scientist and did not study the Inuit from a scientific perspective. Rather, he provides his own stylized personal points of view and descriptions of Inuit life. In the book, he is initially disparaging of the Inuit way of life, seeing it as primitive and often using the description "cave man". Indeed, a clear theme of racial superiority, described in terms of innate intelligence and physical appearances, and cultural superiority in terms of morals and ethics pervades the first part of his work. As the book progresses and his hardships in the harsh Arctic environment take their toll (at one point Poncins runs behind a dog sled), he begins to find a new appreciation for the Inuit way of life, for their intelligence and resourcefulness, and experiences a spiritual awakening, ultimately reaching a point where he discovers that he himself has become so well adapted to the Inuit way of life that he is no longer a "kabloona" and has become one of them. The term "kabloona" The title Kabloona is a transcription of the Inuktitut word nowadays spelled qallunaaq (qablunaaq in Inuinnaqtun). It is a term originally used to describe white Europeans - a reference to their qalluit, the bushy eyebrows that the Inuit saw as the distinctive feature of Europeans. Nowadays, its use is a bit vaguer. It can mean Anglo-Canadian in contrast to other ethnolinguistic groups like the uiviimiut - French Canadians. Alternately, it is used to describe non-Inuit Canadian society, or even occidental society as a whole. In the 1940s, however, Inuit made fewer of those distinctions, and the term could easily apply to Poncins despite his French ethnicity. In popular culture In the 1941 film Never Give A Sucker An Even Break, waitress Jody Gilbert calls W.C. Fields a "big kabloona". Fields replies: "Kabloona -- I haven't been called that for two days." The Firesign Theater recording "In The Next World You're On Your Own", Side 2 is labeled "We've Lost Our Big Kabloona" Editions Gontran De Poncins (author), Lewis Galantiere (collaborator). Kabloona. 1941. Gontran De Poncins (author), Eric Linklater (intro). Kabloona. London, 1942. Full-text online. Scanned book via Internet Archive. Notes Inuit literature French travel books 1941 non-fiction books Kitikmeot Region Books about Nunavut Books about the Arctic