Power, Resistance, and Security: Papers in Honor of Richard G. Condon, Steven L. McNabb, Aleksandr I. Pika, William W. Richards, Nikolai Galgauge, Nina Ankalina, Vera Rakhtilkon, Boris

From Trait to Emblem and Back: Living and Representing Culture in Everyday Inuit LifeAuthor(s): Jean L. BriggsSource: Arctic Anthropology, Vol. 34, No. 1, Power, Resistance, and Security: Papers in Honorof Richard G. Condon, Steven L. McNabb, Aleksandr I. Pika, William W. Richards, NikolaiGalgauge, Nina Ankalina, Vera Rakhtilkon, Boris Mymykhtikak, and Nikolai Avanum (1997),pp. 227-235Published by: University of Wisconsin PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40316435 .

Accessed: 13/06/2014 00:03

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

University of Wisconsin Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to ArcticAnthropology.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.44.77.82 on Fri, 13 Jun 2014 00:03:49 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=uwisc

http://www.jstor.org/stable/40316435?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


FROM TRAIT TO EMBLEM AND BACK:

LIVING AND REPRESENTING CULTURE

IN EVERYDAY INUIT LIFE

JEAN L. BRIGGS

Abstract. Scholars have discussed at length, and in a variety of ethnographic contexts, the ways in which ethnic imagery is created and manipulated by groups in conflict, or

merely in contact, to further their goals. However, much more attention has been paid to the public, political arena than to the idiosyncratic, private feelings and concerns about ethnicity that are often the stuff of everyday life in multicultural, multiethnic communities. This paper suggests possible emotional origins for emblems that Cana- dian Inuit often use in differentiating themselves from Qallunaat (Euro-Canadians), and

argues that in the private lives of Inuit, these cultural characteristics only occasionally do duty as culture -markers. In other contexts they recede back into the general pool of culture traits, where their practical qualities - and perhaps their relevance to non-ethnic dramas - are more important than their ability to signal Inuit identity. Vignettes of three Inuit men who live culturally complex lives are presented, showing how differ-

ently they use ethnic emblems.

Much has been written about the changeability of cultures. A generation ago, the focus was on "culture change," seen as a passively received, destabi- lizing process which resulted from "culture contact." Nowadays, scholars most often look at change as an active process of renewal; they write of the "invention of tradition" (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983) and the uses that groups make of na- tionalist or ethnic symbols to represent and defend (or impose) their own cultures, and to maintain boundaries between themselves and others. Very often, however, the discussions in both scholarly and popular fora are about large-scale policies and politics.1 The ways individuals use ethnic imagery in private life have received much less attention.2 This paper is about that modest, domestic side of

ethnicity, as I have seen it in a late twentieth century Canadian Inuit community. Let me set the scene, however, by recalling how we come to be aware of the existence of "cultures" in the first place and to give them emblematic form.3

Traits and Emblems It is possible to live in our socially constructed worlds without becoming aware of them as "cultural," as any teacher of introductory anthropology in North America will attest. Culture is what everybody else has; it is somewhere else, not here. But when we have to interact with people who be- have in unfamiliar ways, traits that we have un- selfconsciously taken for granted suddenly appear

Jean L. Briggs, Department of Anthropology, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada AlC 5S7

ARCTIC ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 227-235, 1997



228 Arctic Anthropology 34:1

to view like lemon-juice writing in the sun (Wag- ner 1975:4). These traits may, in principle, remain just simple differences, even when we are aware of them: I have a cat, you keep pigeons; I eat my fish cooked, you eat yours raw. But when our worlds are felt to be endangered - when a house of brick suddenly reveals itself to be of straw - then "traits" may turn into "emblems": emotionally charged markers which we can use as mirrors to show ourselves that our house is real, or as building blocks to construct boundaries and barriers in self-defense (Linton 1943:231).4

The emblems we create are not necessarily ethnic. The label will depend on where we perceive a threat to be coming from. When traits we value and rely on disappear - when we suddenly can't understand our children's speech or their new and different tastes in music; when they dye their hair green or refuse to eat seal meat or learn to hunt - we are presented with a problem which requires explanation. If we feel secure in most of our life ways, we may explain the strange behavior of our children as a product of "adolescence," a life-stage we recognize; or, if we are unacquainted with other children of the same age outside our own family, we may blame our child's "personal- ity." On the other hand, if in many other respects we feel our culture is threatened, then we may see our green-haired, rock-&-rolling children to be cultural traitors: they are "Qallunaat," Euro -Canadians, instead of "Inuit," as we would like them to be.5

Choosing Emblems Let's recall an Inuit world that was not under threat. Did Inuit regard themselves as less Inuit when they began to wear cloth clothing in the summer and to hunt with guns instead of bows and arrows? No. They were merely Inuit who lived in greater comfort and hunted more effectively. Was Aipili, born into an Inuit hunting camp, who never hunted and who was nauseated by seal meat, less an Inuk than his brother, who hunted constantly and loved seal meat? No. We (and Inuit) begin to question Aipili's ethnic identity only now that many Inuit have moved off the land and are living side by side with Qallunaat, who find seal meat repugnant. Formerly, Aipili was just Aipili, a man who didn't like to hunt and preferred fish and caribou to seal.

