Chaco Dog Collar

doug herman: aloha everyone andwelcome back to “stellar connections”. our next speaker isjohn macdonald. now retired, john macdonald spent most of his workinglife in the canadian arctic. he for 25 years coordinated the igloolikresearch center, located in the inuit community of igloolik in nunavut’snorth baffin island region and i

Chaco Dog Collar, can’t believe i got that out of mymouth without blowing it. throughout his time in igloolik hecollaborated closely with local inuit elders to record and document theoral history and traditional knowledge of the region. part ofthis work included a major study of

inuit astronomy and cosmology leadingto the publication of his wonderful book the arctic sky: inuit astronomy,star lore, and legend. long interested in contact history betweeneuropeans and the inuit, john is currently editing and annotating anunpublished journal documenting early encounters between the inuit of theigloolik area and members of an 1820s british naval expedition seeking anorthwest passage from the atlantic to the pacific.john’s presentation is entitled after his book “the arctic sky: inuitastronomy, star lore, and legend”. please welcome john macdonald.[applause]

john macdonald: thank you doug. boythese lights are bright. it’s like the midnight sun. again, and alsothank you for plugging the book. it’s available on amazon by the way.but i should point out that the proceeds go to two things; the - -museum and also to support an oral history project in the community inwhich i lived all these years. i’m also grateful to be invited here.it’s many years since i’ve been to washington, and the last time i wassimply passing through. i’m going to be here for approximately a week, sobecause i was brought here so to speak by the smithsonian i’m going tohang on and go through the museums as

much as i can, so thanks very much.it’s probably very clear to us all now that cultural astronomies areabout particular people in particular places. so first a few words aboutinuit and their arctic homelands. inuit, and i name this and i use thename to include the upic in the western part of the arctic. inuitlive mainly in the arctic regions of north america, greenland, and evenhave a toll hold in parts of alaska. excuse me, a toll hold in parts ofnortheastern siberia. the blue areas on the map indicate approximatelytheir traditional homelands. they’re predominately coastaldwellers, although a few groups live

within the margins of the treeline,notably in parts of alaska, northern quebec, and labrador. coastal inuittraditionally lived on marine mammals such as seals, walrus, and whales;while those living inland relied almost exclusively on caribou. dietwas augmented seasonally by fish, migratory birds such as geese, ducks,and also ptarmigan, and minimally by foraged roots and berries in thesummer. over the past 60 years or so, inuit have become more urbanizedand moving from their camps in the land into crowded settlementsestablished by national governments across the arctic.this afternoon we’ll be looking

mainly at the astronomy of the inuitof igloolik. they’re also known by their own name as the igloolingmutwho live on a small island in canada’s nunavut territory.igloolingmut star knowledge is shared by other inuit communities in northbaffin island, but at a general level its cosmological foundations areapplicable across the entire inuit range from the bering sea, acrossarctic america, to the west and east coasts of greenland. igloolik andthe igloolik island is shown inset on the map in the screen is just below17Ⱐnorth, placing it 320 kilometers above the arctic circle. the wintershere are long and dark and the sun is

gone each year from the end ofnovember until the middle of january. and the summers while they’re shortand blessed with the midnight sun, are invariably short. the ice-freeseason even in these times of climate change lasts around three months fromlate july until the end of october. in fact, igloolik as i speak isexperiencing freeze-up, not like here.igloolik was established as a settlement by the canadian governmentin the early 1960s and is now a growing town of around 1,900 people,mostly inuit. before moving into the settlement inuit of the area lived insmall seasonal camps on the coastal

inlets of nearby baffin island.locations chosen for the predictability of the marine animalson which they depended. as you can see, the terrain aroundigloolik tends to be rather flat and featureless compared to most otherlocations in the eastern arctic. there are no mountains to obscure thehorizon, and so a large and rather inviting sky is the hallmark ofigloolik scenery, which is very good for anyone that’s interested instars. igloolike island has an extremelyrich archeological heritage. the numerous remains of ancient dwellingsscattered throughout the island have

found their way into inuit cosmology.inuit tradition views these sites as having been occupied at a single timein the very distant past by the island’s first people. this was at atime when there was no winter and no death. life it was said was easy andfood plentiful, but the island eventually became impossiblyovercrowded, the countless archaeological sites prove this, andpeople were literally being pushed into the sea. legends tell that thisdesperate situation was eased only by people calling for death and winter.so death and winter came, social order was established, and the growthof the community checked.

