal guts, maggoty meat, rotten blubber and premasticated birds. Papik's father deliberately wounds himself to make his injured son less lonely in his pain...
...anthropological fascination Ruesch adds sardonic bite by contrasting The Men with white men. Every Eskimo knows that whites are comic. A favorite Inuit joke involves Admiral Peary's trek to the North Pole: What did he find there? Punch line: "Nothing, absolutely nothing!" Hilarious...