Documentary visits spiritual past of Inuit

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Life in Canada's northernmost regions has gone through a number of changes over the past century. Once a nomadic people who lived off the land and followed their food supply as it moved with the seasons, the Inuit have been changing since their first contact with Europeans. They now live in settlements of western-style homes, no longer at the mercy of the often harsh environment that surrounds them, and no longer as connected to the land.

Along with their new ways of living, the European explorers and settlers brought with them European missionaries bent on bringing Christianity to the Inuit people. They worked their beliefs into the Inuit way of life by incorporating Christian figures into the Inuit belief system. The result can be seen today, with the majority of Nunavut's Indigenous people leaving behind their traditional beliefs in favor of Christianity.

Just what those beliefs were is something that interests Zacharias Kunuk. The award-winning film-maker, best known for his feature film Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, the first Aboriginal-language feature film to be made in Canada, has recently completed work on a documentary that looks at the pre-Christian beliefs of the Inuit people.

"That's my interest. I mean, that's everybody's interest, strange stories ... but when they're coming out of our Elders, it just proves that these stories are true."

In producing Angakkuiit: Shaman Stories, Kunuk and his crew went out to talk to Inuit people in and around their home community of Igloolik. They spoke to both young and old about shamanism and the beliefs that once guided the lives of their people.

This is not the first time Kunuk has examined shamanism through his film work. Igloolik Isuma Productions, the production company he helped to found in 1990, has touched on shamanism in both Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner and in its Nunavut (Our Land) series. But for this project, shamanism was the sole focus.

"We've been doing oral history, and a big part of oral history is what religion Inuit had for 4,000 years before Christianity was introduced. And in this area, Christianity was introduced about a hundred years ago. And what was going on before that, what people believed in, that's what we're interested in," Kunuk said.

"We traveled around Nunavut, a few places, meeting with Elders on that subject. And it was interesting because everywhere we went there was a different story of the same belief. And I'm always interested in why traditional storytelling and drum dancing was banned in this community in the 70s because of religion. So I was really interested.

"When I was growing up, I never even experienced my parents singing traditional songs, because they were so taught in Christianity that on a Sunday my brothers and sisters, we were not even allowed to play outside," he said. "So we wanted to look back and see what Inuit belief was."

While Christianity first arrived in the North a century ago, Kunuk didn't have any difficulty finding people who still knew the old stories because many of the Elders in the area were still living on the land 50 years ago, and learned the traditional beliefs before coming into the new western-style settlements. And because they knew Kunuk and his crew, they were willing to share their memories and tell them the stories.

"I guess if they didn't know us they wouldn't welcome us, but they know us, so they welcome us," Kunuk said. "With this subject, I think the Elders felt that if we do it, we are the right people to do it, coming from the culture."

Kunuk said he felt it was important to make a documentary on shamanism and to record these traditional stories because they are not a part of modern Inuit life.

"Nobody is talking about it. I mean, nobody really wants to believe it. It seems today that Inuit belief is not very important. And getting your education is more important, getting a good government job is important. That's how it's going," he said.

"Since Christianity came, peple got away and never wanted to come back to that subject. We're just reminding for our Inuit audience, just to wake them up on where they came from and what brought them here today. And why we're having so many problems nowadays. But before that, there was no problems. They had problems, but they [had to] watch out for these shaman, because they're going to find out. They always find out what's wrong ... somebody got sick and had to confess, they had to confess all their bad doings. Hell, you couldn't hide from them. They could even see your face, even if you didn't tell them. But now we've lost that, we've all lost that now. You can't even find who broke that window last night. But if we had shaman, they would know," Kunuk said.

While he thinks it is important to record and preserve the traditional stories, Kunuk doesn't think there is room for the traditional beliefs in Inuit society today.

" I think the damage is already done."

While filming the documentary, Kunuk learned a lot about traditional Inuit beliefs, including some of the taboos that people used to adhere to in their daily lives. Because women bore the children, they had more taboos than men, he explained.

"So number one taboo for women-I mean it was very interesting for us to find out-was the Inuit women in this area were not allowed to eat the heart of animals. Because they bear children, they give life, and the heart, it's got something to do with blood, it's the main pump of the blood. But when Christianity came, they broke that taboo by, like a holy communion, they would cut up the heart and give it to women to break all taboos."

He also heard stories about the shamanic connection to sleep paralysis, something he says is common among the Inuit.

"In the middle of the night, your body gets paralyzed, you could not move a muscle, but you're wide awake. And that happens to a lot of Inuit," he said. "But it was very interesting to find out that one of the Elders said that that's the shaman's tet, to see if you could be a shaman. So it was really interesting to find that out. I thought it was always something evil."

The Elders also recounted stories about the Inuit belief in three separate stages of afterlife, one where people who have been sick for a long time go to refresh themselves, two others where people are happy and there is plenty of game to hunt.

"And shaman would visit these places, and if I have a deceased grandfather and if I wanted to pass a message back, I would hire a shaman to travel to these places and report back to me, or receive messages," Kunuk said.

"But there's also another place where people who commit suicide, there's also a place for that, people who hung themselves or stabbed themselves or cut their throats, they are in that stage, and they say their tongues are hanging out because they're so thirsty. And there's that place."

Kunuk also heard stories about the spiritual powers possessed by the shaman.

"They would have anywhere from one to five to 10 spirits. The more spirits you have, you say your life is expected to be short. And let's say the spirit enters you. While you're having a conversation with somebody and your spiritual helper enters your body and you know your whole neighborhood talking, what's going on. You could see them even though you're having a conversation. So that was very interesting to find."

Belief in the all-powerful and all knowing shaman was what helped keep people in line in the past, Kunuk explained. Whereas today people might face legal consequences for doing ill, in pre-Christian Inuit culture, people feared the wrath of the shaman.

"Nowadays we're so much into modern rules, bylaws, we don't even think shaman anymore. So in those days there was less bad people, less bad people who would steal. Of course in those days people did that, but there's a penalty that they would get sick and they have to repent. Shaman were like priests. They would make people confess all their wrongdoings until theysolved the problem. But now we don't need to do that."

Angakkuiit: Shaman Stories has been aired on APTN, and was one of the films featured at the Global Visions Film Festival in Edmonton in early November. It will air again on APTN on Dec. 2, during Voices of the Land.

On the heels of Shaman Stories, Igloolik Isuma Productions is preparing to approach the introduction of Christianity to the Inuit people from yet another angle, Kunuk said.

"We touched shamanism, we've touched the old legends ... we're now looking into another feature film where in the 1920s, what we're talking was all happening. Christianity was coming. The Bible was being introduced. And now there were traders trading fur. Life was changing. That's the area that we want to touch. Although we've been trying to touch that. We even touched that in our Nunavut series. But now we're just going based on the facts and based on explorers journals," he said.

"You know the explorers journals, when you look at them, they give a detail, but that's their point of view, and you have to find out the cultural point of view. I could use an example. In 1822, there were two naval ships that went to here in our bay, and Captain [William Edward] Parry wrote in his journals, every time the men would go hunting, the women would guard their hut. They would even exchange guards. But that is not true. We know that is not true, coming from the culture. What these women are doing, since there's no way of communications with the hunters, they're standing out there listening, hoping to hear or see the hunters coming home. So they have people waiting. I'll just use that small example of how much misunderstanding that went on when Europeans encountered the people on this side of the earth."