Researchers discover the obvious

I've just read the May 19 Nunatsiaq News article by Jane George about French researcher Beatrice Collignon's "discovery" concerning Inuit place-names. From the article:

"Around 40 per cent of the place names she studied relate to what people do on the land, and 60 per cent seem to simply describe the surrounding physical environment."

I have to admit, I'm getting a bit tired of researchers who express amazement that Inuit possess common sense. Of course place names mean something. Of course they're indicative of Inuit culture and past experiences. Had Collignon assumed that they were named upon a whim - for fun alone?

Even many of the most ancient place names across Europe are based upon the beliefs and experiences of the peoples who named them. Whole countries bear these characteristics: "Ireland," for example, is a distortion of the name "Eriu," one of the three legendary queens of the Tuatha De Danaan (Irish Celts), who was supposedly promised by the invading Milesians that the island would bear her name ever after.

Want a more provincial, closer-to-home example? How about "Parliament Hill?" I guess the "Parliament" falls into that 40 per cent that describes what people do with it, while "Hill" falls into the 60 per cent about geographical description.

How about street names? City names? Heritage sites and landmarks? Tourist spots?

My point, in this rant, is that Collignon seems only to be restating the obvious, something like publishing a book with the theme of, "new discovery: the ocean is somewhat wet."

I suppose that if I have a chip on my shoulder, it's because Collignon's whole premise seems so reminiscent of the all-too-common wonderment that the scientific community expresses when it finds that Inuit can talk, or reason, or play, or that they possess any real, practical knowledge of anything.

Ah well, though, it keeps book publishers in business.

Pijariiqpunga.

Rachel A. Qitsualik
Ottawa

OTTAWA - I wish that I had paid more attention when I was a kid.

Of course, being a kid, I didn't realize that I would wish such a thing decades later. But I didn't have to think about it; I was free to be ayuq, incapable, since there was plenty of time in which to grow up. There were other people who could be ajunngi, capable, instead of me.

In fact, there was never a worry, even among the grownups, about a shortage of knowledge. Somewhere, someplace, there was always an expert in any area of knowledge that might come to be needed: whether it was seal hunting, sewing, ajaraaq (string games), building an igluvigaq, or whatever. If somebody needed to know a thing, had a gap in their knowledge, there were always people to go to who knew how to do it. There were always the elders.

Lately, I've been aware of debates sparked here and there concerning the nature of elders. At the heart of such debates is always the same question: What exactly is an elder?

Identification

The problem of identifying "elderhood" is an interesting (and amusing) one, since the very methodology of identification and classification is a speciality of Western cultures. Now that Inuit are adopting this methodology and trying to apply it to their own culture, they find it exceedingly difficult. They are finding themselves in the same pickle as missionaries and anthropologists who have, in the past, attempted to qualify aspects of Inuit culture.

Elders are perhaps especially difficult to qualify, since they are so intrinsic to traditional Inuit culture. They are an intuitive part of the culture, more of its heart than of its mind. The problem with defining something using Western methodology is that definition relies upon identifying and listing the properties of an item.

In this methodology, an item is no more than the sum of its parts. Once the parts have been classified, we can reverse the process; by restating its properties (and inventing a word that reflects those properties), we supposedly have defined it.

This Western methodology works well. It has spawned sciences that have given rise to handy tools and technologies that even traditional Inuit, when they first encountered them, thought were brilliant: steel, rifles, fuels, and son. Inuit embraced the fruits of such methodology, but not the methodology itself.

This is because such methodology is a specific discipline developed in Europe, requiring deliberate schooling in order to apply it. In other words, it must be conscientiously learned and applied. It is not intuitive, not unconscious. The methodology depends upon conscious awareness, discipline, or it becomes impracticeable.

Intuitive knowledge

It is because the Western methodology is a conscious process that it is difficult - or altogether impossible - to apply to unconscious, intuitive phenomena. A good example of what I'm talking about is the phenomenon of "love."

Love is classically difficult to define using Western methodology, often to the point that many researchers refuse to study it simply out of frustration. When we try to define "love" using Western methodology (on which the English language virtually depends), we can immediately see difficulties arising as we list its properties:

• it is an emotion;
• it is a form of affection;
• it is always focused on something or someone;
• it is accompanied by outward displays;
• it is common to humanity.

The list of properties above barely touches on what love really is. In fact, I could list many more properties, but the more I list, the further I seem to move away from the true "feel" of what love is.

My point? Simply that exactly the same difficulties arise when we try to use the Western methodology to define aspects of culture - in this case, Inuit culture. It is because of these very incompatibilities that non-Inuit cultures have typically found it hard to understand exactly what Inuit mean when they refer to their elders.

How do you know?

A couple of years ago, I was hired to consult with elders from several communities on behalf of the RCMP. A couple of officers came along with me as representatives, but they shared some anxiety over knowing how to behave in front of elders.

They kept asking me: How do we know who is an elder and who isn't? What makes one an elder? What qualifications do you need to become an elder? Do you become an elder at a certain age, say, over 50? Once, a non-Inuit associate in the south actually tried to suggest to me - no kidding here - that he was an elder because his hair was turning grey. I responded as most Inuit do to such encounters: I smiled politely and said nothing.

Now, although I can inwardly sneer at southerners all I want, I find it only reasonable and fair that I should walk a mile in their shoes before feeling so self-satisfied. After all, most southerners claim not to have elders; some of the more erudite among them will say that their culture once did, but that they no longer exist for whatever reason, perhaps because of amorality and social decline. Perhaps. But I think I know the real reason. I'll get to it eventually.

So, Rachel, what is an elder?

Well, it seems to me that elders were always people of deep experience, and not necessarily in everything, but sometimes only in one specific area of knowledge. When I was growing up, as I wrote earlier, there was never a crisis over knowledge. It might happen, for example, that no one in a group - adults included - could remember a certain technique of sewing.

But it was no big deal, because off in the corner, or over yonder was an elder who knew. Now, that elder might not remember the end of a certain story, or a certain ah-ya-ya, but that was no big deal either, because over here was another elder who did. And that elder might not be any good at all at constructing an igluvigaq, but that was okay too, because over there was an elder who could make one in his sleep.

A living library

So it wasn't that an elder was a master of everything, or that he or she was a "true" Inuk. Instead, it was as though the elders, together, in their totality, formed a kind of living library from which the children could extract knowledge as needed. Each elder was an expert at something, acknowledged by the group as having exceptional knowledge in one or more areas.

For this reason, simply being a master of dancing could make you an elder. It meant that you were the undisputed authority on that subject, that everybody had to come to you if they needed to know about it.

In this sense, age had nothing to do with being an elder. It just happened that by the time you got good enough to be acknowledged as an expert at something, you had put on quite a few years. Any useful skill or talent could qualify you, just as long as you were pretty much at the pinnacle of it.

Some elders, for example, might be experts at soothing over bruised egos in an argument. Some might be good at giving advice. Others might have picked up handy tips for keeping spirits from harming you. Still others might be so old that they had become masters of living itself, so that they possessed extraordinary insights into family dynamics and social interaction.

If it happened that the elders weren't sure exactly what somebody needed (perhaps you were just troubled or bothered about something), the elders would do what they could by relating any and all stories that reminded them of the situation. With such a load of experience rifled at you all at once, something was bound to stick.

Nobody questioned them; you would have been a fool to do that, since they were the ajunngi ones and you weren't. This kind of thinking can be perceived as a sort of respect, but it isn't really.

Practical thinking

Instead, it is the kind of practical thinking that Inuit have relied upon for millenia in their harsh, no-nonsense, no-time-for-debate environment. Why would you question someone who knows more than you, especially when you have a rip in your atigi and you had better fix it before you freeze?

A friend of mine, ironically a non-Inuk who used to live in Arctic Bay, once told me a beautiful story relating how he learned - the hard way - what elders truly are. He did learn. I know it, because here is what happened:

My friend was having some trouble at work that he couldn't seem to solve. This lasted for quite a while until someone in the community told him to go ask the elders about it (Arctic Bay has an extraordinary relationship with their elders).

He did consult them. They listened wordlessly as he related all of his work troubles to them. He even tried to give them as many details as he could, so that they could understand him better and give decent advice.

When he was finished, there was silence for a few minutes before one of the elders spoke. The elder told a story about something that had happened when he was younger. After talking for quite a while, he eventually finished.

My friend noted inwardly that the tale had had nothing to do with his problem. Then another elder told a story. Then another. And another. Eventually, the elders were all taking turns relating stories, laughing and giggling together, telling tale after tale that had absolutely nothing to do with my friend's problems.

When they were done, everyone parted company. My friend was furious. He felt that he had completely wasted his time. He vowed never to consult the elders again.

Time passed, and he eventually found himself at work, with a certain problem again. The situation, strangely, reminded him of some of the stories told by the elders. This time, however, he found himself able to solve his problem using ideas that the stories had given him.

Suddenly, his attitude changed and he understood what the elders had done: instead of solving his problem for him, they had given him the knowledge to solve the problem by himself. They had enriched him, given him the gift of insight, something he would carry for the rest of his life. (After that, he began to consult elders on a regular basis.)

My friend's experience illustrates quite well the value of elders, as well as the following point: It is the nature of ignorance that one can never be aware of the extent of one's own ignorance.

Herein lies the value of the elders. They are the living repositories of cultural knowledge, the experience that the young have not yet gained. They make it alright to be ayuq for now, to be imperfect, for they are those who know how.

A true adult

A clue to their true nature lies beyond the word "elder", in the more appropriate Inuktitut word "innammarik". The word for adult is "innaq", but a "true adult" is innammarik (very different from one who is simply old, or "inutuqaq"). Here we can see that Inuit have always known to distinguish between the ordinary aged and those who are "true," the elders.

European-descended cultures, in their development, have moved away from systems wherein elders are useful. I believe that the main reason for this is the use of writing and the super-efficient methods by which data is stored. Public access to archival information - libraries, files, CD-ROMs, etc. - has meant that people don't need to consult a recognized expert every time they want to know something.

It has also meant that the nature of an "expert" has changed drastically. Long ago, an expert was someone who had accumulated knowledge the hard way, by practicing it and surviving long enough to relate his or her experiences. Archiving has meant that an "expert" is generally someone schooled in a specific discipline or trade by a recognized institution. In this sense, the institutions have become the elders for Europeans and their descendants - and now for the present, youngest generations of Inuit.

There are pros and cons to such a development: Access to information is fast, precise, and uncomplicated by personal relations. The cost, however, is a terrible isolation, and the insecurity that comes with the awareness that no one knows or cares about what one has learned. The system is like southern culture itself: powerful and lonely.

Present-day Inuit possess a unique opportunity: the chance to benefit from Western methodology while at the same time retaining the very personal, fulfilling, and esoteric knowledge of the elders.

Claiming the title

I'm worried, though. Inuit culture has been undergoing the pains of rapid change for some time now, with much more to come. Uncertainty over the nature of elders has allowed some to try to claim "elder" for themselves as though it were a title, or a form of royalty.

If I can do one thing, let it be to make this fact clear: You cannot declare yourself an elder. "Elder" is only a word for the intuitive recognition, by your community, that you are the most knowledgeable in one or more areas of expertise.

It is my fear that politicians will try to give themselves more pull by calling themselves elders. A politician is not an elder. President, vice-president, MLA, whatever: none of these are elders. They are simply administrators and bosses, whom we sometimes had when I was a girl; but they were certainly never considered anything other than isumataq ("boss").

The isumatait could throw their weight around all they wanted, but when the true adults, the innammarik, the elders, spoke up, even the bosses fell silent and listened, children that they were.

At least I was paying enough attention to remember that part.

Pijariiqpunga.

Huskies know when they're hunting a bear.

They're really something to see. I remember when my father hunted. He had a certain whistle that the dogs knew. The energy was palpable, something you could sense in the air. It rippled through the ranks of qimmiit - hair bristling, voices whining, eyes wide, tails lashing in agitation.

Some of the dogs were older, experienced, and knew what a bear was. They had attended past hunts, witnessed their siblings killed by strikes of an enraged bear's claws; yet here they were, crying for the chance to meet another of that which haunts Inuit nightmares.

When a bear was finally located, my father would cut the traces that held the dogs to the qamutiik. At that moment, they were a team no longer - they were a pack, their instincts driving them across the ice to enclose the bear in a ring of darting, snapping, flashing teeth. Horrible. Fascinating. My father's rifle shot was its ending.

(Yet I remember - just before it was surrounded - the bear watching from a distance. It was the most terrifying, beautiful thing I have ever seen.)

Some time later, we were eating. My father startled me by saying, "It's too bad we have to eat these beautiful animals."

Inuit have always held two seemingly incompatible views as truth: loving animals, and hunting them. Like anyone, Inuit are touched by beautiful animals, yet their survival has depended exclusively upon the death of such beauty. Consequently, the Inuit view of hunting has evolved very differently than that of southern cultures. Environment is the key.

Benefits available to southern cultures began with plant life and its myriad uses. Minerals were mastered, then eventually molecules themselves. By crafting their world from these, non-animal materials became the southern norm. With this, the hunting of animals gradually narrowed in purpose, becoming a specialized activity, even a hobby in some cultures.

Inuit, on the other hand, had few non-animal materials to work with. Up until recently, animals have not merely been food, but have provided nearly all of the materials from which homes (an igluvigaq can only be built when the right snow is available), tools, clothes, and vehicles have been built.

By necessity - not choice - Inuit have crafted their world from the materials that animals represent. It is for this reason that, to Inuit, hunting and killing are two completely different concepts. Inuit have never hunted an animal with the intent of killing it, but rather of getting what they need of it.

We can catch a glimpse of such southern and Inuit differences by examining language. The modern English word "hunt", for example, comes from the Old English word "huntian," which denotes "chase" or pursuit.

In Inuktitut, however, the word for hunting is "aquijuq", which is "to go get." Aquijuq can also mean to retrieve some meat from a cache.

So we can glean from the Inuktitut that the Inuit concept is not related to pursuit, but rather to retrieving the things one needs - the traditional Inuit version of grocery shopping. The intent is not killing, or even hunting itself, but rather the acquisition of materials that constitute the Inuit world. It is too bad, as my father said, that the beautiful animals die in the process, but they are the stuff of which Inuit life is made.

And what about the thrill of the hunt? Do Inuit love to chase and hunt and kill for its own sake? No. Never. They love their Land, not their own adrenaline. That, they leave to the sportsmen, and the huskies.

Pijariiqpunga.

I saw a girl change into a dog.

We were both quite small, and she had taken a liking to me, inviting me behind a rock to "show me something..."

Then she changed, becoming a qimmiq, and she ran out from behind the rock in that form. I fled screaming, crying, back to my parents, to whom I expressed my horror. They were strangely unmoved, and tried their best to allay my fears.

Such events were not uncommon to Inuit in those days. It was a fact of life that people could change into animals. Anyone who knew how was an angakuq, a person in whom heredity and esoteric knowledge combined to lend them various extraordinary powers. My own great-grandfather - Akomalik - was said to be a particularly great angakuq...

Oh, excuse me, but I'd forgotten - the term today is "shaman". Witchdoctors, medicine men, shamans, whatever - they're all the same, right?

Mistake. Shaman (a word of the Tungus people of the Siberian steppe) has led to a great deal of confusion regarding angakuit and their old function in Inuit society. Largely because of the shaman stereotype, the modern perception of angakuit is that they were holy leaders or priests of a shamanic religion adhered to by Inuit.

In reality, angakuit held no official status in Inuit society. Like anyone, they had families that they had to support. They hunted, crafted, played, danced, loved and hated. What set them apart were their quirky personalities and special knowledge (including a range of legerdemain widely known in stage magic today) that supposedly empowered them to bend spirits to their will, fly, change shape, cause or cure sickness, etc.

Now it's important to remember here that Inuit never believed in magic. Events - like a girl changing into a dog - that would today be termed "magical" were considered then to be incontrovertible physical laws, as real and natural as thirst and hunger. What Inuit understood of the unseen aspects of their world was based on the best guesses available. This occurs in every culture, in every age:

Inuk: Stars look like light shining through holes in a skin.

Plato: Stars look like crystal spheres.

Astrophysics: Stars look like fusion reactions.

In any culture or age, those who best grasp the popular understandings control an economy of power. Societal acknowledgement lends great weight to claims made by knowledgeable individuals.

In abusive dynamics, the knowledgeable elite can wield great psychological power over the believing masses, threatening them with nebulous horrors if desired. The angakuit were often such individuals, wielding secret knowledge that made them terrifying to other Inuit - not because of what they were known to be capable of, but because of the unknown things they might be capable of. Consequently, Inuit worked hard to keep them pacified, not out of any sense of spiritual or religious obligation, but simply to remain sane and at peace.

But the Inuit of today know more about heaven and earth than they used to. Their knowledge has adapted, making the old ways of the angakuit impracticable. Anyone who might try to call themselves an angakuq today would merely look clownish.

And yet, did I not imply that the knowledgeable elite can dominate in any age? If so, perhaps today's elite would do well to hide from the rest of society, remaining less visible than the old angakuit, for these are unprecedented times of free and open knowledge. Like mushrooms, the ways of angakuit thrive only in darkness, and shadows are scarce in an opened room.

The dog trick was good, but they'll have to do better now.

Pijariiqpunga.

Behind closed eyes, there lies my dream country.

One of the most vivid memories I have of childhood is eating oranges in the cool, crisp, fall air. How the peel stung my eyes and small cuts in my hands! I had imagined the warm place of its origin and all the packing and labour required to send it fresh and inviting to our harsh arctic shores. We were one of few families blessed with such gifts: apples, oranges, pop and other goodies, once a year by crate via sealift.

My friends and I gathered for hidden feasts, opening cans with makeshift tools. We hid, so that our younger siblings wouldn't copy us (we considered them too incapable to raid our parents' bounty with impunity). We tried all kinds of things, sardines one day, tomato soup another, and sometimes lucked out on different cereals, a few of which had free suckers used as a whistle before melting.

Such stashes were shared among friends, and were particularly appreciated as camp food when fishing for smelts in a freshwater lake a few kilometers away. Then you could add stone fried fish, smoked by arctic heather, to the tea and raisins and marshmallows, or - if you had doting parents - deep fried bannock.

One could stay out all night as the sun never set from summer into early fall. Most of the time after hiking and fishing, we would catch a short nap and be ready to go again. No grown-ups usually, or if there were, only the "neat" ones who joined in our games and explorations. What better way to learn about the Land than by playing and living in it?

Here, the lake was too deep and a crossing should not be attempted. There was still some wildlife to see, eider ducks with their young almost as big as themselves, flightless but still fast runners. Lemmings made fun pets but somehow never got quite large enough on a diet of breadcrumbs and twigs - and they always ended up escaping anyway.

Far more fun was playing qallupilluq (seamonster) on the rocks, especially on a nice sea-smoothed boulder that had grown multi-coloured lichen. The rocks would be covered in lime greens, black and orange. Why was it, we asked each other, that a bit of rock was lighter than another? Or that some crumbled easily (which we pretended to use for sugar), while others could not be broken?

We played in mudfields, picked berries, roots, and qunguliit - similar to rhubarb. We practised and perfected our aim by throwing rocks and slingshots. We had races, blind-man's buff, a version of duck-duck-goose. Some games tested endurance and pain tolerance. There were Inuit versions of baseball, with no clear "winners" and "losers."

It was all in fun. So and so ran funny, or farted when they tripped and everyone howled over that. We socialized. We let off steam. In a small camp, everyone knew each other, an extended family of cousins, aunts, grandparents, friends.

My eyes open.

Is it any wonder that Inuit have always found it difficult to talk about themselves? How does one tell a dream country? Like a failed joke, "you had to be there." Inuit are the Land's human face, and like a person handed a mirror for the first time, they are often not sure what to make of the reflection therein.

Yet like a mirror that shows the past, I see my own reflection in the dream country.

And it's a lot more faithful than those pet lemmings.

Pijariiqpunga.

I was six:

The weather was perfect, sun beaming with white brilliance over the curving shore and dark rocks. There, gently bobbed a single Otter aircraft, loading up with children. Each child, protesting in vain, was escorted by two men.

There was Connie, trying to dig her heels into the sand as she was dragged to the plane, wailing for her mother, who looked away to hide her own tears. The other children also refused to watch, lest they give in to panic. The scene was repeated several times, until all the children were strapped into their seats. A single agent reminded the parents that if they did not cooperate, their family allowance cheques would be withheld.

That was the first year, the year that I hid behind a rock, waiting until the plane had left.

But next year, they came again, and I was made to board. My father spent what little cash he had to buy me some gum. He handed me a little yellow package of "Juicy Fruit." It would clear my ears if they got blocked, he said. He stood there looking kind of lost, as if he were fighting himself. I cried a little when we were airborne, watching the landscape shrink beneath us.

In Cambridge Bay, we were herded into a gym, given mattresses and supper. Most of the kids couldn't stomach southern food. I had already tried some, so I didn't gag as much as they. All through the night, I could hear sobbing. Especially from the kids who didn't speak English. One little boy kept repeating in Inuktitut, "I want to go home," as his older sister tried to console him.

We were then flown to Inuvik, brought to Stringer Hall, and made to line-up for a roll call.

"What is your name?" "My name is Rachel." Actually I was called Raigili as Inuit had difficulty pronouncing the harsh "ch" sound. "Kitchooalik" was tacked after my name, though Qitsualik was my father's personal name.

Our clothes were taken away. I had arrived with a brand new parka that my mother had made. That, my beautiful duffel socks, my mitts - every personal item was disposed of. We were issued blue parkas, and red socks that looked as though made from an old army blanket.

We were then assigned numbers. I was 409.

We were herded into the infirmary, stripped naked, and examined for lice. A stinking powder was sprinkled on our heads. We were forbidden to wash it off for days. Afterwards, we were given haircuts.

Here were our dormitories, there our lockers. 6:45 was wake-up; 7:00 bed-check; 7:30 breakfast; 8:00 cleaning and taking the supervisor's dog out to pee; and 8:45 was school at Sir Alexander Mackenzie, where we were read "Babar" and "Little Black Sambo". We were forbidden to speak Inuktitut. Children that did not speak English were not to speak at all.

We grew, fell to alcoholism, violence, suicide; listened to denials and pseudo-apologies from the government. My culture even now thrashes like a wounded animal under the destruction of family. The horror still burns like a black and abominable flame throughout Inuit communities, and has saturated my poor, beautiful culture.

Forget?

Mine is a generation of abductees, our identities - like our clothing - taken and never returned.

To this day, I cannot start my day without making my bed so tightly and perfectly that a dime can be bounced off of it. That small rule of thumb was a gauge used to measure our individual level of discipline - and conformity.

Pijariiqpunga.

