American Experience Season 20 Episode 10 Minik, the Lost Eskimo

Minik, the Lost Eskimo, is the tenth episode of the twentieth season of the documentary television series American Experience. It tells the tragic story of Minik Wallace, a young Inuit boy who was taken from his home in Greenland and brought to New York City as part of a 1897-1898 scientific expedition led by renowned anthropologist Robert Peary. The expedition aimed to prove that Greenland was an island and not a peninsula, and to study the Inuit and their culture.

Minik was one of six Inuit brought to New York City, and the only one who was not part of a family unit. He was brought as a specimen, a living and breathing representation of Inuit culture that could be studied and displayed at the American Museum of Natural History. The Inuit were promised that they would be able to return to their homeland after the expedition was over, but this turned out to be a lie.

Almost immediately after their arrival in New York, four of the Inuit died of diseases to which they had no immunity. Minik's father, Qisuk, was one of the victims. Instead of being returned to Greenland as promised, the surviving Inuit were placed on display at the museum's Hall of the North American Indian, alongside taxidermied animals and ethnographic objects. They were made to wear traditional Inuit clothing and perform cultural activities such as seal hunting and igloo building for the museum's visitors.

Minik was only six years old at the time and was separated from his mother, who was placed at a different institution. He was taken in by the museum's superintendent, William Wallace, and his family, who promised to care for him as if he were their own. Wallace took advantage of Minik's young age and naivety, using him as a subject for various experiments such as dental work, and allowing him to be photographed and filmed without his knowledge.

As Minik grew older, he became increasingly aware of his situation and the fact that he had been taken from his homeland and put on display for the entertainment of others. He became a vocal critic of the museum and its treatment of Indigenous people, leading to a public scandal and a congressional investigation. However, his efforts to be returned to Greenland were unsuccessful, and he spent the rest of his life in the United States, eventually dying of pneumonia at age 36.

Through archival footage, photographs, and interviews with historians and descendants of those involved, Minik, the Lost Eskimo chronicles the life of a boy who was torn from his culture and forced to navigate a foreign world. It provides a poignant commentary on the treatment of Indigenous peoples by Western institutions, and serves as a reminder of the ongoing legacy of colonialism and its impact on Indigenous communities.