Even members of a dominant society may feel threatened in contact with foreignness, and when that happens, some of their traits, too, may become emblems: public statements about cultural identity. When a Euro-Canadian schoolteacher in an arctic community cleans house because it is dirty, she is just cleaning house; maybe she has learned to like living in a clean house. This is a cultural trait. But if she cleans house in order to

prove to her supervisor that she has not "gone native" - fearing that the supervisor will send her back south if she goes native (this does happen!) - then housecleaning has become an emblem of Euro-Canadianness. It marks a boundary between Euro-Canadians and Natives. Qallunaat in the North who consort with Inuit and adopt Inuit ways of behaving are often criticized by their ethnic fellows, because their new behaviors are seen as emblematic of a switch in cultural identity.

In any given culture, some traits suggest themselves as emblems more readily than others do. The ways that Inuit characterized both Qallu- naat and themselves in the early 1970s (Brody 1975) are strikingly similar to the characterizations I found some years later.6 Inuit say, among other things, that Qallunaat are ruled by laws and by time, whereas Inuit do what they want when they want to; and they finish a job well, without regard for the time it takes to do so. Qallunaat buy and sell their services whereas Inuit give and share freely. Inuit may dislike dirt, but they don't find it morally repugnant; and they like - even crave - raw meat and fish, whereas Qallunaat are repelled by raw flesh. Language, of course, also distin- guishes the two peoples.

Why are these particular characteristics salient, ripe for becoming emblems? For one thing, almost all the traits mentioned were already strongly charged with value and emotion. Auton- omy, giving, and sharing were all important values for Inuit, because they were the focus of tension even among close associates, before Qallunaat ap- peared on the scene. The flexible use of time and space was a sine qua non of a hunter's life. A rigid attitude that would prevent a person from taking advantage of sudden opportunities, or prevent taking the time necessary to complete a job carefully, could be lethally dangerous. So, any deviation from valued behavior in these domains, whether on the part of Inuit or on the part of Qallunaat, was sure to be noticed and met with strong disap- proval.

The second reason why these traits stood out is that they were the foci of confrontations. When Qallunaat were in positions of power, from which they could impose their contrary values and life- ways on Inuit, those ways inflicted pain on Inuit, disturbed their social relationships, and deprived them of important kinds of control over the lifestyles they valued.

At first, when a Qallunaaq welfare officer re- fused an Inuk's request for help, or when a Qallu- naaq employer insisted that an Inuk come to work "regularly" and "on time," Inuit of my acquain- tance, who had never dealt with Qallunaat before, tended to assume that the welfare officer or the employer was ill-disposed toward them and that the difficulty was a personal matter between two



Briggs: Traits and Emblems in Everyday Inuit Life 229

people. But when these experiences were repeated, with many different actors, the label "Qal- lunaaq" became attached to the behavior that was troublesome to Inuit. Thus, through repeated experience of conflict, Inuit became aware of, per- ceived, or invented their "culture" (Wagner 1975) in terms that were relevant to the nature of their interactions with Qallunaat. And these salient traits became emotionally and symbolically invested, that is, they became emblems of Qallunaaq identity, while their opposites - previously merely taken-for-granted traits - became emblems of Inuit identity.

What about food? The classification of food into "Inuit" (wild) and "Qallunaaq" (store-bought) may seem obvious, but I think the unfamiliar foods might have stayed on the level of neutrally contrasting traits, or even been absorbed into the Inuit repertoire - as were tea and bannock in whaling days - if it were not for the following circumstances.

Inuit in the days before Qallunaat arrived had already invested food with a heavy symbolic load. The giving and receiving of food was a sign that one loved and was loved in return by one's family, and outside the closest circle, the offering of food represented affection and care for one's fellows, one of the most important of Inuit values.

The associations between familiar food and affection have certainly been strengthened by the experiences many Inuit have had of being sent - or occasionally going voluntarily - south to Qallu- naaq country, to hospital or school, or to work. In cities, of course, wild game is usually not available. And Inuit, when lonely and afraid, often crave the food that symbolizes care and are repelled by foreign food, which does not have the same associations.

On the other hand, Qallunaat have their own symbolic associations to raw animal food, and to its source, bloody carcasses. In good Levi-Straus- sian fashion, they are repelled when the "natural" intrudes into the "proper" arena of the cultural (Levi-Strauss 1969). Inuit, of course, feel this re- vulsion and, sensitive as they are to criticism, are embarrassed and ashamed, sometimes deeply so, I think, because of their strong attachment to the foods in question.

