Missionary to the Eskimos

• Published in: Life of the Spirit
• Main Author: Harper, Thomas
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1953
• Subjects: eskimo*
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0269359300028718; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0269359300028718

Inuk is from several different points of view a work of remarkable interest. It is in the first place the story of the fifteen years spent by a French priest as a missionary among the Eskimos; it is in addition a commentary of considerable value on the habits and way of life of a remote and little-known people, and it is also a study in the propagation of the Faith under exceptionally unfavourable conditions. Father Buliard, an Oblate of Mary Immaculate, went to work among the ‘copper’ Eskimos (the least developed section of this very primitive race) in 1934 only twenty years after the murder of two of his predecessors in the same territory. In the intervening years the work of evangelising the copper Eskimos had been carried on by seven Oblate Fathers working two or three at a time under conditions of physical hardship which are probably unique even in the annals of the Church's foreign missions.