Markers on the Land
Inuksuk
The
inuksuk
(plural: inuksuit),
stones piled to look like a human being, has been in the Arctic
for thousands of years. Inuksuit were used to mark trails and
food caches. Inuit also built them in double rows to direct
caribou herds during the hunt.
Courtesy of Nunavut Tourism
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Trails
Trails connected river fishing
grounds with mountain meadows, led through forests, and from one
Aboriginal people's country to another. Many Aboriginal trails
are now city roads and highways. In northwestern British
Columbia traders carried boxes of eulachon grease along a series
of interconnecting trails.
Constellations
The sky was home to people who
had lived on the earth, and Aboriginal people told and retold
their exploits in story. Like people in other parts of the world,
Aboriginal people named stars and constellations, and the map of
the sky was a memory theatre.
Boulder Configurations
A "medicine wheel" at
Moose Mountain in southern Saskatchewan. In the Plains of Canada
and the United States, Aboriginal people made installations
using boulders, aligned with the summer solstice and other
astronomical events. Some may be thousands of years old.
Drawing by John A. Eddy, from Solstice-Aligned Boulder
Configurations in Saskatchewan, by Alice B. Kehoe and
Thomas F. Kehoe, National Museum of Man Mercury Series,
Canadian Ethnology Service Paper no. 48, Ottawa, 1979, p. 7.
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Stop Sign in Inuktitut
Today, there are other markers
on the land. A stop sign in Nunavut, where Inuktitut is one of
the three official languages.
Courtesy of Nunavut Tourism
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Petroglyphs
Located on an island in Hudson
Strait, off the northern coast of Quebec, this petroglyph was
made by Palaeo-Eskimos, who lived in the region before the
arrival of Inuit. It was probably carved about 1,000 years ago.
The meaning of the images is now unknown.
Petroglyphs,
"rock writing," are images incised on rocks. They are found across
Canada, and record sites of spiritual significance and historic
events.
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