Sat, Jan 30, 2010 page19

• FEATURE : Vancouver Olympic emblem has curious past

  • AP
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  The emblem of the Olympic Winter Games is a colorful humanoid with arms spread wide, a contemporary interpretation of a stone landmark called an inukshuk with a history stretching back more than 3,000 years in Inuit culture.

  Sitting atop the Olympic Rings, the symbol looms large on licensed merchandise and is sure to generate curiosity once the Games begin.

  An inukshuk is a carefully balanced pile of unworked rocks and slabs. The Inuit have built them through time to guide travelers, assist with hunts, warn of danger or indicate caches of food. A miniature version stands hip-high, with others measuring from 1m to 2m, one builder said.

  

  An Inuit stone landmark called an inukshuk stands at the entrance to the Olympic ski jumping venue in Whistler, British Columbia, last Wednesday. The inukshuk is a symbol of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, which begin on Feb. 12.

  PHOTO: REUTERS

  With a more human look, the design for the Olympic emblem was chosen in 2005 from about 1,600 proposals to represent hope, friendship, hospitality and teamwork, Vancouver organizers said. Named Ilanaaq, meaning friend, it was cast in Canada’s red and two shades of blue, along with green, yellow and gold.

  Towering examples of ­inuksuit (the plural of inukshuk) have been constructed in modern times, like the sculpture in Vancouver on English Bay, left over from the 1986 World Expo. Other First Nations peoples in Arctic regions from Alaska to Greenland also used such markers, and they can be found elsewhere around the world, including one on the summit of Pike’s Peak, in Colorado, and elsewhere in the western US, where they were built by Navajo and other American Indians.

  In the Inuit culture, inuksuit played a key role for the nomadic people in the frozen, unforgiving climate of northern Canada and were built to withstand winds of more than 150kph, said Peter Irniq, an inuksuit builder, former commissioner of the northern Nunavut Territory and an Inuit cultural teacher who lives in Ottawa.

  “They’re symbols of survival,” he said. “Whenever I’m around inuksuit in the Arctic, I am never scared because I know that Inuit have lived there before me for many, many thousands of years and have survived from hunting and fishing.”

  Norman Hallendy, who has written two books on the subject, said the markers served many roles.

  The day-to-day inuksuit took on different shapes, depending on their function. Some were built with peepholes or windows to look through in a certain direction, revealing good places to find seal, caribou or Arctic char, a foodfish native to Canada. It could have been placed equidistant from prime fishing or hunting grounds or had one slab extended to indicate direction.

  For stores of kill too burdensome to carry, an inukshuk sometimes included antlers on top to make the spot easier to find under snow and ice, Hallendy said.

  For hunting, since the Inuit lived in small groups, the piled landmarks were placed in lines along each side of caribou routes.

  Women and children hid behind them, waiting patiently for the beasts to arrive and startling them into believing there were more people.

  The spooked caribou were forced in the direction of men waiting with bows and arrows.

  In Cape Dorset, a center of Inuit art at the tip of Baffin Island in Nunavut, Inukshuk Point is home to more than 100 of the markers.
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