Voices from the Eastern Arctic

Earle H. Waugh worked at the Humanities Centre of the University of Alberta.

It has been many years since we heard educators encouraging students to do their own thing! Ordinarily the published results of these adventures are very thin. This one is different. True, there are no new issues explored here. Many of the themes are repetitive. But somehow a trilingual book (in French, English, and Inuktitut), with sketches from talented children, gives a sense of place and texture to the North that is refreshing. Voices speaks of the cultural alienation of Inuit from white, people from government, leadership from policy. It voids stereotypes and urges understanding. It is replete with the irony of a white raised in the North who is not considered a northerner by his own government and the Inuit whose northern culture is acknowledged in policy yet suppressed. It is a reflective Canadian document of change.

There is a moral tone pervading these selections that should give us heart for Canada’s future. And there is hope that, somehow, a basic Canadian tolerance will win the day: “There are some advantages to living here in the North. We have people who are black, Hungarian, French, Italian, Pakistani and, of course, Inuit and we all live together very well.” The statement of good will is perhaps the sum of the book.