Inuit are an entire people of discovers, adventurers, pioneers, and explorers.

Time and again.

"The North has been occupied for several millenia," the text books say.

Yet Inuit are forced to receive such facts from a peculiar position. Such facts refer to their ancestors, and yet are not presented by Inuit to Inuit, but by another culture that has come to occupy their homeland, observing it from the inside out.

Unfortunately, when facts concerning Inuit ancestry, language, and customs are presented, they are often bundled up with a collection of facts concerning the Arctic itself, including various animal species, plants, climate, seasonal changes, geography, and geology. The facts run off like this:

"The indigenous population of the Arctic consists of people known as Eskimos — who now call themselves Inuit — descended from the last wave of Paleolithic hunters that swept eastward with the last emergence of the Bering Land Bridge."

"The indigenous fauna of the Arctic consists of wildlife adapted to the temperature extremes and harsh conditions of the last Ice Age."

"The Eskimos are a dark to copper-skinned people, short and wide of proportion, bearing the slanting eyes characteristic of the Mongoloid peoples."

"The musk-ox , Ovibus Moschatus, is a woolly, somewhat bovine mammal, whose thick outer fur is well suited to the cold, while its head bears short, curving horns which which it protects itself."

And the facts roll on and on in this way, wrapping an analysis of Inuit life up with that of the environment itself. For this reason, most non-indigenous cultures have little choice but to learn of the Arctic as a whole — a massive system that includes various singular features, including ground squirrels, purple saxifrage, lichen, snowy owls, and Inuit.

Learning in this way, wherein the Arctic is considered a "package" of educational statistics and trivia, sometimes promotes the perception that Inuit are somehow surreal, that they, like the animal life, will continue to quietly browse in the background while "civilization" and "industry", the mechanisms of what is deemed advanced and thereby superior culture, inevitably entrenches itself in the Arctic. "Too bad about those Eskimos; hate to see their cute little lifestyle disappear, but they'll just have to assimilate."

Just as the old government advice to southern colonists for dealing with Inuit sounded disturbingly like, "Don't pet the animals," so modern policy seems too much like dog training: "Reward them if they're good, but remember to remain dominant..."

As implied above, part of the problem is that Inuit themselves have never traditionally published studies concerning their lifestyles, since the phenomena of studies and of publication are derived from scientific methodology, and thus Occidental tradition.

Package of trivia?

This presents a pernicious situation, for while those non-indigenous individuals whose time or desire permits them to study Inuit in depth will often come to admire and cherish Inuit culture, often times even to defend it, the vast majority of non-indigenous individuals come to be exposed only to the aforementioned "package" of trivia regarding the Arctic.

Those who learn this limited package, superficial facts only, never allowing themselves to realize that Inuit too have hearts and souls, cannot help but develop an unconscious view of Inuit as part of the setting, the wildlife, the background "scenery." The package has presented Inuit to them in this manner. Inuit, to the colonists, can end up seeming like harmless little beings practicing their quaint, obsolete little customs in the background, while "normal", southern-style progress takes place around them.

Because the colonists have come to believe, before coming to the Arctic, that Inuit are merely part of the background, lending the Arctic part of its special ambience and nothing more, Inuit are not expected to factor into the process of colonization. In other words, like the rest of the wildlife, Inuit are considered tolerable and even charming — until they demand a say in what happens to themselves and their homeland.

Colonists duped by governments

The colonial reaction to Inuit impingment is typically dismay. They feel threatened and possibly cheated. And this is not the fault of the common colonist, but of the government that rules the colonist, of the bureaucrats whom the colonist trusts to supply him with information. The problem is very old, especially characterizes "New World" colonization, and has resulted in the great conflicts between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. Imagine a colonist's position:

You are are a simple farmer or tradesman (male for our example), having a dear wife and family. But you are poor. Overpopulation and inopportunity in your own land of birth have ensured that there are few resources for your family to enjoy.

Then, there is suddenly hope. Your government announces that it has, "secured a new frontier. If you and your family are intrepid enough, you may go there to stake a claim, settle, and turn the untouched resources of that place to your advantage. Yes, there are some indigenous people there already, but they don't use the land in a recognizable fashion, and they won't bother you if you just mind your own business."

So you invest what little you possess into getting to that new land, fighting like hell to establish a life for yourself. You do so, and you are happy for a time.

But you soon find that the government did not divulge the exact truth. There is an indigenous population, but even though they don't farm, they in fact do want the land. In fact, they refer to it as their "homeland", increasingly insisting that you are an outsider, that their culture was there first.

Suddenly, you are fearful for your future, for the future of your children. You have nowhere to go. You spent everything trying to get here and there is no turning back. If this is not home, where is? And what about the government that promised you a new life? What are you supposed to do now?

For centuries, all over the world (and still in the Arctic today), colonists have been lured by their governments, in turn spurred on by business interests, to settle lands already occupied by indigenous peoples. Sometimes, colonists who have found themselves in the situation depicted above have tried to resolve the problem by simply ignoring the indigenous populations, hoping that they will "go away," perhaps by dying out or gradually becoming absorbed into the invading culture.

(And we'll just leave out mention, for now, about what happens when governments brainstorm concerning "aboriginal problems." We all know that gets quite messy.)

Left in the background

This only compounds the fallacy that the indigenous population is peripheral, a facet of the environment that will change with the land itself as it is gradually turned to profit. Again, aboriginal peoples are relegated to the background, like the animals and plants.

After all, if indigenous populations were not ignored, what new territory would there be to conquer? From where would come the endeavor that traditionally fuels Western civilization? With the exception of Antarctica and the deepest sea bottom, every place on Earth has been touched by a human presence at one time or other.

And yet, comparatively few cultures have been credited with "discovery" of anything up until the modern age. Aboriginal peoples have never been credited with discovering the Americas.

Instead, they are referred to as having "migrated" — like animals? — onto the continents. Why aren't Europeans ever referred to as having migrated? In the Himalayas, the mountains were never considered "climbed" until westerners had ascended them, despite the fact that it was Tibetan guides — who had yearly travelled the mountain slopes since time immemorial — that led the western "explorers" upward.

In the journals of such explorers, the guides are rarely or never mentioned, a phenomenon all too familiar to Inuit guides that have led "great men" up and down the entire length and breadth of North America's Arctic. Are Inuit ever credited as explorers, as having discovered anything? No — never once.

The very idea is unthinkable — after all, Inuit live there, so you would no more congratulate an Inuk than, say... an animal?

Even today, the Alaskan Iditarod, an admittedly tough sledge dog race over a thousand miles within half a month's time, is admired and spoken of all over the world. Time and again, the "mushers" and their dogs are hailed as some of the most resilient human beings on Earth.

"Adventure" was common for Inuit

But have they ever had to make the same journey, hunt and kill a walrus, and haul the one-and-a-half-ton carcass all the way back in time to feed their families? Polar Inuit (Inussuit) have done so. As well, travel over comparable distances used to be common in the seasonal travel of many old Inuit families. Even today, ask the average Inuit hunter if he is as awed by the Iditarod as the average southerner.

What constitutes a way of life for some peoples can easily become an "adventure" and a "discovery" for others. This is natural and, when moderate and respectful, can be constructive when cultures collide.

Yet when a culture's members, particularly its colonists:

• Traditionally record their discoveries only in their own language, spawning elitism;
• Refuse to acknowledge indigenous knowledge;
• Delude themselves into thinking that their experiences unique and without precedent;
• Force invisibility and silence upon any indigenous population that might challenge their adventures and experiences with their own; or,
• Frantically stake a claim upon everything within sight, with no thought of the disruption of the lifestyles of other populations;

Then they assault the experiences, and the meaning of the very lives, of the people who were here before them — and they insult those few men and women of their own culture who have worked so hard to have more than the superficial, package view of indigenous peoples.

Inuit are not the refugees of an Ice Age. They are not migratory animals. They are an entire people of discovers, adventurers, pioneers, explorers. They are men and women and children and elders, standing here on their Land.

Pijariiqpunga.

Why did I always have to be the sinner? In every religious play that we staged as kids, it was my little sister who got to dress in white flannel and "ascend to heaven" by stepping on an old box, while I — the sinner — had to stand there looking envious as I was left behind.

We interpreted religion a lot. My Dad, being a minister, was pretty patient with us, and only really stepped in when he caught us baptizing our dolls.

Today, the question persists: "What is the Inuit religion?"

The question itself assumes that every people must possess a religion. Yet, a religion usually refers to an organized system of divine acknowledgement that unites a community. Unfortunately, past references to Inuit "shamanism" have created the impression that Inuit collectively believed in a magical system wherein angakuit functioned as priests. This could not be further from the truth, since Inuit beliefs were separate from the secretive and often fearful practices of angakuit.

Yet Inuit have a penchant for picking out the useful aspects of any new thing. Consequently, they have readily adopted Christianity, preferred by most Inuit today, although maligned by a few as a "Qallunaat" religion.

The invasive portrayal of Christianity is unjustified, however, since Christianity evolved from a Mesopotamian tribal tradition that was influenced by many different cultures over millenia. Once the faith finally broke from Israel, it was borne by missionaries of countless ethnicities.

Relatively speaking, Europeans themselves have not adhered to Christianity for very long. For this reason, Christianity does not "belong" to southerners. They, too, were once new to it. By the time Inuit encountered Christianity — through Europeans — the religion had aquired the flavour of literally thousands of mixed cultures, and had developed into a religion that could shape itself to accomodate the cosmology of any people.

Its flexibility has made Christian cosmology appealing through the reworking of pre-existing beliefs. In Rome, for example, missionaries popularized God by identifying Him with Zeus, Jesus with Hercules. The Vikings were told that their "World Tree" (upholding the world in their belief) was the cross upon which Christ was crucified. Haiti remains today the most graphic example of Chistianity's adaptation, with saints and holy figures intermingled with African gods and spirits.

Within a short time of encountering Europeans, Inuit mythology had begun to develop afterworlds reminiscent of heaven and hell, but with an Inuit twist. In Netsilingmiut belief, for example, women who endured tattooing went to a kind of heaven where animals were plentiful, while complainers ended up in a place where the food tasted terrible. (Europeans may have dreaded flames; but to Inuit, bad food was truly hell!)

Inuit picked up on whatever worked best in Christianity: The unity, reward and punishment, singing, forgiveness of sins — all of which were themes that already appealed to Inuit, but had never been formally organized under a single institution.

Even today, there are elders who practice Christianity, while still believing in tunraaq (spirits). Yet most, interestingly, find no conflict in their belief systems, maintaining that while tunraaq are real and dangerous, the power of Christ drives them away.

So as with any culture to which Christianity has been delivered, the religion of the North becomes uniquely Inuit. Ultimately, it is Inuit themselves who will choose whatever faith is best for them, as they generally do with all things. Christianity is simply a highly adaptive religion that naturally appeals to a highly adaptive people.

And I just thought of something: My sisters never did tell me what sin I was supposed to have committed.

Pijariiqpunga.

A little girl learns how to travel with the men.

OTTAWA — My father turned to me, saying, "No, you can't come with us. And even if you did, you would not be treated like a girl."

But I knew I was wearing him down. My father was readying for a four-day hunting trip. Throughout his entire preparation, I had badgered him, trying to convince him to take me along.

"But I've never gone on a caribou hunt," I argued, "and I'll run alongside the sled. I can run for a long time now and I'll use my own rifle."

"We'll walk fast," he countered, "and not take breaks. It will be too hard for you."

He returned to checking the camp stove, and coiled some extra rope into the grub box. It was my job to help harness the dogs and strap the sleeping gear with ropes onto the sled. My father, as well as another hunter and son, had planned their short trek into the mainland over what was left of the spring snow and patchy ice.

I used my last bit of ammunition, saying, "Qilak is going and he's the same age as me."

It worked. "If it's alright with your mother... you can come along," my father said.

Victory!

The sled was packed very lightly: A few caribou sleeping skins, a small tent, my father's .222 rifle with scope, my new bolt-action .22, binoculars, gas for the camping stove, kettle, box of hardtack biscuits, a pair each of hip waders (we wore short rubber boots lined with duffel sox), and my favourite shades — my only concession to vanity.

Keeping up with the men

The first day of travel was very ordinary at first. We moved along the coastline of the mainland, starting off in the early evening when it was cooler and the packed snow firmer. As promised, I ran alongside the dogsled and helped untangle the leads, on the run, whenever necessary. It was already very different from a family trip. There were no breaks for tea or to rest the dogs.

So far, I was doing just fine, and I was trying not to be too smug about keeping up, proving to my father that he had underestimated my capabilities.

It looked like it was going to be more of the same steady progress that we had made thus far, but it also looked like we were now leaving the coastline and heading towards rougher terrain. The steel runners of the sled, which were not iced due to the softer snow, began to drag and clump with the softer, deeper snow of the hills we were soon traversing.

The sled began to snag more and more on rocks and the thawed, jutting landscape. Each time, the dogs cooperated less and less well as they were commanded to spring forward. It would not have been as bad if the entire ground had been like this, but the revealed areas were interspersed with areas of good snow, upon which the dog team would suddenly race forward only to hitch to a sudden stop upon another obstacle.

After yanking, backing up, and pulling for what seemed an endless number of times, I began to lose my enthusiasm. I was calling upon all my energy reserves to keep from looking like I was lagging behind. It was too chilly to take off layers of outer clothing, yet somehow still too warm with all the pushing and pulling, and my own sweat was begining to bother me.

The dogs licked snow and somehow kept trudging, no longer trying to veer around rocks, but instead just crashing right onto them. The sled runners would emit a high pitched squeeling sound each time they ground against the stone, hurting my teeth and adding to my pounding headache.

Tears of fatigue

I looked longingly towards the melted ice on the coast below, refraining from drinking from the swampy ponds that we crashed through for hours. Besides, they looked buggy. After an extended time of this, I was fighting back tears of fatigue.

With every pause we took, I started falling a few more feet behind. I had hit a wall in my stamina a while back, then caught a second wind, only to fall back again a little more listless, sweating less and less due to being dehydrated. Fuelled by stubborn pride, I pushed forward to what now seemed a hypnotic state of gasping for air and lurching one more forced step ever forward.

That evening — or rather, early morning (it was well past two a.m.), when we finally made camp, a quickly erected and Spartan tent was set up. Only a thin layer of single skins were laid down, without the rocks being cleared for a sleeping area as would be done for a "family" tent.

Every muscle ached in my body, especially those in my arms and legs. I could barely lie down due to that pain, as well as a rock that stuck exactly in the middle of my back. I was forced to quasi-sleep on my elbows and knees, my head awkwardly resting on my arms.

I suppose that my suffering had not gone unnoticed by my father, who must have felt sorry for me, since upon awakening I was served tea in my sleeping bag, and was treated to a hardboiled swan egg.

Having been utterly dead to the world, I hadn't noticed father going out that morning to bag some breakfast. He showed me how to shell the eggs, salted and peppered half of one, and added to the fare some fresh bannock (which I, understandably, wolfed down). Feeling a little better both physically and spiritually, I went to fetch water for the dogs to drink.

We were inland now. Managing to collect swan eggs should have been a hint. They were very shy of people, and made huge nests in inaccessible places, usually near mud-packed, boggy areas. And unless you hadn't already guessed as much, those were the conditions under which we travelled all that day, having to don our hip waders.

We half pushed, half pulled the sled — and sometimes the dogs themselves — through slushy snow and muddy fields. Though I was not very heavy, I had to crawl onto the sled whenever the mud went past my knees, which would make me sink with a quicksand effect.

By the middle of the day, my father had become hoarse from urging the dogs on. They did not look happy, and increasingly scrapped with each other out of sheer frustration.

It started to rain a very fine mist, not one worth setting up a tent for, but enough to sting and somehow work its way past mitts and into the sleeves of my sweater. I was now wearing my "safari" cap, trying to ignore my annoyingly bedraggled hair that ceaselessly became dislodged, dangling in my face between alternate efforts to slog through the muck, and scramble onto the sled whenever it began to move again. My spirit was virtually past caring about anything, and we must have made camp sometime as day and night blurred into one. My next memory was of awakening to a sunny day.

It was day three of our trip. I was a little more lively, not because of the rest, but because this would probably be the day that we would sight caribou. The landscape had changed. Unsurprisingly, the snow was disappearing fast, and the few tiny lakes that dotted the landscape looked dangerously thin and yellowed in spots.

After hitching the dogs, I managed to find time to quickly explore the area we were in, and discovered some old cranberry patches left from the previous year, as well as a few dumbly observing ptarmigan. I had a good arm from my father teaching me to throw stones at targets bobbing in water, and could easily "miluq" (kill with a stone) a bird or two, but I didn't bother since we were in a hurry. Besides, I was more interested in caribou. I raced back, and we continued our journey.

Caribou!

With greater frequency, the hunters began to make short stops to survey the area. At one of these stops, my father spotted four caribou on the other side of a small hill. As was the rule when game was near, everyone communicated using sign language. My father held up four fingers and pointed in the direction of the animals.

Both hunters ran back to the sleds and instructed Qilak and I to watch the dogs, while they went to stalk the caribou. My father whispered to me that at no time was I to let the dogs follow him. The dogs knew that any gunshot signalled a hunt, which was irresistible to them. Upon hearing the first shot, they would start running, but I was to remain off the sled, fixing it and the dogs to the ground with the "kisaq," a claw-shaped anchor.

I was overexcited, but managed to quiet the dogs, who were now crouched, ears perked, intently watching my father and the other hunter beginning to stalk the caribou. But the dogs could already tell that a hunt was underway, for as they watched the hunters adopt a partial belly crawl toward the caribou, they took it as a signal that a gunshot would soon follow. The whole team was positioned as though ready to pounce, waiting anxiously as the hunters stalked out of sight.

They didn't have long to wait.

Two shots cracked off simultaneously. As instructed, I leapt to anchor the kisaq, using my body to weigh it down, but the dogs were too strong! The team bolted violently, and I was dragged along in a cloud of flying snow.

My slight form — a little under 90 pounds — was no match for a team of crazed huskies determined not to miss the hunt. I tried to dig in the anchor again, aiming to snag it upon an onrushing outcropping of rock, only to be bounced off of it painfully. At some point, I managed to find my legs, stumbling, falling onto the moving sled, to which I clung for dear life.

I spied Qilak ahead of me, trying to stop his own father's sled, he too being trapped in his own dragging nightmare. We were headed straight for a small, barely frozen lake. I tried steering my sled but once again was too light to gain purchase, and we plowed right over the lake.

Thin ice

Ice was cracking all around me and the back part of the sled began to sink. The dogs were still hurtling at top speed, so I was powerless by now to slow them down. My eyes locked onto the lake as I stared in horrified fascination at the ice shattering all around me. The dogs were running too quickly to sink, but the sled runners were starting to sag as the front of the sled whipped from side to side. I grasped the ropes as I was dragged across an ice crack, witnessing dark water opening up behind me. Choked with horror, I observed helplessly that the same dragging that opened up the ice also carried me barely ahead of drowning or freezing to death — whichever may have come first. The only power left to me was my singular ability to cling.

I was shaken and numb with exhaustion when we reached my father, Qilak's father, and all four caribou, quite dead, splayed across the tundra. There had seemed, in all the chaos, to have been only two shots fired. I guessed that the other shots might have been fired almost immediately following the first, as the caribou were not far away from each other.

My situation had made me miss it all. I'm not sure that my father and his partner had seen what had happened, for they had been on the other side of the hill, and Qilak and I agreed with our mutual silence that they didn't need to know about it. At least, we hoped they didn't know about it.

After skinning and quartering the caribou, we sat down for a meal of caribou ribs. Mission accomplished. As a bonus, although they were late spring caribou, the skins were in excellent condition, having molted early, so that they were just the right thickness for bedding. They would make good replacements for those used in summer camping, as these new skins would not shed as much hair as our older, well-used ones.

The return trip home was not as taxing. Taking a longer, much easier route through the snaking coastline, it seemed almost anti-climactic.

A couple of days later, I had finally washed the mud out of my hair, nails, mitts and socks. I was feeling a little dejected, not knowing how well — or poorly — I had performed on the trip. I was feeling like a failure over not controlling the dogs. "At least Qilak hadn't either," I told myself; it wasn't only me that had screwed up.

Home.

Unlike his usual, advisory self, my father didn't mention anything one way or another. Normally, when I goofed at something, he would lecture me on what I had done wrong, what I could do to fix it.

Another trip?

Now, however, he seemed too busy to comment. He was already preparing for his next trip, which was to Hatt Island to retrieve camping gear left behind during a prior season. I was not very cheery when I helped him with the usual preparations. Untangle traces, fill the smaller gas can, spread out the tarp to dry, fetch this fetch that — I was listless through it all.

My father was getting ready to clean his rifles. He told me that while he did so, he would also check the sight on my .22, and clean and oil its barrel for me.

"Go and get my old canvas rifle case," he ordered, "and take this box of shells."

I knew my father owned a brand new sealskin case for his rifle. I watched him set aside some shells, presumably for shooting practice, for which we normally expended many rounds. As he did so, I was pu led as to why he would want me to fetch his old rifle case, and voiced it: "Why the old rifle case when you already have the new one?"

(I tried not to sound too surly, peering out from under my cap.)

"You'll need it when you come along tomorrow. It's only a short trip but I'll need help watching the dogs on seal hunts along the way."

Did he need to ask twice? I tried not to yell out a whoop. After all, an undisciplined whoop would not befit a hunter's daughter.

Pijariiqpunga.

Imagine their surprise.

At the time that Europeans first encountered Inuit, the European practice of child-rearing was based upon distance. Children were raised in separate rooms from their parents. If they cried, they were ignored, which was expected to make them strong.

As they grew, they were expected to maintain a "healthy" distance, addressing their parents formally. Among all but the lower classes, education was the responsibility of institutions, and displays of physical affection were considered grotesque. Children were, as the saying goes, "...to be seen, and not heard."

This knowledge makes it easier to understand why many Europeans, in their writings of Inuit, originally expressed shock at the sight of children playing freely, unadmonished amongst laughing adults who showered them with tender caresses and kisses.

In those times, it was natural to dote upon one's children, just as it was natural to view children as one's greatest lifetime achievement, the ultimate source of joy. Children were as one with their parents, sleeping with them at least until puberty. Love was expressed through touch.

Among each other, children were free to play and develop their own hierarchies and rules. When very young, they were free spirits, rarely disciplined. As soon as they were perceived to have an understanding of their own actions, around age four or five, they began training under their parents. The training varied from Inuit culture to culture; some were lenient with their children, while those that lived in the harshest areas were more stern, urging their children to learn with haste.

Once the children began to learn, it was through copying the activities of their parents. Boys, for example, began to mimic the hunting postures and tool-making of their fathers, while girls mimicked the maintenance and nurturing of their mothers.

