west coast of Hudson Bay, you note the landscape lies flat, shaved by the glacier that scoured this place a mere 9,500 years ago. You are about to be astonished. There it is: You now behold an Arctic shaped by mountains, snowfields, glaciers, and icebergs. This is the Arctic described in heroic accounts, stories, songs, dreams, and nightmares. At first, you are spellbound. Then inwardly, you come face to face with your utter insignificance. You are exposed to the terrible realization of your vulnerability; everything you have ever learned is irrelevant because, unequipped with the knowledge and skill of how to survive on the land, you are likely to die here in a matter of days if left alone.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
For my generation, getting up to the Arctic was easy. Weather permitting, I could fly to the most remote regions in a day or two. Yet just a single generation before mine, those hearty souls who ventured north were resigned to the prospect that it might take them at least a year or longer, depending on the weather, to reach their destination. At that time, getting to the Arctic was by way of train to the end of the line, then a stomach- churning voyage on a small supply ship, often followed by walking and sledding enormous distances. There was no food supply from the outside world, no global positioning system, no sideband radio. The essentials were simple: Learn from the Inuit how to survive, make no mistakes, and regard hardship, no matter how severe, as a natural occurrence to overcome. Savour a sense of personal triumph, however small. In those early days, grants, steady wages, or sponsors were rarely available to those travelling to the Arctic. Many paid the costs of doing their fieldwork out of their own pocket.
I arrived in Cape Dorset — or Kinngait as it is also referred to — in 1958, when I was 26 years old. At the time, I was working with the Department of Northern Affairs as an industrial designer. The department did groundbreaking work, such as developing the Arctic char fishery, a lumber operation on the George River, and, most important, a network of Inuit cooperatives across the Arctic.
When I arrived, Cape Dorset was a pleasant community of about 700 people, many living in flimsy shelters known as “matchboxes.” The town faced the sea and was blessed with good hunting in the surrounding area. A few people were still living in permanent camps along the coast and came into Dorset to trade with the Hudson’s Bay Company. At the time, probably fewer than 100 qallunaat, white people, lived in the entire eastern Arctic (excluding military personnel). This number would swell each summer when a few dozen scientists arrived just in time to feed our little leituriaraluit, voracious mosquitoes.
In those days, many Inuit of southwest Baffin Island, historically known as Sikusiilaq, were still living on the land. Though they were equipped with rifles and an increasing number of articles obtained from the qallunaat, staying alive still meant securing enough food to keep from starving, fashioning one’s own clothing and shelter to keep from dying of exposure, and rearing children who were expected to be future providers. Such was the taimaigiakaman, “the great necessity.”
It was with these people of Cape Dorset that I would develop a lasting friendship. Many had recently started living in settlements. They left behind articles designed for living entirely off the land. They brought to Cape Dorset few material goods — perhaps a harpoon for seal hunting, a stone lamp handed down from mother to daughter, and other assorted articles of sentimental value. They also brought vivid memories of their traditional way of life and enduring perceptions of both the physical and metaphysical world that continued to exist just beyond the visible limits of their new settlement.
The familiar expression “going out on the land” meant leaving the often mundane life in the settlement. Going out on the land also meant journeys upon the sea or ice to locations dear to the heart: returning to the places of one’s childhood and family life, to favoured locations on the tundra where caribou grazed, or fishing spots where, during twilight hours, one could listen to the haunting cry of red-throated loons.
Upon my arrival in Dorset that first year, one of the people I met was Kananginak Pootoogook. The son of one of the most powerful camp bosses on Baffin Island, Kananginak represented the generation of Inuit who had been born on the land and lived long enough in traditional camps to learn many traditional skills. Kananginak and his contemporaries later moved into settlements with their elders and became the first generation of Inuit exposed to a qallunaat way of life.
Kananginak was a sturdy man as a result of years of hunting and tending his father’s traplines which extended for hundreds of kilometres throughout the Foxe Peninsula. Though he had come to live in Cape Dorset as a young man, Kananginak retained a strong attachment to the land. His remarkable drawings of wildlife, traditional camp scenes, and contemporary themes are well known to Inuit art curators and collectors in North America and Europe. One of Kananginak’s last drawings is a small map he did for me documenting his family’s immediate hunting area in Kangisurituq (Andrew Gordon Bay).
Though Kananginak and I had known each other since 1958, in the early years we never sat down for a good chat. We would often just trade good-natured insults, shake hands, and be on our way. Only in the later years of his life when we finally came together did he make known there were things he would like me to record. In these conversations, Kananginak spoke movingly about how he had perceived life when living on the land and how living in a settlement had affected him.
What I’m about to tell you is how I remember life as it was on the land when we lived at Ikirasaq. Our entire life was spent looking for food. Just think about that! Staying alive depended on knowing where to look and when to look at places where the animals would be. We were always on the move. We travelled by boat, sled, and most often we walked.
Entire families would take everything that was needed for the journey. We carried everything on our backs. Some of us were lucky enough to have a few dogs who would carry things on their backs as well. The man and the eldest son would carry the hunting equipment and the heaviest things. We would carry the tent, bird catcher, throwing stick, fish spear, antler knife, bow drill, a special rock to make fire, and bows and arrows. It was necessary to carry sinew, pieces of ivory and bone and other materials so you could repair things along the way.
It was important to make extra arrowheads before setting out. Especially beautiful and accurate arrowheads could be made only during one day in the year. They were made by using the last rib of an udjuk [square-flipper seal]. Of course, arrowheads were made at other times but lacked real importance. All kinds of other things were brought along, but the most important was the harpoon. You see, the harpoon has many functions. It is used for hunting seal, walrus, and whales. But even when travelling inland, it has many uses. It can be quickly converted to a spear by changing its tip. It can be used as an ice chisel, a snow probe, a rod to help someone in need, and other useful things, but most importantly, as a weapon to defend yourself.
The wife and daughter had much to carry on their backs. They carried pieces of scraped skins to repair clothing and caribou skins to lie upon. They brought needles, sinew, thimbles all placed inside a bag made from a loon skin. The woman carried a stone ulu [women’s knife] skin stretchers, one made from stone, another from the scapula of a seal, and a special one from the shin bone of a caribou. They carried the extra clothing, the qulliq or kudlik [soapstone lamp], a small bag of moss for the lamp wick, soapstone pot, and a skin bucket and dipper made from sealskin. She brought dried seal meat and blubber to burn in the lamp, as well as to eat along the way until the men got fresh food. Because the women must keep clean, they brought seagull skins to clean their hands and rabbit skins for when they had their period. Rabbit skins are also good for wiping the baby’s bum and the skins from the rabbit’s legs are carefully peeled off to be used as finger bandages. The woman brought a scraping board for cleaning skins, together with tent poles and a drying rack.
With all this, she would probably be carrying a baby in her amaut [parka hood]. She knew how to carefully remove the skin from small birds and turn the skins inside out. They become nice warm booties for babies. Women had to keep up with the men while carrying all these things. If a woman gave birth along the way, by late the same day she put the baby in her amaut, picked up her belongings, and continued on with the rest.
Our journey inland would begin