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Gísli Pálsson,
"Hot Bodies in Cold Zones: Arctic Exploration"
(page 4 of 7)
Stefansson: The Inuit Connection
Stefansson's first expedition (1906-1907) was brief. He was
determined, however, to return to the Arctic for a second expedition
(1908-1912). In the Arctic, guests from the south usually placed
themselves higher up on the social ladder than the Inuit, and Stefansson
was no exception. About three months after he left "civilization" for
his second expedition, Stefansson encountered and hired Fanny
Pannigabluk who traveled with him for most of the expedition. Their son
Alex Stefansson was born in the middle of the expedition, on 10 March
1910. During Stefansson's third expedition (1913-1918) with the fatal
sinking of his ship The Karluk, he somewhat unexpectedly renewed
his relationship with his wife and child; Pannigabluk became again a
member of the Stefansson party. Stefansson had not seen his son for a
couple of years or so. Now he taught him to read and write and Alex
quickly became bilingual.
Apparently it was during this expedition that the first photographs
were taken of Stefansson's Inuit family. The oldest picture of
Pannigabluk and Alex that has been preserved is from 1913, around the
time when Stefansson renewed his relationship with his family.
Pannigabluk looks rather shy, avoiding the gaze of the photographer,
G.H. Wilkins (see Photo 2), perhaps observing Inuit manners requiring
that a woman look down, not directly at another adult, especially a man.
Photo 1 Stefansson at Herschel Island, 1906. (Dartmouth College
Library).
Photo 2 Pannigabluk, the "common-law wife" of Vilhjalmur Stefansson,
and their son Alex Stefansson, 1913. (Public Works and Government
Services Canada and Geological Survey of Canada).
Judging from Stefansson's field diaries Pannigabluk had a much more
important role than Stefansson's publications indicate. Her name appears
quite often in Stefansson's diaries. Pannigabluk was not just a
seamstress who made fine clothes from animal skins, she would also act
as interpreter and narrator. In effect, she was Stefansson's closest
ethnographic collaborator—his "key informant". Like most of his
contemporaries, Stefansson was unable to acknowledge the intellectual
role of his indigenous collaborators, in particular women. While
Stefansson praises the qualities and contributions of some of his
indigenous male collaborators, including Roxy Memogana and Natkusiak
(Billy Banksland), he rarely mentions his female sources.
Stefansson seems to have prepared his son for a trip to Seattle or
Vancouver at the end of the last expedition and then to the east coast
of the United States, where Alex would presumably adapt to the world of
whites. If this was the case, Pannigabluk who was almost fifty at this
point and with two relationships behind her must have refused to let her
son go. After all, he was her only security in old age. Stefansson wrote
in his diary during the third expedition (22 Desember 1916) that several
years before he met Pannigabluk she had twins, both boys, with her late
husband Alahuk. One of the boys was left to die on the ice, according to
the demands of the husband and "all the others", probably for fear of
famine. The other died at the age of ten. Perhaps this helps to explain
why Pannigabluk would not accept losing Alex.
Whatever Stefansson thought of Pannigabluk, their Inuit companions
regarded them as husband and wife. Their conjugal relationship is
underlined in church records from Herschel Island marked as "Eskimos:
Baptisms, marriages, and funerals". On 15 August 1915, in the middle of
Stefansson's third expedition, Reverend Whittaker baptized Pannigabluk,
"Stefansson's wife", and "their five-year-old son (Alex) Alik Alahuk".
Stefansson never returned to his Inuit family, but some evidence
indicates that he paid their bills at the Hudson Bay store in Aklavik
long after he left. Significantly, perhaps, Stefansson did not marry
until Pannigabluk had died, the same year in fact, more than two decades
after he left the field.
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