Finally, store food is not easily shared with unexpected visitors; it has to be cooked, and the number of eaters has to be calculated, whereas an indefinite number of visitors can be invited to help themselves from a carcass. And so the con- sumption of Qallunaaq food violates the important Inuit value of sharing.

Cleanliness is different, and perhaps it is a less satisfactory emblem than the others, in that it is hard to set it off neatly against a strongly felt Inuit value or way of behaving. Inuit appreciated a

clean environment, even before the arrival of Qal- lunaat. Their motivation was, I think, more sen- sory than moral: they disliked dirt, rather than striving to achieve cleanliness as an end in itself. Nevertheless, some of the Inuit I knew were repelled to the point of nausea by certain forms of filth. Perhaps this is why they were sensitive to the criticisms of Qallunaat, who, using different criteria, found them repulsively "filthy" when they, Inuit, thought of themselves as "clean." So, this emblem responds not so much to disruption of Inuit values as to a sense that Qallunaat are judging Inuit in their own terms and finding them wanting.

The case of language is a bit different again. Unlike most of the other traits I have been talking about, it was, I think, not a value, any more than culture was, before the arrival of Qallunaat. Inukti- tut was taken for granted, like air or water. To be sure, there were the alien dialects of the neighbors, which were considered amusingly defective forms of speech, but they could be easily understood. Inuktitut was noticed and invested with value only when it was threatened, that is, when communication began to be problematic. Nowadays, as a symbol of Inuitness, it is set off not only vis-à-vis Qallunaatitut, the language of the Euro-Canadian foreigner, but also vis-à-vis all the dialects that Inuit used to find foreign and funny. Thus, a new song says: "[The different dialects] are all good because we are all Inuit" (fieldnotes). The separate groups are symbolically melded into a new unity: "Inuit."

Some other culture -markers are of the sort that Pocius (1988:78) calls "objectified creations" and associates with people who have moved away, geographically, socially, or just psychologically, from a secure cultural base: tangible "expressive forms," visible and/or audible both to the would- be members of the culture designated and to an audience on the other side of the cultural boundary. Such "Inuit" characteristics include: traditional stories and games; drum dancing; and - most interestingly - square dancing, which was originally learned from European whalers, and expressive arts, which in their present forms owe a great deal to outside influence.

Another large category of visibly "Inuit" traits consists in traditional survival skills: skin sewing; camping, especially iglu building; hunting; butchering; meat preservation, and so on. These survival skills - some of which, as traits, are no longer needed in the urban lifestyles that are developing in modern arctic towns - are, as emblems, well suited to strengthening a sense of ethnic rootedness. As the inclusion of square dancing and new art forms suggests, it is not necessary that these traits be indigenously Inuit, not necessary that their histories as ingredients in Inuit culture




go back to prehistoric times. It is not even necessary for the majority of Inuit to have once partici- pated in these activities. (There were quite a few "Eskimo" groups who, as far as we know, never lived in iglus, for example.) What is necessary is that people be able to create chains of association and lines of reasoning that link the behaviors cog- nitively and emotionally with the half-remem- bered, half-imagined past. As one man (in his 30s, speaking English) said: "When I hear myths I try to make them my own by associating to them - adding bits - collecting variants." It is also important that the traits be visible and admirable to Qal- lunaat.

The importance of visibility to the outside audience is supported by my observation - if it is accurate - that Inuit naming practices have not become emblematic of Inuit culture, in spite of the fact that they have great historic depth, have in- tense personal and social meaning for Inuit, and are very different from the practices of Qallunaat. Although most of the Inuit I know have "Inuit names" and believe that those names are, in one or another sense, invested with the existence of their previous holders, most Qallunaat do not know this. I think it may be for this reason that I have never heard either Inuit or Qallunaat use Inuit names to point out a person's ethnic or cultural identity. Traditional naming practices are, thus, a trait without becoming - so far as I can judge - an emblem.7

Conceptually bounded cultures and ethnic identities can serve psychological and social purposes that undefined cultures - like that of Aipili in the days when he was just a man who didn't like to hunt - cannot serve. Boundaries act as walls. When we are in doubt, a bounded world as- sures us that we belong somewhere; it helps us to explain our own behavioral preferences and ideas when they are called into question, and to account for some of the differences - often troubling ones - that we notice between ourselves and others.8