a version of this legend ends withthe words “with death came the sun, the moon, and the stars. for whenpeople die, they go up to the heavens and become luminous”.archaeologists with a very different cosmology view the island sites ashaving been occupied by various arctic hunting peoples over the last4,500 years as the island gradually rebounded from the seas following thelast ice age. my interest in inuit astronomy cameabout perhaps inevitably as a result of a long-term resident in igloolike.i was there with my family for almost 25 years. and it was also aided andabetted by my dabbling in the very

esoteric practice of celestialnavigation. during my observation sessions on clear winter nights, andi’d be usually fumbling with a frozen sextant or a frozen artificialhorizon, older, curious inuit would often happen by point out a few oftheir stars, gently implying or so i thought that an understanding of thesky and the employment of its contents could be had without the useof my cumbersome gadgets. i took the hint and so began in 1985 a series ofinterviews with inuit elders about their astronomy lastingintermittently over some 20 years. all this was part of a major oralhistory project sponsored by the

igloolik elder society.about 30 elders, three of the main contributors shown here, [foreignlanguage] participated in the program. when interviewed abouttheir astronomy, most insisted that the information they possessed wasmeager compared to that of their parents or grandparents.nevertheless it was clear that these elders were virtually the lastkeepers of a more or less detailed knowledge of their astronomicaltraditions. the rapid dilution of inuit starknowledge is not surprising. the semi-urban life most inuit now livehinders the transmission of

traditional knowledge. conditionsreadily conducive to learning about the celestial sphere have ceased toexist. in the old days for example, slow-paced, dog team journeys acrossthe open tundra gave excellent opportunity to learn about the sky.nowadays however with their snowmobile travel leaves very, verylittle inclination or enthusiasm for star gazing. significantly elderspointed out that they no longer noticed the stars because of theglare of the community street lights. unfortunately light pollution, theanthema of urban dwelling sky watchers everywhere now pervades thecanadian arctic.

inuit cosmology was based onshamanistic belief and observance and offered a view of the sky and itscontents well suited to their spiritual and pragmatic needs. theirastronomy, particularly for those groups living above the arctic circlereflects the unique appearance of the celestial sphere at higher latitudes,perhaps demonstrated most dramatically by the sun’s absencefrom the sky during the mid-winter months.the illustration on the screen is by [foreign language], a well-knownartist from cape dorset on baffin island. [foreign language] imagebeautifully captures the inuit

perspective of the intimaterelationship between the sky, its contents, and the earth. unlike ourview, which seems increasingly to expand the limits of space, [foreignlanguage] sky is actually contained by the earth. you’ll notice too thather drawing is also about time, place, and activity. in effect it’sa calendar delineating the arctic year, including the freezing andmelting of sea ice, as well as the key activities associated with eachof the seasons. notice too that the sun’s annual cycle is representedalong the fringe of high mountains bordering the earth. and you can seethe sun’s annual cycle is represented

around the edge of the drawing.across the arctic, the notion of a flat earth was widely held. inalaska for instance, lost hunters were said to have fallen off the edgeof the world, while in labrador such accidents were prevented by highcliffs, keeping anything from living going to the region beyond. thecarving by [foreign language] on the left of the screen nicely illustratesthe world’s mountainous perimeter. the image on the right shows thelegendary mesana [phonetic], at the end of the world staring triumphantlyinto space holding a string of brilliant beads, proof that he hasreached the earth’s extremities; a

widespread inuit legend, known fromareas as far apart as alaska and northern quebec, tells us that suchbeads are found only at the world’s end.earth and sky are analogous in theinuit view, each in winter having a similar snow-clad topography. in thesky, the sun and moon live in adjoining igloos, regular traffictook place between the two realms. shima’s for instance, on their spiritflights would visit the moon and the moon man protector of abused orphans,would come to the earth to enforce taboos and to confer fertility onchildless women. it was believed

