Word: inuit
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Dates: during 1973-1973
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...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...