Emotionally charged emblems make good weapons, but sometimes our weapons can turn against us and limit our options for adaptive action. This may be especially true of Eskimoic, and perhaps other North American indigenous cultures, as well (Morrow 1990; Guédon 1994). Mor- row (1990:153) tells us that the Central Yupik of southwestern Alaska "for some purposes . . . see their society in terms of individualized positions, and not in terms of valorized norms ..." Meaning is "essentially indeterminate," a matter of contex- tually relevant potentials; to specify and categorize is dangerous (Morrow 1990:144-145). A consequence of the personalization and indeterminacy of meaning is that from a Yupik point of view, identities are multiple, not singular. According to Morrow (1990:142), even Yupik society does not

have definite boundaries, which explains why different historical sources contradict one another in defining and placing Yupik territorial groupings. As Morrow (1990:143 note) puts it, for Yupik, "boundaries, in some 'double-think' way, simulta- neously do and do not have reality." Most of Mor- row's supporting examples sound remarkably Inuit, though it had never occurred to me to analyze my data in similar terms. Now, writing this paper, it strikes me that a culture built of shared emblems with fixed meanings might well seem a straitjacket to people imbued with the ethos of individual variability. Fortunately, it is not always necessary to use our chosen culture -markers as culture -markers. We can change their colors and enter them in other tournaments: about age (remember the green-haired teenagers?), about gen- der, and so on. Sometimes we can even let markers revert to being just traits.

Ethnicity in Everyday Life If cultural characteristics can move in and out of emblem status in different hands or in different contexts - or if, as emblems, they can be used to make a variety of points, not always ethnic - then what circumstances determine the guise in which they appear? Since space forbids outlining all the symbolic battles of everyday life in a modern Inuit community, I illustrate the contrast between emblem and trait in the ethnic arena.

I noticed that traits were used as ethnic emblems mainly when Inuit were talking about, or were engaged in, situations of conflict and con- frontation. Sometimes the conflict was between Qallunaat and Inuit - Qallunaaq employer and Inuit employee or Qallunaaq bylaw officer and Inuit Community Council - and sometimes it was between Inuit who had different and conflicting concerns. But even in situations of conflict, emblems might revert to traits, as illustrated in the following example.

The law-creating and law-abiding nature of Qallunaat was repeatedly mentioned in connec- tion with discussion of three bylaws unpopular in the community: a law restricting the use of guns to adults, a law requiring the licensing of all-terrain vehicles, and a curfew imposed on children under the age of 18. Inuit opposed to these bylaws per- ceived them as hindrances to autonomous deci- sion-making, rather than as means to positive goals such as safety, education, and the collection of needed revenues for community use. Emblem- atic comments were of this nature: "Because we're Inuit we don't have to get our children up in the morning if they don't want to get up; if the teacher wants them to get up, she can come and get them up." On the other hand, one woman said, "I want to let my children stay up because they don't want




to go to bed; but then I think, it's important for them to get a good night's sleep too, so they can get up in the morning and don't get sick." In this woman's statement, "staying up late at night" is a trait, not an emblem; she weighs its pros and cons. Again, a man, speaking disapprovingly about gun laws, says, utilizing an emblem, "I want to teach my son to hunt from when he's a small boy; that's the Inuit way." But in the same conversation the same man says, "We know there have been accidents [with guns] in the N[orth]W[est] Territories] . . . the law is a protection for the community . . . but I think the laws have to be changed." In this second statement it is not Law per se that is Qallu- naaq, it is specific laws; and the specific law, though formulated by Qallunaat, is seen as a product of circumstances - that is, accidents - not as a symbol of Qallunaat identity. It is practical concerns that weigh, not emblems.

Ethnic identities, and the emblems out of which they are built, are of course tools, which can be used not only politically, in support of group aims, but also by individuals in developing the plots of their personal lives. I introduce now three individual Inuit who live culturally complicated lives. In the everyday actions and conver- sations of these men we see several cultural attributes in operation. Sometimes the attributes are used to mark culture; at other times they are just used in living it.9 I first describe, then analyze, the behavior of each man.

The first individual, Joshua, is an older man. His father was Qallunaaq, and Joshua looks Qallu- naaq, but he understands and speaks no English. He was brought up in hunting camps and is a good hunter and traveler. For some years he was also a Christian religious leader, and now he represents his community in various regional political fora. He is married to a woman who grew up in remote hunting camps, far from Euro-Canadian influence. Like her husband, Sarah now travels widely, representing her village in various regional and national Inuit organizations. She, too, speaks exclu- sively Inuktitut. I once heard the following joking conversation between Joshua and Sarah, in the presence of an Inuit woman who was married to a Euro-Canadian and lived in an ethnically mixed arctic community.

Sarah: "My husband, being a Qallunaaq, can't drum and dance."

Josh: "Yes, I can; I did it once." Sarah: "He broke the drum." (We were all drinking tea with biscuits.

Sarah got out frozen caribou and thawed it for me. The other woman joined me in eating it.)

Josh: "Because I'm a genuine Inuk I can't eat frozen caribou."

On another occasion, Joshua and Sarah were out in a hunting camp with some of their kin. Fol-

lowing a meal of boiled caribou, when a bowl of soapy water was passed around and everyone was washing their hands, Joshua said, "Because I'm an Inuk, uariaqangngittunga." The word could mean either "I have no reason to wash" or "I don't have permission to wash."