Both parents, as well as other community members, contributed to the rearing of the children, who were typically permitted to clown about with impunity. Punishment, when used, was in the form of verbal admonishment; but more often than not, praise for correct behaviour was considered the most effective technique.

For example, children were encouraged to be silent in public (a useful skill in adulthood), but this was merely a discipline considered desirable, not a rule, and a child that refused to remain silent was simply not praised for it. Corporal punishments, such as beatings, were rare and considered deviant behaviour, the actions of very disturbed individuals. Within healthy families, children were encouraged to express themselves, since the more opinions that a child expressed, the healthier and more intelligent that child was deemed to be.

But forgive me — I am thinking of days past, when children were considered an invaluable resource, sunlight shining into an otherwise bleak existence. Now that the Inuit world-view has shifted, it seems that the little ones are becoming increasingly trampled beneath the adult shuffle for new resources, new values, new sources of joy.

A blasphemous thing called a "sexual assailant" preys upon an infant, yet heads turn to budget meetings. A child has a seizure, veins laden with toxin, and heads turn to award ceremonies.

And yet I still see parents who, as they amaaq their child, bear their burden as though they carried the king of all the earth; whose eyes glisten as their fingertips trace the curve of their child's cheek; who would fight all and give all for the happiness of their little one.

God grant that I never stop believing Inuit, at the root of their souls, to be a People who live for the lives of their children; who allow them to be heard, not merely seen.

Pijariiqpunga.

With few exceptions, cultures regard new technologies with suspicion. Fortunately, Inuit are an exception, tending to embrace and reshape foreign technologies with an adeptness that has consistently astonished other cultures.

In their latest technological adoption, Inuit find themselves — for the first time — in the company of every other industrialized culture, pondering the ramifications of the Internet upon themselves. Only vaguely prophesied even by such futurists as Marshall MacLuhan and William Gibson, the Internet has been received by most of humanity much like the harnessing of fire must have been: with a mixture of dread at the knowledge that things can never be the same again, and exultation at the enormous potential.

Ironically, the Internet's most staunch proponents, and most severe opponents, both argue their positions based upon the same, singular feature of the internet — that of freedom. Supporters argue that the instantaneous, world-wide transmission of ideas empowers the common man with unprecedented representation, rendering the world as a single, vast medium wherein all are minds are given voice, the closest thing to true democracy.

Critics, however, claim that impersonal, electronic contact inevitably numbs the human sensibilities, eroding family values and social skills, and resulting in the loss of intrinsic human characteristics that are impossible to convey through electronic media. In the South, the debates span decades, while the Internet itself fuels the battle by changing society, continually providing either camp with ammunition.

Yet the North was ever a different place.

I have noticed that Inuit are taking up the Internet with glee. Having mastered computers with the usual rapidity that their extraordinary intelligence offers, the Internet in particular seems to hold a special appeal to Inuit, and electronic forums such as message boards show no shortage of Inuit opinions (some of which are quite colourful). But whatever happened to the shy, quiet People depicted by anthropologists, writers, and film-makers?

The truth is that Inuit are nomads. Yes, as you may have noticed, I used the word "are" — not "were." Over five millennia of heritage cannot be wiped out within a few decades.

At heart, Inuit are still travellers, a fact reflected in language and custom, ancient twin forces that subtly pervade even modern elements of Inuit existence. There is nothing that frustrates Inuit more than being made to remain in one spot. Stagnation results in boredom, which manifests as frustrated anger, for there is nothing more abhorrent to the intelligent mind than a lack of stimulation. In olden times, families prepared for a seasonal move with joyful anticipation; a chance to visit different people, see different sights, eat different foods, and hear different stories.

The community life into which Inuit have been forced has been the bane of their culture. Families and individuals within them can no longer choose the company they keep. They no longer have the option of moving on to new adventures with each change of season.

Instead, each Inuk is a "citizen" of a specific community, a hunter-gatherer desperately trying to dance to the awkward beat of mismatched agrarian traditions. Each Inuk is a born wanderer, suddenly ordered to stay home.

Then it is no wonder that Inuit treasure the Internet, for if they cannot bodily leave their communities, at least their minds can wander at will. While southern societies balk at their loss of cohesion, a tradition derived from their ancient farming settlements and city-states, Inuit rejoice in the ability to compare opinions abroad, as they did when traveling at will.

For the hamlet is the new iglu, and the Internet is the new Land.

Pijariiqpunga.

"Hello!"

Why did they always have to shout it so loudly? They could have been heard all the way across the bay. I was a young girl, fishing with my friend at the shore of the Gjoa Haven harbour.

The "hello" had issued from the lungs of a large, southern tourist, camera in hand, regarding us with a broad, cheesy grin. Such tourists all greeted in the same way. Therefore, we called them Halluraaluit, "The Big Hellos."

After the greeting always came the pointless questioning. This Big Hello was true to form, with:

"Catch any fish?" There were two fish lying next to us on the sand, in plain view. What could we say?

Then there was the obligatory:

"Mind if I took a picture of your dogs?"

By then, we had quietly gathered up our fish, shyly escaping to beyond camera range. The dogs were not so lucky.

Once home, I placed my catch on the rack that my father had built for cleaning and filleting.

"We saw an Halluraaluk," I told him, "and he wanted to take a picture of our dogs. Why do they always take pictures of our dogs?"

"Maybe they like them," my Father answered.

At that, I looked to our dogs chained near the stream. They were excited at all the photographic attention. I couldn't fathom it all. They didn't look particularly impressive to me, their ugly clumps of underfur shedding from their winter coats.

In clearest view was bad-tempered Iggalik ("One With Glasses"), his one battle-shredded ear hanging oddly. Next to him was Tattuqi, playing the fool and hoping to scam some food from the photographers. No big deal.

I had never wanted to share the fate of the dogs. As far as I was concerned, Inuit were not curiosities. I always made a point of avoiding cameras, even avoiding other Inuit who looked like they might be doing something fun — something that might attract the lenses of tourists hunting for cute, nose-kissing Eskimos.

I think perhaps that when angakuit fashioned amulets to repel evil spirits, they really had tourists in mind. Nevertheless, I was sometimes caught in a Big Hello's photo oportunity.

Invariably, I would be asked to interpret for the adult Inuit, who were asked to pose this way and that. The tourists had no conception of the fact that, at times, they were ordering around elders. I could tell from facial expressions that people were not happy to be interrupted in their work, but none of us — ironically — wanted to be rude to strangers.

So I interpreted, and the adults would assume a strained smile as they were requested to, "...hold the fish liester higher, a little more to the left..."

Years later, I happened upon a shocking sight: the pictures taken by The Big Hello on that fishing day in Gjoa had ended up in a wall calendar. I couldn't believe it. Of all the things in the great, wide world to put in a calendar, why a day of my life?

I felt like studying photography myself, just out of spite; felt like travelling the South, taking pictures entitled, "Boy Mows Lawn", or, "Dog Pees On Fire Hydrant".

Yet I have resisted such dark impulses. Even though the course of my life has caused me to spend much time in the company of southerners, though school and work have forced me to learn the ways of many different cultures, I can hold my head high, stating in truth that I have never greeted southerners by yelling "Hello!" at them.

Instead I say, "HEY THERE!"

Pijariiqpunga.

I was going to write about Nunavut's educational system. I was going to be intensive, possibly tedious. I was going to discuss budgets and current issues.

But at some point, it occurred to me that writing about only one element of Nunavut is like trying to study a flower by examining only one petal. To me, all of Nunavut's social situations are inextricably linked. So instead, I would like to begin with a story.

Taitsumaniguuq:

Once there was a small camp at the water's edge. Within the camp lived a few dozen people, who worked in relative peace.

In time there arrived a number of military men. These strangers were led by a powerful leader, who decided that the camp would be an excellent strategic position upon which to construct a settlement. The military men and their leader intended no harm towards the original inhabitants, but their business was inevitably disruptive, resulting in hard feelings between the two groups.

To aggravate matters even further, the new settlement attracted even more strangers, to whom it acted as a convenient gateway to the frontier that the strangers intended to settle and develop.

The years rolled by, and the settlement grew into a village, and then a town. The original population was pushed aside in the wake of countless, fortune-seeking transients from the south, as well as the numerous businesses and services established to profit from the transients' needs and desires. Dreams of rich opportunities attracted waves of settlers.

Few, however, actually attained their dreams, and the population — transients and residents alike — gradually fell into despair, soothing their aching hearts in the dark indulgences of taverns, brothels, and bloodshed. By that time, few people could call themselves permanent residents of the town, for most visitors stayed for only a year or two.

Eventually, a small constabulary of no more than three men was established, but the tiny force found it impossible to effectively police the hellish frontier town, whose ever-expanding population had suddenly swollen to thousands.

Adding to the problem was the matter of corruption among town officials, individuals who chose to profit from their deals with the predatory business community, rather than see to the health and safety of the people. It seemed that such officials were always getting caught, always being fired, always being replaced with new officials of equal greed.

Schools were dilapidated through underfunding, buildings unfinished, garbage undisposed of, and all but the most serious crimes unprosecuted. Those residents who genuinely cared about their home were powerless, for the government would not hear their pleas, instead heeding only the corrupt officials, who swore to the rest of the country that there were no problems — because local businesses were booming.

Such events helped the true residents of the town realize that no outside agency could help them. In desperation, they began to discuss the possibility of shaping the town into the image they desired.

They slowly came to realize that the cost of taking a personal hand in things was uncertainty, a long, arduous effort that might never bear fruit. Yet the time had arrived for deciding whether they were merely existing in a town — or were members of a community.

It is an unfortunate fact that human beings cannot observe themselves in their first few years of growth. This time is said to constitute our most important learning period, that whatever we learn in this time will determine how we relate to the world forever after. Ironically, by the time that we gain self-awareness, we cannot recall the childhood years that imparted the ability to observe our own behaviour.

Instead, we must rely upon the observations of others to tell us how we behaved as small children, yet such exterior observations are always hindered by the fact that others can never know what actually occurs in our young minds throughout the learning process.

In the need to reduce such hindrance, entire sciences have evolved to study child learning patterns. For those of us who have neither the time nor inclination to dedicate our lives to such studies, we must trust the education of our children to the experts. But there is a cost to this reliance, a cost that emerges only over generations.

In a sense, a good educational system is a sort of social opiate, for our own education within public learning institutions breeds in us, from childhood to adulthood, the assumption that organized, well-funded education is "normal," and we take it for granted.

Because of our own upbringing within it, and our own inability to observe our place within it, we believe it is standard procedure for every human being to attend school, just as we believe that every human being after us will attend school.

In school, as children, one of the first socially relevant lessons we learn is that we are powerless. The institution governs our lives. We must line up when told, open our books when told, eat when told, stand up when told, sit down when told, even play when told. Even when we are permitted choices, they are only limited, controlled choices presented by the adults who govern us.

For this reason, children soon come to understand the economy of power, the fact that they are small beings tolerated in a world of insurmountable adult forces. Children realize, however unconsciously, that achieving their wants and needs requires a knowledge of specific rules, codes of "do's" and "don'ts" that allow them to interact with their world.

These are important lessons, for in later adult life, nature itself plays the role of institution, yet with unbounded savagery and cruelty. It is a knowledge of when and how to act — how to obey the rules — that allows the adult to sidestep nature's pitfalls.

Yet so much is learned without conscious awareness, and it is the rare adult that truly understands the depth of his education, or the importance of it. When education is most successful, it is taken into the mind like air into the lungs. Like the unconscious breath, it is not exceptional, but merely natural.

Dependence on experts

In this way, it is the very success of learning institutions that, over generations, comes to threaten their own existence. The adults that schools so successfully produce generally send their own sons and daughters to school. In time, the schools become perceived as a given, always existing somewhere in the background.

Since the education and facilities offered by schools are considered to be a part of "normal" life, they are regarded as rights rather than privileges. The fate of a school is considered peripheral, in the hands of experts, whose job it is to make the school and the students themselves shine for all the community to see, while the adults are at work on the "adult" world. It is a gradual complacency that afflicts the public — the perception that teaching is for teachers alone.

When problems assail the school, the parents' reaction is typically one of frustrated anger, since reality is divorcing itself from expectations. The assumption is sometimes that the teachers are simply lazy and want more benefits than they are entitled to, perhaps even that the school is failing to use its money in a responsible fashion.

On the deeper level, it is that an old trust is being broken, a childhood paradigm that the institution is eternal. When parents and teachers alike turn to any level of government, like children to parents, the response they hear is usually the equivalent of "So what? We make enough money to send our kids to private school. Who cares about yours?"

"Care" is the key word here. There comes a time in every community that its people must decide upon their priorities. In regard to education, the community must ask itself, as a whole, whether or not it cares about the education of its children.

Similarly, the community must decide what constitutes an education. What, in fact, do they want their children to learn? And the answer to this question will ultimately depend upon what skills the adults consider to be important.

One thing, however, is absolutely certain: no outside agency, no other town, no government or people, cares about the education of another community's children over its own. Each community must act for itself.

Are hamlets home?

Nunavut's hamlets, in particular, may find themselves reaching a point where the people must decide upon what they care about. To do this, the residents must determine if their hamlet is worth calling home.

The problem is that many hamlet dwellers do not consider their community to be home, and understandably so. After all, the overwhelming majority of citizens in any hamlet are Inuit, descendants of people who not long ago were forced into a community existence in the federal effort to make the North seem "populated" (by the Occidental definition), as well as to wipe out Inuit culture and language by syncretizing children within the schools.

"School" is still an understandably ugly word to some Inuit. Even to some very old Inuit today, the communities seem to them like artificial constructs, as if Inuit are being made to "play Qallunaaq." They know that their true home stretches across a quarter of the Canadian Arctic itself, in the form of ancient camp sites from shore to shore.

And then there are the colonists, the southerners who are not happy in a hamlet either, having been reared in the temperate cities of the south, places offering every possible amenity at one-fifth of northern prices. Many of the colonists arrive only for the temporary work, a chance to gain money and experience over a couple of years, before disappearing to the south — to them, the "real" world — once again.

Consequently, no one actually feels ownership over a hamlet. Everyone talks of their hamlet as the place where they are "for now," while rarely or never referring to their hamlet as home. And why should they? It is possible that they do not reside in it by choice. They have never planned it, never fought for it, and most certainly did not build it.

As with the rest of the world at this time, Nunavut's hamlets are experiencing deprivation of funds, which is taking its toll on the schools. In any society, education suffers most when money is tight.

Currently, in Western Siberia, teachers have not been paid any portion of the $3.5 million owed to them since February, and instead are receiving 15 bottles each of vodka in return for continuing to teach. (They were offered toilet paper and funeral discounts, but they indignantly refused these.)

Even in the grossly rich United States of America, underfunding has resulted in a ridiculous dichotomy where education is dependent upon parental resources alone: kindergartners from wealthy families are using computers, attending school alongside impoverished kindergartners who still cannot identity their colours.

Desperate schools are now turning to philanthropy for funding, seeking donations from the rich and famous. In July, for example, comedian Jerry Seinfeld announced that the proceeds from his 10-day Broadway show would go to assist public schools. Privatization may be the wave of the future.

Management of money

My own suspicion, however, is not that Nunavut schools simply need more money. After all, is there not truly money that is simply consistently mismanaged? How is it possible that requests to replace a school furnace go unheeded, while the exterior of the school gets a nice, new paint job?

The key to Nunavut's educational problems, as well as to all of its social problems, lies in toleration. A settlement of people only becomes a true community when sufficient numbers of people come to call it home that and are willing to work and fight for it. The common people must care. They must eventually reach the point at which they can no longer tolerate the events in their settlement.

They must ask themselves, "Is this my home, or not?" This is a question that the denizens of every frontier town, as it develops, must ask themselves — and make no mistake: Nunavut's communities are frontier towns.

A frontier town, in any place or time, is always a gateway. It is essentially a large encampment of people who build and develop a settlement that attracts others. Those who would reap the benefits — gold, diamonds, fur, oil, and so on — of the frontier are attracted to the frontier town as a launching point, the last outpost of civilization at the edge of the inhospitable wilderness.

Take Iqaluit, for example, the community that is all-too-often depicted as the Gomorra of Nunavut. Iqaluit is the major eastern gateway to the North. As such, it receives an incredible amount of traffic, those who would study, thrill- or fortune-seek in the Arctic for one reason or another.

Making money from such traffic are the businesses, knowing full well that certain vital services — running water, heating, groceries, — are both needed and wanted. With no competition, such businesses can charge ridiculous prices and reap a far greater profit than they could in the south.

But many businesses and seekers fail to find their fortunes, joining the ranks of those who are simply stranded in Iqaluit, having no money to leave. The resulting despair spawns the perfect hunting grounds for various iniquitous balms, ranging from alcohol and prostitution to bloodshed and cocaine.

Sometimes, self-destruction occurs not through slow chemical indulgence, but instead, through a gun. Yet suicides stem not entirely from despair and poverty.

Newfoundland is dreadfully impoverished, yet it has the lowest suicide rate in Canada. Instead, it is alienation that turns one against oneself. Newfoundland, although impoverished, has a strong sense of community: the people suffer together.

In the northern hamlets, however, especially in a place like Iqaluit where individuals may become trapped among strangers, some will end their lives rather than endure the horrible loneliness, the feeling of belonging nowhere and to nothing, of drifting in an emotional vacuum.

And there are those who love Iqaluit, those who were born there, who cannot imagine living anywhere else. And there are some not originally from Iqaluit, but who have settled and come to care equally as much for the town and its people as anyone born there.

From gateway to community

Their problem is an old one: how to forge a real community where generations can thrive in mutual peace and prosperity, despite the flood of visitors who carelessly use and abuse the town, soiling it much like someone who leaves muddy boot prints by repeatedly tromping through one's living room.

This is part of the natural evolution of a frontier town, for such towns are originally, by nature, only organized pockets of settlers on their way out onto the frontier. The lawlessness that is a phase of every frontier town's growth is akin to "growing pains." the social pressure that accumulates over decades, finally determining the fate of the town itself.

The infamous Dodge City, Kansas, of Wild West gunfighter legend was a frontier town that became known as "Hell On the Plains," for its uncontrollable violence, debauchery, and corruption. Despite the number of criminals that tough marshals like Wyatt Earp put in the Boot Hill town cemetery, it was the city's permanent residents — in an effort spearheaded by teachers, journalists, and parents concerned for the future of their young — who finally clamped down on criminality and cultivated peace.

While Mr. Earp may be remembered for his further exploits in other frontier towns like Tombstone, Dawson, Nome), he enjoys none of the reverence with which Dodge regards its teachers, through the Kansas Teachers' Hall of Fame, the first and only one of its kind in America. At some point, the community got its priorities straight.

We live in times of apathy, moral ambiguity, and spiritual fatigue. This is nothing new, of course, afflicting every complex culture at some point in time. But our excessive reliance upon professional services and government-funded programs, tends to atrophy our natural impulses to work for the betterment of ourselves and those we love.

We hesitate overly long in our weariness with the world and its problems, repeating time and again: "Surely I don't have to do it myself! Isn't that what I pay taxes for?" And yet there truly are times when, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, just as sometimes life does come down to the black-hats versus the white-hats.

The hamlets that best thrive in Nunavut, that best protect and educate their children, will never be those with a philosophy of "more": more police, more business, more people, more money. There are countless frontier towns that have paid the price of excess in place of success.

Just remember Dawson, in the Yukon, which in the first two years of the Klondike gold rush swelled to a sophisticated capital city of 40,000 souls, before shrinking in the next two years to 1,000 as the gold ran out — it's nothing other than a little tourist attraction today.

Every citizen of Nunavut must ask himself if his hamlet is truly his home. If even a few people can claim that this is so, they are a community. It is the community that must set the standards by which strangers live in their home. It is the community that together must build, must plan, must enforce, and must teach their young.

A community with pride in their home can push out the darkness, for when humans are not alone in their struggles, they have no need of drink, drugs, rage, or suicide. Remember: darkness and light are not equals — for while no measure of darkness can snuff out a light, even the lowliest candle can pierce the shadow.

Oh, and by the way, the residents in my beginning story of the frontier town did succeed. By the time the leader returned, he was much impressed by the clean and peaceable place that it had become under the citizen groups.

In those days, up until 1854, it was called Bytown. After that, it was called Ottawa.

Pijariiqpunga.

"And up there in the middle of the sky is the constellation known as 'Orion.' "

I was showing my father the formations in the sky, those that he knew under different names, from different times. He seemed interested enough, perhaps glimpsing a future in which my life would be shaped by means other than those that had influenced his own.

He had paused from feeding the dogs frozen seal, stored from the previous summer. The sky was a black blanket that encompassed all, light from distant stars winking at us in a clear Arctic sky. There was enough light to see by the half-moon and from the light reflected through the ice porch. Standing outside, the ice porch looked like a giant soap bubble trapped in front of the house, lit afire from within.

"See, the three stars that are all in a row, that's the sword sheath. In his right hand, you can see where he has his club above his head, and in his left hand... well, if you could imagine a hand, there's a lion's head or a shield that he's holding. Those stars that look like they're falling down from his left arm. There, see?"

He did see. After flinging the last of the meal to the dogs, I helped him carry the leftovers to the storage shack. An eerie silence fell around us. A low wind, as if in a whisper, seemed to bring voices from afar. Even the dogs seemed to be listening.

"And over there, that's Gemini, the twins. Did I show you Cassiopeia?"

"Where did you learn all that?" my father queried.

"They're in the book I brought home. I'll show you when we come in. Oh yeah, there's the Big Dipper. The Little Dipper pours into it."

"We call that 'Nanurluk,' " he said, "the big, bad bear. Above it is the star by which we navigate the North."

"How did you know that?" I asked.

My father just laughed. He said, "Show me your books when we go in."

He always seemed surprised at what we were being taught in school. He particularly liked math. Sometimes, out of fun, I'd have him pronounce difficult English words. The hardest were "Northwest Territories" and "Prime Minister Trudeau" — although he was okay at pronouncing "Trudeau" by itself.

Sometimes, as an adult, I look at the night sky and feel a peace that is too often eclipsed by concerns less simple than childlike wonder. I long for times when I could so easily bring up dizzying thoughts with my father. I long for the times when we were so close.

But at times, only distance allows us to learn. Growing up offers us the crucial balance between such distance, and closeness. In viewing my father on an adult level, he no longer looms large and in charge of the world, but my mature faculties allow me to appreciate his specific knowledge in a way that I never could as a child.

I phoned him a couple of years ago, telling him this, thanking him for the things he had taught me. He listened until I was finished, then said in Inukitut:

"The child never knows more than the parent."

