(and of course, Eskimo)
The Innu and the Inuit are two distinct peoples.
The Innu are Algonquian, and their name for themselves is a variation on the Proto-Algonquian term elenyiwa that is the basis for a variety of the names Algonquian people across the northern half of North America call themselves. Of course, the most obvious example, and the one that is closest in sound to elenyiwa is the Illinois people, from which the modern mid-western state gets its name. But other, less obvious examples are the Inuna-Ina (whom we refer to as the Arapahoe), the Lenni (who are better known to us as the Delaware), all the various peoples who use some variation on "Irini" or "Inini" in their names, and the Innu (plural Innuat) of Quebec and Laborador.
Many peoples refer to themselves by a term that in their own language means "The First People" or "The Pre-eminent People," but the root of the term elenyiwa is elen- ‘ordinary.’ And so when peoples such as the Lenni or the Pahouiting8ach Irini or the A’aninin or the Innu refer to themselves there is a strong sense of "The Ordinary People" or "The Common People" in that name.
This appreciation for "The Common People" is understandable. The Algonquian cultures were developing in the wake of the rise and decline of Mississippian cultures such as the one that built the great mounds at Cahokia. These cultures were virtually devoted to the celebration of an elite class, a celebration that often took the form of the elaborate burials. Those burials often featured exotic trade goods and the extensive use of sacrificed soldiers, servants and young girls. The burials came to feature in some places the sacrifice of infants.
This celebration of the elite also came to dependent on other less simple and obvious cultural elements, such things as increased population density, a restricted and rather unhealthy diet overly dependent on corn, and very warlike defense against enemies of the elite, real or imagined.
It is understandable if Algonquian cultures were a rejection of a life devoted to creating monuments to the elite and offering infants and young daughters to be sacrificed toward that end. It is understandable if they cherished being free and egalitarian, in short, "Common People."
It is ironic that in our own culture "common" often has connotations of "vulgar" and "inferior," and there is often a real effort by well intentioned people to deplore anything that has become common or vernacular. A look at the constant evolution of terms used to refer to Afro-Americans offers a good example and case study. 'Coon' and 'Race' were once terms of pride used by Afro-Americans. Then 'Race' was deemed vulgar, and 'Colored' became the preferred identification. Then 'Colored' became deplorable (much to the embarrassement of the NAACP) and 'Black' changed from a racial slur to a preferred expression.
This tendency to view the vernacular as vulgar and deplorable has in a very roundabout way been very damaging to Innu culture. The situation is largely the result of a campaign some years ago that centered on, of all things, the number of words Eskimos have for "snow."
It is meaningless, of course, to talk in terms of some definite number "words for snow" in either Eskimo or English, but it is particularly problematical in the Algonquian family of languages from which Eskimo languages come. Those languages are "agglutinative" in that words are characteristically the product of a considerable putting together of multiple sounds so that a single short word in an Algonquian language might be the semantic equivalent of a phrase or even a sentence in English. For that reason, the number of possible words for snow or anything else in any Algonquian language are about the same as the equivalent number of phrases or sentences that can be constructed to describe that subject in English. A couple of examples from Greenlandic Eskimo: QuinQ, 'rotten snow/slush on a seal,' or anarluk, ‘dirty lump of glacier-calved compacted snow’.
The number of Eskimo words for snow varies from three or four to hundreds or thousands, depending on how the question is framed, that is, depending on the point of the question. In recent years the question has become very important issue in some quarters, and the very important point to be made in those quarters is that Eskimos do not have many words for snow.
This point of view made news a few years ago with the publication of Geoffrey K. Pullum’s book The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax and Other Irreverent Essays on the Study of Language.1 Pullum argues that the number of Eskimo "words for snow" is very small, such four, and that any references to seven "words for snow" or dozens of "words for snow" are the result of "an enormous hoax involving false, ‘illicitly inflated’ numbers." Pullum’s discussion is riddled with factual errors and makes no pretense of being accurate or scholarly. Indeed, Pullum admits he has no interest in or knowledge of Eskimo languages and characterizes his study as "a silly, misleadingly unscholarly piece, designed to infuriate." The closest it comes to scholarship is a folksy monolog that invites people to contact Anthony Woodbury of University of Texas at Austin who Pullum says puts the number of Eskimo words for snow at a small number, such as four, to "certainly over a thousand" to perhaps infinity.
Woodbury posted his own answer to what he considers this meaningless question to an Internet list in 1994 and invited others to copy and disseminate it as widely as they wished. It is currently posted on numerous sites, including: <http://www.prairienet.org/prairienations/woodbury.htm> Incidentally, Woodbury’s answer, in a nutshell, is perhaps a thousand words.
Pullum characterizes the staple of courses offered by most linguistics departments as "unredeemed piffle." He calls the widely reprinted classic works of ethnology "shoddy" and the authorities of the American Anthropological Association "boneheads."
He is fiercely uninterested in information about different types of "snow" words in Eskimo languages:
this would not, objectively, be intellectually interesting; it would be a most mundane and unremarkable fact...He offers this startling statement:
the truth is that Eskimos do not have lots of different words for snow, and no one who knows anything about Eskimo (or more accurately, about the Inuit and Yupik families of related languages) has never said they do.This statement is, of course, ludicrous. Virtually every scholarly study of Eskimo languages has said that they do. This statement is from a UNESCO scholarly study:
One of the most obvious - and best-known - specificities of Inuktitut is the great number of words used to designate snow.2Or this statement from a U.N study—
Since much of the Inupiaq and Yupik world is covered with snow and ice … the language is rich in terms for different types of snow and ice.3Or check out the web version of the Iñupiat Eskimo Dictionary posted at:
<http://www.alaskool.org/Language/dictionaries/inupiaq/default.htm>
Along different lines, the Sierra Club book The Secret Language of Snow is written for young readers and explains and illustrates a dozen of the different Eskimo words for snow.4
Much of Pullum's work is devoted to describing his failure and frustration about being considered a crackpot by his colleagues. And yet it is hard to view his argument in any other terms. As noted earlier, he cites a statement by the individual he considers the best authority on Eskimo culture that there are about a thousand words for snow, and he offers this statement as proof that any number larger than four (such as seven) is an "enormous hoax involving false, ‘illicitly inflated’ numbers."