In the same camp, one morning, Joshua and Sarah were talking about the down parkas that lay on top of their sleeping bags to provide extra warmth. They commented on their age and cost (Sarah's newest one had cost more than $500 CAN). Then Joshua remarked that his was filthy from snowmobile grease. (I noticed, however, that his pillowcase was very clean.)

Finally, Joshua, unlike others, joked regularly with a young boy in the camp whose father was a Qallunaaq: "You a Qallunaaq? An Inuk?"

Clearly, ethnic identity is a salient issue for Joshua, whose genes have ethnically mixed sources, and whose appearance contradicts his up- bringing. His experiences and his behavior are ac- tually no more mixed than anyone else's in the complicated modern arctic community where he lives, but he feels a need to dramatize his Inuit- ness to an Inuit audience, and perhaps to himself, as well. He does this in several ways.

(1) The first is the most complex. By jokingly posing an emblematic conundrum - genuine Inuit eat frozen caribou; I don't like frozen caribou; therefore I'm a genuine Inuk - he creates a problem for his audience and leaves the way open to several opposing interpretations; a very Inuit thing to do. Maybe he is telling us that, despite his assertion that he is a real Inuk, he is in fact a Qallu- naaq, and that's why he can't eat frozen meat. He tempts the audience to take that idea seriously. And he does it by joking and by saying the oppo- site of what he means - which, again, the audience will recognize as Inuit behavior. On the other hand, perhaps the message is, "My joke proves that I am so secure in my Inuitness that I can even reject frozen caribou without endangering that identity. Thus, I am more Inuit than the two women - one a Qallunaaq, the other married to a Qallunaaq - who accept this Inuit food (frozen caribou)." In either case, he comes out Inuit. On the third hand, he may simply be calling attention to his dual nature - telling us that he is both, and leaving it open for other people to classify him, which is also an Inuit thing to do. Or, finally, he may simply be making fun of the emblem, dis- missing its validity. In this case, though his Inuit identity escapes challenge, he is not making a positive assertion of that identity.

(2) When he turns the everyday act of washing - which everybody else is treating pragmatically - into an emblem, Joshua again says, "I am more Inuit than you are." But what sort of value is he placing on being Inuit? Is he free from having to




wash, or is he deprived of being able to wash? I judge the former - but one can't be quite sure. And again, it might be both.

(3) When he points out the filthy condition of his parka, he draws attention away from the fact that it is an expensive store-bought garment, and focuses again on the fact that "Inuit don't need to be (and/or are unable to be) clean." More than that, in calling attention to the reason why the parka is dirty, he tells his audience, "I am a hunter, a real Inuk."

(4) Finally, Joshua jokingly displaces any concerns he may have about his own ethnic mix- ture to a child who is in the same situation. The attention of the audience is drawn away from him and focused on the child, instead.

The second man I want to introduce, who also makes heavy use of ethnic emblems in his personal life, is in his 40s. Juda is genetically 100% Inuit. At the time I spoke with him, he worked for Qallunaaq employers in a job that was, contradictorily, both responsible and devalued by Qallunaat. Juda was born in a remote hunting camp, but at a very young age he was sent to a boarding school for Native children at the other end of the Canadian Arctic, and there he stayed until - as he tells it - he had "become a Qallu- naaq." He "was a Qallunaaq when [he] left school." He could no longer speak Inuktitut, and he didn't know how to build an iglu. Said he,

When I came home I wanted very much to return to Inuktitut ways and language. I was laughed at as a Qallunaaq. I said, "No, I'm an Inuk." I kept trying to speak Inuktitut, and now I speak it better than my father. I'd like to be an Inuk. I learned to build an iglu. I wanted so much to learn to build an iglu, I kept practicing, and now I can win a contest.

Juda described his life to me in terms of conflict between competing lifestyles: "I learned to build an iglu, and I would like to take off for months on the land; but I also want to work, I want clean clothes, I want to provide for my children. The most important thing is to provide for my children, and for that I need money." More- over, he often gives explicit ethnic labels to his behavior: "If my wife keeps on bitching, I would leave her, though that's not the Inuit way." And again: "Inuit sex is wham bam; Qallunaat kiss. If I love someone I'd want to kiss, but I prefer wham bam."

Juda, even more than Joshua, seems to have a strong need to demonstrate his Inuitness to an audience and to his highly conflicted self; but he uses at least one emblem - iglu-building - that tells me he has "frozen" Inuit culture at some ear- lier point in time. This is a museum emblem, the sort that is often preferred by people who do not

feel actively engaged in a live cultural world. Moreover, all of the emblems Juda uses set up oppositions between lifestyles and associated ethnic identities. The consequence of using such emblems, setting up such oppositions, and evaluating all one's behavior by ethnic standards is that it be- comes impossible to live in a live, changing cultural world. The frozen world defined as "true Inuit" does not exist. Seeking to bring it into existence, Juda has performed dramatic feats - re- learned a language, learned to build a snow house - feats calculated to call public attention to his Inuitness. He even claims to have won contests in Inuitness. But ultimately, I fear, his goal is un- achievable because he is always torn between symbolic oppositions - "Inuit" and "Qallunaaq" - and so cannot experiment flexibly with combinations and compromises. He is in a bind.

