Too Many People examines the history of contact with the outside world and a group of Inuit, the Iglulingmiut living in Canada's Eastern Arctic. The nature of these encounters and their impact is described and analysed from 1822 to 2015. Seeking to understand how order was brought about and maintained during this period of nearly two centuries, the ongoing historical narrative that evolves displays a pattern of interconnected social, economic, political, cognitive, and volitional changes in Iglulingmiut society.
Starting with a detailed description of Iglulingmiut in 1822, based on the ethnographic accounts of initial European contact left by members of Parry's Second Arctic Expedition, the historical analysis documents how Iglulingmiut evolved from a fairly ordered and harmonious society, into its present—day state marked by deep social malaise, tragically expressed through high rates of substance abuse, delinquency, and suicide. The book also reveals how, in response, the Iglulingmiut are increasingly turning to their traditional values as a means of stemming and reversing the demoralization and cultural degradation brought on by decades of colonial contact.

Willem Rasing is a social studies and philosophy teacher and an associated researcher with the Department of Religious Studies, Theology, and Philosophy, Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands). He is also a member of the Dutch research group Circumpolar Cultures. Willem’s research for Too Many People has helped establish the Igloolik Oral History Project as the leading archive of Inuit traditional knowledge and oral history.

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