Aglooka’s Ghost: Performing Embodied Memory

Abstract

Sometime between 1848 and 1850, thirty or forty Franklin survivors, marching under the command of a man called “Aglooka,” met Inuit who were seal hunting. Using gestures and a few words of Inuktitut, Aglooka told the hesitant Inuit that he had friendly intentions, that he and his men were trying to reach Iwilik (Repulse Bay), and that they were hungry. Aglooka then performed gestures and sounds that Inuit believed represented his ship, or ships, being crushed by ice. The two groups camped together before the Inuit, continuing their hunt, left the white men behind. In May 1869, Charles Francis Hall interviewed Owwer and Teekeeta, two of the men present that day. Through translators and Owwer’s “pantomimed” actions, Hall learned the details of the encounter. While Hall was not the first to hear the story—John Rae included it in his 1854 report—he was the first qallunaaq to hear it from eyewitnesses. Hall’s account of how Owwer recreated Aglooka’s actions is remarkable not only because of its content but also because it demonstrates precisely how Inuit, like Europeans, used performance to transmit knowledge of what happened to Franklin’s men and suggests that it was often only through performance that these experiences of contact were preserved.