Not so, Joshua. The emblems he and Sarah use - eating (or not eating) frozen meat, not washing hands, wearing a dirty parka, drum dancing (and breaking the drum) - do not encrust and rigidify his lifestyle. Joshua can go on making important compromises and developing personally meaningful combinations of behavior - eating and not eating frozen meat, not washing and washing his hands, wearing dirty parkas and using clean pillow cases - without constantly holding up his choices, his constructions, to an imagined ethnic standard of true Inuit. These actions lend themselves to moving easily back and forth between the statuses of emblem and mere trait. His jocular and ambiguous(?) use of the emblems also demon- strates a playful attitude which facilitates flexible movement back and forth between statuses. He uses, but takes distance from, the emblems.

My third and last example is of a man whose life is culturally even more complex than the lives of the other two men. But he utilizes a flexible combination of traits that, as far as I can tell, are not lived as emblems most of the time.

Samuel was born of Inuit parents in a hunting camp and lived a nomadic life until he was a young teenager, at which point he spent a year or two in a boarding school for Native children, very far from home. There he was christened and given an English name. When he came home, he spoke a little English but not much. He speaks very good English now, which I think he taught himself, but with Inuit he speaks Inuktitut. After Samuel's father died, his mother taught him to hunt. Later, he lived with an older brother, who continued his education as a hunter. When he was a young man, his family moved into a settlement, where he sometimes worked at various jobs and sometimes hunted. When he was in his 40s, Samuel success- fully ran for elected office in the settlement, giving me as his reason: "If you love these people, you have to help them." At the time I talked with him,




he still held office. He was also a well-known sculptor, who taught sculpture in a southern city to Inuit from other areas. (He learned that skill largely from his mother, too.) He was a hunter and fisherman, and taught (or tried to teach) his sons to hunt and fish, using store-bought boats, snow- mobiles, and other "modern" technology. In the summer he took his family out on the land, camping for a month or more; but they had a CB radio with them with which they communicated daily with other camps and with various settlements in the region. He preferred game food, and a caribou carcass was often to be found lying on his kitchen floor. He played the guitar and wrote songs in Inuktitut about the emotionally charged events of his life: the lessons he had learned from his mother; the difficulties of living in a settlement or holding office. The music to which he set these words was sometimes country and western in style and sometimes borrowed from hymns. And while he jounced over the tundra in his truck on the way to a fishing lake, he played tapes of Mozart chamber music. He told me he also played Mozart to put himself to sleep at night; it relaxed him.

Looked at from the outside, it would be easy to separate some of Samuel's behavior into cate- gories labeled "Inuit" and "Qallunaaq." Other behavior would be harder to classify; the threads are too tangled. I have in mind Samuel's running for office (the office and the mode of achieving it are Qallunaaq, but the reason for seeking election is Inuit); sculpting (it was a Qallunaaq who intro- duced sculpting to Canadian Inuit, and Qallunaaq ideas of what is saleable have influenced style, yet the products are recognizably Inuit); and writing songs about one's life (an old Inuit practice, but Samuel uses western music). However, as far as I know, Samuel does not doubt his Inuit identity, and only once did I hear him apply an ethnic label to behavior. That once was in a meeting - a public setting - when he was trying to justify a bylaw concerning dog control. Speaking to (Inuit) settlement officers, some of whom were very opposed to the introduction of Qallunaaq laws, he said, "A person who neglects a dog will have to pay a $25 fine; that has been Inuit law for many years." However, when he was talking to me about the need for law, he said,

We never used to have bylaws. ... We didn't need them. . . . But when different people [who don't resemble each other] come from many different communities to live together, then you realize that some bylaws are necessary. They're good protection for the community - I mean for Inuit. But the federal laws aren't always appropriate; some of them need to be changed [for us]. (He was thinking of the gun control law.)

You see that when he was not trying to make a po-

litical point to his constituents, he did not formu- late the problem in ethnic terms - except as an af- terthought: "I mean for Inuit." He can move flexibly from trait thinking to emblematic thinking and back again, as appropriate to his circumstances and goals; he sees equally well through both pairs of glasses. And he does what he does, not because he is an Inuk and needs to prove it, but because this is the way he wants to live.

