Day 3 Friday
Nothing like the smell of fresh naphtha in the morning, tea is made inside the tent, tastes great, I miss my Seattle coffee but this tea is fortified with plants and herbs found by aunt S* yesterday, very nice and fortifying. We are told that it is time to move camp, the conditions here are too windy, we need a calmer place to hunt caribou. In record time the camp is taken down, tents loaded in canoes, everything packed up, we check the nets, jackpot! 2 ducks (in the net) 2 arctic char, 1 is huge and cheers all around, 5 codfish, one duck is released as it is a mother, the other’s neck is snapped with practiced ease, it goes under my feet, codfish are casually thrown in the bucket, char are treated like gold and heads smashed repeatedly before bringing on the boat so that if they drop they will not get away. We stop back at grandfather’s house to bring char, we arrive like heroes with all these fish, celebration, inside the home, on the floor, the char is cut with uluq knives, each chunk of meat is cut into chunks and eaten raw with gusto. Tea is made, everyone loves heavily sugared tea. Grandparents take their time teaching me how to say every object in the house in Inuktitut and laughing at my attempts, this is a fun game (for them!). I get some rainbow trout jerky as a present, bright orange color, delicious and chewy. We’re all full and ready for the journey ahead. I asked the elders questions related to my research, changes that have occurred in their lifetime, they told me about ‘English voices’ (TV/Radio) changing things for them, they are worried about I* their grandson, they want him to grow up in the old ways. They spend a lot of time with him for this, he will stay with his grandparents for the whole time that we are on the land. Grandparents say ‘we are worried about Inuktitut’.
After I while I get hot and take a walk alone, along the beach there are many signs of death, caribou antlers, bones, skulls, a massive ribcage (beluga?), shattered sea urchins, and the theme of life/death comes back again, instead of hiding death, it is celebrated here. Hawks circle overhead and loons: (many) I like that sound very much.
I am called to the boats, we are ready to leave, one last thought that I had on this leg of the trip, about language, about how hard it is to get foreign language TV/news/programming in the US and Canada (I pay 24.95 per month to get one word of Japanese on our TV, the French channel is similarly priced, ditto for Chinese), but English is heard on every single TV and radio I hear up here. I think of what I am told, that current media realities are "realism", this can’t be changed, and hear about idealism of the academy, but I would infinitely rather hear the silence and peacefulness and Inuktitut that I hear today than the English-language advertising that assails me when I head back to town. When I asked my tupiq-mates how they felt about being Inuit, they said “lucky”. When I asked where they would rather be, in town or on the land, they all said “on the land”. We head off on the boats and wave goodbye to the grandparents.
We are on the water for another hour, we turn a corner, suddenly L* shouts tuktu! They point, I see nothing, they point frantically, I still see nothing ☺ My guides see everything, they recognize every birdcall, but I am clueless, we round a corner and finally I see it, a big buck, with a full set of antlers, a prize catch, my guides deliberate, they decide there must be more in the area and choose to head back to camp to tell the others (this will prove to be a sore point for them for the rest of the trip though…general consensus afterward being that they should have shot it immediately). We arrive at camp and everyone is excited, even before camp is set we head out to find the caribou but it has escaped! Everyone is disappointed and we return to camp to find it set up, we lay out nets again, this campsite is very beautiful, a sheltered bay, not windy, but I learn that no wind up here means mosquitoes, more than I have ever seen, bigger, meaner, in clouds and they do not ‘shoo’ off, I am told that dogs left chained to a post have died from mosquitoes when they cannot run away…I am given a beekeeper’s hat to protect my face and all skin must be covered…I am tired and a bit discouraged by all these insects, it’s hot today, I retreat to the tent and take a nap.
