McELROY, Ann, 2008 Nunavut Generations: Change and Continuity in Canadian Inuit Communities, Long Grove, Waveland Publishers, 200 pages.

During Ann McElroy’s first visit to Iqaluit in 1967, a Montreal student asked her why she was doing an anthropological study here [in Iqaluit], “These aren’t real Eskimos” (p. 15). By “real” he meant a person who hunts and lives off the land, “not someone who works for a paycheck” (p. 15). Curious to learn more about what town-based Inuit themselves thought of their identity, McElroy returned to Baffin Island two years later to complete a dissertation project on Inuit children. Although not all Inuit youth identified with the same adult gender roles, McElroy learned that many desired to find a balance between finding work in town and having time to hunt, fish, and travel with one’s family on the land. The desire to blend tradition with town-based opportunities is a recurring topic in McElroy’s ethnography of southern Nunavut society and culture. McElroy finds the concept of “real” Inuit problematic because it locates such Inuit outside Arctic towns, the locus of her research. What is more authentically Inuit to McElroy is the ability “to integrate traditional values and modern lifestyles,” (p. 16) including working for a paycheck. The ability to integrate different modes of living provides the foundation of an overarching theme of McElroy’s work: Inuit in South Baffin are fully bicultural. While survival in an increasingly urban environment has required Inuit to adopt many of the customs and values of the Qallunaat (“white people”), Inuit continue to emphasise their identity as a distinct people whose traditions and values differ from those of the Qallunaat. The lengthy process of negotiation that led to the creation of Nunavut in 1999, a territory that McElroy refers to as an Indigenous homeland, demonstrates just how committed Inuit are to maintaining cultural and political autonomy. McElroy takes aim at another stereotype of Inuit: “historical critiques” of Inuit as “passive victims of change” (p. 10). Coinciding with this view is the image that Inuit experienced the transition from camp to town life as a forced relocation caused by “ecological destruction, coercive policies, and exploitation by intruders seeking profit and control” (p. 93). She contends that Inuit always have been and continue to be major agents of change in the Arctic. Inuit were eager to trade with the first Qallunaat traders and whaling crews to arrive in South Baffin, and they often offered to join the crews of strange-looking men. A number of Inuit at this time became cultural brokers, persons who facilitated exchanges between the two societies (Inuit and Qallunaat). These brokers became models of biculturalism, individuals at home among both Inuit and Qallunaat. McElroy’s most recent research project, the results of which are detailed in several chapters of this book, is a study of Inuit memories of the transition from camp to town life. To support her claim that Inuit were agents of transformation rather than victims, she draws on the testimonies of Inuit elders who recall many different reasons for moving to town. According to McElroy, the government did coerce a number of different groups to move by threatening to withhold assistance during medical emergencies and food shortages. In other contexts, however, Inuit chose to relocate in order to be closer to family or to find work. Some remembered their relocation as a twist of fate; one Inuit elder told McElroy he got stuck in Pangnirtung for five years after running out of money there during a trip from Lake Harbour. Others remembered town as a safe haven during times of disaster. An outbreak of canine hepatitis that swept through camps in southern Baffin Island in 1962 forced many families in the region …