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Subject: Dead Media Working Note 10.3
Dead medium: The Inuit Inuksuit
From: ianc_AT_islandnet.com (Ian Campbell)
(((I've been wanting to find something on the Inuksuit, I
got this from my favourite science show. I digitized some
small pics from the program and put them up at
http://www.islandnet.com/~ianc/dm/100/102.html
I wish I had more info (like an illustrated vocabulary),
but this is a start. == Ian Campbell)))
Source: _AT_Discovery.ca, (a weekly science show on Discovery
Channel Canada), May 28, 1996.
(((Judy Halliday interviews Norman Hallendy, Founder,
Tukilik Foundation.)))
Intro: "Deciphering the Inuksuit, how stone relics signify
everything from good hunting to sacred ground. (...) Some
of them are more than 5000 years old, but the Inuit are
still building them today." (((bruces remarks: apparently
the Inuksuit, though ancient and pre-literate, is still a
living medium, then.)))
"Similar stone structures can be found all over the
world. Norman Hallendy has spent years learning about
Arctic life, including the Inuksuit, from Inuit elders."
Judy Halliday: (...) Every time you see pictures of the
Arctic you see these magnificent stone structures that
(((sometimes))) look like men. What exactly are these
structures?
Norman Hallendy: They fall into various groups. There are
a group of them which are used as hunting instruments.
(...) They were put up in lines and occasionally a woman
or kid along with them (((because there were not that
many male hunters))), and they'd frighten the caribou
(...) and they'd be driven into a lane to be picked off by
hunters. That was (((the most))) important function of the
Inuksuit.
(...)
And then there were others that were terribly
important in terms of travel. You could actually learn a
series of Inuksuit, the shape of them, where they were
situated and what time of the year they should be
observed, you could learn a whole sequence and travel
great distances without ever having been to that place. I
knew of an old guy who travelled something like 900 miles
without ever having been there, based on a song his father
had taught him about the Inuksuit and the landmarks along
the way.
JH: So it's like having mileposts or street signs except
that the Inuksuit are telling you the story.
NH: Yes, you could look at Inuksuit in general as
messages. You see this is the beauty of them, what they
are is messages regardless of function, they convey some
kind of information to you if you know how to read them.
JH: (...) Are there ever any kind of religious or
spiritual messages?
NH: (...) I'll generalize here, they could be in two ways,
if the Inuksuit was quite a beautiful looking structure,
and built a very long time ago, like a thousand years ago,
believed to have been built by the Tunik (...) what the
Inuit call the "other people," these were considered
objects of veneration, so it's interesting where a
functional object over time can become almost
a religious object (...)
JH: Would anyone ever build one to honour somebody?
NH: Oh yes, that did happen, that happened in individual
cases where an Inuksuit could be built to commemorate a
major event, or a major happening by a powerful person, a
camp boss or a shaman for example. I was travelling with
one old chap, that (...) before his uncle died, he asked
his son to build an Inuksuit to represent the spirit that
he had as a spirit helper, as a shaman. And therefore
there were these strange little objects that were built on
the landscape that were actually spiritual
representations.
There's another case, this occurred early in this
century, where there were a group of women out hunting
(...) The ice broke, they were carried out to sea, and
they were crying out to their husbands who could not help
them, and finally they died out at sea. The men were so
heartbroken by this tragedy that they built an Inuksuit
for every woman (...) so that her soul would have a place
to come back to. I asked the question of one of the
elders, should these really be called Inuksuit, the answer
I got is that you should really refer to them as
'Sakabluni' (((sp?)))) ["stones which have spiritual
significance"].
JH: How did you find out that they (...) carried so many
messages?
NH: Well, I went up to the Arctic (..) and kept asking
questions about everything that came into my mind. Rather
than study the people or the culture, I was trying to
understand things from the point of view of how do I
respond to the Arctic environment. (...) Over time what I
really gathered up were the old words, for objects, for
places, or events and happenings.
Because I was a very strong believer in semantics,
not yours, but theirs. (...) If a person really explained
to you in their terms what you were looking at, you might
see it from a different perspective.
Ian Campbell
http://www.islandnet.com/~ianc/dm/dm.html
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