What’s in a name?

By Jill Marshall

Recently I got an LCCC winter run invite email. It included the usual safety reminders about cold-weather boating - for this class III run a dry suit and an Eskimo roll (Hereafter referred to as the E-roll).

Uh-oh - I thought - this wonderful boater- who does so much for the community- likely does not know how much pain - that word the one that starts with an E - brings to many Arctic indigenous tribes.

Heck - I didn’t know it was considered a ’bad’ word - akin to the 'n-word’ - till I started working at 68° N on Gwich’in land with the Gwich’in community and the larger Inuit community (a broader term that covers most Arctic Indigenous communities). I’ll let you do your own research - for starters here is a link from a 2016 NPR piece. Like most things, it's complex - and not everyone agrees (can depend on if you are in Alaska or Canada and if you are above or below the Arctic Circle).

Studying the impact of climate change in the Arctic - which is warming 3-4x faster than anywhere else on earth. Photo taken on Black Mountain, Gwich'in hunting lands since time immemorial.

To me at least, if a term insults anyone - in terms of a history of pain - why use it?

As a sport that suffers from a lack of diversity, think how many folks might be turned away by the term E-roll. In fact, I think we boaters love the E-roll term and saying things like Greenland paddle because it DOES celebrate the first folks to venture out in boats with skirts which required figuring out how to roll upright in rough water.

Sea kayak on the Colorado River in Grand Canyon.

I can’t speak for the community in terms of what a better term is - kayak roll leaves out canoes and packrafts, boat roll is just so durn generic.. Roll is ok but a descriptor somehow makes it better. 

I have started calling it the Inuit roll. This name celebrates those Arctic paddlers without using a potentially derogatory term. Whatever you decide to call it I’ll see you on the river where I’ll be forever working on getting an Inuit combat roll.

Roll practice humor.