that taboo breaking was oftenresponsible for the creation of celestial objects and virtually allstars with human personifications were created following the commissionof some grave social transgression. murder and incest as we shall see areat the root of the epic inuit legend recounting the creation of the sunand the moon. because of igloolik’s high northernlatitude, around 70Ⱐnorth, the visible portion of the celestialsphere is notably less from what we see in the more temperate latitudes.in practical terms for example, this means that the brightest star,sirius, such an obvious feature of

the late night sky in washington justnow is barely seen at igloolik. it literally creeps along the horizon.in contrast, the twin stars castor and pollux, which rise and set atwashington’s latitude, are circumpolar, meaning that they’realways above the horizon and can be seen any time during the hours ofdarkness in igloolik, obviously if there’s no cloud cover.inuit names for stars and star groupings fall into severalcategories. as i’m going through this you can look at the names asthey give various constellations on the table there. the two principleones are first human and animal

personifications. the secondintrinsic designations derived from some feature of the star in question,including for instance, its spatial relationship to other stars, whetherthe star is leading or trailing, and in the case of the north star, it’sapparently fixed position in the sky. some have anatomical designation; thebreastbone of which is what they call the ploidies, and also the collarbones. normally only single stars are usedby inuit for personification of humans and animals. this practice isconsistent with the widespread that such stars were once animate beingson earth, possessed of single souls,

which in transformation logicallyretain their individual identities. the image on the screen shows a viewof the sky as perceived by igloolik inuit. almost all their major starsand constellations are represented here, including most obviously ursamajor. i mentioned the collar bones, these are four stars that compriseour stars capella and colleen and castor and pollux; cassiopeia hasactually two designations. the three brightest stars in cassiopeia areconsidered lamp stands for a soap stone lamp. i’ve mentioned theploidies before, that’s the breastbone. we’ll hear more aboutalderbarn, which is the polar bear

and the surrounding stars, the starcluster, the hiodies. sirius here is represented as an old woman cleaningher igloo window. she also has a lamp, which apparently flickers eachtime people go between the moon and earth. now if any of you have seenthe star sirius at lower latitudes it’s extremely brilliant. somepeople have likened it to a cut diamond. it is full of prismaticfigures changing all the time, and inuit feel that the draft of thesepasserby’s cause the lamp to flicker thus.myths and legends can serve a variety of purposes from the archean andquoting of cultural values and

expectations to explicit cautionarytales aimed at dissuading wayward behavior. celestial legends sharethese same characteristics, but in addition, are a practical device formaking sense of the sky and its contents. indeed igloolik elders saythat one of the purposes of star stories is to help us remember theexact location of important stars used in time telling and innavigation or way finding. and incidentally once inuit do tell youtheir stories about stars, they do tend to stick with you. they’re lesscomplex than some of the projections that we tend to make on the sky.and the legend of uluctut [phonetic]

stars, and these are the stars inorion; uluctut means the runners and it illustrates the point i’ve justmade very well. the story involves the three main stars in orion’s beltand the prominent star aldebaren in the constellation taurus and finallya number of stars in the hiodies cluster.this legend relates that on a bright moonlit night three brothers andtheir dogs come across a polar bear; they begin to hunt it. howeverthey’re unaware that they have been seen by a woman who has recentlygiven birth and is thus under various taboo restrictions, one of whichprohibits her from looking at

hunters. breaking this taboo causesthe three hunters, their dogs, and the polar bear to rise up to the skywhere they’re all conformed into stars. the three hunters becomeorion’s belt stars, ahead of them is the polar bear, the star we know asaldebaran, surrounded by the hiodies star cluster, which are now thehunter’s dogs. there’s a lovely embellishment ofthis story and that’s the great nebula in orion is sometimes said tobe the children and they’re usually cousins of the hunters that arecarrying fur clothing to their fathers that are pursuing the polarbear. now, those of you that have

observed the great nebula in orionwill recognize that it’s quite fuzzy and stands in very well for furclothing. legends can also be seen as akin tohypothesis, offering an explanation for the way things are or seem to be.the sun/moon legend provides an example. in its entirety, thislegend is one of the most widespread and complex of all inuit traditions.it is often abbreviated to relate how two siblings, a brother—a sister andher incestuous brother rise up to the sky to become the sun and the moon.in its fullest sense this story is much more than this. it addressesuniversal concerns about creation,

