Inuit write about illness; standing on thin ice

Although Inuit have a traditional pattern of behaviour for how to die, their culture has not provided a pattern for how to be seriously sick or disabled, since such conditions did not last long in a hunting-gathering society. Tuberculosis provided Canadian Inuit with a harsh and bitter lesson in how to be sick in the twentieth century. The tuberculosis experience is an important part of modern Inuit history and an understanding of how they viewed it goes some way towards explaining some of the attitudes Inuit have toward the health system in the North today. The way Inuit regard illness is evident in their traditional oral literature as well as in more recent written accounts of the disease that devastated their lives only a few decades ago.