One might ask: why? Why is this meaningless, misleading silliness (his descriptions) so important to him? Why is it so important to him to label the fundamental premises of anthropology about language and culture a "hoax perpetrated by the anthropological linguistics community."
The answer to this question is, of course, after a moment’s thought, predictable.
Anthropologists are racists.
The hoax is evidence of "buried racist tendencies."
Anyone who is interested in Eskimos is racist.
The very term "Eskimo" is offensive and demeaning, at least according to a campaign to remove the word from English usage and substitute the word "Inuit" instead (which is no more a synonym for "Eskimo" than "German" is a synonym for "European").
The campaign to eliminate the word "Eskimo" from English usage is based on the assumption that the word is a racial slur. But that is simply not necessarily the case, or at least it was not before the campaign to malign the word took its toll. It was, like any term of vernacular English, used in a variety of everyday ways. Many Eskimos were and are proud to claim that identity6, although since the campaign they probably realize the difficulties they will face if they publicly express that pride. As this paper was being researched (after the anti-Eskimo campaign had largely blown over) an NHL star of the Stanley Cup playoffs was spending quite a bit of time telling reporters it was OK to think of him and refer to him as an Eskimo; he was proud to be an Eskimo. And rightly so.
At any rate, the campaign is particularly poignant for the Innu people, who are not Inuit, but who are constantly, incorrectly lumped together with them. The Innu have suffered a particularly debilitating history of efforts by well meaning public officials, clergy, educators, social workers and health personnel to advance Innuat culture beyond its traditional parameters. The result has been ever rising unemployment, drug addiction, poverty and suicide.7 The final nail in the cultural coffin – what one observer calls their Extinguishment – is that they are no longer allowed to identify themselves in their traditional way, as Eskimos. They are now identified in many official or modern contexts as Inuit.
The fact is, as virtually every study ever done of Eskimo cultures documents, Eskimos have many much more subtle and sophisticated perceptions about ice and snow than we do. And there is no reason why this expertise under any name should be considered racist or offensive or amusing. It is expertise that has been very valuable to students or arctic environments and cultures. Just ask Clarence Birdseye, student of Eskimo culture and "Father of the Frozen Food Industry."
Endnotes
1Geoffrey K. Pullum, The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax,
and Other Irreverent Essays on the Study of Language (Chicago : University
of Chicago Press, 1991).
2Louis-Jacques Dorais, A?he Canadian Inuit and Their
Language,@?in Arctic Languages: an Awakening, ed. Dirmid R. F. Collis.
([Paris]: Unesco, 1990), 204-205.
3Edna Ahgeak MacLean, "A?ulture and Change for Inupiat and
Yupiks of Alaska,@?" in Arctic Languages: an Awakening,??/? , ed.
Dirmid R. F. Collis. ([Paris]: Unesco, 1990), 165-166.
4University of Alaska Anchorage Institute of Social and
Economic Research, Iñupiat Eskimo Dictionary 26 September
2002, <http://www.alaskool.org/Language/dictionaries/inupiaq/default.htm>
10 October 200
5Terry Tempest Williams, and Ted Major, with illustrations
by Jennifer Dewey, The Secret Language of Snow, (San Francisco:
Sierra Club/Pantheon Books, 1984).
6Here are some sample resources documenting that pride:
The Alaska Native Knowledge Network, Guidelines for Nurturing Culturally
Healthy Youth, 22 Apr 02 <http://www.ankn.uaf.edu/standards/youth.pdf>
10-08-02."Adopted by Assembly of Alaska Native Educators, Anchorage, Alaska,
February 6, 2001." The Alaska Native Knowledge Network is a consortium
of the Alaska Federation of Natives, the University of Alaska, the National
Science Foundation and the Alaska Department of Education.
Tricia Brown and Roy Corral, Children of the Midnight Sun: Young
Native Voices of Alaska, (Anchorage: Alaska Northwest Books, n.d.).
Richard Glen, "Traditional Knowledge, Environmental Assessment, and
the Clash of Two Cultures" in Sidney Stevens, Handbook for Culturally
Responsive Science Curriculum, No date. <http://www.ankn.uaf.edu/handbook.pdf
>10-08-02. The Handbook is a publication of the Alaska Science Consortium
and the Alaska Rural System Initiative funded by the National Science Foundation
grant and is in cooperation with the Alaska Department of Education.
It might be noted that the appendix consisted of an overview of curriculum
building and assessment and then sample modules on 1) ice fishing and lure
construction and 2) wind and weather observation.
7Colin Samson, A Way of Life That Does Not Exist: Canada
and the Extinguishment of the Innu (New York: Verso, 2003)
DOCUMENT INFORMATION
This document: http://www.prairienet.org/prairienations/InnuEski.htm
Referring document: http://www.prairienet.org/prairienations/index.htm
Author: Jim Fay, Ph.D.
Comments to: jfay@prairienet.org
Last Update: 2/23/08
