2004-04-21 - 8:30 p.m.
I'm so excited to have come across wench77, a children's book illustrator and all-around wonderful artist, and her Eskimo sketch is one of my favorite pieces, so far.
About the Eskimo sketch, in wench's comments section I wrote: Well, you know I am such a fan of yours and these drawings may be the best ones yet! You've characterized such love and family joy and just simply happiness at being alive, these drawings are packed with richness. I'm also so glad you included a baby wrapped onto the mother's back, which not only contributes to deep bonding between mother and child, but also leads to the Eskimos being phenomenally talented when it comes to spatial relations and understanding mechanical interactions, because the babies see everything, up and down, back and forth, close up and far away, from over their mothers' shoulders as the mothers go about their daily business.
Wench wrote back and said that she wanted to know more about this, could I refer her to a source? Absolutely, and I highly recommend, especially for our touch-starved culture, the book Touching, The Human Significance of Skin, by Ashley Montagu, which I believe is a classic in its field. On pages 296-306, Montagu goes into great detail about the Netsilik Eskimos, who live in the Canadian Arctic of the Northwest Territories. That's about as far away from "civilization" as you can get. Lucky for them!
Since I am so fascinated over the subject of how to better raise children, and am also extremely saddened by the painful loss of what marvelous human abilities our own children (and we, ourselves) could have had, but did not develop due to our own relentlessly diabolical techniques, I'll pull out a few choice quotes from the book.
It amazes me that despite all that we can quite clearly see, or at least read about, in how other cultures take care of their babies, it's really quite horrifying that American mothers still give themselves over to the medical ritual of hospitalization, lying back with their feet up in stirrups (putting their vaginal canal into an upward slope instead of the more natural "squat" in which gravity helps with the process), drugging themselves with pain killers (which Michael Crichton, in his autobiographical book describing his experiences in medical school and as an intern and resident, says do not mask the pain at all, but merely help the mother forget most of how truly horrible the pain really was, leaving her blissfully ready for the next baby), allowing their children to be hauled out and held upside down by their ankles so that they can be spanked into crying and therefore into breathing by default ("Wecome to our violent world, baby!") and, if the baby is a boy, submit him to a cutting off of the most sensitive and pleasurable portion of his penis, the foreskin, without anesthetic. Why haven't American mothers gone for water-birthing, for example, as described in Frederick LeBoyer's Birth Without Violence and the work of other water birthing authors (in which mother and baby are completely relaxed in water the same temperature as inside her womb, the baby comes out and while the umbilical cord is still intact, actually swims in the water, which is the medium it has been in for the past nine months, and then is gradually, gently brought into being an air-breathing person)? What, do they think that is too "hippie" or something? How about the example of the Russian mothers who slip into dolphin tanks during their pregnancies, whose children, due to their developing brains being exposed to the penetrating complexities of dolphin conversations with their squeals and clicks, are born geniuses with almost unmeasurable IQs? Too "subversive," or "new age" for the American mother? Well, something's seriously wrong, to see the state of the children we have today. For example, autism is increasing dramatically, and a sizeable portion of kids in school spend their day drugged on Ritalin or other anti-ADHD drugs. Why are so many suffering from "attention deficit" disorder and "hyperactivity"?
To contrast with that, the Eskimo mother is unruffled and constantly bestows warmth and loving care on her children, who grow into altruistic and generous beings. She never chides her infant or interferes with it in any way, except to respond to its need. Wow, what a concept, let me write that again: "never chides her infant or interferes with it in any way." She simply lets her baby unfold and grow as nature intended.
The Eskimo mother carries her baby on her back with his head looking over her shoulder, holding him there with a sash that serves as a sling that supports him securely. The naked front of the baby is right up against the naked back of the mother, and the mother is therefore so attuned to his movements that she can tell when he is hungry (he starts to root or suck on her skin) or needs to urinate or defecate (he starts to wiggle in a certain way, or kick his legs). Eskimo mothers are astonished at the implications that western culture mothers do not know when their babies have the need to eliminate.
Montagu writes, "The interaction and understanding between baby and mother is so intense and complete that every urge of the infant is attended to immediately, ensuring optimal physical and emotional satisfaction and preventing a build-up of feelings of frustration." As a result, Eskimo babies very rarely cry; they have no reason to.
Of course, in our two-income family economy that we now live in, taking care of a child is one of the major problems of a American mother. She has to leave her career or reduce it to a part-time job, or hire a nanny (a stranger) to help take care of her kids, or find a day care center. Imagine if the corporate world simply accepted a mother having her baby carried on her back all day? No fuss, no muss, and a very happy mother and child. Who, really, would be harmed by that?
Montagu goes on to say, "The motions of his mother during her daily activities give the Eskimo child a view of the world from virtually every possible angle, a view from which its spatial skills will grow and be reinforced by its subsequent experiences. The extraordinary spatial faculties of the Eskimo, and probably also their remarkable mechanical abilities, may be closely related to these early experiences upon the mother's back.
"Aivilik men are first class mechanics...they delight in stripping down and reassembling engines, watches, all machinery. I have watched them repair instruments which American mechanics, flown into the Arctic for this purpose, have abandoned in despair. Working with the simplest tools, often handmade, they make replacements of metal and ivory...."
Sheila Burford, in her book One Woman's Arctic, describes the Arctic Eskimos she came to know and admire as "superb natural mechanics and improvisers," and literally stood in awe of their "incredible accuracy and coordination.... Little boys of three or four would play with a miniature dogwhip, the lash nevertheless being about fifteen feet, curling it back then flicking the target of a stone or a stick." This observation is in keeping with things I have written elsewhere, how when freely allowed to grow as they naturally will, how quickly very young children develop remarkable abilities and skills that many adults in our culture would never imagine developing themselves at any age. These are the kinds of things we have lost in our mechanical industrial world, and while I definitely enjoy all the fruits of our culture (at this point, what would I do without my computer?), I do bitterly regret the loss of attunement to nature, and to each other, that we could have had if we had all been raised differently. To live among a more satisfied and generous population, instead of a society riddled by depression and crime, would be an infinite pleasure, indeed.
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