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^p/tf/uW ByAlootook Ipellie AT THE END OFJanuary 1992, lyola Kingwatsiak , an Inuk carver from Cape Dorset, Nunavut, was invited to participate in the Conference on Inuit Art held at the McMichael Canadian Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario. Shortly after the conference, in the spring 1992 edition of InuitArt Quarterly magazine, he was asked: "What did you think aboutyour trip to the McMichael conference?" His reply: "I enjoyed being there, but the problem was that we sat there like pieces of art in a showcase display. The non-Inuit at the conference spoke as much as they pleased about their own lives and how they lived like Inuit. But they never gave us a chance to speak or asked us questions about our work. The white people dominated as usual. They think they are the experts and know everything about Inuit. This goes on all the time. I myself felt that the white people should be asking us Inuit what we think rather than encouraging the non-Inuit to talk about their childhood in our homeland. The only contribution I madewhile I was there was to do a bit of printmaking but, again, the people who organized the conference didn't give us a chance to speak or respond to questions people might have had." To the interviewer's follow-up question, "Did you think thatyou 'werejust therefor people tolook at you?" Kingwatsiak answered: "You're very right about that. We're just like part of the show pieces; they treat us like carvings. The white people never seemed to be interested in talking with us. We work hard to make a living with our art and nobody asked us to talk about how we make our carvings and prints and what kind of tools and other things we use." In the fall of 1880, eight Inuit from Labrador arrived in Germany, having been recruited by Adrian Jacobsen on behalf of his employer, Carl Hagenbeck, the owner of Hagenbeck's Zoo in Hamburg. According to one of the Moravian missionaries in Labrador the Inuit "were unable to refuse Herr Jacobsen ... to be exhibited like wild animals outside in Europe to gain money ..." with "promised daily earnings of three shillings per man, two shillings per woman, one shilling per child ... the desire for European splendours is too strong ..." All summerJacobsen had been travelling the coastlines of west Greenland and Cumberland THE DIARY OF ABRAHAM ULRIKAB [vii] Sound off South Baffin Island before arriving in Hebron, Labrador looking for so-called "exotic" peoples still practicing their traditional cultures on the land and the sea. His main objectivewas to recruit Eskimos to be shown at the "Volkerschauen" or "peoples shows" that provided ethnographic shows of different cultures. Three years previously,in 1877, Hagenbeck had successfully exhibited a group of Inuit from Greenland. Now he wished to duplicate that success with Abrahamand the seven other Inuit in the entourage - on the onehand, Abraham's family of five Christian neophytes and, on the other, Terrianiak's shaman pagan family of three. The voyage from Labrador across to Europe on the Atlantic's rough seas must have been a curious one. These two groups did not see eyeto -eye, as their daily lives led them on different paths - one family, devout Christians who prayed daily and left their future in the hands of the Lord; the other, "heathens" who were very much in the hands of the natural world and still practicing their "magic" to the very end. But they were heading to Europe for one mutual reason: hired by Hagenbeck as live human exhibits to demonstrate their survival techniques as "primitive" hunters and gatherers on the Arctic lands and waters to audiences, large or small, in different European cities. They had had enough of carrying heavy debts and experiencing great poverty. The trip to Europe gave them a glimpse of a financial windfall that would certainly wipe out their financial predicaments this side of the Atlantic. It seemed awin-win situation , so they hopped on board the ship with encouraging optimism in their hearts. In reading the contents of Abraham's diary and letters published in these pages (translated from the original Inuktitut to German and then finally to English) one feels empathy with the author. He and his fellow travellers must have gone through a myriad of emotions from the day they decided to join Jacobsen on the voyage to Europe, through the five months on exhibit, to the moment their eyes closed for...

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