social and cosmic order, nourishment,retribution and renewal. the concluding part of the narrative inwhich the sun and the moon are actually created goes like this; longago before the sun, moon, and stars, when all was dark, a young womanalone in her igloo was repeatedly visited by a man who took advantageof her. wishing to find out who this man was, she decided that the nexttime he visited she would mark his face with soot from her extinguishedlamp. on his next visit she did just this, smudging his face with hersooty fingers. when he left she followed him to a large igloo wherepeople were celebrating. and there

in the light of the oil lamps shediscovered to her horror that her visitor that had been none other thanher own brother. distraught, she lit a torch of moss and rushed around theigloo. her brother also lit a torch and followed her. outside they ranround and round the igloo in a clockwise direction. the sisterleading, the brother following, until at last they ascended into the sky.her torch grew brighter and brighter, but her brother’s torch merelysmoldered. she in her brilliance became the sun, and he the pale moon.across the arctic, key elements of this legend have been used by inuitto explain a number of observed

phenomenon. for instance, theirapparent motion of the sun across the sky from east to west is establishedin the clockwise direction of the chase around the igloo. the sister’sbrightly burning torch compared to that of her brother’s smoldering oneaccounts for the difference in luminosity between the sun and themoon. the moon’s dark patches are the smudge marks on the brother’sface, and this illustration shows them as does this, the dark patcheson the moon are soot. solar eclipses results when the moon in hiscontinuing pursuit of the sun periodically catches up with hissister and embraces her again.

even the moon phases are explained;the sister full of disgust at her brother’s incest stops giving himfood. he gradually wastes away, her pity evoked, she begins to feed herbrother again, thereby restoring him to his former size. this cycle ofrevolution and pity continues endlessly, hence the monthly waxingand waning of the moons. inuit have no word for time, not atleast in the abstract sense, commonly understood in our industrial society.this does not mean of course that they somehow lacked any comprehensionof the links between time and so- called economic activity, a view toooften attributed to cultures with

perceptions of time do not coincidewith those of the western world. expressions dear to us like savingtime, losing time, over time, time is money, create all kinds ofdifficulties for inuit translators. once at a conference that was dealingwith inuit co-ops, a government advisor was trying to explain toinuit that time costs money. the translator was really baffled andgave it his best shot, which was a watch costs a lot. and if i go onmuch longer i’ll be timed out by doug here.i’ll mention that with the introduction of christianity, inuitwere introduced to that rather

unusual concept or division of timecalled a week. and on the right of the screen we have an early calendarthat was made by inuit hunter. again, you can see the preoccupationthat inuit have with the product of the hunt. this is basically a tallyof animals he’s caught up to a certain date. the markings aroundthe edge of the calendar are days of the week, obviously the crosses aresundays. the ones that are sort of scored off are days that have alreadypassed, but that gives you some idea of the introduction of our time, thebeginning of inuit accepting industrial time as it were.for inuit, the changing seasons

determine not only their day-to-dayactivities, but also their diet, dwelling locations, and familygroupings as they moved about their local area in response to themigrations of the animals on which they depended. the annual cycle wasreckoned usually by 13 moon months, beginning with the first new mooncoinciding with the sun’s return. the designation of each moon wasbased on recurring events in the natural world, such as the birth ofseal pups, the nesting of birds, the thickening of caribou pelts, and thefreezing of the sea ice. significantly moon months and thedepth of winter were marked by the

appearance of certain stars, and in amoment we’ll look at some of these particular months.you can see here how the names of the moon months pick up things that aregoing on in the environment. this one was important; caribou hairsheds, it was a moon when it was good to go caribou hunting to catchcaribou for winter clothing. the one down here, [foreign language] meaninghearing, perhaps its meaning isn’t immediately obvious, but thishappened round about early november when the ice was thick enough toallow dog team travel and remote camps could then visit each other bydog team because in these days of

course there were no communicationslike we have today. the moon of [foreign language]literally meaning great darkness, spanned the sunless period straddlingthe winter solstice. this was a period of relative inactivity andresources at this time were often scarce. but to the extent permittedby available moonlight or twilight, inuit would still try to hunt on thesea ice, but it was often unproductive. storytelling andindoor games help pass the time. string figures or cats cradles asthey’re sometimes known were especially popular and were playedalmost obsessively. i’ll just

