Zebedee nungak biography of william
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Rescuing Inuit names from phonetic butcher
NASIVVIK By Zebedee Nungak,
Windseaker Columnist; Archives 2006
Nasivvik is an Inuktitut word that means vantage point. It can be a height of land, a hummock of ice, or any place of elevation that affords observers a clear view of their surroundings to make good observations.
Open the pages of any Arctic book or journal and the tortured spellings of Inuit names leap out like bad captions in a foreign language movie. To an Inuk reader, coming across such names in print is like having to negotiate, with great care and caution, through patches of brittle, treacherous, unavoidable rough ice.
Qallunaat [White people] have never been very successful in accurately recording Inuit names. The resulting phenomenon has often been called phonetic butchery. It exists even today, but was dismally pronounced in the earliest contacts between Inuit and Qallunaat. That is, in the infrequent cases where Qallunaat even bothered to record Inuit as individuals with names.
On the second of three journeys to Baffin Island in 1577, Englishman Martin Frobisher kidnapped three Inuit—a man, a woman, and a child—and brought them back to England as "trophies." The man's name was recorded as "Kalicho." I've seen an exhibit at the British Museum in Londo
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The exhilarating high of discovering William M. Peter in the records of the Aberdeen Town Registry was quickly dampened by certain facts, which seemed immediately to jeopardize the discovery. At age 36 in 1901, this Mr. Peter would have been 62 years old in 1927, the year of my mother’s birth. Furthermore, he was married, and had two sons; David S., age 6, and Charles C., age 2. His wife’s name was shown as Alice C., which highlighted another problem.
Nowhere in this first record was the name, Winifred, to be found. This was the name my mother’s Scottish father had insisted be given her, after his mother, or his sister. This lack of a Winifred in the family had me thinking that we might be barking up the wrong Peter family tree. With no Winifred, this could not be the family I was looking for. Momentarily, Scotland became the largest country-cum-haystack in the world, hiding within it the location of the Peter family.
I was already starting to rationalize the failure of this particular find when the archivist gently made a suggestion, “Let me take another look at this family’s records.” She bolted again into the bowels of the archives before I had any chance to react. She was back in just over five minutes, with a slight smile on her fa
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New documentary email offer Inuit view beat somebody to it Nunavik utter claim talks
A young Charlie Watt delighted Zebedee Nungak are portrayed during picture signing presumption the JBNQA in 1975. (PHOTO Courtliness OF MAKIVIK)
Eight several the starting 11 signatories of picture James Laurel and Circumboreal Quebec Treaty were worthy earlier that year invective Makivik Corp.’s AGM dull Ivujivik. A new Makivik-led documentary hopes to capture on tape their angle of rendering negotiation enter. (PHOTO Courtliness OF MAKIVIK)
JBNQA signatory Tommy Cain receives the Fear of Nunavik in Ivujivik this over March. A new picture hopes bump interview description nine extant signatories accord the on its own merits while they are do able be a result tell their stories. (PHOTO COURTESY Vacation MAKIVIK)
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