Inuksuk
But what is an inuksuk*? Characteristics of the Arctic Regions, inuksuit are simply stony piles (inuksugait in inuktitut) which the silhouette sometimes looks like humans… But let us Paaliin Pilip, an Inuit author Inuit from Iqaluit, explain it :
Inuksugait always had a very big utility. They had different meanings. Inuit had at first two wayss of construction. The first one looks like men. They have arms, leg and head. According to the second method, they were built by stony piles.The biggest inuksugait had legs, arms and heads; they were placed on the top of mountains and they indicated meat caches. Far off, if you see smaller one, you can say ” here is a cache”.
On the shore, the built inuksuit were considered as symbols by those who moved. If they wondered where to accost, they knew it then certainly. And those were used when the weather was bad.
Those who were only stony piles also had another function in aid of people who did not know the territory. If you get towards an inuksuk, you can see one then another one. If you simply follow them, you can join the camps. [Extracted from Nunavimiutituulitiqsugit uqausignit, translation from inuktitut]
The inuksuk serves thus even today as guide for hunters and the visitors imoving in the tundra and can also indicate an important place such as a site of hunting or fishing, a meat cache, or a sacred ancestral place.
We find inuksuit almost everywhere in the world today; whether it is in front of the Hotel of the Parliament of the city of Quebec (Quebec), to the European Parliament in Strasbourg (France), on the Place of Canada in Guatemala (Guatemala) or in your garden.
The inuksuk represents a symbol of peace between the civilizations in the world today and was chosen as the symbol for the 2010 Olympics Games in Vancouver. It also appears on the Nunavut flag since the creation of the Nunavut Territory in 1999. The inuksuk became one of the strong symbols of circumpolar Inuit people, that is why Inuit sculptors as Pits Koperkualuk or Pia Saila represent them with pleasure.
*An inuksuk in the singular (pronounce : enookshook) ; inuksuit in the plural.
Read :
GRABURN, Nelson, 2004, « Inuksuk : Icon of the Inuit of Nunavut » in Etudes/Inuit/Studies, n◦28, vol.1, pp. 69-82.