Conclusion This paper has dealt primarily with private and idiosyncratic uses of traits and emblems in domestic life, not with the larger political and legal issues that make it necessary for groups to decide - often with heated discussions - on the characteristics that will define them. But the humble emblems of every day also have important consequences for social and psychological life. I have argued (as does Barth 1993:339-354) that it is emotionally charged personal experience that gives emblems their symbolic load and attaches people to cultural identities or alienates them from those identities, for better or for worse. At the same time, the expe- rientially salient traits that serve in some contexts as emblems marking cultural identity may be used as counters or instruments - to make statements - in interactions with one's associates that have little or nothing to do with ethnicity. In the hands of some users, in some contexts, these traits may lose emblem status altogether and return to the ranks of ordinary culture traits, which have primarily prag- matic value. Such flexibility of use can lead to misunderstandings that are very strongly felt because of the emotional loads these emblems carry. For example, one person in an interaction may perceive another to be making a statement about ethnic identity when the latter chooses to speak English instead of Inuktitut, whereas the English- speaker may really be saying something about conflict between the generations, not wanting her parents to understand what she is saying. Or, she may not be making a symbolically loaded statement at all, but merely playing with foreign sounds, or practicing a half-learned, pragmatically useful skill.

Let me now sum up five points. (1) Ethnic identities, like conscious "cultures," are tools, and are created to serve purposes. (2) The same ethnic identity may be differently composed by different persons or groups, for different purposes. Dif- ferent emblems are appropriate to different ends. (3) Moreover, except when an "official" or institu- tionalized identity is at issue, consensus concerning the validity of an emblem is unnecessary. Different individuals, living different lives and struggling with different issues, may disagree about whether a particular emblem is or is not ap-




propriate. They will also differ in the uses to which they put an emblem in their daily lives, and in the extent to which they use emblems. (4) To be a good emblem, a good culture -marker, it is not necessary for a trait to have "belonged" to a culture from time immemorial or even to have belonged at all, except in imagination. What is important is the emblem's ability to symbolize a psychologically or socially or politically meaningful contrast between two worlds, two contexts, and its ability to help the users to achieve their goals. (5) An emblem is not always an emblem; it is sometimes only a trait. And, paradoxically, when it is a trait, a mere behavior, not burdened with ethnic symbolism, it may enter more readily into personal experiments with new cultural constructions which are psychologically and socially meaningful, hence, produc- tive of vigorous, adaptive culture.

End Notes 1. Out of many candidates for mention, I name four collections of papers. The first three (Barth 1969; Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983; Gold 1984) give us information on symbol construction in very diverse cultures. The fourth, Fienup-Rior- dan's Eskimo Essays (1990, Parts II and III), I choose because of the rich variety of evidence the author adduces for the political construction and reconstruction of "tradition" in Yupik culture.

2. Some exceptions are Sally Weaver (1984:184- 185), who makes a distinction similar, though not identical, to mine, between "private ethnicity, which is behavioral, situational and heteroge- neous" and "public ethnicity [, which] is symbolic, global in application (to all or specified members of a minority) and uniform in concept"; Pocius (1988, 1991), who discusses the ways in which culture -markers change as people move, physi- cally or psychologically, away from their origins; and Evelyn Plaice (1990), whose book The Native Game is the only discussion I have seen of the ways individuals manipulate ethnic symbols in conversation, to position themselves - variably, as context dictates - with respect to group concerns, such as rights to land. Another very recent book, which is both ethnographically and theoretically germane to the present paper, but which I have not yet succeeded in getting hold of, is Chase HenseFs Telling Our Selves (1996), a study of ethnicity and identity in an Alaskan Yupik and "white" community. Hensel discusses the ways in which both Yupik and non-Native men and women construct ethnic emblems and "make highly individual deci- sions to balance their lives" (Hensel, personal communication) .

3. Although I recognize the inadvisability, in general, of equating ethnicity with culture (Barth

1969:11-15), I presume to hope that, in this paper, slipping back and forth between these concepts does not cause confusion.

4. In order to make the contrast between trait and emblem stand out clearly, I have overstated the case a bit. All behavior is, of course, loaded with value, hence symbolic, to some extent, even when that behavior is taken for granted or unnoticed. An emblem is born when the symbolic loading is conscious and paramount in determining our use of the act or artifact.

5. To avert another misunderstanding, I want to say clearly at the outset that such ethnic identifi- cations are by no means always stable and general- ized across contexts. Scholars (e.g., Plaice 1990) have shown us that ethnic labels can be situation- ally variable. Though labels derived from behavior are often applied to whole persons - for example, people may say not "you are acting like a Qallu- naaq" but "you are a Qallunaaq" - nevertheless, these global- sounding judgments may change from one context to another and do not at all imply pro- foundly dichotomous categorization of individuals. This point is demonstrated once again in this paper. 6. Ann Fienup-Riordan (personal communication) tells me these contrasts are also very like "ideal- ized distinctions" that Yupik people in southwestern Alaska make between themselves and Kassaqs (whites).

