Overview

The small island of Igloolik lies between the Melville Peninsula and Baffin Island at the northern end of Hudson Bay north of the Arctic Circle. It has fascinated many in the Western world since 1824, when a London publisher printed the narratives by William Parry and his second-in-command, George Lyon, about their two years spent looking for the mythical Northwest Passage. Nearly a hundred and fifty years later, Bernard Saladin d'Anglure arrived in Igloolik, hoping to complete the study he had been conducting for nearly six months in Arctic Quebec (present-day Nunavik). He was supposed to spend a month on Igloolik, but on his first morning there, Saladin d'Anglure met the elders Ujarak and Iqallijuq. He learned that they had been informants for Knud Rasmussen in 1922. Moreover, they had spent most of their lives in the camps and fully remembered the pre-Christian period. Ujarak and Iqallijuq soon became Saladin d'Anglure's friends and initiated him into the symbolism, myths, beliefs, and ancestral rules of the local Inuit. With them and their families, Saladin d'Anglure would work for thirty years, gathering the oral traditions of their people. First published in French in 2006, Inuit Stories of Being and Rebirth contains an in-depth, paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of stories on womb memories, birth, namesaking, and reincarnation. This new English edition introduces this material to a broader audience and contains a new afterword by Saladin d'Anglure.

Full Product Details

9780887558306

Table of Contents

Reviews

"""Inuit Stories is engaging and easy to read and can be recommended to the interested public but also to scholars for its important contribution to anthropological theory. Saladin d'Anglure explains how Inuit oral tradition blurs boundaries between opposing worlds such as male/female, human/ animal, and death/life.""--Alaska Journal of Anthropology ""Saladin d' Anglure [...] shares a philosophical perspective that sex and gender play interchangeable roles as a means of Inuit survival. The stories describe Inuit perceptions of sex and gender in ways that are unlike Western binary concepts of sexual and gender identity. [...] This book is a lens that can allow a glimpse into Inuit knowledge systems and offers a rare account of how Inuit established social structures and unity among the sexes prior to European contact. While some of the practices of naming have changed in a post-modern Inuit context, the stories and analysis by Saladin d' Anglure imply that unity among the sexes is an important aspect of how Inuit have survived as a distinct Indigenous people within some of the harshest environmental living conditions on earth.""--Wayne Voisey Clark ""Canadian Journal Of Native Studies"" ""The new English edition of Inuit Stories of Being and Rebirth: Gender, Shamanism, and the Third Sex -- translated from the French by Peter Frost -- is a major accomplishment. This is one of the great classics of humanities and social science research in the Canadian Arctic.""--Marianne Stenbaek ""Canadian Literature"" ""The strongest point of the book is its rich capacity to generate analyses of Inuit story and life. While many works provide different Indigenous stories from across Canada, this text goes further and provides variants of and insight into the stories themselves.""--Amy Farrell-Morneau ""NAIS"""

Saladin d' Anglure [...] shares a philosophical perspective that sex and gender play interchangeable roles as a means of Inuit survival. The stories describe Inuit perceptions of sex and gender in ways that are unlike Western binary concepts of sexual and gender identity. [...] This book is a lens that can allow a glimpse into Inuit knowledge systems and offers a rare account of how Inuit established social structures and unity among the sexes prior to European contact. While some of the practices of naming have changed in a post-modern Inuit context, the stories and analysis by Saladin d' Anglure imply that unity among the sexes is an important aspect of how Inuit have survived as a distinct Indigenous people within some of the harshest environmental living conditions on earth. --Wayne Voisey Clark Canadian Journal Of Native Studies The new English edition of Inuit Stories of Being and Rebirth: Gender, Shamanism, and the Third Sex -- translated from the French by Peter Frost -- is a major accomplishment. This is one of the great classics of humanities and social science research in the Canadian Arctic. --Marianne Stenbaek Canadian Literature The strongest point of the book is its rich capacity to generate analyses of Inuit story and life. While many works provide different Indigenous stories from across Canada, this text goes further and provides variants of and insight into the stories themselves. --Amy Farrell-Morneau NAIS

Saladin d' Anglure [...] shares a philosophical perspective that sex and gender play interchangeable roles as a means of Inuit survival. The stories describe Inuit perceptions of sex and gender in ways that are unlike Western binary concepts of sexual and gender identity. [...] This book is a lens that can allow a glimpse into Inuit knowledge systems and offers a rare account of how Inuit established social structures and unity among the sexes prior to European contact. While some of the practices of naming have changed in a post-modern Inuit context, the stories and analysis by Saladin d' Anglure imply that unity among the sexes is an important aspect of how Inuit have survived as a distinct Indigenous people within some of the harshest environmental living conditions on earth.--Wayne Voisey Clark Canadian Journal Of Native Studies The new English edition of Inuit Stories of Being and Rebirth: Gender, Shamanism, and the Third Sex -- translated from the French by Peter Frost -- is a major accomplishment. This is one of the great classics of humanities and social science research in the Canadian Arctic. --Marianne Stenbaek Canadian Literature The strongest point of the book is its rich capacity to generate analyses of Inuit story and life. While many works provide different Indigenous stories from across Canada, this text goes further and provides variants of and insight into the stories themselves. --Amy Farrell-Morneau NAIS

The new English edition of Inuit Stories of Being and Rebirth: Gender, Shamanism, and the Third Sex -- translated from the French by Peter Frost -- is a major accomplishment. This is one of the great classics of humanities and social science research in the Canadian Arctic. --Marianne Stenbaek Canadian Literature The strongest point of the book is its rich capacity to generate analyses of Inuit story and life. While many works provide different Indigenous stories from across Canada, this text goes further and provides variants of and insight into the stories themselves. --Amy Farrell-Morneau NAIS

Author Information

Bernard Saladin D'Anglure first began his work among the Canadian Inuit in the 1950s, when he was a young student from France. He later became a professor of Anthropology at the University of Laval, where he taught until his retirement.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available