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

Abstract

Abstract: 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. You Can’t Stop the Hip Hop!2 “You can’t stop the hip hop! ” is a statement of significance and provocation – a declaration that has been professed to me (a hip hop scholar, researcher, fa-cilitator, and enthusiast) by young people living both in the northern regions of Canada on Baffin Island and those living in southwestern Canada in the prairie provinces of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Alberta. To understand the complex meaning(s) of this statement, one needs to consider the continually

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