“Don’t Call Me Eskimo”: Representation, Mythology and Hip Hop Culture on Baffin Island

• Main Author: Marsh, Charity
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: The Canadian Society for Traditional Music / La Société canadienne pour les traditions musicales 2013
• Subjects: Baffin Island; Nunavut; Baffin; eskimo*; inuit
• Online Access: https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/MC/article/view/20248

Through a contextualization of the song, “Don’t Call Me Eskimo,” which was launched on the interactive website YouTube in 2007 and an analysis of three examples of hip hop culture drawn from her ethnographic fieldwork on Baffin Island in June/July 2008, the author makes the argument that hip hop culture in Nunavut enables a re-working of contemporary Inuit identity. As part of this re-working, Inuit youth mediate representations of themselves and their current lived experiences through mobile technologies and local networks, challenging common stereotypes and reified identities that continue to circulate in political, cultural, and national discourses.