It was years later that I had my next discussion about stars. I was carrying my youngest child in the amauti. He was four, and very talkative. He peeked out of the hood and said to me,

"You know, Mom, I want to be an astronaut when I grow up."

"Yeah? That's neat."

"I want to go zoom into the sky in a rocket."

"Really? Why is that?"

"So I can see E.T."

As good a reason as any.

Pijariiqpunga.

IQALUIT — I was guzzling coffee on a restless night when the email letter came in.

It was from France, and the author wanted to let me know about some articles concerning Nunavut that had recently appeared in the newspaper Le Monde, as well as to congratulate Inuit in general on the glorious formation of Nunavut, their chance to leave their "footprints in the newly fallen snow," as he put it.

My feelings were mixed. There was naturally a bit of surprise at the fact that a nascent Nunavut could so intrigue a fellow from France. There was mingled with this a kind of childish glee at the recognition of Inuit culture, for recognition is the Holy Grail of all aboriginal peoples, that constant striving to be acknowledged as distinct and self-determining.

Yet there also swirled within me a subtle and nebulous feeling, one that I found myself unable to identify for quite some time. Upon finally identifying it, I at once realized why the feeling was so difficult to get a grip on. It was strange because it arose from the Inuit part of my mind, an intuitive part of me, refusing to allow itself translation into my analytical and English thought processes.

Acquisition of land?

That feeling told me that it was somehow bizarre that a person would think it necessary to congratulate Inuit on the acquisition of land. Land is not something that Inuit typically think of as subject to acquisition.

The first thing to understand is that Inuit are not a conquered people. They have fought no wars with the Canadian government, have not resisted the settlement of European-descended colonists on the Land "Nuna" in any way. They exist under no treaties, possess no band numbers, live on no reservations, have no history of uprisings.

In fact, it is the accomodating nature of Inuit, even to southerners, that has secured their reputation as a kind and hospitable people. Traditional Inuit culture reviles argumentation and conflict, so when Inuit were eventually declared Canadian citizens, the government met with no resistance.

When Inuit were eventually rounded up into communities and forced to abandon their nomadic lifestyle, the only defiance that occurred was in the form of a very few hunters who refused the government by disappearing out onto the land. The southern-style "progress" and gradual "development" of the North that transpired over decades occurred without consultation with Inuit, so that Inuit have come to feel very much like a neglected people, a people relegated to the status of second-class citizens who could do little other than watch and obey, as industrial and governmental powers dictates every aspect of their lives.

Although treated as squatters on the land that their families had inhabited for many dozens of centuries, they were suddenly defined as "wards" — as are orphans, interestingly — of the government, childish and simple-minded savages refused decision-making ability "for their own good."

Within a short period of time, they of course discovered that they were considered Canadian citizens, and inevitably had to pay taxes, but this did nothing to ease the feeling that they were tiny observers under the feet of the great governmental beast that claims all property (even places it hasn't seen) for its own, demanding the redefinition of life itself in order to fit some obscure and cryptic purpose - leaving Inuit to sort out their own maimed cultural identity.

For this reason, Inuit have remained attached to the few things they feel they still have as their own: their homes and families, and the land itself, upon which absolute subsistence not long ago depended. The land was the grocery and hardware store of Inuit, providing them with everything they required, including food and tools.

Just as one knows one's neighbourhood, or the town where one was raised, so Inuit regarded the entirety of the land as their home. Even over the years during which Inuit were forced to deal with the hardships of relocation and government/church residential school programs, they still could depend upon their land, the one thing that no one — not even the government — seemed interested in taking from them.

Land an enduring reality

The land is the one thing that has always seemed "real" to Inuit in the rather chaotic existence that has engulfed them since the arrival of Europeans. Most of their language, Inuktitut, hinges upon interaction with the features, flora, and fauna of the land, and therefore it has seemed like the one thing upon which Inuit can rely — the one thing that will not change, even though generations, technology, and traditions may.

Even the word "Inuit," although mistakenly translated as "humans" or "people" actually means, "The Living Ones Who Are Here," meaning the ones who dwell on the land itself. Such language may be viewed as a clue to how Inuit regard their relationship to the land.

They take it for granted that Inuit and the land were made for each other — that the two are inextricably linked. What has assisted this thinking is the fact that no one has actually approached Inuit and told them their land has been taken. No one has actually informed them that it has been claimed by the Canadian government.

Instead, Canada simply insinuated its invisible tendrils while Inuit went about their own business. In this sense, they may have been overtaken, but they have never been conquered.

So a part of me found it strange that this Frenchman would congratulate Inuit on securing their land through a claim process. After all, to Inuit, there should be no need to "claim" anything. Their home is their home, the place of their incomprehensibly ancient ancestry.

Nunavut has always existed

And so it seems strange that there are those who feel that Inuit are "lucky" to have secured such a massive land deal, that Nunavut will be formed. To Inuit sensibilities, Nunavut, "Our Land," is the land that belongs to everyone, something far greater than the powers or interests of humans alone, and therefore Nunavut in a sense existed long before Inuit themselves, even before the Canadian government decided, in a patronizing manner, to make it official.

It was not owned by Inuit, but neither was it supposed to be subject to ownership by anyone else, for it is absurd in traditional Inuit thinking to mark off land or sea as personal property.

This makes me think back to many years ago, when I once worked on a project wherein a southern research team was trying to get me to explain Inuit land use in hunting. They wanted to map it out prettily. For the purposes of their map, they insisted that I give them precise, "X marks the spot" sorts of information, which simply doesn't apply to Inuit hunting.

I kept trying to explain to them that Inuit don't use the land in such a precise manner, that a hunter may cover many miles of territory in a single hunt. They wanted to hear, "A caribou is guaranteed to be caught right where this X is on the map."

I think it is for this reason — the hunting lifestyle — that Inuit never traditionally developed the thinking that land was something to be marked into zones or borders. Their lifestyle demanded that they range over great distances, a practice that prevented the development of any concept of land as private property.

Yet we live not then, but in the modern era, when borders are not only common, but necessary. As strange as it may seem to me, Nunavut will be a reality, both as a new Canadian territory, as well as the world's largest land claim.

And the letter from France makes me smile, because I know that Inuit do deserve to be congratulated; not for Nunavut, but instead for their survival of the radical changes that have assaulted them. Inuit have persevered under syncretation attempts by both church and state, and still the community schools teach Inuktitut to the children today, while the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation produces shows of the old Inuit tales for the enjoyment of any generation.

Once, when I attended college in British Columbia, a professor snidely remarked that my language would be a dead one within only a few years. It is many years later, and Inuktitut is still taught and spoken in the hamlets. If Inuktitut is a dead language, it is peculiar that such a relic would occupy as many texts and CD-ROMs as it does.

Against all odds

Against all odds, Inuit have retained their culture and traditional knowledge, and have used the power of their age-old cunning and ingenuity to make their interests known in the House of Commons itself, to negotiate a land claim and territory that will bear their unique cultural mark forever. I love Inuit for doing so, and this is really what they deserve congratulations for. But then, survival is the Inuit specialty.

Their next feat of survival, is the challenge of retaining their cultural identity amidst the dizzying flurry of administrative difficulties that the institution of Nunavut is bound to bring. The new territory, combined with the land claim, will allow Inuit an unprecedented level of self-determination within the Canadian nation. It promises a reversal of the habitual servility and timidity, what in Inuktitut is known as "ilira," that Inuit have been pressured to cultivate in the presence of European-descended culture.

With such self-determination, of course, follows responsibility. Inuit can never turn back the clock and return to their pre-European lifestyle (nor do most want to), so they will have to learn how to administer to their lands, how to profit, to feed themselves and their families from trade and commerce, while simultaneously protecting the land from plundering by industrial developers and foreign interests. Inuit have been aware of this fact for some years, and are preparing to deal with it.

But the key to their success will ultimately depend upon learning how to choose the best of both worlds, to enhance their modern skills through the application of traditional wisdom. They are disadvantaged by the fact that they are entering a nationalistic arena whose costly lessons — wars, economy, revolutions and so on — are alien to them.

Pressure of survival

The learning effort goes slowly thus far, but perhaps only because Inuit as a people do not find themselves under sufficient survivalistic pressure yet, a quality that they traditionally require before resorting to their keen adaptive powers. Sensing no immediate danger, they relax and prematurely celebrate an expectant utopia. Yet when they finally perceive and identify the very real threats to their future, as they are beginning to, they will rally, and they will take up the wings of eagles.

It is well known that the current state of the hamlets is deplorable, with rampant crime, substance abuse, suicide, sexual predation, and sheer violence taking their toll upon the family — that very skeleton to which the flesh of Inuit culture has always been attached.

The crisis stems:

First, from the developmental pangs that wrack every frontier settlement in its evolution into a true community. As a frontier, the Arctic was originally ignored by southern culture, since colonial development used to be dependent upon forestry, mining, and farming — once impossible in the far North.

However, not only is mining now possible (and perhaps hydroponics/sea farming on the horizon), but resource priorities have shifted to fossil fuels and strategic materials, which the Arctic holds in abundance.

Ironically, it is modernity — technological prowess, and the need of special resources to fuel such prowess — that has effected a form of time travel back to the beginning of the colonial effort upon this continent. It is as though colonization in the northward direction had only been delayed, merely slowed for a couple of centuries, until technology could catch up.

Now, just as it once did across the forests and plains, European-descended colonization has renewed its march, staking and transmogrifying the Arctic, effecting commercial, industrial, and political changes with a rapidity that wreaks havoc upon tiny hamlets. Each hamlet is suffering the effort of defining itself and its needs, under the siege of foreign interests.

Secondly, and most hideously, the disruption of family through the monstrous residential school systems, which have left an entire generation of Inuit without a sense of identity or purpose, disconnected from those before and after them.

Thus has been incubated the germ of frustrated rage in all generations, an infectious suppuration that inevitably discharges against others and oneself. It is a social disease that took time, effort, and hatred to engineer.

Only time, effort, and love — not politics — will rebuild the generations. My own brother was a victim of the internalized rage, the generational desolation that afflicts Inuit. He was a fine, respected man, a hunter and a hero, having won a Governor General's Award for his bravery in saving the lives of others.

Nevertheless, the despair and horror eventually played their distracting game upon his mind, so that he shot himself with his hunting rifle. He was too disturbed, at the time, to realize that the rifle would blow away part of my own heart, as well as those of the others who loved him.

I wish that my brother had stayed of course, for the simplest reason that I miss him, but also because I want to share with him the thrilling events of today. As Nunavut approaches, I have observed a special spirit overtaking Inuit. More and more, they refer to their own needs, something that they always seemed so silent about, as though it were hopeless to wish for a better life than what the government had already given them.

Excelling at new skills

Now, Inuit are coming to excel at skills that before were exclusively the province of southerners. They are shedding the kindly shyness that explorers have so often exploited in the past. They are learning to defend themselves with words and ideas, and they are learning to express their demands of the world around them, their viability as the beautiful people that they are.

Most importantly, however, I am coming to see more frequently the gleam of fierce pride in Inuit eyes, a pride that grows from knowing that they finally have aquired for themselves the tools with which to reshape their environment.

In a sense, this is all Inuit have ever done: manipulate their environment with the tools of their time-honed cunning. When Europeans arrived and changed the environment, perhaps all Inuit were ever really waiting for was the chance to reshape it in response. They were only waiting for the necessary tools.

Not since the time that I was a small girl have I witnessed Inuit who treasure their culture for its own sake, who can consider themselves fortunate to be Inuit, and who will with confidence and dignity claim pride in their culture. More than ever, I love them for loving themselves.

Nunavut is the call for Inuit to step out of the cultural darkness of winter, and into the renewed light of spring. For this reason, Nunavut might also be referred to as "Nunataaq," the New Land.

Smiling at the letter from across the Atlantic, I turned off the computer, and went to bed.

Pijariiqpunga.

Undying, it is as characterized by popularity as by dread. It is the secret topic of taverns, homes, safe places: "Why are so many Inuit leaders abusing their office?"

Many leaders fall into substance abuse; hire only friends, family, lovers; crush those who displease them; ignore socially relevant issues such as suicide, child abuse, substance abuse, poverty; use organizational funds or credit for personal expenses; don't show up for work; develop no opinions of their own; hire consultants to speak for them; and generally revile public opinion.

Why? Although we cannot discount old-fashioned despotism, the problem is likely compounded by a misunderstanding of what an elected "office" represents. The concept is derived from traditions of statehood, ways that Inuit have only recently been forced to comprehend.

Unfortunately, self-determination and elected office are considered one and the same thing. Inuit must "govern" under Canada's laws. This forces Inuit to adopt a system of government without having absorbed the cultural subtleties that facilitate the system — subtleties learned through the evolution of statehood, including costly mistakes and lessons learned through wars and revolutions.

One such lesson has been the arrangement of elected offices. The functions are very specific — the official shall do this; shall not do that — so that others can more easily know if the individual is doing his job.

Experience has taught most states that a human is always a wildcard. Consequently, states have come to reduce the margin for error, restricting an individual's ability to dysfunction, by carefully constructing the concept of a specific office. The office itself, in this system, becomes the power — not the individual human, who is merely the minister, the person whose job it is to fulfill it. It's a valuable system, but not immediately understandable to other cultures.

In traditional Inuit culture, not so long ago, the individual was paramount. When sufficient numbers of people gathered together that they begin to trip each other up, an "isumataq" or boss might emerge, but only existed until no longer needed. Rulership itself is alien to Inuit.

It is possible that some Inuit leaders do not comprehend their office as being separate from themselves. Instead, they believe that they have been "awarded" or "given" power in recognition of their personal merits.

It is possible that such individuals find it more easy to abuse their station, since they believe that it belongs to them - that it is their personal property. Just as no one can tell an individual what to do with his own home, so such officials believe that no one has the right to tell then what to do with their office.

This might also explain some of the indignation that Inuit officials typically express when their conduct is challenged. They often react to comments from their constituency as though to strangers butting into private business.

The skills of bureaucracy and politics are many-faceted, and one of the elements that Inuit have yet to learn is discernment. All too often, leaders are voted for out of family loyalty, notoriety, or simply peer pressure ("Everyone else is voting for him - even though he's an alcoholic — so I might as well too").

It is the younger generation, more masterful than the oldsters in such matters, who should be congratulated on its skepticism and independence — its ability to question and defy autocracy — abilities older generations have yet to refine.

There is a saying that goes, "People get the government they deserve." Truly, if Inuit are to master their own destiny, they must take ownership back from the isumatait, realizing the true owner of government: the public. No one enslaves but one's self.

Pijariiqpunga.

A man was out walking when he met a raven.
"Raven," he asked, "what are you doing?"
"I'm waiting for my Grandfather," the bird replied.
"What is his name?" the man asked.
"The Thinker," the raven replied.
"What is your Grandmother's name?" the man asked.
"Old Ice," the raven replied.
"What is your mother's name?" the man asked.
"The Dog Trace," the raven replied.
"And what is your name?" the man asked.
"I am called Poor Little Thing," the raven replied.
"Who gave you that name?" the man asked.
"You did," the raven replied, just before flying off, "by bothering me."

OTTAWA — He was a striking man: jet-black hair, high cheekbones, smooth ruddy-brown skin, and a flashing smile. He was taller than most, and possessed a powerful voice that you could hear from a great distance. He was admonishing his dogs.

"You good for nothings! Less than nothings!"

They were insults only an Inuk could best appreciate, diminishing the worth of the intended targets. In those days, Inuit did not swear with references to sexual matters, by referring to anatomical parts or functions, as has always been quite popular with other cultures.

Inuit, traditionally, tended to base either praise or derision solely on value. In Inuktitut, instead of comparing the target to something nasty, the value of the target was whittled down to nothingness or less (less than nothing was somehow a distinct and most loathsome final state).

The fellow doing the whittling was my Ai'juaq. I was his Ai'juaq. Meaning "Big Sleeve," it was our mutual handle for one other, a necessary convention since children weren't allowed to address adults by name. His daughter was one of my best friends.

My Ai'juaq was not my peer. Neither was he my buddy, nor my uncle, nor my neighbour, nor my partner, nor my godfather. Yet we still shared a distinct, common bond. Ours was a "name" relationship.

Strange, isn't it? These days, I can write in the paragraph above of the man's daughter as my "best friend," and everyone is guaranteed to understand the reference. Yet fewer readers, I imagine, will comprehend a name relationship — an Ai'juaq — just one of the many powers and subleties of naming possible with Inuktitut. Names are what I will address in parts one and two of this article: their inherent force, and their ability — in Inuktitut and other languages — to craft the cosmology of named and namer.

But have patience. First, I'm going to tell you about my Big Sleeve.

My Ai'juaq regarded me with respect, and with occasional warmth displayed through his making me small gifts of carved animal figurines constructed from ivory or antler. In years, he was middle-aged, while I was merely a small child.

Remembering him now, and our name for each other, has at once reminded and allowed me to appreciate the strength of the name relationship, a bond that persisted despite the cultural differences between us — despite the modern homogeneity trend, Inuit cultures did vary widely from place to place. Such wondrous differences!

Many Inuit cultures

There were Netsilingmiut (Gjoa Haven-Spence Bay people), Mittimatalingmiut (Pond Inlet people), Kingarmiut (Cape Dorset people), and Utkuhikhalingmiut (Back River people), all intermingling in Gjoa Haven in the formative part of my life, the time up until I was taken to boarding school. My Ai'juaq and his family were Netsilingmiut, while my culture was of Pond Inlet and Cape Dorset.

Although we were all Inuit, we had different dialects, different forms of expression, different customs, different philosophies, and different styles of clothing (of course everyone insisted that their own style was the best). In my culture, the role of butchering game went to the men. In Netsilingmiut culture, women were assigned this tough job.

It takes a lot of practice to learn where to cut and slice, and it's not easy to memorize the rules of food sharing — who gets what choice part and how far to go in sharing. One had to walk a careful balance in these matters so as not to insult anyone. It was a multicultural Inuit society, based on common respect, with many different Inuit peoples observing many different ancient taboos.

In my young mind I wondered: Why do the Netsilingmiut women cut up the game? They're already doing a lot of child rearing, tailoring, and domestic work. I was thankful that I would never have to do that job, and promised myself that, by no turn of chance, would I ever be made to do it.

Instead, I got to watch the male members of my extended family sharpen their panas, then remove and dispense with each body part in time-honoured order. Most of the animal went to our incessantly ravenous dog-team.

Another thing that I found strange, gender-wise, was the fact that the Netsilingmiut women would drum-dance. They also sang a lot more than my culture. When people and their customs intermingled, it could all get very confusing — especially for a young child.

Social relationships

Naturally, many varying relationships could form in such an environment, and it became important to distinguish one from another. There were complicated systems of addressing and naming people — hard to juggle at times, but absolutely necessary in a society without official ranks, trades, or societal strata.

On the simplest level, of course, we called our parents Anaana and Ataata. However, some of my child peers would address their parents differently than we, so we had to stay on our toes by adapting to several different names for a single individual. There was simply no alternative. Until we learned proper names, we at best could simplify things for ourselves by referring to the adults as, "(So-And-So's) Father or Mother." Then it could be sheer hell trying to guess what to properly call someone's grandparents.

In some dialects, for example, it might be Anaanatsiaq and Ataatatsiaq (although in other dialects these could refer to adopted parents); or it could be Ningiuq or Ittuq (which to others might simply refer to an old woman or man). The best thing to do was to wait for your peers to mention what they called them, then feverishly commit the name to memory.

Although my siblings were pretty much on an equal social plane, we rarely addressed each other by "given" name. My adopted half-sister was exactly that (Angajuqtaaq). My younger sisters were all my "nukait" (same-sex sibling, younger), and my brothers were my "Aniit."

When referring to them individually, I called them with an affectionate "Anikuluk." To complicate things further, the reverse was also employed. My brothers would call each other "nukait" or "angajuq" (same-sex sibling, younger and older), and call all of us "Najait." Or individually "Naja." Or "Najakuluk" in the affectionate...

It is perhaps the exactness of Inuktitut naming that never ceases to astound me. Inuktitut, in theory, may apply as many names to an object or person as there are words to describe it, for in fact naming and description are at times indistinguishable. In a sense, the situation of a person may determine the name used for that individual, but then the name may come full circle to determine the nature of the named in turn. I'll elaborate on this idea later, but a good little example is as follows:

My parents were both midwives before a nursing station was installed in Gjoa Haven. Around that time, my father came to be addressed by one particular little girl as her "Akuriaq." This was because my father "caught" her when she was born.

In our tradition, the one who "catches" the newborn baby has a special, lifelong relationship with the child. As was her duty to her Akuriaq by tradition, the girl gave my father the first of every catch — every fish, small animal, and so on. It was a sort of Inuktitut tradition of respectful irony.

Codes of conduct

As you may have guessed by now, naming carries social power in traditional Inuit culture, and not in terms of mere status, but more importantly in the way that names used to tell every Inuk precisely how to treat every other Inuk.

In a sense, the entirety of the naming systems — and the codes of conduct they demand — used to serve for Inuit the purposes that law and moral codes do for state-based cultures. In a way, the old naming systems made sure that, even if one could not emotionally relate to another, one could at least fall back upon the conduct demanded by a name relationship.

Traditionally, the name relationship prevails in a social situation. For example, one of my cousins named her son "Gideon," after my father. Sharing the same name with my father forever bonds them together. In a sense, the "energy" — I'm speaking very figuratively here — that is Gideon is shared between them. As is proper in Inukitut, I refer to my cousin's son as, "Ataataga — my Father," and he calls me, "Paniga — my Daughter."

Actually, sometimes you can find relatives you didn't think you had by tracing their namesakes. Shortly after meeting one another, an Inuk may ask another, "So who are you named after?" The other is likely to reply: "———, who was a famous hunter in ———."

The answer provides an anchor, an instant relationship, so that the reply may be: "I know that person; he (she) was the second cousin of my great aunt who was half-sister to such and such an uncle. That means you are my fourth cousin on such and such side of my family." Then it's down to the important stuff. "You'll have to come and eat with us and you're more than welcome to think of my home as your home."

"Same Name Together"

As in any other culture, sometimes people end up sharing the same name accidentally. Once made aware of this, however, those with the same name typically acknowledge their special relationship, calling each other "Atiqatik" or "Same Name Together."

They might also give each other nicknames that are indicative of their innate tie, such as "My Bone." As already implied above, they may or may not come from the same family, but their common name allows them to identify with each other in a unique way.

Such a relationship may be viewed as similar to the kind I had with my Ai'juaq, who of course eventually finished reducing his dogs to nothingness (or lower), another facet of naming in itself.

Oh, you didn't think I was actually capable of making you understand our name relationship, did you? Believe me, even though it was my own culture, it took me a few years to get the relationships straight.

