Super Shamou versus Captain Al Cohol: Inuit Cultural Productions and the Discourses on Inuit Drinkers

Abstract

The history of alcohol control policy in the Canadian Arctic is perverse. In the 1960s northern administrators regarded alcohol consumption as the right and responsibility of masculine citizens. Thus, they undertook to provide tutelage to Inuit in the “proper” use of the substance in the hopes that Inuit could be produced as proper citizens of the nation. A decade later the alcohol education message directed at Inuit changed. The new message told Inuit to abstain from drink. Many of the educational materials delivering this message, such as the Captain Al Cohol comic book series, started with the premise that Inuit were naïve users of alcohol and that Inuit alcohol abuse stemmed largely from a lack of knowledge about its effects. Nothing could be further from the truth. In this paper I examine Inuit cultural productions dealing with alcohol use and abuse. Some of the works, such as Manassie Akpaliapik’s well-known whalebone and stone sculpture of a bottle embedded in a man’s head, were produced for non-Inuit consumers of Inuit art and culture. Others, including cartoons, short stories, journalism, filmic works and the Super Shamou comic book, were directed at Inuit audiences. I consider how Inuit understandings of citizenship, alcohol, and the self are reflected in these cultural productions.