I am awakened by the call for hunting, I get up and get waterproof, we head off and look for caribou, I am handed a .243 bolt action rifle with scope to familiarize myself, there is a 10-gauge and 12 gauge shotgun and numerous .22 longrifles, an impressive armory. I shoot the 10 gauge in practice, it is the most powerful weapon I have ever shot, I am told that it will knock me out of the boat if I accidentally pull both triggers at the same time and to be careful. I am impressed by the care that goes into the weapons, these people treat these tools with respect. Also I realize that no meat was brought on this trip, the only food we eat is what we catch, making the hunting even more important. As food is so expensive up here, especially meat, community members are also depending on what is caught during these expeditions to put in the community freezer and on the table.
There is frantic activity and the boat veers off towards an island where I see nothing. We beach and J* is off like a shot running up the hill. The two girls also start running. I hear “Go! Go! In Inuktitut, and find myself running up a hill chasing two girls, J* already having reached the top and over out of sight, not knowing where I am going or why I am there, just running feeling immensely stupid. I puff up the hill much slower than these athletes, I reach the top and there is J* holding two goslings by the neck, they are still alive, he is very happy and proud, the girls are running chasing goslings around the rocks, L* yells “atii!” jolting me out of my stupor, I run after the girls, I catch up with beautiful M*, her face beaming, looking for all the world like a covergirl from teen-beat magazine, kneeling on the jugular of this gosling and crushing the life out of it, her friend Li* is running chasing another one, L* spurs me on and then I spot one, cringing in fear under a rock, and here is where a change came over me, there is a big difference between seeing a cute, cuddly fuzzy baby goose as a pet, and seeing it as dinner, with your friends depending on you, and I chased that gosling along the rocks until I caught it around the neck. They yelled at me to wring its neck, I must say that I have never done this before, I spun it around, and it was still screaming out, and then I realized that I was just making it suffer, and then I spun it the way I should have done in the first place, and the bones just dropped out, it went limp in my hands and twitched before going still. And here another change came over me, at first when I was holding it before it died, it was warm and cute, and I felt affection, but after it died, I felt the blood running and it got colder, and I felt revulsion as I think we do for dead things, but I wanted to feel like the Inuit do, and I urged myself to continue feeling love for it even though it was dead, and not to hold it as if it were a cold clammy dead goose, but to hold it as a lover would and cherish it because it was going to feed the family. And my grip changed from a harsh grip to a softer grip and I carried it back to the boat where we had 5 of them, making this a very successful afternoon. Everyone was elated. I saw a full caribou skull with antlers on the beach before we left that island that day.
We got back to camp, everyone very pleased with our catch, there are 2 char and 3 codfish in the nets. I speak with S* about her experience growing up in Resolute Bay on a government outpost (this is one of the most northern communities of them all, except for maybe Grise Fjord?) she tells me of walrus and arctic tern and that it is a truly cold place there. I believe her ☺ I also tell her my plan that I want to cook come fish and meat on a fire tonight, I feel the need for something cooked, we have wood as there is a wrecked cabin here (wood is rare as we are above the treeline), so I make a fire, this is a big event even for the girls, fires are rare, I make a small fire, we have some tinfoil that we can spare, I wrap some fish and the goose I killed in foil (S* prepares it for cooking in record time, feathers/insides gone in about 5 minutes), we wait until the wood burns and only glowing embers are left, I put the foil-wrapped fish and goose in the coals, the sizzling smells attract the whole camp, curious at this way of cooking, then the Northern Lights come out, as we open the packages, the goose is cooked perfectly in its own juice, I distinctly remember the girls tearing away at that goose like lusty vikings, everyone was impressed but there was not enough for everyone, we decide that we will have a bigger feast cooked like this tomorrow. I felt good having contributed to the community, it felt good seeing people eating what I had killed, a kind of pride.
TerraPass, a carbon credit based sustainability energy broker (you can offset the carbon emissions from your vehicle or flights through their services) has posted this article on the state of the arctic thaw and the 'no-longer-fabled Northwest Passage'. As I saw in Nunavik, not only language and culture are changing, but the entire geography and way of life are being altered. Now more than ever the Inuit are relevant on the International Stage as the peoples most visibly affected by climate change. 
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