The deepest of silences

Looking back on it now, I have to be careful about reconstructing or selecting memories in the light of all that transpired. In 1970, as part of my work for a research group within the Canadian Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, I moved to the Arctic and began learning the Inuit language, Inuktitut. My girlfriend, Christine, and I ended up living in a settlement named Sanikiluaq, on the Belcher Islands, some 150km from the Hudson Bay coast of Arctic Quebec.

The Canadian government had established this settlement in the 1960s, the result of a post war policy to incorporate all of the country, even its remotest edges, with a new conviction that the far north had vast economic potential. Although life in Sanikiluaq was now based on the new government settlement, this was an Inuit world, where language, culture and links to the land continued to be very strong.

During my career as an anthropologist, I have written much about my work with and for Inuit, but very little about Sanikiluaq. The beauty of those islands and of the people were clear to me then, and are so now as I bring them to mind. But there is a thread of darkness running through these memories, intimations embedded in the stories that the people of Sanikiluaq shared with me. There was also a shocking reality that I failed to see. These stories raise questions of life and death that have been central to Inuit experience, and are turning out to be of urgent importance for us all.

AT THE TIME I ARRIVED, white people from the south, who the Inuit called the Qallunaat, had overwhelming influence and authority. Most were there either to transform the Inuit or to take over possession and management of the land on behalf of the Canadian government. The Inuit were expected to adopt a new religion, learn about the world of the south in schools run by southerners, and live more like other Canadians. When describing to me their feelings about these white people, lnuit in Sanikiluaq often also used the Inuktitut word ilira, to express awe (as in relation to ghosts) and intimidation (as in relation to powerful elders or shamans).

Christine and I lived as much as we could outside the norms and attitudes of most Qallunaat. This did not make for easy relations with the other southerners living there. The one other Qallunaaq who did like to visit