Inuit Stories of Being and Rebirth: Gender, Shamanism, and the Third Sex

by Bernard Saladin d'Anglure, Peter Frost (Translator), Claude Lévi-Strauss (Foreword by)

Overview

Ujarak, Iqallijuq, and Kupaaq were elders from the Inuit community on Igloolik Island in Nunavut. The three elders, among others, shared with Bernard Saladin d’Anglure the narratives which make up the heart of Inuit Stories of Being and Rebirth. Through their words, and historical sources recorded by Franz Boas and Knud Rasmussen, Saladin d’Anglure examines the Inuit notion of personhood and its relationship to cosmology and mythology. Central to these stories are womb memories, narratives of birth and reincarnation, and the concept of the third sex—an intermediate identity between male and female. As explained through first-person accounts and traditional legends, myths, and folk tales, the presence of transgender individuals informs Inuit relationships to one another and to the world at large, transcending the dualities of male and female, human and animal, human and spirit. This new English edition includes the 2006 preface by Claude Lévi-Strauss and an afterword by Bernard Saladin d’Anglure.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780887558306
Publisher:	University of Manitoba Press
Publication date:	11/30/2018
Series:	Contemporary Studies on the North , #6
Edition description:	1
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.99(d)

About the Author

BERNARD SALADIN D'ANGLURE first began his work among the Canadian Inuit in the 1950s, when he was a young student from France. He later became a professor of Anthropology at the University of Laval, where he taught until his retirement.
 

Table of Contents

Preface to the 2006 Edition Claude Lévi-Strauss xi

Foreword xiii

Igloolik Island, A Mythical Place

The Storytellers xxi

Introduction 1

Iqallijuq, Ujarak, Kupaaq, and the Others

Interlude 1 Song of Saittuq 9

Chapter 1 Savviurtalik is Reincarnated 11

Interlude 2 Iqallijuq Remembering 28

Chapter 2 Inuit Genesis and the Desire for Children 39

Chapter 3 Naarjuk: The Giant Baby with Prominent Genitals and the Master of Sila 57

Chapter 4 Incestuous Moon Brother Chases Sun Sister 74

Chapter 5 A Headstrong Daughter: The Mother of All Human Races and all Marine Mammals 101

Chapter 6 A Cheated Husband and Thwarted Love in the Animal World 121

Chapter 7 Girls Should not Play at Marriage 141

Chapter 8 A Battered Wife Chooses to be Reborn in Animal Forms, Then as a Man 152

Chapter 9 Kaujjajjuk, A Mistreated Orphan Rescued by the Moon Man 177

Chapter 10 The Danger of Being Impregnated by a Spirit when you have a Jealous Husband 197

Chapter 11 Itirjuaq, The First Woman Healer 210

Chapter 12 The Strange Man and his Whale 220

Chapter 13 Atanaarjuat, The Fast Runner: A Mythical Hero 232

Chapter 14 Ataguttaaluk, The Cannibal Forebear (or the Birth of a Myth) 247

Chapter 15 Qisaruatsiaq: Back to her Mother's Womb 274

Conclusion 283

Afterword 291

Glossary of Inuktitut Terms 305

Notes 319

Bibliography 337

Photo Credits 349

Index 351

Editorial Reviews

The strongest point of the book is its rich capacity to generate analyses of Inuit story and life. While many works provide different Indigenous stories from across Canada, this text goes further and provides variants of and insight into the stories themselves.

Amy Farrell-Morneau

"Saladin d’ Anglure […] shares a philosophical perspective that sex and gender play interchangeable roles as a means of Inuit survival. The stories describe Inuit perceptions of sex and gender in ways that are unlike Western binary concepts of sexual and gender identity. […] This book is a lens that can allow a glimpse into Inuit knowledge systems and offers a rare account of how Inuit established social structures and unity among the sexes prior to European contact. While some of the practices of naming have changed in a post-modern Inuit context, the stories and analysis by Saladin d’ Anglure imply that unity among the sexes is an important aspect of how Inuit have survived as a distinct Indigenous people within some of the harshest environmental living conditions on earth."

Canadian Journal Of Native Studies - Wayne Voisey Clark

The new English edition of Inuit Stories of Being and Rebirth: Gender, Shamanism, and the Third Sex — translated from the French by Peter Frost — is a major accomplishment. This is one of the great classics of humanities and social science research in the Canadian Arctic.

Canadian Literature - Marianne Stenbaek

Inuit Stories is engaging and easy to read and can be recommended to the interested public but also to scholars for its important contribution to anthropological theory. Saladin d’Anglure explains how Inuit oral tradition blurs boundaries between opposing worlds such as male/female, human/ animal, and death/life.

Alaska Journal of Anthropology