Diamond Jenness
Diamond Jenness, was one of Canada's greatest early scientists and a pioneer of Canadian anthropology.
Early life (1886–1910)
Family and childhood
Diamond Jenness was the second youngest son in a middle-class family of ten children. His father's profession was that of a watchmaker / jeweller, though he also installed several clocks in municipal building towers in New Zealand. The family was encouraged to read, learn music, and engage in sports. Barnett Richling, in his biography In Twilight and in Dawn writes that the young Jenness "was a proficient outdoorsman and an accomplished sharpshooter," skills that helped prepare him for his experience in the Arctic years later.Education
At an early age, Jenness showed proficiency for learning. He earned his first scholarship at the age of twelve by entering a composition competition for children under fourteen. In those days, in New Zealand, secondary education was only available to the wealthier families, so this scholarship enabled Jenness to complete high school and three years of college. He finished his final year of secondary education with six prizes: mathematics, science, Latin, French and English, and was named top student. He attended Lower Hutt School, then Wellington College. He and sister May were the only two siblings to proceed on to college.Jenness graduated from the University of New Zealand , receiving first class honours for both degrees. Then, when 22 years old, he received a scholarship that allowed him to pursue further education at Balliol College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford.
Career (1911–1948)
Field work – Northern D'Entrecasteaux
From 1911 to 1912, as an Oxford Scholar, he studied a little-known group of people on the D'Entrecasteaux Islands in eastern Papua New Guinea. Jenness comments:Canadian Arctic Expedition
In 1913, Jenness was invited to join the government-funded Canadian Arctic Expedition that was led by two Arctic explorers - Vilhjalmur Stefansson and Rudolph Martin Anderson. He would be one of the two anthropologists on board; the other was Henri Beuchat. In June of that year, having barely recuperated from yellow fever contracted while in New Guinea, Jenness boarded, a brigantine formerly used as a whaling ship, along with 12 other scientists. The ship steamed up the British Columbia coastline towards Nome, Alaska, where they met up with Stefansson who had purchased two schooners to assist in the expedition work. The three vessels then proceeded towards their rendezvous point, Herschel Island, just east of the mouth of the Mackenzie River, Northwest Territories.The rendezvous never took place. On August 12, the Karluk became locked in the sea ice. Stefansson, with his secretary, Burt McConnell, Jenness, Hubert Wilkins, and two Inuit, set out to procure meat for the crew. While they were ashore, the Karluk drifted westward to the East Siberian Sea, where, on its last voyage, the ship was eventually crushed in the ice off Wrangel Island. Thirteen of the crew perished on board, including Henri Beuchat.
With the ship gone, the hunting party set off on foot towards Utqiagvik, Alaska, away, hoping to meet the two other vessels involved in the expedition: the Mary Sachs and Alaska. In Barrow, they learned that the two ships had anchored in Camden Bay, Alaska making it their winter base. Jenness remained behind and spent the first winter at Harrison Bay, Alaska, where he learned how to speak the Iñupiaq language, and compiled information about their customs and folklore. The next year, in 1914, assisted by interpreter Patsy Klengenberg, Jenness commenced studying the Copper Inuit, sometimes called the Blond Eskimos, in the Coronation Gulf area. This group of people had had very little contact with Europeans, and Jenness, now the only anthropologist, was solely in charge of recording the Indigenous way of life in this area.
File:Ikpukhuak and his shaman wife Higalik.jpg|thumb|Hubert Wilkins photograph of Ikpukhuak and his angakkuq wife Higalik
Jenness spent two years with the Copper Inuit and lived as an adopted son of a hunter named Ikpukhuak and his wife Higalik, an angakkuq or shaman,. During that time he hunted and travelled with his "family," sharing both their festivities and their famine. By living with this Inuit family and partaking in their everyday experiences, Jenness did something that was "not often employed by other ethnologists" at the time: he lived with the people who were the subjects of his fieldwork. As David Morrison in his Arctic Hunters: The Inuit and Diamond Jenness states:
Summarizing his first year with the Copper Inuit, Jenness wrote:
As anthropologist Frederica de Laguna noted years later, his "accomplishments are the more remarkable when it is remembered that Jenness had to perform not only his own duties but those of his unfortunate colleague, Beauchat." Furthermore, Jenness's camera, anthropometric instruments, books, papers and even heavy winter clothing had all remained on board the ill-fated.
The CAE scientists kept daily diary logs, took extensive research notes, and collected samples which were shipped or brought back to Ottawa. Jenness collected a variety of ethnological materials from clothing and hunting tools to stories and games, and 137 wax phonographic cylinder song recordings he had made. The latter's musical transcription and analysis by Columbia University's Hellen H. Roberts with Jenness's word translations can be found in the monograph "Songs of the Copper Eskimos". Eight of Jenness's recordings could be heard at the CKUG-FM website, located in Kugluktuk, Nunavut, Canada. The website also features a short video demonstrating how Jenness recorded these songs with the technology available in 1913.
Copper Inuit subgroups studied by Jenness
Several subgroups were reported on by Jenness and they include:- Akuliakattagmiut
- Haneragmiut
- Kogluktogmiut
- Pallirmiut
- Puiplirmiut
- Uallirgmiut
Origin of the Copper Inuit and their copper culture
Jenness characterized the "Copper Eskimos" as being in a pseudo-metal stage, in between the Stone and Iron Ages, because this cultural group treated copper as simply a malleable stone which is hammered into tools and weapons. He discussed whether the use of copper arose independently with different cultural groups or in one group and was then "borrowed" by others. Jenness goes on to explain that indigenous communities began to use copper first and following this, Inuit adopted it. He cited the fact that slate was previously used among Inuit and was replaced by copper at a later time after the indigenous communities had begun to use it.
First World War
The scientific members of the Canadian Arctic Expedition completed their mission and left the north in 1916. Jenness was assigned an office in the Victoria Museum of Ottawa and instructed to write up his expedition findings. After six months of feverishly working on his collections, notes, and initial reports for the government, Jenness, concerned about the events in Europe, enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and served in France and Belgium as a gunner in the field artillery. Being of slight build and short of stature, he was assigned to duties other than direct combat.Field work and writing
In December 1918, Jenness applied and received military leave to finish writing his Papua studies report in Oxford,. While in Oxford, he received word that his unit was one of the first to be sent home from the war. Jenness returned to Ottawa in March 1919, and the next month married his fiancé, Eileen Bleakney. After their honeymoon in New Zealand, Jenness set about writing up his Arctic reports, and produced eight government reports in five volumes, totalling 1,368 pages. Richling states: "The scientific results of the Canadian Arctic Expedition filled fifteen volumes. One-third of them contained the product of Jenness's investigations."Canadian First Nations
A year and a half after his return from the war, the Government of Canada made his employment at the Victoria Memorial Museum permanent, and he was assigned to study many of the First Nations tribes of Canada.The Tsuutʼina Nation, on the Tsuu T'ina 145 reserve in Calgary, Alberta, were the first of many First Nations in Jenness's fieldwork. That experience also provided his first encounter with the deplorable conditions Canada's Indigenous peoples experienced on Indian reserves. After the Tsuutʼina, Jenness undertook fieldwork study of the Sekani, Beothuk, Ojibwe, and Coast Salish. Collins and Taylor refer to Jenness's Indians of Canada as "the definitive work on the Canadian aborigines, dealing comprehensively with the ethnology and history of the Canadian Indians and Eskimos".