socy 274
V. Sacco
Ashlee Ferguson
5528727
November 15th 2007
Bloody Falls of the Coppermine: Extermination to Assimilation, Merely factors of Social Control?
In “Bloody Falls of the Coppermine” McKay Jenkins presents us with a journalistic account of the meeting of the Coppermine Eskimos and the encroaching white settlers. Jenkins account leads the reader to question the socio-political outcomes of this time period, and helps to determine if it is possible to ever truly understand a culture into which we are not born. By presenting us with this very thorough account we are able to garner if two vastly different cultures, the nearly xenophobic and extremely isolated Eskimo and the pioneering European settlers, could ever have gained a true understanding of each other and leave their cultural identity intact. It has almost become the standard conclusion that such a meeting can only result in two ways: assimilate or exterminate. With this account we can determine if these extreme options are in fact the elements required to create structures of disreputability and social control when a society is confronted by culture clash.
The culture collision in “Bloody Falls” can present an argument that assimilation can be considered a factor of social control. The text is able to provide examples of white settlers encouraging the Eskimo to adopt white technology. By forcing the Eskimo to become dependent on modern technology they are compelling them to change their culture, and ultimately to destroy the parts of their culture that are viewed as deviant by whites. This will to indoctrinate the Eskimo to a European standard of living can be evidenced here, “[Breynat] had been praying for the chance to extend his missionary work to the continent’s northern most people.” This will to be ever moving forward, to proselytize a society to a way of life completely alien to their own would not only create new problems for the Eskimo, seen in a section of the text, when an Eskimo group decides they can not join a rescue party on the Sabbath, to the Eskimo populations ultimate reliance on the white settlers. By teaching them to use guns, build houses, etc, white settlers were able to cut them off from the factors which made their culture unique, i.e.: their connection with the land. By limiting the experience Eskimo children would have with their native techniques of survival the invading settlers were able to fully control what types of behaviour which were to become normative, now the Eskimo would be dependent on white technology, and therefore dependent on white society. The text provides the reader with numerous examples of how Eskimo communities were being assimilated, and how this assimilation ultimately destroyed many of the unique dynamics of their culture.
The threat to the Eskimo culture through assimilation was not something that was lost to either communities, but it was the threat of the extermination of Eskimo society that was certainly a factor in the willingness Eskimo tribes had to include white normative processes. The reading provides an examination of how extermination can be viewed as a factor of social control: By teaching the Eskimo that if they break white rules then they will be killed they not only instill the idea that they are committing behaviors which are inherently deviant. They are also initiating them into mind-set that would make them fear authority. This would be a totally foreign concept to the Eskimo of the time, who did not have authoritarian figures, and who lived in equal societies. “Bloody Falls” illustrates how these threats would become commonplace in meetings between whites and Eskimos, “Hornby told Sinnisiak-and, later, any other Eskimos he met-that murdering a white man would result in the extermination of all Eskimos.” If they had been constantly reminded of how close their own annihilation was if they stepped out of bounds, it is likely that the will to conform to these new rules would become a strong one.
While the text gives the reader a plethora of examples of how assimilation and extermination can be the greatest tools for social control between two cultures, its examples of the structures involved in social control are more interesting. The way in which White communities were able to enforce their own concepts of deviance through the trial of the Eskimos is a textbook relation of how societies need deviance to reinforce their norms. These structures of Social Control were ultimately perpetuated not just within the white communities but within the Eskimo ones as well. An example given in the text is the investigation of the two murdered priests, at every turn the Eskimos appear more than willing to give up the members of their tribe, even though the men accused have not committed an Eskimo crime. At this point structures have been laid to enforce a white concept of deviance. The white settlers have done this through the ideas of disreputability. Even as the priests are committed to bringing the word of God to all peoples they still discourage any form of becoming too involved with those peoples, “LeRoux had scolded Hornby for his five-year relationship with the Indian woman named Arimo. Hornby had abruptly refused to continue his relationship with LeRoux.” These concepts are also enforced within white communities, the newspaper coverage of the trial reinforces the image of backward Eskimos who must be assimilated to survive a modern world, or, if they do not respect our laws, then exterminated. While the Eskimo life is at first romanticized, “They say they are industrious, thrifty, hospitable, happy, clean and not envious, and in everyway they are superior to the Indians.” It is as if to show that the Eskimo is a species worth saving, they are also shown to be mere creatures or children that are, “... governed by the same natural laws as the animals and to kill is not a crime.” This illustration allows for the conclusion that, “Death is the only penalty the Eskimo knows...” By reinforcing these stereotypes eventually the public can draw conclusions that allow their society to enforce its own social structures upon a different society. When the Chief prosecutor says, “What we needed most of all was a full web of police barracks and courts to handle the inevitable increase in Eskimo crime.”He is merely signifying his societies need to absorb this alien culture into their own, and the way to do that is to teach, “These remote savages...[that they] have got to...recognize the authority of the British Crown.” In this way “Bloody Falls” allows the reader to draw its own conclusion about the way different societies attempt to establish structures of social control, here it seems prevalent that these structures are often in fact tools to bolster a societies frame of being instead of being a formation that is arranged to meet the goals of the society.
Assimilation and extermination are the two most formidable features of social control presented in McKay Jenkins account of the culture clash of 1913. By examining these events in detail Jenkins leaves us a sociological account of how social control is affected by culture clash. The two societies portrayed in the novel are almost completely dichotomist in their approach to life, their differing ideologies, when put into conflict, use different means of structuring social control to maintain their current states. Conclusively, it must be noted, that it appears that one culture has exercised the use of these structures to the point of overpowering the other culture, can we conclude from this that assimilation is the ultimate end to culture clash? Or is it merely a dual factor in reorganizing one culture so that it fits within the bound of a given societies social norms?
