Abstract
In the mid-1990s Frédéric Laugrand and his colleague Jarich Oosten implemented a programme to facilitate the transmission to younger generations of Inuit of the cosmological knowledge, and shamanic wisdom in particular, that the elders deemed of vital importance to Inuit identity. In this chapter Laugrand describes how even though commanding the Inuit language and adapting to Inuit life as best as they could they continued to be perceived as “migratory geese”—stranger-friends who come and go again. And yet as guests they were not only to assist in the transfer of ancestral knowledge to the young, but also to participate in and honour the ritual communication with the spirits and the dead.
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Notes
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Among the Umingmaktormiut—an Inuit group from the Western Arctic—the drum had cosmological connotations: “Sometimes a ring forms round the sun; it is called qilauta: the drum of the sun; for it forms a figure round about the sun just like the drum used in the festival house. We do not quite know what this means; some believe that, simply because it resembles the drum we dance to, the sun drum is an omen of something pleasant that will happen. If it is not a ring, but only an arc that forms round the sun, it is called nataineq, which is thought to mean a part of the wooden rim of the drum. This, then, means that somebody has died” (Rasmussen 1932: 23).
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Laugrand, F. (2019). “You are like Geese”. Working and Drum Dancing with Inuit Elders in Nunavut (Canada). In: Platenkamp, J., Schneider, A. (eds) Integrating Strangers in Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16703-5_3
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