Unfortunately, as with so many other aspects of Inuit culture, the phenomenon defies analysis by existing on an intuitive plane, the place of childhood, survival, and dreams. What was my Ai'juaq? He was my name relationship. What was my name relationship? It was that striking man with the jet-black hair, as I to him, my Big Sleeve.

Pijariiqpunga, for now.

I have no name.

At least, such a statement is technically true if you want to know my real Inuktitut name. I was born Attituq, "No Name," and so if you wanted to be completely accurate, there is no way to address me.

Practically speaking, however, I have a few different names. As already mentioned, you can call me Attituq, which is not so much a true name as an Inuktitut variation of, "Hey you!" in the sense that it simply suffices for a method of address, rather than being a real name to describe the characteristics of a person (I'll return to this idea later).

Then there is the name I was called when little, which was Taanaqutikuluk ("One Who Is A Cute Little Thing Belonging To Us"). And there is my father's name, Qitsualik ("One Who Claws"), attributed to me in residential school.

And finally there is my most commonly used name, which is actually two: Raigili and Rachel, depending on whether you're speaking Inuktitut or English.

Many scholars can attest to the difficulty involved in pinning down Inuktitut names — not only for people, but for places and things as well. The difficulty stems in part from the Inuit tendency to name something (or someone) based on attributes and context, which may continually change over time.

Of course, this exists in every culture — take the accumulation of nicknames, for example — but most cultures avoid confusion over names by designating a single title (or at least very few) as being the "official" one, denoting that others are "nicknames" or "familiar" names, somehow improper or unofficial.

One name as good as another

In traditional Inuktitut, ever bent on functionality, one name is as good as another if it works to adequately describe the characteristics of a person or thing in its current context. We once owned a dog, for example, whose name became Qupiruq ('Worm") because of the wriggling, thrashing movements that he made when, as a whelp, he caught himself between two rocks.

An "official" name for the dog was not important — what mattered was only that one person could communicate to another about which dog was being referred to at any given time, as based on its remembered attributes.

Outlined above is the most obvious and least elusive feature of the old Inuit naming practice. The primary incompatibility, however, between Inuktitut and all other languages, is the unique way in which Inuit traditionally regard the use of naming and words, the responsibility involved in speaking a word.

In order to comprehend this, we must first discuss the cosmology of yesterday — what is wrongly termed "spirituality" or "religion" or even "superstition" — that pillar upon which rests the ancient Inuit practice of uttering the least of breaths.

There is a single word that encompasses the old Inuit cosmology: Sila.

Although translated today as "air" or "weather" or even "outside," the modern translations of sila only convey to us non-Inuit ideas associated with English words. When I speak of the "air" to a southerner, what immediately comes to his or her mind is the idea of invisible, breathable gas: the nitrogen, oxygen, and other gases that make up Earth's atmosphere. Today, the vast majority of Inuit will think of the same thing, as well as wind and weather.

Sila — the substance of life

This is a small tragedy, for in old Inuktitut, sila is much more than simple air. Sila is the breathe that circulates into and out of every living thing.

Inuit, in their rich hunting history, have developed intimate cultural ties to life and death, a deep understanding of the relationship between living and dead: without the death of the living, there is no life whatsoever, so the dead are the foundation upon which life exists.

For this reason, death gives rise to to life. Despite some modern concern about sparing the lives of animals: even herbivores — plant eaters — must subsist upon vegetation, which are perfectly viable life forms that fight for life in the same way that animals do; on the cellular and genetic levels, plants and animals are virtually identical. Even aside from plants, our bodies automatically act to kill bacteria — themselves animals trying to thrive in their own way. Therefore, there is no escape from the role of killer.

Inuit observed long ago, perhaps millenia ago, that that which does not live, also does not breathe. Rocks do not breathe, and neither do they live. Similarly, when an animal (or person) breathes, it lives — yet when deprived of breath, it ceases to live, becoming no more animate than a stone.

Inuit noticed that the breathe, a force seemingly no different from wind and being drawn from the air itself, appeared to be the animating principle of life. They logically concluded that life itself was in fact the breath, the sila, and that when the sila was drawn into a body, it was alive and animate. The observation of childbirth may also have contributed to this thinking, since when a baby is born, it is not at first drawing breath.

The belief naturally evolved over time. Eventually, sila became associated with incorporeal power, quite understandable, since not only does sila — through breath — convey the energy that drives life, but sila also manifests itself as tangible weather phenomena, such as the slightest touch of breeze, or as the flesh-stripping power of a storm. Sila, for Inuit, became a raw life force that lay over the entire Land; that could be felt as air, seen as the sky, and lived as breath.

At some point, the angakuit (wrongly termed "shamans") seized upon this idea, and perhaps they were in turn developed through it so that they viewed Sila (which I shall hereafter capitalize) as a singular, nebulous, yet all-pervasive force.

They came to regard it as possessing something akin to intelligence, for since it was the animating force, it seemed logical that it should also own a mind. Was not a living thing also a thinking thing? (Perhaps not, if you talk to some politicians.)

The angakuit eventually built upon this idea, reckoning that if the Sila possessed a mind of its own, it must be a superior mind. Further, if it possessed such a mind, it might also be reasoned with — even pleaded with.

This is why, when explorers such as Knud Rasmussen inquired among angakuit about their beliefs in "God" or "gods," many angakuit replied with various vagueries concerning "sila," what at the time was mistakenly taken to be "the air," a worship of some primitive sky deity.

But some of the angakuit went so far as to speak of initiation rituals in which an aspiring angakuq was required (after the obligatory fasting and celibacy common to nearly all cultures' mystic traditions) to live alone and naked out on the Land for a time, suffering until he "became one with Sila," or came to "know" it.

Scholars of North American Indian spiritual traditions will recognize this ritual as sounding very similar to what is loosely termed the "vision quest," or "crying for a vision," where an Indian youth seeks a vision of personal relevance after a term of fasting, celibacy, and seclusion (usually in the wilderness).

It's not known whether the Inuit angakuq ritual was borrowed from such Indian traditions, or whether angakuit somehow developed it on their own. One way or another, it is interesting to note that the Inuit ritual of "Knowing Sila" (for lack of a better term) has always been described as having nothing at all to do with tunraaq (wrongly termed "spirits").

Instead, as angakuit have told explorers, "Knowing Sila" is an older and more skillful tradition, originating from the days when Inuit somehow possessed a "lost" knowledge. It was thought that, in older days, Inuit possessed a special knowledge that gave them superhuman powers, but that this knowledge had been lost, so that angakuit now relied upon tunraaq to assist them, a reliance which was deemed feeble, inferior, and the mark of an ignorant angakuq.

Conversely, the lost knowledge was far more powerful, and only very little of it had survived throughout the ages. The knowledge was so formidable that even a non-angakuq could use some of it.

Rasmussen himself was given a few bits of it, by an old Innusuit (Polar Inuit) angakuq who had taken a liking to him. He was given seven different word formulae for various purposes, ranging from spotting hidden animals, to speeding up his dog sled. Such bits of the old knowledge were supposedly usable by anyone (although they were still jealously guarded by angakuit) who accessed them, because they were based solely upon two vital principles: word and will.

Unlike many other cultures, intention, or will, alone meant little or nothing to Inuit. The will was considered capricious, and a thought was no more substantial than one's reflection in water. Only substance, tangibility, was considered to be of importance, and tangibility was typically defined by Inuit as any phenomenon that was capable of affecting others.

Will alone could not affect anything, so it was not considered important until it was given substance — and it could only be given substance by the use of words. Words were terribly important because they were formed with breath, with Sila, which was not specifically one's own, but was part of an amorphous whole, a great life force that a body sort of "borrowed" when animate.

The life force could neither be created nor destroyed, since it simply recycled itself continually into creature after creature. When any creature — human or beast — perished, its Sila (breath/life) was essentially believed to leave that particular body, after which it could linger for a time, dissipate into the larger whole, or find its way into a new form (although the life force tended to stick to its own species).

Words with will behind them

For this reason, that the Sila was believed to reside in a creature, it was thought that words — uttered with breath — were thought to be the physical expression of thoughts, which, in a sense, they are, and therefore portions of the Sila itself. Since the Sila was power incarnate, portions of it (words with will behind them), also contained power. When one both thought and spoke something, that something became real.

It is for this reason that Inuit became very careful with their words, a practice whose meaning and purpose eventually became lost in the mists of time (except perhaps among angakuit). Until recently it has become a simple cultural habit. And this is the primary, the oldest, source of the difficulty that scholars of other cultures typically experience when trying to pry cultural facts or linguistic information out of Inuit.

Their questions are often met with complete silence, a shrug of the shoulders, or at best some vague or cryptic answer. The few bits that scholars have managed to wring from Inuit are considered anthropological gems.

Sometimes, the explanation for the lack of communication is classic shyness, or an inability to adequately express oneself, but most often it is that Inuit have unconsciously followed cultural tendencies constructed of old, based upon ancient cosmological ideas that what is spoken is given substance, and that what has substance may pose danger, and what may pose danger must be treated with respect.

Inuit well understood the solemnity with which missionaries offered them the One God, and the prayers both spoken and sung to Him, for the groundwork of such beliefs had already been developing among Inuit for ages.

Naming has a different meaning

So, when armed with the knowledge of how Inuit once viewed the world around them and their part within it, the practice of naming takes on a whole different meaning. In ancient Inuktitut tradition (I want to make it clear that this is not a modern belief), giving something a name means that you are shaping your own part of the Sila towards it, thereby making concrete that thing's characteristics

The name becomes then, not simply a reference term, a mere method of identification, but a physical mark that bestows characteristics upon the thing. The name (word), being real with the issuance of Sila and will, remains with the named object/person.

It becomes both the empowerment and anchor of the named thing, so that the will of the namer is imprinted upon it, amplifying its traits. In this way, a dog, for example, named "fast" is not merely fleet of foot because nature has imbued him with those qualities, but because those qualities have been recognized and reflected back at him with word and will. It is his name that makes him fast, not his simply his own natural gifts.

Among Inuit, it suddenly becomes apparent that it is advantageous to have a variety of names. In a society in which it is believed that word and will together have tangible influence, each individual must guard against the possibility that another will bring the force of ill will and words to bear against him.

In order to do so, the attacker must of course know the identity of whomever he is cursing. The would-be target is then advantaged if he has several names, for if the attacker does not know all of his names, it reduces the chance of the attacker being able to effectively identify his target.

Without an identified target, the will and words of an attacker, his Sila, have nothing to be directed against. The Netsilingmiut, in particular, were very concerned with this principle, for safety's sake making a practice of applying many different names — some of which were deliberately kept secret — to each individual.

When Asen Balikci studied the Netsilingmiut people, he noted one woman who had at least 12 different names, including: pack ice, the little one with the cut feet, fish leister, butterfly, the one who likes women's genitals, the little one with the bib, the one who has been beaten with a piece of wood, the one who has just defecated, the round one, the admirable one, the coarse stitch, the unlucky one.

Caution with words

I know this may sound confusing to some readers, but please remember I am describing a process that has developed unconsciously and over time, without the government-sponsored organization and deliberation that we have become so used to in today's somewhat burlesque attempts to engineer Inuit culture and language.

I'm trying to illustrate the reason why Inuit have formerly been cautious with what they say to others, and I am arguing that it is a deeply ingrained habit — a responsibility toward the spoken word and its effects upon others — evolved over perhaps millenia of life in the Arctic.

It is my personal belief that Inuit cannot — must not — dismiss their history, and I do not refer only to the history as recorded by the scholars of other cultures. It is of vital importance that Inuit tear their eyes from industry and investment long enough to rebuild their past, to reconstruct and teach themselves what their ancestors lived and felt, thus learning why they do what they do today, where and how their cultural beliefs have developed.

What did the ancestors experience, that led them to lay down the ways whose traces can still be found in communities today? This is the true "old knowledge" that has been lost.

Inuit cannot rely upon other cultures to study and interpret their history for them. If you allow others to define your past, there is nothing to stop them from defining your future.

Inuit have the right to delve into their past, to learn, to explore the heritage that has become a profitable industry to all but Inuit themselves today. And because it is profitable to others, and my words herein will interfere with such profits, such others will curse my name for it.

But let them try: I have none.

Pijariiqpunga.

It's really too bad that back translations for Inuit religious terms were not provided for those who toiled in that realm.

Yes, a cryptical statement. And here's why: the confusing Inuktitut religious vocabulary of yesteryear has returned to haunt me as an adult linguist. I remember it all — the struggle of missionaries to make Inuit comprehend foreign belief systems, animals, or city-states from The Bible that they themselves sometimes only possessed a feeble grasp of, an effort only further complicated by the inherent difficulties of selling religion to a people already endowed with complex codes of personal behaviour.

As it finally turned out, Christianity as brought to Inuit required no small amount of tweaking to make it more palatable. And even then, some things didn't — couldn't — make sense.

Here is an example: Sunday, "Naattiinguja," would retranslate back into English as something like, "Waiting for the long day to be over." "Long day," indeed, when I was a child, for on Sunday I was not allowed to pick flowers, play, chew gum, read (except The Bible), sing, or do anything else resembling fun. Instead, I had to memorize Old Testament verses, using terms that, when combined within a liturgical text, served only to mystify and, worst of all, mildly amuse.

Some of the terminology, weirdly, was taken from angakkuit language. For example, the word for "holy" actually meant "purified" (as in the angakkuit rite of purification).

Words for "forgiveness" meant, "no longer think about it of them." The word for "judgement" meant, "making them remember what was done."

The actual names of people and places from The Bible were easier by comparison, made presentable with a bit of tinkering. Joseph, for example, became the more pronounceable "Josipi." Paul became the more musical "Paooloosie." Satan ended up being referred to as "Satanaasi," though in the west was labelled "Tupilak," a mythical monster that sounded devilish to missionaries, so the name stuck.

Unfortunately, Inuit didn't really have anything angelic for the missionaries to compare their religion to, so they had to try and describe angels to Inuit — who called them "Aingiliit." Heaven got called "Qillak," meaning "ceiling," which I don't imagine appropriately describes it. I can't remember the word for Hell. I think it was called something like "The Big Fire."

I've been mentioning the easy ones thus far. Can you imagine the time missionaries must have had in getting Inuit to envision sheep? Or bread? Camels?

And how could Inuit possibly absorb such imagery in a culturally relevant fashion? Many animals and places included in scripture are meant to evoke specific feelings from a reader, touching them on a cultural level, thereby teaching a lesson or acting as a cathexis, a focal point in a story.

Bread, for example, is referred to constantly because it has always been a food staple for agricultural Occidental societies. Bread is meant to denote that which sustains earthly life. If the real meaning were to be conveyed to Inuit, within a cultural context, the bread would have to be substituted with an Inuit food staple — such as caribou. And even then, traditional Inuit attitudes toward food might result in unforseen permutations.

Yet Inuit have done a remarkable job of chewing the religious hard-tack offered them. Generally, they have come to brush away much cultural difficulty, embracing their own vision of the Universe and its Maker.

In doing so, hopefully there will be fewer youth forced to search for meaning through linguistic gibberish, and perhaps Inuit will cherish that most important realization that religion is only politics, while spirituality is life.

Pijariiqpunga.

OTTAWA — I hate it, but I love it: fear, being scared, creeping myself out. The two feelings mutually coexist, separate yet equal, in my one beleaguered brain. Sometimes, my consciousness feels like a referee just barely keeping two combatant players out of fist's range of one another. On the one side, there is the need to flee, to avoid that which I fear, while on the other is the delicious ecstasy of terror, the exultation in making myself squirm.

The need to fear is closely related to that well-known human need for adrenaline, the need — and note that I choose my words carefully here; not "desire," but need — to safely entertain the animal portion of one's brain, to fulfill its subconscious expectation of its heritage, and the inevitability, of primal terror.

After all, is it not practical to be constantly primed to fear? It gives us an edge when the polar bear appears, doesn't it? Consciously, we may outwardly radiate the confidence of the capable hunter. Yet our subconscious minds knows that the bear will come — perhaps not in this moment, but perhaps in the next.

And the subconscious mind demands an audience.

I am admittedly a horror addict, and have been since childhood. These days, it's Stephen King, Robert Bloch, Jonathan Kellerman, James Patterson — I've always loved to scare myself.

There was not always a time when I could gain access to horror novels or movies, and that time was my childhood, yet I was never without tales of the macabre and horrific. Inuit folktales are rife with gruesome features, and I cheerfully nagged my relatives to tell me those stories over and over again.

So it is as a tribute to all the people who patiently fed little Raigili her bedtime fare that I want to share a ghastly story or two from a late night with my father.

* * *

Kiviuq and the Fox Woman

"Ataataak unikkaaqtualaurit. Father, tell me a story."

"Taitsumaniguuq," he began, "there lived a heroic man who's name was Kiviuq."

Oh goody, I thought, Kiviuq was my favourite story character. Though the story has many versions, the beauty of Kiviuq was that he could and would adapt to anyone's storytelling style. In some stories, he has supernatural powers, and he always came into conflict with evil beings — both human and animal.

Then again, he was a bit of a trickster figure, and could come into conflict with just about any entities who happened to be around. But it was the monster stories that were best.

We were at spring camp and it was warm enough to move into a tent. I, being the eldest child, was near the far wall, and I could entertain myself by staring at the white canvas, which had interesting spots.

I could pretend that the patterns on it were story characters, and "move" them around as they were silouetted against the white of the canvas tent. So, as my father spoke, the story came to life in my eyes as well as in my ears.

"Kiviuq was a powerful man," he said, "and had travelled to many strange places. He was powerful, but not as great as Iqimarasuqjuqjuaq" (an Ancient who's name has lost its meaning due to it's archaic nature) "and he fell into trouble from time to time."

"Kiviuq was kayaking that day when he came across a little island which seemed something like a small, waterbound peninsula. Having been on the search for a wife for a long time now, he thought there might be women about, and wasted no time in landing his kayak. He hid it in a safe place and continued in on foot. His seal-skin boots were soon full of holes from walking on the pebbly ground by the shore.

"Not only were his clothes in bad need of repair, but he was starving, having paddled on the sea for many days. It was then a welcome sight when he noticed a trail of smoke rising over a little hill. Not believing his good luck, he decided to be cautious and peered from behind a rock.

"To his amazement, there stood a beautiful woman, the likes of which he had never seen before. She had long, shocking white hair, and was tall and slender. She was hanging some skins on a line attached to her tent, and — wonders of wonders — was cooking a large pot of caribou stew over a welcoming fire!

"Kiviuq wasted no time and immediately limped down to the tent, playing a tired exhausted hunter for all it was worth.

"'Lovely woman, don't be afraid, I'm not a ghost,' he said by way of introduction. 'I've been washed up on these shores and I have not seen land for a many a day. Please take pity on this poor man and be so kind as to give me just a little stew. That is all I need.'

"He didn't have to beg so hard, as the lovely vision of a woman said in the faintest of voices, 'Welcome to my humble home. I live alone and human company would be refreshing, after all.'

"Thus it was that Kiviuq began living with the white-haired, beautiful woman. It was not a bad life being waited on hand and foot, but soon Kiviuq began to feel uneasy about the whole situation. He could not exactly pinpoint any problems, but it was a feeling that gnawed at the edge of his happiness.

"'So what,' Kiviuq said to himself, 'that she is a little strange and has some eccentric habits.' Every couple of weeks or so, she would insist on hunting by herself at night, and would arrive in the wee hours of the morning looking not like herself at all; in fact, a bit... disheveled.

"That, Kiviuq didn't mind so much. When she returned from such hunts, however, she would kind of smell funny, like she had been eating old meat. Again, Kiviuq was ready to endure all for the sake of living in peace. 'I'll get used to the smell,' he thought, 'after all, I'm a little strange myself.'

"It was only when these peaceful times began to deteriorate that Kiviuq was beginning to doubt his sanity. His wife, the beautiful woman, began to have times when she would launch into a temper tantrum and decry Kiviuq's abilities as a provider and capable man. 'What kind of man are you,' she would scream, 'that you send your wife out to feed you? You're like a monster, and you smell of sweat!'

"Kiviuq kept quiet, but each time the verbal abuse became sharper and just plain strange. Once, Kiviuq swore that he heard a sound like a high-pitched squeal in one of her tirades — more like the sound a small animal would make when threatened.

"'Uakallangaa, I've got to do something,' he thought to himself, 'and I've got to do it soon. All this lying around and being treated like dirt is getting to me.'

"One day, while he was cogitating upon his lot in life , he thought he saw scratchings in front of the tent that he hadn't noticed before.

'And why,' he asked himself, 'does she always hang skins outside, even on a bad day? Oh, of course!' he cried in his Kiviuq logic. 'How could I have been such an idiot! She loves another! Why didn't I see it all before? That is who is giving her all those animal pelts.'

"He then hatched a plot to spy on her and follow her the next time she went 'hunting.'

"So it was that, one evening, Kiviuq pretended to fall asleep — even faking a loud snore for good measure. He thought himself to be quite clever. 'You have to wake up pretty early to pull one over on old Kiviuq,' he chuckled to himself. 'Wait till she sees what I have in store!' He then lay on the smelly bed, keeping one eye open to launch his plan.

"One night he got lucky. His wife had gone out of the tent 'for a pee' and hadn't seemed to return. Peeking outside, he spotted no sign of life. Not even a slight breeze came up on that early fall night. It seemed that not only had Kiviuq's wife left, but she had taken a whole load of furs previously hanging on the line. 'Don't tell me she's leaving permanently this time,' Kiviuq growled. 'Women!'

"Kiviuq followed her tracks, which were visible on some sandy part of the ground. Oddly, there seemed to be an animal either with her or following her, as he began to see some strange footprints mingled with hers. 'What the... !?!' Kiviuq muttered a few curses to himself. 'This can't be happening.' Suddenly, the woman's tracks had vanished into thin air."

This was the part of this story that I had been waiting for, the part that came with sound effects and funny voices.

"'Either this lady can fly, or I'm going crazy.' Kiviuq doubted his sanity. Nevertheless, he followed what was left of the tracks to arrive at what seemed to be a small gathering of people.

Actually, what he could see through the fine mist that had risen up from the ground made it difficult for him to see shapes . The mist also had the strange effect of muffling the people's voices. Kiviuq thought he heard a cough, but it was someone who seemed to have laughed at another's joke.

"'Ha, ha, cough, ha, ha — that's a funny one,' he heard. 'But you know what's funnier? What's funnier is how their children look when they're born. They look like overgrown lemming cubs, all hairless and blind! Ha, ha, ha, bark, bark!'

"'Good grief!' Kiviuq barely managed to exhale in breathless terror. 'These are animals! Animals who were talking!

