The Eskimo Invasion Read Free

the Second. Eskimos with more education

migrated to the cities. There was a Professor of Sociology at McGill who had

been born in an Eskimo village. These Eskimos simply were vanishing into the

Canadian melting pot. Their Eskimo cultural heritage was lost.
     
     
The Fourth Alternative was Canada's pride. Eight years ago, Dr. West

had lived for a year with the Co-Op Eskimos of Bylot Island and Baffinland.

But the first Co-Ops had begun far back in 1958 at Ungava Bay, near Labrador.

During the next thirty years these Eskimo Co-Operatives had spread throughout

the Northwest Territories. In spite of its ponderous bureaucratic title,

the Cooperative Development Section of the Industrial Division of the

Department of Northern Affairs and Natural Resources shrewdly and patiently

had helped these Eskimos learn enough self-confidence to begin making their

own group decisions. From carving soapstone art objects, the early Co-Ops

expanded to quick-freezing fish, to breeding reindeer, to shipping meat,

to renting shops as sales outlets in cities. After guiding sportsmen,

Eskimos cooperated to construct tourist airtels. From investing Co-Op

self-help funds in new Eskimo ventures, Co-Op Eskimo groups ventured into

the stock market. They owned houses, boats and ice cars and watched TV

and smoked cigars. The Co-Op Eskimos had created a strong subculture,

which no longer was Eskimo.
     
     
"The true Eskimos are vanishing," an Assistant Professor of Ethnology

at McGill University had cried out before a Parliamentary Committee more

than twenty years ago.
     
     
A Fifth Alternative for Canada's Eskimos was needed, Hans Suxbey had

pleaded; and an excerpt from Hans Suxbey's speech even had been published

in California in a 1968 Sierra Club Bulletin , intensely read by a

thin high school sophomore named Joe West. "We try to preserve species

of trees and animals from extinction," Hans Suxbey was quoted. "But we

extinguish mankind's distinctive ways of life. What is a man? He is

his way of life. Preserve him from extinction. In this increasingly

homogenized world, any independent way of life has increasing value for

its own sake. Think of Eskimo culture as 5000 years of the hardiest men

ingeniously creating a distinctive way of life which survived the worst

blizzards. But one hundred years of cultural erosion from our kerosene

and rifles, our bacon and flour, Family Allowances and outboard motors,

transistor radios and so-called schools propagandizing our way of life

has almost erased the Eskimo's heritage. Eskimo culture must not die!"
     
     
The Fifth Alternative for Canada's Eskimos officially began in 1970 when

Parliament voted a small appropriation to indemnify existing private

interests in the North and to administer the vast new Eskimo Cultural

Sanctuary.
     
     
"We must stay out." Even Director Hans Suxbey's specially trained Cultural

Instructors, a dozen graduate students of Eskimo ethnology, were withdrawn

from the Eskimo Cultural Sanctuary as planned after the first winter. "The

natural environment is the true teacher of Eskimo culture," Hans Suxbey

had announced nineteen years ago. "Not even I will violate the Eskimo

Cultural Sanctuary."
     
     
Dr. West wondered how the 112 Eskimos who happened to be on the Boothia

Peninsula then had reacted when their rifles or cooking pots were taken

away by earnest graduate students. Evidently Parliament didn't think

democratic choices extended this far north. These abruptly isolated

Eskimos' only opportunity to vote had been with their feet. Now there

was antipersonnel radar along the invisible boundary. The windows in the

Guards' patrolling helicopters reportedly had one-way glass. Dr. West

wondered what these approaching Eskimos thought had happened to the world.
     
     
At this distance the Eskimos appeared faceless. Spreading out, they left

the sled behind. There were twelve of them, seeming short and stocky in

their shapeless