7. On the other hand - or additionally - the very fact that Inuit names are emotionally and spiritu- ally charged may inhibit their use as emblems. Some, even most, of a person's Inuit names tend to be private. People have traditionally used kinship terms in everyday interactions in preference to names. They often identify themselves to strangers, too, by their kin connections rather than by name. Ann Fienup-Riordan tells me, however, that among Yupik in southwestern Alaska, whose naming practices are very similar to those of Cana- dian Inuit, there has been a growing tendency in the last decade for younger people to use their "public" Yupik names - their "calling names" - in an emblematic way when addressing non-Yupik audiences in English. It would be interesting to know what gave rise to this choice of emblem. (For an extended description of the social significance of Inuit names in Greenland, see Nuttall 1992:66- 75, 86-93; and concerning Canadian practice, see Briggs 1979:48.) 8. In the public, political sphere, creating boundaries with strong values attached to them of course explains and justifies the imposition of depriva- tions on a population of "others" and, conversely, allows us to claim rights and privileges for our-




selves and those we care for. I do not deal with these important issues here. See Note 1 for a few of many possible references.

9. Two caveats: First, remember (Note 4) that I have not intended to set up polar types of attribute use: practical and symbolic. Symbolism always in- fects "practical" acts, and conversely, mundane considerations of one sort or another usually help to determine how values are acted out. Second, behavioral variation among individuals does not necessarily demonstrate variation in adoption of an emblem. On the contrary, both acquiescence in the behavior mandated by an emblem and resistance to it may be signs that the emblem is alive and well.

Acknowledgments. This paper is a fragment of a longer paper that was prepared for a symposium on "Ethnic Identity: Anthropological and Psycho- logical Perspectives," organized by the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Univer- sity of Troms0, Karasjok, Norway, June 1995. It is offered here in homage to Richard Condon, whose studies with Pamela Stern of Inuit life in a late twentieth century Canadian Arctic settlement have taught us much. I am grateful to Ann Fienup-Rior- dan, Wayne Fife, Chase Hensel, and Robert Paine for their comments on the present version. Inade- quacies are of course my own.

References Barth, Fredrik 1969 Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. Little, Brown,

Boston.

1993 Balinese Worlds. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Briggs, Jean L. 1979 Aspects of Inuit Value Socialization. National

Museum of Man, Mercury Series, Canadian Ethnology Service Paper No. 56. Ottawa.

Brody, Hugh 1975 The People's Land. Penguin Books, Har-

mondsworth.

Fienup-Riordan, Ann 1990 Eskimo Essays. Rutgers University Press, New

Brunswick.

Gold, Gerald L. (editor) 1984 Minorities and Mother Country Imagery. Insti-

tute of Social and Economic Research, Memo- rial University of Newfoundland, St. John's.

Guédon, Marie Francoise 1994 Dene Ways and the Ethnographer's Culture.

In: Being Changed: The Anthropology of Ex- traordinary Experience, edited by David E. Young and Jean-Guy Goulet, pp. 39-70. Broadview Press, Peterborough, Ontario.

Hensel, Chase 1996 Telling Our Selves: Ethnicity and Discourse in

Southwestern Alaska. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger (editors) 1983 The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge Uni-

versity Press, Cambridge.

Levi-Strauss, Claude 1969 The Raw and the Cooked. Harper and Row,

New York.

Lint on, Ralph 1943 Nativistic Movements. American Anthropolo-

gist 45:230-240.

Morrow, Phyllis 1990 Symbolic Actions, Indirect Expressions: Lim-

its to Interpretations of Yupik Society. Études/Inuit/Studies 14:141-158.

Nuttall, Mark 1992 Arctic Homeland: Kinship, Community and

Development in Northwest Greenland. Uni- versity of Toronto Press, Toronto.

Plaice, Evelyn 1990 The Native Game: Settler Perceptions of In-

dian/Settler Relations in Central Labrador. In- stitute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's.

Pocius, Gerald L. 1988 The Mummers Song in Newfoundland: Intel-

lectuals, Revivalists and Cultural Nativism. Newfoundland Studies 4:57-85.

1991 A Place to Belong: Community Order and Ev- eryday Space in Calvert, Newfoundland. McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal.

Wagner, Roy 1975 The Invention of Culture. University of

Chicago Press, Chicago.

Weaver, Sally M. 1984 Struggles of the Nation-State to Define Abo-

riginal Ethnicity: Canada and Australia. In: Minorities and Mother Country Imagery, edited by Gerald L. Gold, pp. 182-210. Insti- tute of Social and Economic Research, Memo- rial University of Newfoundland, St. John's.



Documents

Power, Resistance, and Security: Papers in Honor of Richard G. Condon, Steven L. McNabb, Aleksandr I. Pika, William W. Richards, Nikolai Galgauge, Nina Ankalina, Vera Rakhtilkon, Boris