And, there, right in the thick of it all, was his wife. Only, she was not in a shape that Kiviuq was accustomed to. She looked kind of like a fox but only bigger. Who could mistake those beautiful, hazel eyes, and that lovely, white hair? But her mouth: it was no longer human, but canine. And to complete the effect, her voice had become high-pitched and gravely.

"'Ka, ka, ka, ka, kaw! Ka, ka, ka, ka, kaw! Ka, ka, cough, ka, kaa, ka, kaa...'

"Then they turned, and they saw him. Kiviuq fled.

"'Bark, bark! A human! Yip, yip, yip, yiiiiiii...!'

"'Kaa, ka, ka, ka-ooooww, come bacck! Kaa, kaa, kaa, cooommme seeee your son, yip-yip-yiiiip!'

"Kiviuq prided himself as a brave man, but he ran hard, refusing to look behind him. He ran until he could no longer hear that voice, the voice that he knew so well as belonging to his beautiful wife, but that was also the voice of a fox.

He ran until he was out of breath, finally leaning against a rock to get his bearings. He had run so hard that sweat was streaming down his face, mingled with tears. His tears were salty and tasted like the sea that he had had to prowl for many a lonely night.

"He left in his kayak that very night, and before long, the mist obliterated the island that had been his home, leaving nothing but grey clouds on the horizon. Ahead, a small shaft of light from the setting sun once more became a lure to him, and promised adventures to come.

"And that's the end of the story," my father said.

"It can't be," I protested, still wide awake.

"Why not?"

"Well, Kiviuq can't kayaktuq forever. Where did he end up?"

My father knew where I was going with this. He sighed, "Aren't you getting sleepy?"

"Uh, sure, but I want to know where he went next. He met... the Spider Woman next, didn't he?"

* * *

The Dreaded Spider Woman

It was the dreaded Spider Woman that I had been waiting for. I wouldn't let my father alone until he told of her.

Finally, he gave in with, "Okay, but this will be short because you have to sleep now."

I settled in, and the patterns on the wall seemed to bring his words to life.

"Kiviuq was in his kayak for a long time," he began, "when he arrived on the shore of what what at first seemed like a coastal village. In the distance, he could see a few sod houses, and some stone ones as well. His heart was still aching from his last experience, and it perhaps dulled his judgement.

"Feeling hopeful and desirous of a new life, Kiviuq docked his kayak on the shore, and secured it with traces to some large boulders.

"Turning it upside down, Kiviuq planned to spend at least one night in the lee of his kayak, but after sorting through his belongings, and noting the miserable bit of food that he had with him, he decided not to wait until morning to explore that mysterious village.

"Kiviuq was upon the village, coming quite near before he noticed the strangeness of the structures. He had travelled to many bizarre lands, and lived among peoples having all varieties of traditions and taboos.

"Yet the closest structure to him, to which he had now arrived, was constructed in dimensions that made him shiver with the weirdness of it, for he realized that there was no way that it could possibly act as a human shelter. The structure was semi-circular, a wall of stone built only four feet high.

"He did not have to wait long to view its owner. As he cautiously peered over the edge, there came into view a hideously bloated spider-like thing, nearly the size of a man.

"It rocked gently to and fro, four of its legs tucked into some kind of sitting position, while the others dangled at the edges of its sickening form, a grey like the colour of dead flesh. Oddly enough, it/he/she seemed to be wearing some kind of clothing, which was clumsily made and didn't seem functional at all.

"The sight of the creature was so shocking that Kiviuq at first failed to notice the objects lining the base of the wall. What had seemed at first to be bags and bundles were in fact human heads.

"They had been neatly severed, and balanced side by side upon their stubby necks, amidst scatterings of old dried bones. The bottom of the 'shelter' looked more like some abandoned pantry that wild animals had raided. And for all intents and purposes, such a comparison was not far from the truth, as it was dawning upon Kiviuq.

"'Uakallangaa!' he thought. Kiviuq's mind barely acknowleged what he was seeing. As he stood above this ghoulish scene, a bit of saliva from his open mouth dropped below onto the head of the Spider Woman. Kiviuq hid behind the wall.

"'What was that?' she chirped. 'Is it raining? Damn these eye-lids anyway.' With that the Spider Woman snipped off her top eye-lids to reveal red coals burning in the sockets beneath, and went back to her tasks.

"Kiviuq then realized that, as with his wife, this was some inhuman thing that had tried — and not quite succeeded — to assume the form of a woman, that he had arrived in some horrible, nightmarish land from which he would be fortunate to escape.

"Kiviuq watched as the Spider Woman continued to strip the meat from the calf of some animal she had caught. Kiviuq turned away to spare himself recognition of that flesh that he suspected was not of a caribou. Suddenly, he heard a noise.

"'Y-y-y...' It was one of the heads along the wall, that nearest him. Somehow, Kiviuq was already resigned to the fact that there was nothing normal about this place, so he was not surprised when the head rolled its eyes at him, pathetically gasping, 'Y-young man! O-over h-here...!'

What could he do? He stood paralyzed, and listened. 'Young man,' the head wheezed, 'save yourself. Forget about us. Her hearing is very poor. Just don't let her smell you. Leave before it is too late. Leave before you are invited in, like we were...'"

My father continued to talk, but it was getting hard to listen. Sleep was nearly upon me now, waving in and out, like a dark, gentle tide. There was more to the story: something about a snow bunting, and three riddles, and then at some point my father saying,

"...and I don't remember the rest."

It was the Inuit way of saying that one didn't want to tell anymore. I think I resisted feebly, but the night's storytelling was done.

Comfortable in my warm fear, a gift of love from a patient father, I began to drift. The patterns on the tent wall were fading now, figures disappearing into the mist. The last pattern I remembered was of a man walking with a dog, carrying his harpoon and walking off into the distance, until both of them were small black dots.

Thank you, father.

Pijariiqpunga.

Where were our parents?

We had just disembarked. My half-sister and I were the only children on the beach, where the float-plane had landed.

Some other parents told us that ours might be at their spring camp a few miles away - past the two lakes, the Inukshuk, probably in a cove near the peninsula - poor instructions to ones who had spent the past year living in a dormatory, attending residential school.

Hefting our suitcases, we agreed that we would use intuition, something not often called upon in school. Starting off, we wondered what our little sister would now look like, wondered if she would like the bubble gum we had brought her. Maybe our parents didn't know we were arriving. Maybe they hadn't been told. We were scared. At least it was June.

It was a difficult trek. The land was different from how we remembered, and we didn't really know each other, having been long ago separated into age groups. I had lived upstairs and she downstairs. We started to get reaquainted, talking about mean supervisors, about who had been sent home pregnant that year. Had she seen so-and-so? Yes, she had, but that girl had not adjusted and had only learned "pidgin" English. I know, I replied, we had a couple of like that in our class too - they had spent a lot of time crying, getting bullied, being called "retarded." Do you think we'll recognize our parents?

After a worrisome couple of hours, we neared a tent, where a man was shoveling. He spotted us, waving his arms in recognition.

Awkwardly hauling our baggage, we ran toward our father, our mother appearing from the tent behind him. As our father gave us a kunik on both cheeks, he asked,

"When did you arrive?"

"Just now!"

A little tyke slipped out of the tent — so cute! It was our little sister. She was jabbering away in Inuktitut when we gave her the bubble gum. In Inuit fashion, she automatically began to share. "No," we told her, "it's for you! A present!"

Shortly, our luggage was unpacked, and we chattered away, in time wandering about outside.

"Do you want to see some eggs?" little sister asked.

We glanced at each other, smiling at her cuteness. Behind the tent was a raised ridge of smooth rocks. She began by guiding us to where sparrows were nesting, hidden in dark crevasses. In a nest were tiny eggs — perfect miniature paintings, blue-speckled with small brown dots — in a cup lined with feathery down.

"And here is where all the flowers are," little sister said, showing us her own grand and secret discovery. Spread before us were purple and pale yellow symmetries and dapplings upon the land more beautiful than any garden of Asia.

"And you can eat these ones," our tiny tour guide continued, picking up a handful as an example.

She's showing us her world, I thought to myself. To her, these are her "toys." Ahead lay a gigantic playground. I looked around, as though for the first time, at the colours and textures of it, and realized then that a child's world did not have to mean manufactured toys.

These were no shiny red trucks, dolls with painted faces, or anything speaking with the aid of a battery. This wealth did not flash, sparkle, or come in a neat package. Yet it lay beyond the comprehension of any industry.

And make no mistake: this was wealth, but of a kind alien to the sterile walls from which we had just arrived. This was, I thought to myself as I looked at the expanse around me, a treasure of the heart, and a prize of the soul. Home.

Pijariiqpunga.

"Bullies don't want to fight you. They just want to beat you up."

— John Steakley

There was a lot of violence at boarding school, most of it hidden. Some classes were let out early, racing home to Stringer Hall, taking short cuts to avoid the bullies. Most bullies were "town" kids, envious of what they thought was our "uppity" institutional life. They could never know that we envied them what we were denied: a family.

My older half-sister and I were kept separated, so we could not support one another. She would, however, smuggle me what little money she could find, sneaking it to me on the weekends, so that I could buy an occasional treat. The few pleasures we were allowed were counterbalanced by some horrific episodes, such as fierce attacks by the bullies. When I think back on the earliest days, one attack especially springs to mind.

In a lot of ways I was a typical little Inuit girl, struggling with English, adjusting to school, living with 199 other kids virtually devoid of privacy. My half-sister and I were tough, having been brought up like boys by my father. Constant training had imbued us with stamina. Although my father had anticipated a different environment — not residential school — that training saw us through some very dangerous times.

In early fall, my half-sister and I went berry-picking behind a hill near Stringer Hall. We had been released for the weekend. We had picked nearly an entire bag of cranberries, when two much bigger boys suddenly appeared.

They had sling shots, the kind that sported thick rubber slings for killing rabbits and birds, and they were aiming them at us.

"Let go of the bag," one of them commanded, firing a warning shot that went wide. I was terrified, my heart hammering away. Looking them straight in the eye only brought silence for a few minutes. They were serious.

I looked over at my sister. She stood still, defiant, even when she was told the second time to let go of the bag.

They shot her hand.

Still, she would not let go of the bag. Blood ran down her fingers, mixing with the colour of the berries. We both remained, reaching for whatever reserves we possessed of bravery.

I broke, snarling,

"Look what you did!"

I started yelling, running to my sister. I grabbed the bag that she had dropped — only because her hand had now swollen, preventing her from gripping — and defied the boys to try again. My sister was gasping in pain, trying to stem the blood which now steadily streamed.

The boys departed, the fun taken out of their threats. My sister bandaged the wound as best as she could, tears now welling up with her pained sobs.

"Let's go before they come back." I said. "I'm proud of us anyway. We didn't run away."

Somehow, years later, only that fact is important. With fondness, I can still picture my sister when I close my eyes, standing there, holding her ground with fierce pride, refusing to be a victim.

I think I learned then that it takes two to make a victim: both the bully and one's self. Will is the key. You cannot be a victim if you refuse.

Strangely, from then on, I didn't succumb to bullying. Later, when a senior girl dumped me out of my bed — mattress and all — I merely stared her down, daring her to continue. As before, she walked away, confused at her failure to evoke submission.

The best gifts are the ones that arm you against life.

Pijariiqpunga.

I never look forward to explaining that different cultures can think in different ways, that language does not necessarily bear concepts universal from one people to the next.

There is an assumption by too many individuals (many of whom, tragically, are policy makers) that the concepts held by their own culture automatically exist in others.

A great number of people, for example, ask of me the Inuktitut word for "traditional law." When I explain that there is no such word, in fact, no such concept in old Inuit culture, that the contemporary word "piqujaq" misleadingly means "command," I am typically met with a blank stare. Even worse are scientific terms, such as "bacteria," to which Inuktitut can only best approximate "qupirruit" (worms).

It works in reverse, as well. There are a great number of Inuktitut concepts that refuse to lend themselves to translation into foreign mindsets.

My favourite example is the concept of "ilira." In the simplest English translations, ilira has been labeled fear. In the most complex translations, ilira has been described as fear of authority or ill will.

Differing cultural lenses are at work here. In truth, ilira owns elements of all such translations, yet its nature is characterized by a depth impossible to comprehend unless absorbed through actual life within Inuit culture. In order to understand it, you have to be able to feel it. I know that there are those readers out there who are shaking their heads at this, perhaps muttering,

"Impossible. One human is the same as the next. All human beings experience the same thoughts, emotions, and experiences. They simply use different words..."

Untrue. While many thoughts and feelings overlap to an extent that they can be commonly recognized, I submit that every human experience is unique. Each thinking creature is a separate Universe unto itself, unable to be perfectly understood by any other.

Just as the immeasurable combinations of wind, pressure, temperature, and density ensure that each flake of snow is unlike another, so the infinitude of life events ensure that no soul — no thought or experience — is exactly alike to another.

Imagine, then, the greater gulfs existent from culture to culture, as spawned by environments of lethal extremes — such as the Arctic evolution that has crafted Inuit mind and body since the ages when glaciers caressed the world's temperate regions.

The true world of the Inuit ancestors — the realm of safety, joy, warmth — was the family. There was no variety of experiences in the Inuit world to compare to the intricacies of fellow human minds.

Consequently, the Inuit identification of the range of human feelings exceeds even that of modern psychology, so that Inuktitut today contains dozens of unique terms for emotions not immediately recognized by other cultures.

One such emotion is that of ilira, a feeling that is not quite fear, and yet may cause traditional Inuit to seem as though they are yielding to authority. Ilira is an emotion that only features in interpersonal conflicts, when there is the potential for argumentation — occurring only when opinions collide, and only in the one who "backs down" from confrontation.

And this is where Inuit culture becomes important, for since traditional Inuit find conflict loathsome, an Inuk may come to feel "ilirasuktuq," — a state in which they are distinctly unsatisfied (perhaps even angry), and yet will give in simply for the sake of dissipating the conflict.

Again, Inuit culture becomes a key factor here, for one who is ilirasuktuq does not give in from a sense of duty, or a fear of punishment. Interestingly, the reaction stems from the fundamental principle of Inuit wisdom most estranged from this age.

Pragmatism.

Pijariiqpunga (for Part One).

Imagine two tourists, husband and wife, nervous grins, rosy noses, heaving lungs unaccustomed to clean air. They sport bright red, puffy parkas, like giant plastic body pillows — bought at a trendy urbanite store located in a shopping mall — shockingly brittle in the sub-zero temperature and wind chill.

Like a cherry topping some hideous cake are their Indian-style mitts, stiff with newness, complete with "dummy" strings to prevent their loss. They wield their camera like a weapon.

At their mercy is a lone Inuk, whom they have caught untangling some dog traces. Earlier, the traces became a bit wet and, whilst routinely tangled from use, froze together into a semi-cylindrical clump. The tourists stand nearby, watching the Inuk, amazed at the sight of him untangling the icy traces with his bare hands. They periodically turn toward each other, commenting excitedly. The Inuk tries to ignore them as they snap a few pictures.

Eventually, because the Inuk hasn't reacted negatively, the tourists decide to get some better shots. Soon, they are leaning in close to him, asking him to position the traces at this angle and that, to pose, to redo some shots they were not happy with.

The Inuk obliges them. He does everything they ask of him, thus wasting about an hour, so that he has to work harder to finish the traces. But he doesn't say a word the entire time. The tourists eventually move on. The photography has cheered them and made them hungry, so they are off to the inn to get a hamburger. On their way, they discuss how nice the locals — the "Innooits" — are, how shy and kindly, just like in the movies.

Another tourist has witnessed the whole thing. He watches the couple on their way to their hamburger, placing his hands on his hips and snorting with derision. He is disgusted at how rudely they treated that poor Innooit, at how they bullied him into posing for their insipid snapshots, at how they have no respect for the traditional culture.

He shakes his head in disgust, resolving to step in next time, to fend away the tourists from these gentle native people who are inherently shy, quiet, and ready to do anything to please strangers. Poor, passive Innooit.

Everyone in the above scenario is wrong.

The first person who is mistaken, believe it or not, is the Inuk. He is following a cultural cue best reserved for other Inuit who understand it. He is obliging the tourists because they have made him ilirasuktuq — feeling ilira. He needs to remember that they are not of his culture, that in order to help himself and others, he must communicate with them in their own way — by telling them to jump into the nearest lake.

The second mistake is made by the tourist couple, not in their rudeness, but in their belief that the Inuk harbours no ill feelings toward them. They are mistaken in thinking that he obliged them out of kindness, for he was really feeling ilira — the need to obey in order to avoid a messy confrontation. He probably hates their guts.

The last mistaken one is the lone tourist who felt indignation, believing that the Inuk indulged the tourist couple out of passivity, an inability or unwillingness to defend himself. He doesn't realize that the Inuk practised ilira — losing an hour rather than risking hostile confrontation, an efficient and very old cultural method of dealing with strangers.

Old Inuit culture reduces waste, even of emotional energy.

This article is introductory to the next three, each of which shall discuss the points above. It's time to air some cross-cultural theatre.

Pijariiqpunga (for Part Two).

In Part Two, I described an encounter between tourists and an Inuk. The Inuk's work was interrupted by a tourist couple who demanded he pose for their photos. I briefly outlined the mistakes that each party made. In this article, I'm going to write about the Inuk's mistake. The next article will discuss the tourists' screwups.

Traditional Inuit held silence and respect as twin virtues. The value of silence is obvious, since a hunting society isn't going to catch anything if its members are noisy by nature. The ability to keep silent was considered a skill, so that even many Inuit games — such as Aaqsiiq, wherein the first to make noise is the loser — are based upon silence. Because of this culturally ingrained value, Inuit are typically soft-spoken to this day, so that strangers of a comparatively "louder" culture seem aggressive.

Respect for the isuma — personal thoughts and feelings — of others was also fundamental, so that Inuit were reticent about questioning or making demands of others. Inuit relied upon the assumption that each individual would willingly carry out his duties to every other — such as sharing food and shelter.

Conversely, most European-descended cultures are combative in their approach to isuma. A feeling is not considered valid until proven against others. When two European-descended people meet, they subtly (or sometimes overtly) fence with their opinions, weighing and measuring them against each other.

They feel the need to immediately voice an opinion ("Quite the weather, eh?"), submitting it for acceptance or rejection. To this day, many Inuit still cannot fathom the need for reparte. Traditionally, one's opinion belongs to one's self only. Voicing one's opinion, or discussing that of others, seems aggressive.

Behaviour that seems aggressive to Inuit is traditionally met with ilira, a sullen silence and compliance — such as exhibited by the Inuk in the story. It is the old Inuit way of dealing with aggressors, especially strangers.

When met with loudness or argumentation, the Inuk responds with ilira, feeling that it is better to yield, to defuse to conflict by refusing to fight. Violence was once considered wasteful — Inuit preferred conflict resolution over combat.

Ilira worked in traditional society, where ideas and opinions in themselves were not considered worth fighting over. Times have changed, however, forcing Inuit to address the problems that arise when trying to reconcile the opinions of many people living in a single community.

No longer can Inuit afford to allow everyone their own way, for Inuit — like Qallunaat — now rely upon projects where separate opinions conflict, where singular visions are valued. This forces the society to become an arena, its members dueling over the ideas that will prevail. In a project-driven society, ideas are the power for which authoritarians will kill.

So it is his inability to understand his new world that is our fictional Inuk's failing. While there was a time when his ilira would have worked to avoid conflict, his compliance means only one thing to the culture that now occupies his Land: that he is passive, perhaps even cowardly — like a servant, a slave.

His indulgence of the tourists will never resolve the matter. As long as he says nothing, their demands know no limit. Within their own culture, silence means agreement — if the Inuk wishes them to go away, he will tell them.

Our story Inuk needs to understand that he is about to live in a new territory — Nunavut — with those of their culture, and this necessitates learning to communicate differently than with other Inuit. Instead of feeling ilira, he needs to communicate as Qallunaaq would with each other:

"Buzz off!"

Pijariiqpunga.

To get you into the Christmas spirit, here's a tale of childhood self-discovery.

OTTAWA — The angakuq woman was doing it again — making strange noises in her igluvigaq. We dared each other to come near enough to hear what she was doing.

"No, you go closer..."

We nudged each other, then ran when we thought we heard a sound like a seagull cry. She seemed to be making tea, from the sound of her gas stove, and to be either singing in a low croon, or moaning.

"I hated her."

I hated her. She always did something weird in the middle of the night, got stuck in one of her trances, and my father would have to go to her and snap her out of it. It was always very distressing to me.

"What has she done now?" I would complain, and could never get my father to explain what exactly it was that he had to do in these late night emergencies.

Rumour had it that she would slip into a trance and become unable to awaken from it. Some said that her eyeballs would roll up in her head, or that she would pass out.

I didn't care. "Let her get out of it herself and stop making my father work at night," I thought ungraciously. Someone would come running in, asking my father to go help her, and I would think to myself, "Her again. If she's such a great angakuq, why does she always get 'stuck' wherever she is? Obviously, she doesn't know very much does she?"

Besides, she couldn't be a real angakuq, since everybody knew that angakuit have the power to appear wherever and whenever they wanted, appearing in a foggy mist followed by music.

She didn't like me, either. She was always telling me that she would make me pee my bed. And I would. But, of course, it did not occur to me that nearly every kid my age — cursed or not — was peeing their bed as a matter of biology.

One hundred mysterious dolls

Another thing that made the angakuq creepy was the rumour that she possessed one hundred dolls. She had bought them while in the south, during repeated trips to the hospital.

In time, my little sister and I decided to check out the story of these one hundred dolls for ourselves. It was said that the dolls were her familiars, her tuurngait, her enslaved helper spirits. It was told that every night she would arrange them about her igluvigaq, and therein do "something" to them.

We stood at the foot of her winter igluvigaq. It was brand new, as someone had freshly built it for her. On the bed platform was a burlap sack stuffed with toys.

"Do you want to see the dolls?" she asked.

We were transfixed. Before our eyes, she gently let them tumble out onto the ground, lovingly picking them up one by one and placing them around her dimly lit home. She would introduce each one as she did so, saying, "This one has blue eyes, and this one can move its arms and legs..."

Isumairutisimajuq

"She's a looney," I thought. "She's isumairutisimajuq, crazy, lost her grip on her mind." So it was this nutcase that my poor father had to deal with.

While I balked in horror, my younger sister stood entranced. She was nodding and taking the dolls as they were handed to her. "Maybe the plastic will freeze in the cold," I thought, "and they'll break." I tried to send unfriendly vibes.

Later that night, as we were falling asleep, my little sister asked: "Do you think she'll make the dolls do something to us?"

