The Polar North: ways of speaking, ways of belonging

ARCTIC, 2000

Polar Record, 2016

‘Speaking’ and ‘belonging’ have a particular salience as indices of intimacy in a remote corner of northwest Greenland where connectedness is constantly reinforced through a distinct commonality of expression and certain social practices, such as very frequent visiting of one another, story-telling, recycling of names and a shared monistic philosophy. The Inugguit define themselves by a repertoire of communicative and behavioural strategies which are used to ensure that one is accepted in a supportive kin group: the perennial social and personal imperative for each member of the group. This article shows how despite social and climatic upheaval, these practices remain, but that the hunters’ ‘symbiotic’ relationship with nature is eroding as the loss of sea ice means they can no longer live like the animals they hunt.

2014

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Peter Lang, 2015

This book serves as an insightful ethnographic introduction to the language and oral traditions of the Inugguit, a sub-group of the Inuit who live in north-west Greenland. A unique work, it encompasses an overview of the grammar of Polar Eskimo – a language spoken by about 770 people – as well as a description of their oral traditions (drum-dancing and story-telling) and the most extensive glossary of the language compiled to date. The book presents the Polar Eskimo language in the orthography established by the author in conjunction with the local community in Greenland, an extremely difficult task for a language made up of such an aberrant phonology and with no written tradition. By exploring their ways of speaking and ways of belonging, Leonard provides an original ethnographic interpretation of the nature of Inugguit social organization and their world-view. Some Ethnolinguistic Notes on Polar Eskimo will serve as an invaluable resource for linguists who specialise in the Eskimo-Aleut group and will be of much interest to anthropologists working in the Arctic region

Studies in Travel Writing, 2016

Postmodern Canadian writers challenge the classical image of the North, "the perspective […] southern; the landscape described in terms of what it lacks" (MOSS 1996: 85). Acknowledging that the English language is inadequate to describe Arctic landscapes, writers such as Rudy Wiebe, Robert Kroetsch, or John Moss turn to those who have been living there for millennia -the Inuit. By experiencing what Terry Goldie calls an "indigenization" : 234) of their works, those writers absorb the Inuit language and culture in their perception of the land, questioning the Occidental geography by the integration of Inuit spatial concepts and orientation. This indigenization raises problematic issues such as the appropriation of the Other's voice and the translation of orality into a written form.

A Review of Penny Petrone's 'Northern Voices', from the winter 1989-90 issue of Archivaria