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Two circumpolar populations, ages 11.0-19.9 years, have been studied at different stages in acculturation to a sedentary lifestyle: Igloolik Inuit and Volochanka nGanasan. Both populations are short, but have a normal body mass. Skinfold readings rise with age. Male handgrip force develops similarly in both communities, but female scores are poorer for Inuit than for nGanasan. Older nGanasan males show a greater knee extension force than the Inuit, but the converse is true for females. Predicted aerobic power is 56-59 ml · kg-1 · min-1 for Inuit males and 49-57 for nGanasan males. For females, values decline with age, from 50 to 45 ml · kg-1 · min-1 for Inuit females and from 47 to 39 for nGanasan females. It appears that the main effect of acculturation has been an accumulation of body fat in the Igloolik population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Igloolik Isuma's second feature film, "The Journals of Knud Rasmussen," received its world premiere in Igloolik on 12 March 2006. In the words of director Zacharias Kunuk, Journals "tries to answer two questions that haunted me my whole life: Who were we? And what happened to us?" The film tells of a vital period in Iglulingmiut cultural history, when powerful external forces converged in Northern Foxe Basin, and when the Iglulingmiut, who knew how to believe, changed the contents of their songs and stories, what they believe. They also changed their ceremonies of belief, particularly the songs and stories associated with the ritual of conversion to Christianity known as siqqitiq, with which the film ends at Igloolik. This essay draws from the disciplines of ethnography, film criticism, comparative religious studies, oral history, and the writing of J. Edward Chamberlin to analyze and discuss the tensions, contradictions, and apocalyptic uncoverings that inform this historical film, and in particular the life story of the camp leader Avva, an actual historical figure who banishes his helping spirits and rejoins his community at film's end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a conceptual model to examine the vulnerability of Inuit food systems to food insecurity as a consequence of climate change. The model illustrates that food system vulnerability is determined by the exposure and sensitivity of the food system to climate-related risks and its adaptive capacity to deal with those risks. The model is empirically applied using a case study from Igloolik, Nunavut. Specifically, the paper focuses on how extreme climate-related conditions in 2006 interacted with the food system to affect food security, using 2006 as a lens to identify and characterize some of the processes and conditions shaping vulnerability, and establishing a baseline for identifying and characterizing processes that are likely to shape future vulnerability. There is a high level of adaptive capacity among Igloolik Inuit, with food sharing mechanisms, hunting flexibility, and store-food access moderating the impact of climatic-risks on food security. However, high fuel and commodity prices, the increasing economic burden of adapting to back-to-back years with unfavorable climatic conditions, underlying community vulnerabilities, and the nature to the climate extremes in 2006, overwhelmed the adaptive capacity of many community members. Those dependent on traditional foods and having limited access to financial resources were particularly vulnerable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illustrates how Igloolik media collective Isuma Productions travels across time through its films and videos and travels across space through its work with the Internet. In the period of a few generations, communities of Inuit throughout the north have undergone a dramatic transition from lifestyles based predominantly on nomadic subsistence hunting and fishing to a sedentary, wage-based, consumer economy. Isuma is known for its unique documentary drama aesthetic, which brings forward the past and melds it into the present. The films and videos of Isuma are always based on the oral history of the community elders. For many years these media artists in Igloolik have dreamed of how to use the Internet in Igloolik have dreamed of how to use the Internet in Igloolik to enhance and promote Inuit culture as well as their own creative process.

Inuit hunters of the Igloolik region orient themselves on the land by understanding wind behaviour, snowdrift patterns, animal behaviour, tidal cycles, currents, and astronomical phenomena. Inuit wayfinding methods are burdensome to learn, requiring years of quiet tutoring and experience, but are perfectly reliable. Concern arose in the mid-1990s that younger, less experienced hunters were beginning to rely too heavily on mechanized conveyances and electronic navigational aids. The use of global positioning system (GPS) units, particularly, has been steadily growing in Igloolik. This paper discusses the changes wrought by GPS use against the backdrop of interacting social and technological change. It argues that an understanding of these changes requires a model of technology that depends on the patterns created by devices rather than the devices (or systems of devices) themselves. A paradigmatic theory of technology based on the work of the philosopher Albert Borgmann is presented, and a distinction is made between technology that is physically and socially engaging and technology that reduces engagement with experience of the land, people, and local knowledge. It is suggested that there is a risk of turning landscapes into constructed entities or commodities, which is what happens figuratively when we are too attentive to the map and not the territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sometimes the unfamiliar, rather than the too-familiar, may provide a more suitable frame of reference for studying literature. Seeking to implement transnational culture studies in the American curriculum and favoring the use of films and literature from outside the student's familiar cultural context in order to explore other belief systems and cultural values, this study evaluated student responses to foreign film adaptations of epics for use in a multicultural introduction to the humanities. The responses suggest that the non-Western films, appropriately supported, suitably complement the study of epic literature. Questionnaires that elicited short written responses demonstrated multi-faceted efficacy, both for assessment of teaching materials and for systematic development of analytical skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article discusses various historical language books. The publications include "Reversing Language Shift, Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages," by Joshua A. Fishman, "Intellectual culture of the Inglulik Eskimos," by Knud Rasmussen, and "Alaska Native languages: Past, present, and future," by Michael E. Krauss.