"Of course not," I replied. "Besides," I added, "She's not really an angakuq. If she were, Ataata would tell us. She's just crazy, that's all. Everybody knows that dolls are not alive."

I paused for a moment, before adding: "Even if she does, Kusik will kill them."

Besides being my favourite dog, Kusik had the extra task of protecting us from the supernatural. Strangely, that night, I dreamt that Kusik had come into our house.

When I woke up, she was curled up at the front, having given birth to some new pups that we — as kids — hadn't even known she had been expecting. In my half-sleep, I heard some sort of mewling. When I lifted up my head from the pillow, there was Kusik, nursing a number of fu y newborns, looking rather pleased with herself.

Kusik must have somehow known that it was Christmas soon. "What a clever dog," I thought, "giving us puppies for Christmas." By spring, they would be large enough to travel with us to our spring camp. I had expectations of playing ball and other games as we had done with her last litter.

Somehow, I interpreted the new litter as a good sign, countering the negative influence of the angakuq woman and her nightmarish legion of dolls. My fears eventually faded, my young mind distracted by living and growing.

Will Ataata come back?

One night, a bad snow storm came up. My father was out hunting with a couple of other men for the coming Christmas feasts. In the dark, we listened to the wind howl. We had spent the entire day stranded indoors, drawing frozen shapes on the crystals formed on the lone window of our cabin.

"Do you think Ataata will come back?" my little sister asked.

"Of course, you silly thing," I answered, not as sure inside as I affected to feel on the outside. "Ataata always comes back."

It was now a few days before Christmas. We thought we heard something bump against our cabin, on the roof.

"Maybe that's Father Christmas...?"

"Could be... Maybe those are the sounds of his reindeer."

We listened some more. But the closer I listened, the more I thought that those bumps and scrapings did not quite sound like reindeer hooves. They were more like the patterings of little feet. I suddenly thought of dolls...

"Does Father Christmas know where we live?"

"Sure he does — he knows everything."

Even though I was older, and knew differently, I could not dash my sister's hopes. I knew that there was no Santa. I had seen my father once eating the cookies when he thought we were asleep, and commenting on how cute we were in believing that there was a Santa. But I still told my sister:

"He'll know its our home when he sees the cookies and milk you left out for him," as I continued to listen to those sounds on the roof.

"Okay..." she said sleepily.

I did not want to frighten my sister by telling her what I really thought those sounds on the roof might be. And my fear was compounded by the fact that — unlike what I told my sister — I truly suspected that my father's return from a hunt was not always guaranteed.

Fear

One day, I feared, he would not show up. (It did happen once, but that is another story.)

For the time being, there was nothing I could do, and I too began to drift into an uneasy sleep, wherein reindeer sleds landed on our cabin to bring us toys, candy and other treats — alternating with images of tiny forms that pattered through the shadows, while one hundred pairs of blue eyes watched me through the storm.

As it was, my father did come back. No, I don't believe Santa had arrived; but yes, someone had eaten the Christmas cookies and left the empty plate and cup behind.

My sister got a rock in her stocking and had a fit like she always did when a joke was played on her. We had hung up our duffel socks, and our real treats eventually came out.

Father Christmas arrives

Among my presents was a large Raggedy Anne doll.

After my father's return from that hunt, no one ever came to our cabin with an angakuq emergency again. As far as I know, my sister always continued to put cookies and milk out for Santa on Christmas Eve. Me, I just go to the midnight mass with my family, and hope not to get a rock in my stocking.

Ever since that day, I've loved dolls. Suddenly having one of my own somehow dissipated my hostility toward the angakuq woman. In fact, today, I have several dolls of my own, and I can better appreciate the nostalgia or simple wonder that drove an eccentric old sorceress to treasure her toys.

Perhaps the only black magic at work was jealousy.

Pijariiqpunga.

Those who go away for a while to bring back fuel may be the ones who restore the flame of Inuit culture to its former brightness.

OTTAWA — Not unlike a flame, culture seems preternatural. It obviously exists, but it is ghostly, continually shifting and elusive. It seems paradoxical, for while it remains ethereal, it is capable of destruction. It is dangerous, beautiful, useful, and delicate. Distance from the bed of fuel that is its home will eventually kill it.

Fortunately, Inuit culture has thus far avoided such killing distance from its own base: the Land. The very fact that Inuit have remained upon the land of their ancestry has bought them the precious time needed to find their voice, despite the plague of relentless cultural turmoil. Many aboriginal cultures, removed from their own traditional lands, have not been so lucky.

Inuit have had time, as I like to say, to become the squeaky wheels that get the grease — a vital skill in this day. I chuckle to myself when I say this of modern Inuit, as I suddenly recall that pre-colonial Inuit didn't use wheels.

Ah, well, some bit of comedy was ever a symptom of social upheaval — that mess, one might say, that always results when the wheel first receives its oil.

They weren't always squeaky, of course. In fact, Inuit are used to suffering in silence, in keeping with traditional sentiments that one should never impose one's problems upon another. Such an imposition would constitute a violation of another's isuma — personal thoughts and feelings — which Inuit used to deem so utterly vulgar.

Consequently, Inuit have always remained relatively quiet in the face of colonization from the south, only rarely voicing their discontent even under the most extreme hardships, and certainly never before organizing themselves to the level today represented by the great Nunavut Land Claims Agreement.

Looking forward to the new

As for the territory of Nunavut itself, no one looks forward to its inception more than Inuit. Why? Well, other than the obvious fact that Inuit are a majority in Nunavut, it is the old issue again — like isuma — the traditional way of looking at things.

Inuit are new to cities and statesmanship, to industry and agriculture. Such institutions are virtually meaningless to their elders, for their lifestyle was only recently one of hunting and gathering, near or total reliance upon the land.

They have been introduced to Occidental institutions by southerners; have had it implied to them that somehow Inuit missed out on something great for all these millennia.

But let me tell you something: nearly every explorer who has traveled north to study the Inuit has looked upon their culture with envy. Knud Rasmussen, when travelling with a hunter/shaman whom he had befriended, once remarked at how healthy he felt when living an "improvised" lifestyle — being able to sleep and eat whenever he felt like instead of following a "civilized" schedule.

He expressed, in his writings, that he felt free in sleeping, rising, and eating when his mind and body — rather than southern tradition — demanded, that this experience somehow seemed the way that humans were meant to live. Indeed, Rasmussen was perhaps correct, for the agriculturally inspired regimented lifestyle is relatively new to mankind, all of whose members have been nomadic for far longer than they have been sedentary.

One female elder I had known once remarked to me that, "Sleep is mamaqtuq (yummy)." This expression can sum up the whole Inuit approach to life; not only the want, but the need to do what one wants.

The adoption of statesmanship

It is important to remember that Inuit were not truly tribal. They essentially existed as distinct families who seasonally banded together in temporary encampments. There is no precedent in Inuit culture for the lifestyle that they live today, which is also why it is amazing to witness the skill with which they have taken up the trappings of statesmanship.

And why have Inuit adopted statesmanship so readily? Why would they bother to master a tradition that has done little in the past other than harm their ancestral ways?

The answer is quite simple: They want things their way for a change. It has taken a while, but Inuit are gradually realizing that in order to have their future the way they wish it to be, they themselves must shape it.

Originally, Inuit perceived the complexities of southern culture as a "Qallunaat" phenomenon, something that had little or nothing to do with Inuit. Their perception was that the Qallunaat and Inuit worlds were separate.

And they were not alone in this: both parties assumed that the Arctic was large enough that neither people would interfere with the activities of the other. Eventually, due to cross-cultural inexperience on the part of both parties, as well as gross blundering on the part of the Canadian government, extreme and well-documented damage was inflicted upon the Inuit hamlet cultures and generations that arose during the latter half of the 20th century.

Beneficent harm

If you are going to cure an illness, you need first to diagnose it. Unfortunately, the earliest perception of Inuit was that the damage stemming from Qallunaat colonization would or could be reversed by the federal and territorial governments, those powers that had caused it.

The talk that has come down from such governments (still today) has been little other than humanitarian, ever promising and beneficent, while the lack of true action implies a policy of lethal neglect.

Taking the governments at face value, Inuit at first were willing to believe that the Qallunaat governments meant no harm, that the socioeconomic problems spiraling out of control within the communities were simply a result of mistakes on the part of essentially well-intentioned powers.

Now that the governments had been made aware of their errors, as well as what Inuit themselves wanted, it was believed that they would repair the damage they had done, helping Inuit return to the hunting-gathering lifestyle that, since its disruption, had been rapidly assuming the characteristics of a mythical Golden Age.

Yet time marched onward, and the infection of disrupted culture — and the despair resulting from it — only continued to fester. While Inuit waited for the government to act on their behalf, so in turn the government waited for Inuit to act for themselves.

***

Taitsumaniguuq: Once there existed a flame. The flame was beautiful and burned high, treating the eyes with its colours as well as the skin with its warmth. It had existed for so long that few remembered to note it, and thus they forgot to tend it.

Only when the people noticed the growing cold and darkness did they turn to regard the flame, whereupon they saw that it was dying. In their panic, the majority of people began to act foolishly, without forethought. They began to add smaller fires and bits of coals to it, futilely hoping that the addition of extra heat would help it grow.

Not only did the great flame continue to die, but it consumed and took with it all the smaller fires and coals that the people feverishly heaped upon it.

The people began to lament. Most gave up, leaving the flame and themselves for dead. Many began to waste their time accusing each other of leaving the flame untended, thus bringing doom to them all. A few went mad, attacking each other.

Still, the flame burned lower and lower, itself heedless of all the bickering. Then, at the last possible moment, there appeared hope.

While all the others had fallen to panic, a wise few had realized that they must temporarily leave the flame in order to save it. Unnoticed, they had ventured out into the darkness and cold, and there had gathered fuel. This fuel they brought back with them, and fed to the flame.

***

Tossing money at problems

Like that majority who panicked when the flame burned low, a great many individuals and offices have tossed money at Inuit social problems in the form of countless projects and studies. Such miscellany has done little to preserve Inuit culture and language, just as tossing coals and sparks at a dying fire will never preserve the flame.

Fortunately, however, there have arisen a hardworking few who are wise enough to realize that the solutions must fit the problems. These growing few — a great number of youth among them — are the Inuit who have come to understand that plasticity and — most of all — honesty, are the keys to mastering the future.

The first key, plasticity, has never been a problem for the supremely adaptive Inuit; but the second, honesty, is extremely difficult. I am referring here to cultural honesty, the ability of Inuit to truthfully assess their own needs, to face the New World they now reside in.

It is important to remember that Inuit never sought to adapt to "the Arctic," but rather to the world itself, for what others call the Arctic was simply what Inuit once believed to be the entire world. They thought they were alone.

Encounters with other cultures have opened up an entirely new world to Inuit, so that they are forced to change their understanding of it. Instead of being perfectly adapted to the world, as once they were, they must now face the fact that they have mastered only a special part of it.

They must face the fact that what was once their entire world is now, with the assistance of southern technologies, a very temporary frontier — the northern edge of an ever-burgeoning, ever-ravenous planetary population.

But they are well on their way.

And I chuckle again, but with delight this time, at the thought that Inuit have thus far succeeded in securing their rights; that a wise few have, instead of accusing each other or submitting to panic, courageously ventured into the cold and darkness of an unforgiving new world, to gather and bring home the fuel that will preserve the fire.

For these wise few have realized that the flame is merely an illusion, a phantom, a byproduct of the burning fuel. It is the fuel itself that represents the true substance of a fire, the true stuff of which the heat and light are made.

Similarly, culture is only a byproduct of the people themselves. Just as the flame reflects the status of its fuel, so a culture reflects the status of its people. The wise understand that a culture is only healthy when the people are healthy.

Could anyone, decades ago, have imagined a future where government and corporate officers must ask permission of Inuit for use of the Land? From where I sit, the fire is growing ever higher, warm and bright.

Pijariiqpunga.

Dedicated to the memory of Isabelle Pringle.

It is said that the dead play ball with a walrus' head in the sky, to us appearing as the northern lights. There they are: dancing in the cold air, brightening as if coming closer, then fading as they climb.

The wind seems to carry a distant message of its own, as the dark sky wheels across darker ground. Harsh gulps of freezing air forces one to stop, staring across the expanse. Once, I truly believed in the ballplaying dead — as much I believed in the omniscience of adults.

Once, I was small, dependent, at the mercy of adult routines, happiness snatched in moments of wonder and discovery, raucous games played with others, bundled against sub-zero temperatures. And there was my kindergarten teacher, brought from the South to teach our tiny class.

We called her "Ilisaiji" (one who teaches), but her actual name was Isabelle Plaunt (later Pringle). She was no mere school teacher to us, but a part-time parent, and friend. She was our discovery; this fun-loving, tough yet gentle soul, having the near impossible task of establishing a school program, and teaching adults as well as children. These were the days when very few Inuit spoke English. Even fewer lived in houses or communities.

I looked forward to days when I could move in with her while my father was hunting. It was fun to play with her myriad learning blocks, colouring books, games, and pu les. We made ginger bread cookies, using raisins for eyes.

There was green Koolaid.

I remember my introduction to it, in the year that I escaped boarding school by hiding behind a rock while other children were picked up by the single Otter airplane. Later in the year, one of my cousins approached me, asking me if I wanted to go for "Koolaid" at the new teacher's house.

"What's Koolaid?" I asked.

"It's this great stuff that makes water green, and you can drink all you want. The new teacher isn't iliranaqtuq (scary) like the other white people."

My cousin insisted that the teacher was really fun, that we could play there.

She was right — the Koolaid was not only great, but the new teacher was fantastic, and soon we were over nearly every day. Such fun!

On Hallowe'en, there was dunking for apples, costume parades, races, and movies. Even the elders eventually got involved, as such festivities soon became family events. Ilisaiji's spirit touched much of the community. Even my father tried out her adult English class.

But best of all were the Christmas festivities. They took place at the school, as it was the largest place in town, and ended up as the community centre. After feasting, some of the elders would put together some entertaining skits they had been practicing.

One, I remember, was a shadow show. A large blanket served as a "screen," and magic tricks were done with optical illusions of light cast from behind. I really thought that one of the elders had gotten his leg "removed," or had been eviscerated. It was all great, grisly fun.

Later came races for prizes, mostly offered by the contestants themselves. And much, much later there was dancing to accordian music. During the festival, time was thrown out the window. Adults and children alike slept when tired, awakening whenever ready to repeat it all until the next day.

Such things did Ilisaiji inspire in us.

So, Ilisaiji, if you are looking down from the great ball game above, catch one for us! We all miss and love you.

Pijariiqpunga.

What can compare to a Northern Christmas? Perfect weather, cold but not yet stormy, the snow muffling sound, outdoor decorations. The stars twinkle in the night sky like a restless audience awaiting a concert of angels.

The North is an excellent home for the Christmas tradition, for a message sent to earth thousands of years ago by an infant birth. Inuit, of all peoples, would understand the humble beginnings of this great message: reconciliation between man and God, man and man, announced to shepherds, heralded by a star.

After all, like the Jews of so long ago, Inuit today are a formerly nomadic people, only now learning to settle permanently. The potential for a better future, hinted at in the Christmas theme, is very tribal.

As Christmas neared in Inuvik, each year I would pass an ice sculpture, a Nativity scene carved by one of the Oblate Missionaries as a celebration of his faith.

The ice he chose was lake ice, crisp and clear as the finest crystal. Mary shone as the central figure, adoring an Infant Jesus. The contours caught the light so as to lend the figures an unearthly radiance. As with all such scenes, Joseph and the shepherds were off to one side, as if confused, or perhaps not deserving of such exalted company.

The Oblate Father's medium mixed old with new, the sculpture style classic, while the figures supported a multitude of coloured lights. This labour of love had been his prayer, a special dedication to his Maker. And even though I was not Catholic, this effort touched me on a spiritual level, in a way that many hours of prayer in an Anglican chapel never could.

Here was a man who not only lived his faith, but carried his personal light to this corner of the world. He is long gone now, as are the many Christmases since I last stopped to admire his prayer in ice.

Today, I have come to treasure the calm amidst the storm of celebrations and other pressures brought on by this most festive of seasons. The memories of my Christmases long ago — some wonderful, some dreadful — have served as a lesson that this time works best as a mutual message of love between Creator and Created.

And this understanding has a way of persisting on its own, touching people's hearts almost without their knowledge. No matter where you go in Canada, and despite the militant commercialism, some folks just respond to that spirit of kindness and giving.

Once, in busy downtown Toronto, I was on a frantic Christmas shopping spree at the Eaton Centre, trying to get too many things done at once, before running to catch my train. Frankly, I was in a sour mood, wondering why I was forced closer to poverty in order to fulfill the requirements of some stupid, greedy festival.

At one point, I fumbled with the gifts I was carrying, and a fist full of loonies and other change scattered in a million directions. "Great," I thought, "people might as well take candy from a baby."

Imagine my shock when the dozen or so strangers nearest me began to gather up my change, handing it back to me. The kindness thawed me out a bit, so that afterward, as I strolled past a Salvation Army Santa swinging his bell as though it were on fire, I was extra generous.

Then I thought to check on something. Accounting for what I had just forked over to Mr. Claus, I collected up the change I had earlier dropped, counting to find out just how much of it had been lost.

They had returned every penny.

Pijariiqpunga.

OTTAWA — As a kid, did you ever really laugh at what one of your parents did? I mean really holler and make a big deal out of it?

I did once, when I saw a pair of duffel socks my father had fashioned on a trip. But there's a story behind those socks.

My father maintained a personal philosophy that a man didn't really attain a high level of skill until he had mastered "woman" skills. Considering the fact that he grew up in Cape Dorset — where the men used to be very, very macho — such a philosophy could be considered an especially high compliment to the women.

Nevertheless, my siblings and I got away with a lot of clumsiness, due to the fact that we were children whose ineptitude was to be tolerated. New skills were always introduced to us without prior announcement, and of course always under supervision. We were our own instructors, administering our own tests to ourselves, assessing our own mistakes and triumphs.

For those readers whose jaws are hanging open in objection to the practice of not actively pursuing a child's education, it is important to remember: These were different times, times when Inuit could ill afford to force a curriculum upon a child.

Time and energy were — and on the land still are — precious. If a child seemed incapable in one skill, it was best to move him on to another. Inuit were not a state, not a singular society that could build walls to keep out the more hostile aspects of nature.

The societies that today enforce an educational curriculum upon their children do so in order to regulate the large populations typical of states — masses of people enclosed in a relatively small space. For the sake of efficiency, the state must generalize, placing education in the hands of institutions, who must teach their populations en masse.

To this day, the child-to-adult transition is a mysterious thing to me. It is perhaps hazy for any culture, but for us it was crystallized by this one fact, suddenly slamming into our brains at an early age: the supported were to become the supporters. What we could not realize as children was that later, as young adults, each act of carelessness would demand a heavy price.

This lesson, as we inevitably learned, was the grand equalizer — the Land whose bounds and nature respected no individual. Our parents, as it turned out, were only temporary shields against it. Elders, strong men, weak children, animals — all were subject to its wrath.

Perhaps such a shocking impact, coming of its own accord, is the reason why Inuit have never developed the "coming-of-age" rituals so universal among other cultures.

The wrath of the land

One week, that wrath struck at the core of my family. My father did not return from a boat trip, along with two others who had accompanied him. The forever dreaded event had happened. There was nothing to do about it. The one gone missing was the authority.

There was a palpable silence that fell over our family. Everything suddenly seemed edged with cold and fright. Our Inuit patience — a hard-earned skill — was rapidly deteriorating. It was impossible not imagine the worst.

The disbelief that this would happen — that this could happen — to my father and his companions hung like a thick fog about us. No one dared to voice their inner fear. Each thought it, but tried not to project it.

Every day, we looked out at the Land and its breadth, to the empty horizon that brought no good news. Some men had begun to consider putting together a search party, but those were only brave words. The lost men were known to be capable, but even the greatest hunters were occasionally no match for the land.

At that time of year, late fall, the Arctic Ocean was a raging and hostile place, before finally calming down, to freeze over in winter. Perhaps they were simply stranded — we hoped — and would cross over the ice to us, once it had hardened.

I kept trying to remember what it was that my father had brought with him for outdoor gear. I knew that he had some water-proof things, like his hip-waders, but which coat had he brought? His caribou skin clothing was no good to him, being out of season, so he had left it behind.

He always carried a little survival kit, so I knew he would at least have waterproof matches. As far as food went, that wasn't a worry — I knew there were caches along the way. It was a few nerve-wracking mornings later, after constant checking and worrying, that it seemed the Land had loosened its grip upon them.

My father had finally arrived, utterly exhausted, some time between two and four a.m. When we woke up that morning, we saw him, but had to remain quiet all day long, letting him rest.

A story of survival

He slept fitfully, finally opening his wind-burned eyes after two and a half days, sitting up to rub at his scraggly beard. His hair was wild, and he hadn't even bothered to change his clothes. He literally had come home and collapsed.

After a few days, we got the full story over a pot of caribou. The hunters had caught some caribou as planned, but as they set back for home in their boat, the water had been too rough, and had washed them back ashore.

The ocean kept them ashore for a couple of days. At one point, they had attempted loading the caribou — which they hadn't yet skinned, in order to save time — into the boat, only to have them washed overboard. They had had to jump into the freezing water to rescue their catch. No wonder I tasted bits of salt water and sand in my share of ribs.

For unprotected humans, wet is dead. Getting soaked meant they had to hurriedly set up a tent, and wait while their clothes and gear dried out. By then, it had begun to snow, and the boat engine would not start due to freezing. They had started a fire on top of the engine, in order to thaw it out, but this had cost them precious fuel. It was not long before they were snowed in.

An extra pair of socks

While we were practicing patience at our end, they were doing the same at their end. In their wait, my father had cut up a wool army blanket to fashion himself an extra pair of duffel socks — not so much for warmth, but mostly as a back-up pair in case things got even worse. Using his hand as a measuring device, he had roughly estimated the design, and cut it with his pocket knife, sewing a pair of socks that fit him pretty well.

The hunters eventually decided to risk walking to King William Island — before it got too cold to walk, as winter was working its way in. This had originally been a trip by boat, without the dogs so crucial for overland travel. What had been intended as a short journey for supplies had turned into a major trek.

One of the hunters was an old man, wiry and built like an old wolverine, as tough and gnarly as they came. As aged as he was, even he summoned the stamina necessary to walk for three days — with a few sleep stops caught behind low rocks and hills as little covering against the scouring wind.

My father spoke in amazement at their return, of surprise at his own ability to survive as complete a disaster as anyone could face. They had walked over ice while encouraging each other not to fall asleep, succumbing to the cold-induced drowsiness.

