Shamanism meets Christianity

For thousands of years, Inuit belief was centered around a shamanistic belief system. When there was trouble, one paid a visit to the local angekoq. He -- or she, there were a great many women shamans -- might ask a few questions; had you and your family broken a taboo? If so, ritual cleansing might be in order. If not, the shaman might speak with others in the band -- had they? All else failing, the angekoq might summon one of her tongait, or spirit helpers. These were often embodied in a small charm worn on the belt, and might be made of an old piece of animal skin or bone. Brought to life, the spirit helper would enable the angekoq to travel wherever he needed -- to the bottom of the sea to visit Sedna, to a neighboring band, or even to the Moon -- as Kenn Harper once pointed out, Neil Armstrong wasn't the first man to set foot there -- Inuit had been visiting for milennia!

When missionaries finally arrived in the more remote areas of the Arctic, the shamanistic system faced a challenge. Shamanism had always had practical as well as spiritual value -- what could Christianity do if the seals didn't come to their breathing holes? -- but at the same time shamanism worked mainly by fear, and brought with it "numerous and irksome" taboos, as recounted in the introduction to our book. Perhaps understandably, while attending church and even becoming catechists and preachers, Inuit quietly kept shamanism alive, like a fire extinguisher in a closet, in case of necessity.

Isuma productions has dramatized the onset of Christianity, showing both its attractions and its coercive elements, in an episode of its Nunavut series, Avaja. In it, the priest offers his Inuit neighbors gifts of tobacco, attaching the promise that when they hear the bell, they must come to the church. He preaches a sermon about "Mosesesee" and the Burning Bush (a tough sell for people who have never seen a bush), and they seem to comply with his wishes, singing along loudly with every hymn. Nevertheless, it's clear that one reason they chose to attend was the anxiety of not being impolite, and (perhaps) the fear of offending the new God and his ministers. For Inuit who were there to witness this development, there has always been a sense of doubleness, of living between and yet within two worlds.

The spread of this new faith was uneven at first, and often the text of the Bible or other religious texts arrived well before any context with which to understand them. Perhaps the worst case of this was the Belcher Islands incident of 1941, in which a hunter named Peter Sala -- the only man on the islands who could read syllabics -- decided that he was God and his son was Jesus. Those who would not follow his orders were killed. His sister even claimed to have a vision of the second coming, and declared that Jesus was going to float down in his kayak from the sky -- and Inuit needed to be naked in order to receive his blessings. Perhaps needless to say, many of those who listened to her froze to death.

This and many other stories are told here, by Kenn Harper, based on installments of his long-running column, Taissumani ("in those days") in the Nunatsiaq News. Read them -- many are strange indeed -- and unlike the tales in Kayak Full of Ghosts, most of them are true stories. In your comments, choose one of them, and describe your reaction to it.