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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [First Page] [206], (1) Lines: 0 t ——— 0.0pt PgV ——— Normal Page PgEnds: T [206], (1) twelve Inuit Social Networks in an Urban Setting Nobuhiro Kishigami Both government statistics and anecdotal reports indicate that Canada’s urban Inuit population is increasing. The demographic shift gained momentum during the 1980s as more northern-born Inuit relocated to southern Canadian cities (Kishigami 1999; Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples 1993). In 1991, 8,305 Inuit (approximately 17 percent of the Canadians who identify themselves as Inuit) reportedly resided in the largest Canadian urban centers (Statistics Canada 1994: 100; Centre for International Statistics at the Canadian Council on Social Development 1996). 1 This new urbanization foregrounds numerous changes in Inuit communities in the North as well as in the lives of the urban migrants. In the summer of 1997 I interviewed fifty-four Inuit living in Montreal on a variety of topics including lifestyle, contacts and interactions with family and friends still in the North, and importantly, social and economic exchanges with other urban Inuit. Franz Boas argued that kinship was the primary organizing principle of social life in Inuit communities of the 1880s, observing that “the social order of the Eskimo is entirely founded on the family and the ties of consanguinity and affinity between the individual families” (Boas 1964 [1888]: 170). Inuit kinship, however, is not merely a matter of biological relatedness but depends on many other factors, such as physical proximity, naming, and regular social interactions. Despite the enormous social and physical reorganization of Inuit communities and economies in the latter half of the twentieth century, arctic anthropologists continue to describe the overriding importance of kinship as the organizing principle of social networks and social activities in contemporary arctic communities (cf. Burch 1975; Damas 1963; Kishigami 1995; Nuttall 1992; Wenzel 1981). To date little an- Inuit Social Networks in an Urban Setting 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [207], (2) Lines: 15 to 25 ——— * 19.4pt PgVar ——— Normal Page * PgEnds: Eject [207], (2) thropological attention has been paid to the lives of urban-dwelling Inuit. However, the urban environment is markedly different—socially, culturally, and physically—from that of Inuit communities in the North, and thus we should expect Inuit living in cities to live markedly different lives than their northern kin. In this chapter I explore whether kinship is the main organizing principle of social networks and social activities of Inuit living in Montreal. Research Methods My previous experience in both Montreal and the eastern Canadian Arctic led me to select Montreal as a research site for examining the urban Inuit experience (Kishigami 1995, 1997, 2000). Montreal is an important service center for Inuit from Nunavik (as it was for the Inuit from the Baffin region of Nunavut until the late 1990s), and a number of Nunavik Inuit organizations are based in Montreal. Additionally, as an international student at McGill University in the 1980s I had the opportunity to experience Montreal as a nonwestern nonfrancophone outsider, which was not entirely dissimilar to the experience of recent Inuit arrivals in the city. In the summer of 1996 before beginning this project, I visited the offices of several Inuit and native organizations in Ottawa and Montreal in order to explain my project and obtain their cooperation. In Ottawa the organizations included Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (now Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami), Pauktuutit (Inuit Women’s Association), Inuit Circumpolar Conference– Canada,andTunngasuvvingatInuit(Inuithouse).InMontrealImetwithof- ficialsfromMakivikCorporation,theNativeFriendshipCentreofMontreal, Chez Doris (a women’s shelter), and the Kativik School Board. I conducted preliminary interviews with ten Inuit at the Native Friendship Centre and, based on this pilot survey and in cooperation with Caroline Stone at Makivik Corporation, developed a series of questions for a one-hour open-ended interview. Using a snowball sampling technique, I contacted as many Montreal Inuit as possible between June 17 and August 8, 1997. In the end fifty-five people agreed to answer my questions (table 12.1).2 Because it was summer, university students, who make up a significant portion of urban Inuit, were undersampled.Additionally...

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