Diamond Jenness (1886-1969)

Abstract

Canada's most distinguished anthropologist, Dr. Diamond Jenness, formerly Chief of the Division of Anthropology, National Museums of Canada, and Honorary Associate of the Arctic Institute of North America, died peacefully at his home in the Gatineau Hills near Ottawa on 29 November, 1969. He was one of that rapidly-vanishing, virtually extinct kind - the all round anthropologist, who, working seriously, turned out first-class publications in all four major branches of the discipline: ethnology, linguistics, archaeology, and physical anthropology. One must also add a fifth: applied anthropology, a fitting designation for the series of monographs on Eskimo administration in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland which he wrote after his retirement and which were published by the Arctic Institute of North America. ... [In response to an invitation to join Stefansson Arctic Expedition and study Eskimos for three years, Jenness found himself a member of the Southern Party with an assignment to study the Copper Eskimos around Coronation Gulf. These plans were interrupted due to the presence of sea ice.] On 30 September, Stefansson, with his secretary Burt McConnell, Jenness, two Eskimos, and the expedition's photographer G.H. Wilkins (later Sir Hubert Wilkins), left the Karluk near the mouth of the Colville River to hunt caribou and lay in a supply of fresh meat when it had become apparent that the ship, immobilized in the ice, could proceed no further. With two sleds, twelve dogs and food for twelve days the party set out for the mainland, but they never saw the Karluk again, for a week or so later the unfortunate vessel began her final drift westward. This was the inauspicious beginning of Jenness' arctic career. Few young anthropologists have faced such difficulties in beginning field-work in a new and unfamiliar area; yet none, surely, has emerged from the test with a more brilliant record of work accomplished. ... Jenness' first winter's field-work on the Arctic coast of Alaska led to [an] impressive list of publications ... conducted under conditions that many an ethnographer would have found intolerable. ... Scarcely a hint of these personal experiences of his first winter in the Arctic will be found in Jenness' anthropological writings. They were reserved for his retrospective volume Dawn in Arctic Alaska (1957) which he wrote while on a Gugenheim scholarship in 1954, some years after his retirement. ... Jenness' first year in the Arctic ended in July 1914 when the Expedition's schooners left Camden Bay and sailed eastward to Dolphin and Union Strait where he was to meet with another though very different, Eskimo people named by Stefansson the Copper Eskimos, most of whom, before Stefansson worked among them in 1910-1911, had never seen a white man. ... To obtain a faithful picture of the life of the Copper Eskimos Jenness chose an approach that in those days was not often employed by ethnologists. He entered into their life directly, as one of them. He attached himself to an Eskimo family and became the adopted son of Ikpukhuak, one of the foremost hunters and respected leaders of the Puivlik tribe of southwest Victoria Island, and his wife Higilak (Ice House), who was not only proficient in the ordinary and burdensome duties of an Eskimo wife but was also a shaman in her own right, a talent that saved Jenness from a local murder charge. Jenness lived with these people in their snow houses in winter and skin tents in summer, observing and recording the vastly different modes of life according to season. ... Jenness' researches extended far beyond Coronation Gulf and the arctic coast westward. ... Jenness always disclaimed being an archaeologist, yet he made two discoveries that are fundamental to an understanding of Eskimo prehistory - discovery of the Dorset culture in the eastern Arctic, and of the Old Bering Sea, earliest stage of the maritime pattern of Eskimo culture that later spread from northern Alaska to Canada and Greenland to form the principal basis for modern Eskimo culture. ... And so much more. In 1926, Jenness succeeded Edward Sapir as Chief Anthropologist of the National Museum of Canada. ... He developed the Antiquities Legislation that has been so important for the protection of archaeological resources in the Northwest Territories. ... Between 1962 and 1968 the Arctic Institute of North America published his admirable five volumes on Eskimo administration in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. These monographs reflect his durable and compassionate concern for Canadian Indians and Eskimos and in them one can find much of the advice that he, for so many decades, provided the Canadian Government. ... [Jenness' accomplishments extend beyond the realm of anthropology and his reputation was both national and international. For his services in the field of anthropology, particularly in connection with the Indian and Eskimo population of Canada, he was appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada.]