An Inuk Boy Becomes a Hunter

Melvin Baker is an archivist and historian at Memorial University of
Newfoundland, and the co-editor of Dictionary of Newfoundland and
Labrador Biography.

In the past 15 years, memoirs have become a popular aspect of
Newfoundland publishing. Igloliorte’s work is a welcome addition to
this genre, for little has been written by Labrador’s Innu and Inuit.
Indeed, much of what has been published about them is by outsiders who
have gone into their communities.

Igloliorte’s story begins with his growing up in the northern coastal
Labrador town of Nain during the 1940s and 1950s (he was born in 1936).
He details how as a young boy he played at being a hunter using bows and
arrows and slingshots fashioned out of sealskin to learn the skills that
would be essential for survival later in adulthood; explains
recreational and dancing gains; and describes how the Inuit hunted
caribou and other animals, fished cod, and caught seals. He also
describes his successful courtship of the sister of a friend’s wife,
raising his family, supporting his family by fishing and later by
working at various labourer’s jobs in Labrador, and his struggle to
overcome alcoholism, and notes the racism experienced by the Inuit in
the government stores along the coast.

An interesting aspect of the memoir is the pervasive influence of the
German Moravian missionaries on the Inuit way of life (the brass band,
the emphasis on schooling, soccer, devotion to church service, and
singing in the church choir, for example). The memoir, which is fully
illustrated with Igloliorte’s drawings, is useful for understanding
the Inuit way of life and how it is changing from within and outside the
community.