Living with Eskimos

By Queuebot in Art, Pictures, Travel on Mar 7, 2009 at 2:26 pm

Photo: Scarlett Hooft Graafland

Photographer Scarlett Hooft Graafland spent 4 months living with the Eskimos in the remotest part of north Canada and documented her experience in her photograph series "You Winter, let’s get divorced."

James Read of Don’t Panic Magazine has an engaging interview with Scarlett and a few photographs to boot:

Okay, and how about igloos? You made an igloo for one of your photos, right?

I learned some igloo building, yes. It’s beautiful how such a structure works and how peaceful it is to sit inside one. It’s a real shelter from the cold, and the sound insulation is intriguing too. I was surprised that you could do this with such thin blocks of ice.

For my project Lemonade Igloo, I made frozen blocks of orange lemonade, cast them in wooden boxes, and asked traditional Inuit men to build an igloo out of the blocks. It took a whole day – you have to glue all the pieces together with snow and water to make a strong structure out of it. A big job.

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by JJA.

Tags: eskimo, igloo, lemonade, Scarlett Hooft Graafland

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Greencolander
Mar 7th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
*wince* Inuit, not Eskimo.
OhnO
Mar 7th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
@Greencolander: thank you

Did this person really spend time in northern Canada?
l'elk!
Mar 7th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
not all inuit’s take offense to being called eskimo’s and this photographer obviously traveled with a group that didn’t give a shit.
l'elk!
Mar 7th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
not all inuit’s take offense to being called eskimo’s and this photographer obviously traveled with a group that didn’t care.

so… taking offense for them seems like a waste of time.
Kalel
Mar 7th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
Anyway, the locals were superfluous to her ‘vision’.
T313
Mar 8th, 2009 at 12:32 am
The author/photographer didn’t use the term “Eskimo” – the Queuebot poster did.
singer
Mar 8th, 2009 at 2:15 am
Uh, yeah, Eskimo is not really acceptable anymore. It means something like “eaters of raw meat”, i.e. a version of “savage”. An Inuk is “person”, Inuit is “the people”, Inuktituk is “how the person speaks”.
Alex
Mar 8th, 2009 at 2:21 am
“Eskimo” is the term used by interviewer at Don’t Panic Online.
ted
Mar 8th, 2009 at 8:24 am
Whatever. What’s the point of making an orange igloo?
Induline
Mar 8th, 2009 at 11:51 am
And then she was eaten by a polar bear because she’s sitting in an igloo made of sugar water. Seriously, they’ll travel kilometers for garbage, now her “art installation” is the most dangerous place in the near north.
Jibb
Mar 8th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Please change the term “Eskimo” to Inuit. Highly offensive and racist. It’s akin to saying “gook” or “wop”. Not nice. Doesn’t matter if the author used it. Just change it.
johzephine
Mar 9th, 2009 at 12:57 am
If she’s in Canada, they’re probably inuit. But remember, mot all eskimos are inuit.
Scooter
Mar 9th, 2009 at 10:38 am
Wait, so saying Eskimo is the native peoples equivalent to the N word?
Maria
Mar 9th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
PLEASE, dont say eskimo. The right word is INUIT

thanks:-)
EskimoKisser
Mar 10th, 2009 at 9:53 am
Well, here’s the thing.
I know a thing or two about eskimos (I have been in Greenland), and the way I understand it the word “inuit” is too specific, it’s like calling all Asian people Japanese. It refers to a sub-group of what we used to call “eskimos”.

I realize there may be some cultural-insensitivity baggage that needs to be dealt with, but in terms of accuracy I would go with “Eskimo”. If you want, we can settle on Greenland-American or some $h!t like that but either way we would be doing this group of people a disservice.
And aside from all that, the “eskimos” that I met didn’t give a damn what you called them, they usually had “names” they used to address each other with anyway.

And, no, Eskimo does not equal the N-word by a long shot. Not even in the same ballpark.
EskimoKisser
Mar 10th, 2009 at 10:06 am
And speaking of these blanket terms, the same goes for “Indians” vs. “Native-Americans” or whatever else they’ve come up with lately.
All these words are Western constructs, words from a language not native to America when it is discovered by the Europeans. They had their own tribal names and probably didn’t have a blanket term for all the people that shared their skin color, since they didn’t know there was another way people could look. That is until the Europeans came and brought the full buffet. So I would imagine they probably just called themselves “human” in their different dialects and languages.

So, what I’m saying is, the whole thing is corrupt to start with. Changing the name for a particular group of people every ten years to try to make up for a mass-genocide is like putting a band-aid on a decapitated head.

There isn’t really much need to use these words in an everyday conversation (wishful thinking, I know, but there isn’t). For the purposes of theoretical essays and studies that rely on ethnic-specific data then those performing the study should be allowed to choose whichever term they find to be the most accurate and descriptive given the circumstances. So if they want to say “Indians”, I say let ‘em.
But with these things like everything else, I guess you have to leave it up to the people the word refers to:
http://www.peaknet.net/~aardvark/means.html
Kirby's 2nd grade class
Apr 23rd, 2009 at 3:30 pm
My 2nd grade class would like to know if there is a bathroom inside an igloo, or do they have to walk to an outhouse? Please help our inquiring minds!

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