Issue 5 2021 Short Essays 

The Ulu: A Non-Linear Object

Elizabeth Sanders

The ulu is an ancient indigenous knife that derives from the Inuit in Northern Canada, Alaska, and Greenland and continues to be used today by contemporary Inuit peoples as a means to practice and maintain cultural identity and traditions.¹ One example in the McCord Museum in Montreal dates from 1867, a significant date as that was the year Canada was “founded” by the British colonists (Fig. 1).² The shape of the ulu varies drastically, but it is universally characterized by a lunar-shaped blade with a singular bevel and a handle. The object was historically made of slate or quartzite and the handle fabricated from wood or bone. Today, ulus can be made of metal or plastic.³ Ulus are far more ergonomic than what we might think of as regular knives, as the handle is placed above the middle of the blade. This means that the force is applied directly to the object that is being cut, rather than dissipating at a right angle, which is typical of Western knives.⁴ The function, form, and cultural significance of ulus have escaped obsolescence in the Western sense as they have been used by the Inuit for millennia and continue to be used today—a significant feat given the history of cultural genocide within Canada against indigenous nations.  

The term “ulu” directly translates to “woman’s knife,” and the tool was used for a variety of domestic tasks such as to clean animal skins like seal, fillet fish, make clothes, cut hair, and trim snow blocks to construct igloos.⁵ The handles of ulus are often made of wood or ivory and can act as a pictorial surface, which is prevalent in more historic examples. Women would carve meaningful images into the handle of the knife that would represent an aspect of themselves, personalizing their ulu (Fig. 2). It was also common for ulus to be passed down matrilineally, and the knife would remain in families for generations.⁶ It was understood that when a woman died, a piece of her energy was contained within the handle of the ulu, therefore acting as a relic, venerated by the family. Today, ulu knives are used by all genders.⁷ 

As culturally compelling objects, ulus resist the colonialist notion of a linear history, grand narrative, or canon, which have been essential components of design history survey courses. They have belonged to Inuit culture for over 4,500 years and are currently used by contemporary Inuit and non-Inuit people.⁸ The knives are mostly used for non-traditional practices: for example, as an efficient kitchen tool to slice food (Fig. 3).⁹ However, their traditional and symbolic purposes are highlighted by their inclusion at the Arctic Olympic Games, in which northern indigenous communities come together and compete in sports such as fish filleting (in which ulus are central to the process) or dog mushing.¹⁰ The medals that are given out to the winners at the Arctic Olympic Games are in the shape of an ulu, demonstrating the tool’s ongoing importance (Fig. 4). In addition, the ulu is a recurring motif in contemporary Inuit painting, drawing, and sculpture.

Ulus and Inuit communities have been studied by archeologists and anthropologists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and there are abundant examples of ulus in museum collections across North America, including the Smithsonian Museums in the United States (in addition to the one mentioned above in the McCord Museum).¹¹ Most scholarship on ulus is in the field of anthropology, as ulus have been a means to study the history of Inuit people, examine precolonial trade networks, and understand social structures within indigenous northern tribes. More contemporary anthropological sources have explored gender fluidity within native communities grounded in objects like ulus as queer tools. In pre- and postcolonial Inuit culture, materiality is closely tied to gender, which can exist outside of a binary to include a “third gender” or what is termed two-spirit folk.¹²  

Ulus resist the hegemonic ideas that have been entrenched in colonial practices and, like many indigenous histories, are left out of design history. Often, indigenous Canadian groups have been romanticized and “taxidermized”: isolated behind glass in natural history museums and rendered as an extinct culture or as artifacts.¹³ Ulus are historic, contemporaneous, and accessible objects that are prolific within burgeoning Inuit communities across the Northern Hemisphere. As the antithesis to neocolonial practices, the ulu as an object of material and visual culture honors the legacies and futures of indigenous nations.

Notes

1. Amanda Robinson, “Ulu,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, last modified May 24, 2018.
2. “ME969.80.20 Ulu,” McCord Museum, accessed February 1, 2021.
3. Chaim Christiana Andersen and Geoff Rayner-Canham, “The Ulu: Chemistry and Inuit Woman’s Culture,” University of Waterloo: CHEM13 Magazine, accessed February 1, 2021. 
4. Urban Inuk, “Cutting Stuff with An Ulu,” YouTube Video, 1:53, May 6, 2019.
5. Andersen and Rayner-Canham, “The Ulu.”
6. Megan Walley, “Exploring Potential Archeological Expressions of Nonbinary Gender in Pre-Contact Inuit Contexts,” Études/Inuit/Studies 42, no. 1 (2018): 269–289. 
7. Ibid.  
8. Andersen and Rayner-Canham, “The Ulu.”
9. Inuk, “Cutting Stuff.”
10. “Ulu News,” Arctic Winter Games, accessed February 1, 2021. 
11. “Ulu Knife,” National Museum of the American Indian, accessed February 1, 2021. 
12. Walley, “Exploring Potential Archeological Expressions.” 
13. Fatimah Tobing Rony, “Taxidermy and Romantic Ethnography: Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North,” in The Third Eye: Race, Cinema and Ethnographic Cinema, (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996).