ChristyG

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/theyre-not-human-how-19th-century-inuit-coped-with-a-real-life-invasion-of-the-walking-dead

Indigenous groups across the Americas had all encountered Europeans differently. But where other coastal groups such as the Haida or the Mi’kmaq had met white men who were well-fed and well-dressed, the Inuit frequently encountered their future colonizers as small parties on the edge of death.

“I’m sure it terrified people,” said Eber, 91, speaking to the National Post by phone from her Toronto home.

And it’s why, as many as six generations after the events of the Franklin Expedition, Eber was meeting Inuit still raised on stories of the two giant ships that came to the Arctic and discharged columns of death onto the ice.

Inuit nomads had come across streams of men that “didn’t seem to be right.” Maddened by scurvy, botulism or desperation, they were raving in a language the Inuit couldn’t understand. In one case, hunters came across two Franklin Expedition survivors who had been sleeping for days in the hollowed-out corpses of seals.

“They were unrecognizable they were so dirty,” Lena Kingmiatook, a resident of Taloyoak, told Eber.

Mark Tootiak, a stepson of Nicholas Qayutinuaq, related a story to Eber of a group of Inuit who had an early encounter with a small and “hairy” group of Franklin Expedition men evacuating south.

“Later … these Inuit heard that people had seen more white people, a lot more white people, dying,” he said. “They were seen carrying human meat.”

Even Eber’s translator, the late Tommy Anguttitauruq, recounted a goose hunting trip in which he had stumbled upon a Franklin Expedition skeleton still carrying a clay pipe.

By 1850, coves and beaches around King William Island were littered with the disturbing remnants of their advance: Scraps of clothing and camps still littered with their dead occupants. Decades later, researchers would confirm the Inuit accounts of cannibalism when they found bleached human bones with their flesh hacked clean.

“I’ve never in all my life seen any kind of spirit — I’ve heard the sounds they make, but I’ve never seen them with my own eyes,” said the old man who had gone out to investigate the Franklin survivors who had straggled into his camp that day on King William Island.

The figures’ skin was cold but it was not “cold as a fish,” concluded the man. Therefore, he reasoned, they were probably alive.

“They were beings but not Inuit,” he said, according to the account by shaman Nicholas Qayutinuaq.

The figures were too weak to be dangerous, so Inuit women tried to comfort the strangers by inviting them into their igloo.

But close contact only increased their alienness: The men were timid, untalkative and — despite their obvious starvation — they refused to eat.

The men spit out pieces of cooked seal offered to them. They rejected offers of soup. They grabbed jealous hold of their belongings when the Inuit offered to trade.

When the Inuit men returned to the camp from their hunt, they constructed an igloo for the strangers, built them a fire and even outfitted the shelter with three whole seals.

Then, after the white men had gone to sleep, the Inuit quickly packed up their belongings and fled by moonlight.

Whether the pale-skinned visitors were qallunaat or “Indians” — the group determined that staying too long around these “strange people” with iron knives could get them all killed.

“That night they got all their belongings together and took off towards the southwest,” Qayutinuaq told Dorothy Eber.

But the true horror of the encounter wouldn’t be revealed until several months later.

The Inuit had left in such a hurry that they had abandoned several belongings. When a small party went back to the camp to retrieve them, they found an igloo filled with corpses.

Just walk around saying shit like "That's so blizzy. I dig the dharma. Get sippy with it, homeswizzle."

I spent one single year in a private high school, and they had a dress code, and the dress code said t-shirts must be a solid color and have a pocket.

Now i didn't mind solid color t-shirts, but i hated how the shirts with a pocket looked. So after failing to get away with wearing pocketless shirts... I borrowed a sewing machine and made a solid colored t-shirt with a pocket over the belly button like a silly little kangaroo. Facing the principle the next day, i pointed out that the student handbook clearly stated that all t-shirts must have a pocket. I asked him if my shirt had a pocket. I asked him to show me where the rules detailed the location on the shirt that a pocket must be. It was a private school so they simply suspended me for a day (which went on my record) and when i got back the student handbooks had all been reprinted with a sentence added to it specifying that t-shirts must have a breast pocket on the left side of the chest. Being the cause of a whole new student handbook edition gained me a small amount of notoriety, but i was so low on the social totem pole at that school that it didn't do much for me.

The next Monday, i showed up with a t-shirt entirely covered in pockets, front and back. In the principle's office again, I asked him if my shirt had a pocket on the left side of the chest. I asked him to show me where the rules said there must only be one pocket. I was suspended for a day and the next day there was ANOTHER student handbook reprint, and the school threatened to bill my parents the cost of reprinting all the student handbooks if they didn't get me in line. My parents basically laughed at them but asked me to not make them have to fight my school as they were already short on time and money. So i gave up on that and began amusing myself finding neck ties that met the letter of the dress code but pissed off the administration.

