On Eating, Critical Distance, and Qallunaat Cosmology

Abstract:This essay produces a reading of Qallunaat—glossed as white people, or sometimes non-Inuit—as they come into view via two things: their relationships with Inuit and with animals, and their reactions to Inuit relationships with animals. Alongside three filmic texts that appear—especially to those who follow Qallunaat conventions—to be about Inuit and Inuit practices of hunting and eating seals, this essay reads against the (perceived) grain to shine the spotlight on Qallunaat: What can the tensions between eating and critical distance tell us about Qallunaat cosmology? The three filmic texts in question are the Qallunaaq filmmaker Robert Flaherty's 1922 Nanook of the North, the first full-length documentary film; the Inuk performer Tanya Tagaq's 2012 Nanook of the North, in which Tagaq rewrites Flaherty's version by adding a live soundtrack; and Tungijuq, a 2009 film by Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël in which Tagaq stars and whose screenplay she co-wrote. This essay also performs its reading: Tagaq becomes the theorist who leads us in equal parts through these filmic texts and through the thick, fleshy contexts in which they are embedded. I, neither Inuk nor Qallunaaq, take on a hyperbolized critical distance as a quasi-anthropologist. Qallunaat proclivities are eagerly displayed.