mention that elders would tell methat various camps had different kinds of string figures and peoplewould be sent on long journeys actually to get someone’s newinvention of a string figure. it was only during the sunless periodthat these games were permitted because it was widely believed thatstring figures would entangle the sun as soon as she appeared on thehorizon. the appearance of two stars, which we call alter andtatazed [phonetic], but which the inuit call [foreign language] in thenortheastern quadrant of the sky around mid-december was taken as asign of winter solstice as well as a

promise of the sun’s return.the next one is [foreign language]; this literally means that the sun ispossible. and obviously it was a month of the returning sun, and forinuit marked the beginning of a new year. until the introduction ofchristianity to the igloolik area in the 1920s and ‘30s, the sun’s annualreturn was an occasion for celebration of renewal, symbolized bythe extinguishing and then relighting of the soapstone lamps with a newflame. this ceremony was also said to strengthen the land. the ceremonyusually involved children extinguishing the lamps and i thinkthe involvement of children

themselves, a symbol of renewal, wasused particularly for that purpose. the lamps among the igloos of eachcommunity would be relit from a single flame, a new flame from tinderthat was kept especially for that purpose. and you can imagine thattemperatures, let’s say 40 celsius below or 30 as it could easily bethen, caused—didn’t really invite people to extinguish their onlysource of heat, but the sun’s return was so significant to them that theseobservances were made without any complaint.in recent years this celebration has been reestablished and is now a majorcommunity event. this image on the

screen shows a soapstone lamp used inthe ceremony just after it has been relit. note the parallel imagerybetween the lamp flame and the inset picture of the sun peaking just abovethe horizon. when the sun comes back it’s literally on the horizon for afew minutes before disappearing again.traditionally the return of the sun was an anxious time for inuit due tothe effects of atmospheric refraction, the sun often appearedreluctant to return, sometimes hesitating and behaving erraticallyon the horizon. and on a number of occasions in igloolik when i’vewitnessed the return of the sun, the

day it would always be back earlierthan the prescribed date astronomically because of thisphenomena that we know as refraction. but you would see just the tip of itsome days and then remarkably the next day you wouldn’t see it again;there would be a glow, but no sun. and then the next day it would beabove. and this bouncing around the horizon was very typical of the sun’sreturn, and i think it really led to inuit uncertainty about the sun’sactual return, which was never taken for granted and taboos at this timewere carefully observed; one of which was to destroy the cords of thestring figures and as i’ve already

mentioned there was fear that thesestring figures, even symbolically would prevent the sun from rising.with the sun now back on the horizon, string games were replaced by a gamecalled [foreign language]; and this is a cup and ball game where theplayer tried to impale a caribou vertebrae usually on a bone spike andthe action of tossing up the vertebrae was said to encourage thesun to rise. in fact some songs that go with the game of [foreignlanguage] include references to the sun rising higher and higher.the next month, and this is the last month that involves the actual sun’sreturn, was called [foreign language]

and that literally means that the sunis increasingly rising. its elevation was carefully observed, andi think this all goes back to the uncertainty that the inuit had aboutthe sun really coming back. so in igloolik at least they would actuallymeasure the sun and its return by in successive days seeing if the sunwould first fit between the extended thumb, mid-thumb or harpoon thumbfirst, harpoon first, then the thumb of a mitt, and then finally with themitt appearing to fit between the sun’s lower limb and the horizon atnoon. when it had reached this point it was called [foreign language] and[foreign language] literally means

mitted, the sun has been mitted.this stage was called [foreign language] and occurred a few weeksbefore spring equinox. and it really marked the end of the winter’s darkperiod, inuit were now confident that the sun was back, light levels wererising increasingly, and the seals and walrus in which they dependedwere beginning to become more accessible. the worst of the winterwas behind them, and although temperatures remained low, the warmerdays of spring were in the offing. and around this time which was a timeof promise, they would note the two stars that they called [foreignlanguage], but which are known to us

as - - appearing on the horizon,fairly above the southern horizon just after sunset when the sky wasstill bright to the west. and there’s a song still well-known inthe igloolik area which celebrates the sighting of the [foreignlanguage] stars. and in translation the last verse goes [foreignlanguage] appear, yonder the daylight. it is a joyous feelingthat again in the broad daylight will i sleep. thank you.[applause] mr. herman: thank you john.