Volume 43- No. 30
July 25, 2013
Top Left - An igloo, at night. Fact: Eskimos do build igloos but usually only for temporary shelters when away from home, while hunting or fishing. Top Right - Do Eskimos really kiss with their noses? Fact? Or Fiction? Bottom Right - Two Eskimo hunters, clad in caribou clothing. Imediate Right - An Eskimo Elder. Middle Bottom - An Eskimo Child. Below - Do the Eskimo set their elders adrift on ice floes to hasten their end of life? Fact? Or Fiction? Bottom Left - One of the prettier Eskimo women.
by lyle e davis
Exploration! Adventure!
Things we all thought about when we were younger . . . or, perhaps, even now we think about them. We just don’t do a whole lot about them because . . well, just because. A shame, too. So much can be learned by exploring; by sharing in adventures. Adventure can be a lonely event . . . or it can be done as part of a group.
Being only human, however, The Paper - 760.747.7119
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particularly if we tend to be “an older human,” we tend to avoid the more difficult explorations and adventures. In fact, even the young adventurers, full of vim, vigor and vitality (or as my Norwegian Grandma Tollefson used to say, “wim, wigor undt witality,”) tend to stay put.
We’ve all heard, for example, tales of the great North, the Arctic Circle, the sub-Arctic Circle. The Eskimo, Esquimeaux, the Inuit, the Aleuts, those hardy souls who actually live in the ice cold climate of the Arctic areas.
These tales . . . are they fact or fcation?
Chances are we’d never know were it not for anthropologists and other adventuresome types who venture to don heavy winter clothing and actually journey to the Arctic to study the terrrain, its flora and fauna, its people, and their culture. Not only do they journey to these spots, they actually live there! With the natives! In the cold!
Not too many tourists go to the Arctic. But, thanks to those antropologists we can learn
something of the area and its people . . . and separate fact from legend.
We’ve all heard, for example, that the Eskimo bid farewell to their elders by dressing them up in furs, placing them on an ice floe and shoving them off to meet Eternity. Fact or fiction?
Actually, it’s based on fact.
It’s called senilicide and it means assisting your elders in dying . . even giving them a bit of a
“The Eskimo: Legends and Facts” Continued on Page 2