抄録
While staying in an Inuit community in the Canadian Arctic, I was often asked ‘quvianaa? (Is it fun?)’ or ‘quvianai? (Is it no fun?)’, by many Inuit. Indeed, it is no wonder that my acquaintances often said ‘lots of fun?’ to me in such events as feasts and games held by the hamlet office during the Christmas holidays. However, they often used these phrases to me when I was just thinking about something or spending idle time. It was sometimes burdensome to me especially when I was tired from interviews with elders. I was never bored or unhappy. I just wanted to enjoy my private time. Then, I sometimes became oversensitive and eventually suspected I was constantly under surveillance, and sometimes became bothered by these phrases. Why should I be always happy and having ‘fun’? There seems to be no doubt that ‘quvia- (fun or happiness) ’ is one of the crucial concepts to the Inuit people.
In this paper, I examine the meaning of the concept ‘quvia- (fun or happiness) ’, in the cultural context of Inuit society from the viewpoint of ‘structuralism’. Based partly on my own research in Kugaaruk (Pelly Bay), Nunavut, Canada, and partly on other studies of Inuit culture and society, I propose a hypothetical model of the relationship between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ in the Inuit worldview. Then, I will show that ‘quvia- (fun or happiness)’ is more than the concept indicating emotional conditions and includes an ‘ethical=moral’ connotation, in which sharing happiness and fun is one form of a return gift to the wild-life giving their meats and furs as gifts (niqinmarik: real food) to Inuit. Moreover, it will be shown that sharing happiness and fun relates to ‘prohibition of accumulation’ = ‘order of sharing’, and plays a crucial role in maintenance of the relationships between Inuit and wildlife, as well as among the Inuit society. Indeed, a person should be happy anytime in order to make requital to wildlife and thereby maintain ecological and social relationships. Finally, I will briefly consider what we could learn from this concept sharing between the human and non-human worlds to depart from the present regime of market supremacy.
