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SIKU: Knowing Our Ice pp 377–400Cite as

Franz Boas and Inuktitut Terminology for Ice and Snow: From the Emergence of the Field to the “Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax”

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Abstract

Franz Boas, the “founding father” of North American anthropology, has long been credited with many pioneer contributions to the field of Arctic anthropology, as a result of his first and only fieldwork among the Inuit on Baffin Island, following the First International Polar Year 1882–1883. In this new “polar year” the SIKU project has initiated several studies of the Inuit terminology for sea ice and snow, including in the areas of Baffin Island once surveyed by Boas, as well as in the nearby regions of Nunavut, Nunavik, Labrador, and Greenland. Also, in the past decade the story of Boas’ fieldwork on Baffin Island has become known in full, in diaries, personal letters, and field notes. This chapter capitalizes on these new sources: it examines Boas’ knowledge of the Inuit terminology for sea ice and snow and its value to current discussion about language, indigenous knowledge, the Inuit, and beyond. It also addresses the so-called Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax debate of the past decades that misconstrues Boas’ use of the Inuit terms and the analysis of the contemporary Inuit ice and snow vocabulary.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to our colleagues, Claudio Aporta, Ernest S. Burch, Jr., Louis-Jacques Dorais, Ives Goddard, and Michael Krauss for many valuable comments to the first draft of this chapter. Mark Halpern was a source of inspiration on many issues related to the “Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax” debate. Matthew Sturm shared with us his lexicon of the Inuit/Inupiaq terms for snow collected among knowledgeable elders in Barrow, Alaska; and Noel Broadbent shared and translated the Swedish list of ice terms from Edlund’s dissertation (2000). Our colleagues in the SIKU project – Claudio Aporta, Ron Brower, Gita Laidler, and Pierre Taverniers – kindly offered Inuit ice vocabularies they collected in 2003–2008 in Igloolik, Barrow, Pangnirtung, and Qeqertaq, respectively, for our comparative analysis with Franz Boas’ 1894 lexicon. All shortcomings in interpreting the Inuit knowledge or ice and snow are of our own.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 20013-7012, USA

    Igor Krupnik

  2. McGill University, Montréal, QC, Canada

    Ludger Müller-Wille

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  1. Igor Krupnik
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Correspondence to Igor Krupnik .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. National Museum of Natural History, Dept. Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution, 10th and Constitution Ave. NW.,, Washington, 20013-7012, District of Columbia, USA

    Igor Krupnik

  2. Dept. Sociology & Anthropology, Carleton University, Colonel By Dr. 1125, Ottawa, K1S 5B6, Ontario, Canada

    Claudio Aporta

  3. National Snow & Ice Data Center, University of Colorado, Boulder, Clyde River, Nunavut, Canada

    Shari Gearheard

  4. Dept. Geography &, Environmental Studies, Carleton University, Colonel By Drive 1125, Ottawa, K1S 5B6, Ontario, Canada

    Gita J. Laidler

  5. Inuit Circumpolar Council, Greenland, Dr. Ingridsvej 1, Nuuk, 3900, Greenland

    Lene Kielsen Holm

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Krupnik, I., Müller-Wille, L. (2010). Franz Boas and Inuktitut Terminology for Ice and Snow: From the Emergence of the Field to the “Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax”. In: Krupnik, I., Aporta, C., Gearheard, S., Laidler, G., Kielsen Holm, L. (eds) SIKU: Knowing Our Ice. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8587-0_16

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