Abstract

This paper explores the role that gender plays in cross-cultural contact. A model of the Thule Inuit gender system in the eastern Canadian Arctic was derived from ethnographic sources. These sources indicate that Inuit gender relations were largely egalitarian and complementary. This suggests two interrelated behavioral expectations with respect to European interaction: 1.) equal access to European goods and materials by Inuit men and women; and 2.) differential use of European goods by gender will relate to the types of tasks which each gender engaged in and the social roles they held, rather than to a gender hierarchy. The model was tested with archaeological and ethnohistorical data relating to three periods of contact in Frobisher Bay, Baffin Island: 16th-century exploration and mining, 19th-century commercial whaling and early 20th-century commercial fur trapping.