When science meets aboriginal oral history – Toronto Star

Press Release –

The Inuit tales were right about those great big shy guys who came before

In Inuit oral history, the Tuniit loom both large and small.

They inhabited the Arctic before the Inuit came, and they were a different stock of people — taller and stronger, with the muscularity of polar bears, the stories say. A Tuniit man could lift a 1,000 pound seal on his back, or drag a whole walrus. Others say the Tuniit slept with their legs in the air to drain the blood from their feet and make them lighter, so they could outrun a caribou.

But despite their superior strength and size, the Tuniit were shy. They were “easily put to flight and it was seldom heard that they killed others,” according to one storyteller in the book “Uqalurait: An Oral History of Nunavut.” The Inuit took over the best hunting camps and displaced the conflict-averse Tuniit. Soon enough, these strange people disappeared from the land.

Read more: http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2014/08/31/when_science_meets_aboriginal_oral_history.html