Completely unaware that they needed food, or winter clothing, and utterly ignorant to the fact that they needed to feed their domesticated animals it’s a wonder that the poor, naked, starving, Eskimos of the Canadian Arctic had even the strength to wonder why their dogs were getting skinny and dying until the government came along and saved them.
Can you imagine the arrogance of a society and government that would write such a thing?
Telling a people who had not only lived, but thrived, in the Arctic for thousands of years before Europeans quit burning people at the stake for questioning their holy men and figured out how not to sail off the edge of the earth, that they couldn’t survive without food or winter clothing?
I wonder how many people are aware that when the first Europeans finally did reach the Canadian Arctic that they were viewed by many in the same light as little kids — people to be coddled, and for whom allowances had to be made, because they had neither the common sense, or the skills, to survive on their own.
Without the winter cloths and food given to them by the people they encountered the first Europeans would have been little more than frozen explorersicles standing on the tundra…. something that, depending on where they stopped walking, could possibly have served as useful trail markers - at least until spring when they fell over.
If I used the word pathetic to describe it I’d be being overly kind.
It’s been noted before that there were two kinds of Arctic explorer; the ones who listened to and learned from the Inuit, and the ones who died.
Sir John Franklin was type B. To Sir John, the Inuit were interesting primitives in need of civilization and, of course, Christ. His men wore regulation british wool (which trapped moisture and froze), travelled with tons of tinned meat (some of which spoiled and poisoned his men), and abandoned ship with his silver tea set. His entire crew froze to death somewhere in the neighbourhood of Gjoa Haven.
John Rae was type A. He travelled alone or with a few Inuit companions, learned Inuktitut, hunted and foraged, built snow houses, and maintained a lifelong respect for Inuit and Cree. Consequently he became one of the most successful Arctic explorers in history, ranging across the Arctic, mapping the last stretch of the Northwest Passage, and uncovering much of the final story of the Franklin expedition.
Safe to say that most of the government folks around, including whoever wrote that useful memo, would probalby fall into type A as well.