Abstract:
Inuit Entertainers is a profusely illustrated history of Inuit involvement in American mass entertainment from 1892 to 1922. It documents performances at eleven world’s fairs and expositions, at dime museums, with Barnum & Bailey’s Circus, at Coney Island, and in the film industry throughout the first decade of the Hollywood studios. At the center of the story are two extraordinary women. Esther Eneutseak led a group of Labrador Inuit from the Paris World’s Fair to Hollywood. Her daughter Columbia, a World’s Fair baby born at Chicago in 1893, wrote and starred in the first Hollywood film with a credited Inuit cast.