Vollono
Nick Vollono
Nanook and the Innocent Eskimo
Upon viewing many modern conception of “the Eskimo”, such as the modern logo for Alaska Airlines (Appendix, Fig. 1), there is no doubt a dominant version of what a proper Eskimo looks like. Not surprisingly, the persistence of such images are rooted in the original descriptions of these people, which were based largely upon assumptions, projections, and in many times colonialist racism. In an attempt to describe the world in Western terms, the characteristics of the Eskimo were created in order to show a primitive version of ourselves. These long lasting stereotypes become so easy in everyday life considering most of them are so positive, and thus easily go unquestioned. Unfortunately, pushing distinct groups of people under an umbrella of essentializing characteristics, forces them out of any sort of historical progress, and allows them to be seen as unchanging and completely primitive. Denying them this distinct history makes it easy to define oneself as modern, but increasingly hard for them to become “modern” or even anything less than primitive, without being inauthentic.
The first descriptions of Arctic people ultimately created the lasting image of the Eskimo, surviving even until today. Initial contact with them came from the quest for the Northwest Passage, which brought them to the Central Canadian Arctic (Brody, 17). They were met by what we consider today to be the traditional Eskimo, which are igloo-building, dog sledding people, who ate blubber and wear fur parkas. Writings were sent back to the US and Europe, solidifying the entire Arctic natives as the stereotype of the smiling Eskimo who acted as a universal, despite the fact that, according to Riordan, “[the people] these generalized images are based accounted for less than 5 percent of the approximately fifty thousand people who made the Arctic their home in the nineteenth century.” (1) This laid the groundwork for the romanticization of the Inuit people, since the simplified version of Eskimos was a projection of Western desires for both a more simple time, but also the contrast of a primitive person. Their main characteristics clearly describe a mythical return to the place of origin, as they were described in childlike terms. Their settlement in the Arctic was the perfect backdrop for distant and isolated place which stood, in its natural form, in opposition to the artificial industry which had proliferated in Europe and the United States. “Fatalism and an unremitting workload in the face of grim circumstances seem to be accepted with cheerfulness that could be held up as a model to every factory worker in the newly industrial world.” (Brody, 19) Whether this stereotype was correct or not was irrelevant since the legend was not the Inuits, it was those who wrote about them and their yearnings, ignoring any history which hints at contact or advancement, and instead creating a completely primitive version.