I could tell you a couple more things i've done, but i'd rather tell you what my brother did.

To promote recreational reading in The Youth, my younger brother's public high school instituted a 25 minute "free reading period" in the day. Every student had to spend that time reading. You could read anything, you could even read a magazine, but you had to be reading.

My brother thought the whole thing was a stupid way for the school to spend their time, and especially stupid to be applied to him. Our whole family reads excessively -- when i was in high school i was reading, on average, one entire book every day. My brother was more well adjusted than i, so i'd guess he was only reading 3 or four books a week, tho, while i was reading a lot of fiction with a little philosophy and history, he was reading a lot of, like, theoretical physics.

ANYway, he was like, this is stupid for many reasons, i'm going to sit quietly and use this time to catch up on some of my homework. But the teacher he had during that time period didn't like that and made a big deal out of insisting he actually spend the time reading. He was sent to the principles office, where he explained that he did not need extra reading time, cited studies that indicated the "free reading" time would accomplish nothing and was a waste of time for both the administration and the student body, and ended with a reminder that what he WANTED to do was sit quietly and do school work, which any school should be happy about.

The principle said he understood my brother's position, but that he couldn't make exceptions for a single student. As per the instructions to the whole school, it didn't matter what he read, it could even be unpublished writing, but he had to be reading. My brother, already veteran gamer both on a computer and around a table, immediately saw an exploit and seized this mistake (gods, my family really can be the worst lmao).

He asked the principle to put in writing the rules as stated AND that he would not make an exception for a single student. The principle, not understanding the kind of people we are, gave it to him in writing. At which point his fate was sealed.

So the next day my brother came in with a packet of paper he had printed at home. When the time came for "free reading" he took out his packet and began reading. When the teacher came over to make sure he was reading, she was enraged to discover he had a packet of about 25 pages completely full of the repeated letter "a".

"I'm reading it tho" was his response. "This meets the definition of reading" "No it's just a letter, you can't be reading it unless it's words."

The next day he showed up with pages completely filled with "words words words words." He was sent to the principles office "See, those are words," my brother said, "so i must be reading."

"no that's not reading, there's not a single sentence on these pages" The principle must have been stupid, anyone who ever met someone from our family could have seen what would happen the next day, when he showed up with pages full of "These are words in a sentence." over and over

He was again sent to the principles office. The principle discovered that, like a man with a monkey's paw, he could not define reading in a way that met the rules as stated but would prevent my brother's shenanigans. He tried to insist my brother read from a recognized publisher, but my brother pointed out that this was not the rules as given to the rest of the student body, and the principle could not make an exception for a single student. The principle tried to tell him that he was making an exception for him anyway, and my brother told him that unless he was given an exemption from "free reading" time entirely, he would not recognize any rules that violated the written agreement they had. The principle implied my brother would face consequences for this behavior, and my brother implied he would talk to the local paper about being repeatedly harassed for *checked actual notes* following the rules he had been given, all in an effort to prevent my brother from sitting quietly and doing actual schoolwork.

My brother returned to class shortly thereafter with a note from the principle explaining to the teacher that my brother was exempt from "free reading"

anyway, the moral of this story is, when a rule is ridiculous, you can often find a way to make the authority figures look ridiculous for trying to enforce it.

I’m pretty sure the tumblr community is well aware of this problem and probably loads of other people have already made posts about this, so I’ll keep it brief.

So recently blogs like this keep appearing in my followers list (these are recent ones)

Now when you get a spam blogs or p*rn bots you’re supposed to blog them. But some these blogs are actual people who are new on tumblr and have the default icon, so you’re supposed to check before who block them. But here’s the problem…

some of these blogs don’t have anything. No posts, No description, No title. So you’re gonna automatically assume that these are spam and block them.

Now I hate fact that some of these blogs belong to actual people and I’ve been blocking and reporting on blogs like these for the past few days, and that they’re probably wondering why there being blocked or reported. ( sorry to the people who own blogs like these that I blocked you)

So a couple of tips for new blogs on this site,

1.You could change the title (a catchphrase, a favorite quote, a random sentence etc.) or type small description, or whatever random stuff you like!

2. You could change the your avator or icon (it be a picture of you, a cartoon, again it’s your choice do whatever)

3.If you’re not planning to frequently post stuff and just sign in to check out other people’s stuff, just put a put a post something like this just to show you’re new here.(again u can write down anything)