 The 1948-1949 polio epidemic 
In the Fall of 1948, a “strange disease” appeared in Igluligaarjuk (Chesterfield Inlet), a small village on Hudson Bay. The Grey Nuns in charge of the hospital were the first to sound the alarm. In the camps, the number of deaths multiplied and burials were carried out in a hurry. Doctors were rushed in by plane, such as doctor Moody who decreed a vast confinement zone at the beginning of the winter of 1949, one of the largest in Canadian history. On the Inuit side, the wave of deaths continued. Evacuations were carried out by plane and many Inuit died in the south of Canada, far from their families. In the summer of 1949, many sick people refused to be evacuated. Others looked to the shamans for solutions. Oral tradition has preserved the case of Nagjuk who ended up offering himself as a sacrifice, having previously told his companions that only his death could stop the disease. Based on several testimonies collected from Inuit of the region and from the Grey Nuns who lived the epidemic day after day, a double analysis is proposed. The first, historical, looks at the chronology of events as reported by the nuns. The second, of anthropological scope, questions the shaman’s gestures in taking his own life. The polio epidemic reveals the importance of the life force and the practice of self-giving within Inuit shamanism.