How do longstanding Inuit traditions affect the way Inuit children are raised?
JW: Because of the age-old belief that children embody the souls of dead relatives, they are not commonly reprimanded. Children often run wild and unsupervised in the villages, although older brothers and sisters, barely in their teens, watch over their siblings carefully. Consequently, Inuit children grow up quickly, through their greater responsibilities, through partaking in the hunt at a very young age, and, undoubtedly, through the binding ties and love of the traditional Inuit family. AAK: You note that sometimes you found the Inuit people to be “caught in a depraved limbo, somewhere between paradise and the ugly side of modern civilization.” Which aspects of Inuit life are you citing? JW: I’m citing–in one particular depressed Inuit village–how their culture has been assimilated and bypassed. In this transition, from what they used to be into what they hope to become, they have slipped in ways similar to other impoverished North American inner-city and reservation cultures. Fo
