The Nunavummiut: Politically Engaged Citizens

No one would criticize the Literary Review of Canada for not running sports scores or interviews with hockey players. The LRC’s objective is covering literary matters, not sports, and its target audience wants discussion of books, not athletes. Too bad John Baglow’s review of Ailsa Henderson’s fine book, Nunavut: Rethinking Political Culture, didn’t follow the same principles (“The Nunavummiut: Politically Engaged Citizens,” April 2008). His review criticizes Henderson for not writing the book he wanted; he ignores or discounts large sections of the book because he disagrees with or does not understand her methods, and he fails to appreciate her purpose in writing the book. Along the way he engages in selective misquotation and gets facts wrong.

As Henderson explains in Chapter One, she is writing for the political science community. In addition to explicating Nunavut political culture using the tools of political science, she addresses various theoretical questions about the contentious concept of political culture that interest political scientists. If Baglow thinks all this is a crock (“incommensurable theory, unintelligible tables of data … and paltry conclusions”), why not just say so and leave reviewing the book to someone who is interested in whether it achieves its objectives?

Baglow criticizes Henderson’s understanding of Inuit culture: “she claims that the Inuit had an ‘Enlightenment ethos’.” He takes her to task for simplistically believing that the transition from shamanism to Christianity was “almost seamless.” What Henderson actually wrote was: “In many respects, Inuit possessed an Enlightenment vision of the world: that it could be known, understood, and explained.” After elaborating, she cites important ways in which Inuit spirituality made for decidedly non-Enlightenment understandings. Her discussion of Inuit values leads her to observe that “in some respects, this could have made the transition to Christianity almost seamless, at least in terms of values”—a rather more nuanced analysis than Baglow suggests.

Facts? Baglow writes “she continually confuses the ‘government’ with the executive (cabinet).” Someone is indeed confused but it is not Henderson. In a Westminister system, as Nunavut has, the government is the cabinet; regular members of the legislative assembly are not, whatever the rhetoric and mythology of “consensus government,” the government. According to Baglow, “Nunavummiut electors vote in territorial elections in greater numbers than do Canadians in any other province or territory.” This is simply wrong. If Baglow had read Chapter Seven with any care (it’s one with those icky statistics), he would have seen that turnout for territorial elections is not in the 90 percent range but more like 60 percent—well below that in various provinces. Speaking of statistics, on what basis does Baglow make the astonishing claim that “as many as half of the children are deaf due to chronic ear infections”?

Nunavut has much to offer non-political scientists interested in the fascinating politics of this remarkable place. But readers who pick it up should not expect either anthropology or ethnography, as Baglow would apparently prefer, since that is not what Henderson does. Nor should they be surprised that a book written for political scientists should employ the tools of the discipline, including theoretical analysis and simple statistical methods.

Graham White
Toronto, Ontario

Graham White accuses me of “selective misquotation and get[ting] facts wrong.” Despite the seriousness of the former allegation, he provides no evidence of misquotation, selective or otherwise. Ideal with his claims of factual inaccuracy below.

With respect to an alleged Inuit “Enlightenment ethos” or “Enlightenment vision,” Henderson expands: “Inuit sought to explain the world aroundthem.” But no people in the worldhave not, with the possible exception of the Pirahã of the upper Amazon. Using the word “Enlightenment” in this manner robs the term of any meaning.

The main difference between Inuit and Enlightenment explanations, Henderson argues, is that the former included a spiritual dimension. There is a more radical difference, however: traditional Inuit knowledge is experiential and embodied, not abstract and Cartesian. But in any event the Inuit belief in an animate universe, spirits, and the notion that current behaviour could influence future events hardly suffices to make the transition to Christianity “almost seamless,” as Henderson claims it was. Similar spiritual beliefs would have made such transitions “almost seamless” for nearly every missionized/colonized people in the world, which was clearly not the case.

White dismisses consensus government as mythology and rhetoric, but the Nunavummiut do not. The cabinet and the premier are elected (and may be removed) by the legislature as a whole. There are no political parties, and there is no “official opposition,” despite what Henderson suggests.

Regarding voter turnout for territorial elections, readers will have to judge for themselves. Admittedly, the official figures seem suspiciously high: 88 percent in 1999 and 98 percent in 2004. Henderson does make a good case that the turnout in 2004 was more likely 63 percent, putting it above Ontario and Alberta but below that of the other provinces and territories. The 1999 election, however, has yet to be analyzed in this respect.

Finally, my source for the shockingly high rate of deafness among Inuit children is Thomas Berger’s landmark final conciliator’s report on the implementation of the Nunavut land claim, issued on March 1, 2006. This may be found online at http://www.cba.org/nunavut/pdf/NU_finalreport.pdf. Berger notes that between one third and one half of Inuit children in Nunavut suffer some form of hearing loss, likely due to overcrowded housing and exposure to tobacco smoke.

John Baglow
Ottawa, Ontario