Fashioning Selves and Tradition: Case Studies on Personhood and Experience in Nunavut

Abstract

This past summer's dramatic confrontations between Mi'kmaq fishers of Burnt Church, Nova Scotia, and officers representing the Canadian government splashed the covers of Canadian newspapers and newsmagazines. Those reporting on the clashes did an excellent job in presenting the perspectives and interests of the different actors in the dispute. Despite such coverage, however, there continues to exist considerable confusion and ignorance about the struggles facing aboriginal groups in Canada as they battle to defend their cultures and traditions in public settings. Although clashes between the representatives of federal and provincial governments and First Nations are becoming more and more pronounced in Canadian popular culture, these clashes draw attention away from the much more subtle uses of culture and in more private, quotidian settings. In this essay, I focus on these more subtle and personal challenges facing aboriginal peoples throughout Canada today as they negotiate their own relations hip to their traditions and cultures. Specifically, I will show how tradition has become a focal point for the expression of self-identity in the of two very different individuals belonging to the same ethnic group. The first individual is a middle-aged man from Nunavut. I will show how traditions associated with hunting have given his life new direction and purpose. The second individual is an Inuit woman, also from Nunavut, who struggles with applying traditional Inuit ideals about parenting and the development of personhood in an increasingly urban setting, a setting radically different from what she experienced as a child. My reasons for choosing to focus on the life experiences of individuals are twofold. First, I am following a path well traveled by anthropologists, who continue to use the study of individual to render more familiar and intelligible what seem to be radically different forms of cultural expression and social experience. By insistently focusing on individuals and the particularities of their anthropologist Abu-Lughod argues, we may be better able to perceive similarities in all our lives (1993, 27). Second, by focusing on lived experience, I am arguing for a more critical approach towards the study of and culture in the of contemporary aboriginal peoples. Elsewhere I have argued that these are fluid and contingent categories that are interpreted differently in different contexts, but that nevertheless provide a stable foundation for the production and articulation of contemporary Inuit identities (Searles 1998a; see also Dorais 1997). Examining everyday experiences provides a sound model for understanding individuals as agents who both shape and are shaped by the world in which they live (Jackson 1989). Accepting the contingency and indeterminacy of experience also requires a complex definition of tradition. Tradition, as it is expressed and experienced by aboriginal peoples today, is more than just an inherited set of knowledge and practices. It is an intellectual, aesthetic, and political resource used in the building of lives, communities, and nations. Research Setting Research for this paper was conducted in Iqaluit (formerly Frobisher Bay), the capital of the Nunavut Territory, and Kuyait, a small outpost camp settlement nearly 160 miles away. Although in 1994 Kuyait consisted of one household, it continues to be a regular camping spot for many families living in Iqaluit, many of whom stop here while hunting in the outer reaches of Frobisher Bay. Iqaluit, by contrast, is the largest town in Nunavut, numbering 4,220 according to the 1996 Statistics Canada census. Despite its size and its political and economic importance, Iqaluit only came into existence in the 1940s, first as an air force base during the Second World War and then as a regional center for government services and programs beginning in the 1950s. On the other hand, Inuit have occupied Kuyait for hundreds if not thousands of years (Fitzhugh and Olin 1993). …