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January 1, 1908

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Eskimos living absolutely isolated from civilization of any kind, are undoubtedly the happiest, healthiest, most honourable

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The Northwest Passage

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Aboard with Amundsen I heard from all and sundry, but especially from the second-in-command, the Danish naval lieutenant Godfred Hansen, about the relatively admirable results of Danish care for Eskimos of Greenland. I also heard much of the allegedly deplorable results of our hit-and-miss system, or lack of system at that time, in the civilized parts of Alaska and Canada; and about the healthy, happy, and admirable, not yet civilized Eskimos whom the Gjoa had known for two years in and around King William Island. Better than anything I could write up, from memory and records, is to quote on this point from Amundsen's two-volume The Northwest Passage (London and New York, 1908). The following excerpt is from his two-chapter section “The Inhabitants of the Magnetic North Pole”:

“During the three year voyage of the Gjoa we came in contact with ten different Eskimo tribes in all, and we had good opportunities of observing the influence of civilization upon them, as we were able to compare those Eskimos who had come in contact with civilization with those who had not. And I must state it as my firm conviction that the latter, the Eskimos living absolutely isolated from civilization of any kind, are undoubtedly the happiest, healthiest, most honourable and most contented among them ...”

Here and there The Northwest Passage gives instances of modern physical decay, and of the tragic effect of Europeanization on health and longevity. On page 142 of Vol. II Amundsen speaks of the people of the Mackenzie delta, a region in which I was to live Eskimo style off and on during the six years following the Gjoa's voyage. Says Amundsen: “... civilization has had its corrupting influence upon them, so that instead of several hundred families their number was reduced to a handful.”

In Amundsen's book, the last sentence of the final chapter on the people of King William Island is set off by him as a paragraph:

“My sincerest wish for our friends the Nechilli Eskimos is, that civilization may never reach them.”

Topics: (click image to open)

	Eskimo	The Inuit lived for as long as 10,000 years in the far north of Canada, Alaska, and Greenland and likely come from Mongolian Bering-Strait travelers. They ate an all-meat diet of seal, whale, caribou, musk ox, fish, birds, and eggs. Their nutritional transition to civilized plant foods spelled their health demise.
	Cancer	Cancer is a metabolic disease where the mitochrondria are no longer able to burn fatty acids and instead rely on fermentation of glucose and glutamine. Ketogenic diets have been used to prevent and cure cancer, as they induce a metabolic stress on cancer cells who cannot use ketones as fuel.
	Carnivore Diet	The carnivore diet involves eating only animal products such as meat, fish, dairy, eggs, marrow, meat broths, organs. There are little to no plants in the diet.