They had had to share small meals, rotating sleep periods so that only one desperately exhausted man at a time could catnap before heading onward. Three days of continual walking — no shelter, no dogs, no water, no winter clothes, little sleep, little food, little fuel, bearing all of their equipment upon their own backs, navigating by wind and sun direction alone.

Showing off the socks

While my father related his experience, we took out a map to see what route he had taken. I calculated that they had walked a little over 210 kilometers — roughly 70 kilometers a day — mostly covering treacherous, freshly frozen sea ice and flat hard tundra.

"And these were the socks I made," my father said, bringing out the pair to show us.

That was when I starting laughing and laughing. I laughed so hard I was nearly crying. My father looked at me as though to ask: What's so funny?

Something had struck my funny bone. He had sewn the socks with a kind of clumsy stitch that looked more like that of a child. He had been okay at roughly estimating the shape, but as for the finer points such as sewing, he had not quite gotten it right. I should know, I thought, I've been sewing since before I can remember.

He grinned sheepishly, saying that I could have the socks for my doll's blanket.

Pijariiqpunga.

Recent happenings made me think of:

Inuvik, boarding school, was too far away for some children to fly home for Christmas. To compensate, the staff tried to make everything as festive as possible, with decorated Christmas trees, boughs of holly, gingerbread houses, and Christmas music over the PA system. We hung up our stockings on Christmas Eve, opened gifts. Christmas was the sole day on which we were we allowed to sleeping in — to 8:00 a.m.

After pancakes and maple syrup brunch, the rule forbidding fraternization with the dorm opposite us — the boys' — was relaxed to allow visits between family members, who ordinarily couldn't spend time with one another. It was always fun to see how sloppy the boys' dorm was in comparison to ours.

After a day of play, we prepared for bedtime with a good shower, trundling down in our house coats, once again, to the boys' dorm. In the gym was a "picture show." There, I got to see my half-sister and her older friends, who had me sit in their laps, sharing their treats with us younger girls.

There were several reels of Elvis Presley films, complete with singing, dancing, and horses. We knew all about sock hops, and were huge fans of Chubby Checker, teaching each other to twist and jive. We did "the swim," "shimmy,"the "monkey," and played with hula-hoops.

Such a memory had me laughing that:

Elvis was our ideal mate. We all thought, in our fantasy world, that Elvis was who we were going to marry when we grew up — just as we also knew that we could be part-time movie stars at night, and teachers or pilots during the day.

One of my friends really went around the bend with the whole Elvis crush thing, pretending the trees were Elvis, making us "kiss" him. She said we had to practice kissing, so that when the time really came, we wouldn't be embarrassed by not knowing how. "Like this," she instructed on her pillow.

So we practised smooching on our pillows and trees, mimicking the passionate embraces of the movie-stars. We didn't think much of boys, seeing as how they didn't seem to know very many answers to questions in class. Plus they were dirty, and played stupid games.

Females, on the whole, seemed a lot smarter and nicer than males. Except for Elvis. He played the guitar, danced better than anyone we had ever seen, and was the handsomest man on earth. And he was nice, because he sang to women in the movies.

The next man to make me feel that way was:

The former Prime Minister of Canada, Pierre Trudeau, was the only man to rival Elvis. During my high school years, my school-girl crush bordered on adoration.

Not only did Trudeau seem to possess all of Elvis' charm, but he was smart. He took on the media, and was loved in other countries. He made us all proud to be Canadians.

The highlight of that period of my life finally arrived when I got to meet him in person on a school trip. When he was introduced to us, he patted me on the head. I didn't wash my hair for a week, until my friends started to notice, pointing out that no man was worth that kind of dedication.

Dedication. I thought again of the North, where:

My crush faded, leaving me with something better in return: a touch of wisdom. And I am reminded of something Trudeau once said, of possible use today. I hope I've got it right:

"The price you pay for not getting involved is that you are governed by people lesser than yourselves."

Pijariiqpunga.

Christmas reminds us that no winter, whether of the land or of the soul, can last forever.

Drive walruses towards me — You Food Dish down there Below the ice! Send me gifts!

— Old Inuit Song

OTTAWA — Chances are that Christmas isn't what you think it is.

I'm not referring here to the misunderstood-meaning-of-Christmas" sort of theme you find in most articles around this time of year. You know the type: "We're all forgetting the true meaning of Christmas, which is not to give and get gifts, but to celebrate the birth of Jesus."

My own take on things is that a cultural event becomes whatever the culture seems willing to make of it, for good or ill. We all whine and complain about how commercialized Christmas has become, yet we all maintain the commercial climate by scrambling to purchase those gifts (oh, and how wretched we feel if we can't give and get what we want), dutifully arranging or attending those parties, painstakingly putting up those decorations, greedily devouring those dinners.

If Christmas is over-commercialized, there's no nasty, cigar-smoking enclave sitting in high corporate towers to blame for it all. We ourselves support the industry.

But I'm not writing about all of that! You see, I didn't mean that the meaning of Christmas is misunderstood, but that Christmas itself — or at least the seasonal holiday, whatever you want to call it — probably isn't actually what you think it is.

Interestingly, it took the early Church a few hundred years to eventually decide that Christmas was acceptable. After all, long before missionaries Christianized the Inuit, they first had most of the "Old World" to contend with, a veritable sea of ancient and very powerful beliefs and traditions.

At the time that Christianity first began to branch out into the world, the largest existing empire was Rome, whose major festival was the Saturnalia, observed throughout the empire on the 17th of December. Inuit probably could well have identified with the Saturnalia's activities: it was a time of riotous celebration, representing a culmination of all the harvesting work from earlier in the year, a time in which normal routines were disrupted for the sake of fun alone.

Presents were exchanged, all work activities ceased, slaves were temporarily freed, social and moral codes were loosened, and the entire population indulged in general play and feasting. Even when Christianity became the official religion of Rome, it was still impossible to abolish the Saturnalia.

Pagan festival Christianized

It was, however, possible to Christianize it, since the height of the festival was the "natalis invicti solis," a celebration of the birth of the sun in honour of Mithras, a popular died-and-reborn deity at once contending, identified, and confused with Christ.

As it turned out, it wasn't hard at all to Christianize the festival, requiring only a bit of replacement: Mithras was replaced with Christ; the birth of the sun became the birth of Christ (not to mention some celestial consistency by emphasizing the role of the star over Bethlehem); the agricultural celebration was replaced with the celebration of salvation for mankind; and the feasting and merry-making remained pretty much the same, since — let's face it — that's what human beings are really interested in.

This same trick of replacement turned out to be highly successful with other traditions, a sort of template for missionary efforts in regard to traditional, pre-winter festivals. It was a way of letting a people retain the activities crucial to their psychological and cultural well-being, while at the same time lionizing the Christian religion. In truth, the great pre-winter celebration is almost universal among human cultures, and for a good reason.

Whether hunter-gatherer or agriculturalist, the warmth of the more temperate seasons naturally allows for easier harvesting, fall signalling the time for haste in preparing for an inevitable and difficult winter. Just before winter, by the time supplies have been collected and prepared for the coldest, darkest period of the year, it is quite understandable that a people would want to relieve some tension by devouring any surplus available. They need to celebrate.

"Hey, look at all this stuff! We probably don't need all of it for winter. Why don't we eat some of it right now?"

Near the end of December — winter solstice — is pretty much acknowledged as the best time for such festivities, which is one of the reasons why even the Church, in the fourth century, bowed to cultural pressure and switched the date of Christmas to the 25th, instead of the earlier 6th of January.

Today, only Armenia and a few other areas still celebrate Christmas on January 6th. As I've already hinted, the pre-winter celebrations seem to have held the greatest significance for those cultures whose winters were the harshest, or who at least stood to lose the most from an especially cold and dark winter. Teutonic culture (which a lot of folks mistakenly refer to as "Vikings"), for example, held this to be the time of the "Asgardsreid," the time when their chief god Odin rode out across the earth, hunting down and killing monsters.

This time, also called the Yule, was not only for festivities, but also for honouring the ancestral spirits, so that houses were filled with lit lamps, evergreen boughs, and mistletoe — all important symbols of the persistence of life amidst death and chaos.

They took into their homes the few things that were capable of surviving the winter — which they believed was brought by monsters and giants — as a reminder that they too might be like the evergreens, small but tough; miniscule, and yet through some strange power resisting the onslaught of winter.

Quviasugvik

These symbols have held such power for Europeans over the centuries that they persist even today, on this continent, in the form of Christmas trees, lights, and boughs of fir and mistletoe. Even Inuit unknowingly honour such symbolism when they set up their Christmas trees and decorations.

But then the ancestors of Inuit would easily appreciate such celebrations. There is Inuit culture, enduring the worst winters of all, and right there in the best tradition of humanity with their own huge traditional celebration — Quviasugvik — before things get dark and dismal for the next few months. It is the Inuit culture's version of, "Hey, look at all the yummy stuff we caught this year. We know we need it for winter, but can't we just have a quick shot at it now, while the weather's still nice...?"

Is it any wonder, then, with such a tradition having existed among Inuit for so long before the arrival of Europeans, that Inuit understood and welcomed the "Christmas" season? Of all the bizarre things that Europeans and Inuit did not have in common, here finally was a tradition which — at its core — was common to both.

And this brings me to the point of this article: Whosoever you may be, please celebrate this season. Honour the faith that you call your own. Honour the culture that is yours. Dedicate your festivities to those you feel are deserving of it.

But whatever your outward ways and displays may be, understand that at the same time you are in the best company, in your own way following what may be one of the human race's oldest and most beautiful celebrations: the knowledge that no winter, whether of the land or of the soul, can last forever.

Pijariiqpunga.

It is a thing that has always been an especially great mystery to me. Will somebody please explain to me why my grandfather's life is stored in a museum, as a show of a quaint and "primitive" lifestyle?

It's as though someone were to walk into your house, to begin a room-to-room search, bagging or boxing anything they think would look interesting to other people — your TV, dishes, books, couch, the stuff of everyday life.

Each time I open an encyclopedia in any language, there is my grandfather: stalking a seal, running a dogteam, carving, smoking his pipe. There is a sort of Cigar Store Indian feel to the whole thing.

I wish I could express to southerners how it feels to watch some blowzy, gold- and jewel-bedecked, middle-class female looking at photos of your grandfather, gesticulating with one hand, and commenting dryly,

"Those kamiks, they are late Igloolik, no?" as though it were a wine-tasting festival.

"And this fish liester, what is it made from, ivory or musk-ox antler?"

They never seem to want to hear that, as a child, I was forced to stay indoors for many hours while such "period pieces" were painstakingly staged and shot by photographers who felt that us children should not be included because we did not look "Inuit" enough — whatever the hell that means.

"What was the name of your Earth Goddess? Every tribe has one, you know."

"How exactly did Inuit nature shrines look?"

"You people are so surprisingly interesting..."

And the worst comment of all, presented under the mask of a compliment, yet repulsive in the cultural assumption it betrays concerning Inuit education:

"You speak such good English!"

What should I say? "Thank you?"

Don't get me wrong. I value a genuine interest, by non-Inuit, in Inuit culture and language — and thrill at addressing some of the more thoughtful of the numerous questions I receive by e-mail from all around the world. I think most Inuit would be surprised at the level of interest in their lifestyle shown by people as distant as Polynesia, Russia, France, Australia, Mexico, even the Middle East.

Just the other day, I fielded a great question from a school in the States: "Down here, our exposed faces get cold in the winter. How do Inuit prevent this?"

I can't very well ignore such questions. After all, I myself am fascinated by other cultures. Truth, as the saying goes, is stranger than fiction, and although I enjoy fiction in various forms, there are few writers who can anticipate the peculiarities of many alternate lifestyles — the tribe in Eastern Africa, for instance, who when invaded by thousands of enormous caterpillars, holds a gigantic village feast upon them!

It is important, I believe, for Inuit to understand that — while they may view many other cultures as odd and fascinating — such cultures in turn share the same feelings toward them.

But it is one thing to view other cultures as equal yet fascinatingly exotic — and an altogether different thing to thing to view them from the stance of a superior regarding an inferior.

Condescension — racism with a smile — is more obvious than our blowzy middle-class female believes. Such characters may be surprised to learn that not only are Inuit aware of when they are being talked down to, but also that it is obvious to them when someone possesses only puerile knowledge — Inuit trivia displayed for the sake of vanity.

In other words, Inuit can tell when someone is bullshitting them.

Eternally, I am grateful for the meager handful of non-Inuit who labour so that Inuit may be heard in their own voices, their stories and thoughts told in their own words.

So many non-Inuit, since so long ago, seem instead to want to tell Inuit what they are, rather than letting Inuit tell of themselves. Does it take so much to simply let people be?

Pijariiqpunga.

What many Inuit children have had to go through has been nothing short of trial by fire: a school system that did not reflect their reality.

OTTAWA — She was doing it again.

This time, she had my little sister up in front of the classroom, yelling at the girl until she was turning flaming red in the face, wringing an answer out of her through the torture of an emotional thrashing.

It had been arithmetic all morning for all of us. By now, having absorbed some dark, pedagogic energy, the hyperventilating teacher had degraded into the likeness of a rabid hippopotamus. I had seen such spectacles before, of course, in those too-common times when she had failed to extract the "correct" answer from some unfortunate soul.

In retrospect, the problem — as I see it — might have been that she was trying to teach several grades simultaneously, or perhaps was overworked and suffered from a lack of organizational skills.

An excuse?

I have to be honest here. I don't think, in all the years that I have attended school, that I have encountered one single, solitary teacher who did as much damage as that woman did.

Taught to be inferior

What had she been thinking, I wonder? Did she even care? I remember the Inuit children breaking down and crying when they didn't understand what was required of them — when they wanted to please, yet couldn't provide an answer because of the way in which it was requested of them. Nevertheless, they were portrayed as stupid, lazy, inferior.

On this day, the woman had targeted my sister. Although my sister was fairly outgoing, bright and cheerful, it was not a good idea to be confrontational with her — the girl had a temper (but, then again, so do I).

I remember sitting there, thinking that either the teacher was really insensitive or was simply unable to understand that her methods weren't working.

There was a third possibility, as well — one that I was loathe to entertain, but it still called from the back of my brain, like an unwanted dog that insists upon following you around.

The thought was that there might be something wrong with the teacher's mental health. Not that she was crazy, but only that she was... missing something, that she was... unhealthy. She would do things like bend over and repeat someone's name:

"Louis, Louis, Louis...," or, "Sammy, Sammy, Sammy...," while at the same time hitting herself on the leg. Then she would let out an unhealthy rasp, throwing her hands up in the air. Often, the violence of this gesture sent paper scattering in all directions. None of us would even look at each other, let alone say or do anything.

Until one day.

I'll never forget what happened. How could I? It was burned into my brain that day as vividly as a scorch left behind by the flash of ignited grease.

I don't know if I have ever told my sister how proud I was of her. I don't think I told her, because she had been very young and was just starting out in the school system.

The teacher had been making the girl erase every one of her math answers left on the board. No matter what answer my sister left, it was always mocked by the teacher — nothing could please her.

The teacher made it clear that these were not mistakes, but signs of stupidity, indications of ignorance that — like the way an animal may reveal to you its nature by leaving tracks behind it to read in the snow — was a sign of racial, or personal, inferiority.

My sister endured as much as any student had ever endured — at first. Then it continued, and continued, until it was obvious that my sister was deliberately being forbidden to take her seat in order to entertain the teacher — endlessly writing and erasing answer after answer — only so that her ego, the very core of a small child, could stand there, shamed and bared, for the rest of the class to witness.

Fighting back

Then, the breaking point. Without warning, my sister wheeled about. Her only weapon, ironically, was the very tool of her shame, the chalk eraser.

With a great cry, she hurled it at the teacher. She couldn't miss. My father had made all of my siblings and myself practice stone-throwing, intended for hunting ptarmigan. But it was just as effective for hunting tyrannical teachers.

The eraser struck the teacher dead center, throwing up a great cloud of dust that seemed to conceal her for a moment. Then there was only silence as the dust cleared, revealing the shocked teacher standing there with great, ghostly patterns of white chalk from end to end of the itchy-looking wool sweater that she always wore.

In a sense, you could say these patterns might be considered my sister's final mathematical solution, since she avoided math forever after.

Personally, it was not the throw (although it was a good one) that impressed me quite so much as my sister's cry of defiance — such a roar originating from such a small girl. She might as well have been some predator's cub, rather than a tiny human, and I'm sure that if she had possessed fangs, they would have been bared.

And I know it impressed everyone else as well, for not a word was said afterward, not by the students, nor even by the teacher herself. I seem to remember the class simply filing out in silence.

As proud as I was of my sister, the episode made me dread the rest of the year, for there was no getting away from this teacher. Surprisingly though, relations between us and this teacher were rather cold and quiet ever after. Perhaps the teacher had become afraid to push someone else too far, fearing that she might have more than a chalk eraser directed at her next time.

Myself? I made a point of trying never to bring attention to myself, for the teacher had revealed herself to be unstable. I neither excelled at nor failed any of my lessons with her.

I made sure there was never an opportunity to have direct eye contact with her, and even held my breath as she walked down the rows to check our work. I was as quiet as a mouse, even in the times when she sent us to do her morning dishes before classes began.

But I never ceased to wonder about her. Other adults, often priests or ministers, visited our school from time to time. Whenever such guests were present, the teacher was all sugar-and-spice, nothing but pleasant smiles as the guests lectured us on how much more wonderful Europe was than the Canadian Arctic, how there were so many cultures in the world, and how Inuit culture look primitive by comparison.

Weren't we lucky that we had been saved by Europeans from our savage existence? And all throughout such lectures, our teacher projected nothing but than peace and stability.

So was she ever truly unstable? She seemed to curb her behaviour in the presence of other adults, especially parents.

But neither my sister nor myself ever regained an interest in math. It was an cursed subject after that, promising only more shame and abuse. In a sense, we feared it.

The good news was that the experience had brought us closer, and my admiration for my sister's defiance — especially at such a young age — evoked from me great respect and loyalty toward her.

No one could say a bad word about her for quite a while after that, and no one touched her without incurring my wrath — not even the kids from other schools, many of whom hated us to such an extent that they hunted us after school hours, carrying as weapons old boards with nails in them. (Ah, the things parents never know about their childrens' so-called "simple" school life.)

Yet there was no way that we or others could know that our chalk-befouled teacher amounted to only the beginning of the educational system and its horrors in store for Inuit students.

Egos under siege

The true battles — the really insidious ones — came later, in high school, and in college, as the system sought to grind down and rewrite our identities, our history, our culture, our language, the free and fundamental right to have a say in our own destiny.

And most importantly: to be free as Inuit — not as "the natives," wards of the state, as though we were merely remnants of some bygone, prehistoric era, extinct, but too ignorant to realize it.

Granted, despite my complaints, there is nothing like being embattled, your ego under constant siege, for building a strong sense of self. Hard times develop character.

But what many Inuit children have had to go through has been nothing short of trial by fire: an school system that did not reflect their reality; being taught in a language different from that of their parents; being told that they are the inheritors of mere wretchedness; praying for and to a monarch who is nothing more than a name.

For the record: the final, greatest trial, is not what happens to yourself as you are abused, but watching what happens to those you love — your siblings — as they are gradually worn down until, tired of fighting, the light in their eyes gradually dims, flickers, and dies.

One day, I found and examined an old photo of our class, from one of the years when, admittedly, we had had an excellent teacher. Counting, I tallied the number of students in that class.

As though freezing water were suddenly trickling down my back, I came to the realization that less than half the people in that class had survived. The majority had fallen to alcoholism, drug abuse, accidental death, suicide.

And there is my sister today. I don't know exactly what it was that eventually caused her to lose her light; what burden she had to carry that eventually got too heavy for her. I would like to say that she has had a good life, as I have seen her go through good times.

But, in some way, she has been a casualty in a battle that she never enlisted for. Maybe at some point she lost her roar. I would give anything to hear her spirit let out one more sound. I'm sure she has it in her somewhere. Even if it were a squeak.

Pijariiqpunga.

There exists across the Arctic a special myth, a story that in its multitudinous forms epitomizes the very wellspring of Inuit fears — and our awe of the elements. It is a myth that is fun and ferocious, that joins the past with the present, that can elicit primal dread even in today's jaded times.

This is the story of Nuliajuk, or Niviaqsi, the woman below the waves. She is not a goddess, but rather a special creature of fear and tragedy.

In this first of three articles, I shall tell the first half of her story as it is most commonly known. In the second, I shall finish the story — then discuss its variations from culture to culture. In the third, I shall discuss the impact of this strange being upon Inuit traditions.

Taitsumaniguuq:

Once, there lived a beautiful girl, who dwelt along the shore with her mother and father. She loved her parents dearly, but this very virtue was at once her downfall.

When she came of age, her parents realized that it was time that their daughter had a mate. The girl was resistant, however. She knew that having a husband would force her to move away from her parents, a prospect she dreaded.

Time and again, the parents arranged to introduce their daughter to prospective suitors — fine young hunters of high skill. She rejected all of them, however, citing dubious reasons: this one's clothes were sewn funny; that one's sled was too short.

The frustration of the parents was exceeeded only by the girl's own obstinacy, so that in time the parents resigned themselves to the idea that their daughter would never marry. Consequently, they were overjoyed when one sunny day a handsome youth rode into their camp. The stranger's clothes and tools were of the finest craftsmanship, and his dogs were robust and numerous.

Without hesitation, he asked for their daughter as his bride, and for once, the finicky girl seemed smitten with him. In that same day, the two rode away as man and wife. The parents were very pleased.

Over the hills and across the ice, through storms and blinding sunlight, the young couple rode for days on end. During this time, the husband would say little, so that the girl grew increasingly concerned as each day crept by. Yet whenever she pressed her new husband for their destination, he would cryptically answer,

"Home...."

Such answers gnawed at the girl, but her fears were allayed when the youth reigned his dogs in at the edge of a strange and windswept coast. Far in the distance, over fitful waters, she could barely see a small island on the horizon.

Her husband wordlessly gestured toward a small umiaq (boat) waiting near the shore. Reticent, yet fearing the wrath of her husband, she scurried toward the craft and silently climbed inside.

Within moments, her husband had also climbed in and was rowing them across the darkening waters. For some hours he rowed, while hideous birds swirled and screamed overhead. The island loomed on the horizon.

Eventually, the tiny boat approached the edge of that island, with its stark contours, and stones that stood like brooding sentries over the patches of hideous, grey-green lichens. Near the center of that isle, on the highest ground, lay a singular oddity: a blackened hut that squatted like some fetid carcass among numerous piles of ancient bones and refuse.

And as the girl, her husband leading her onward, approached that loathsome hovel that she knew could only be intended as her new home and wedding bed, she suddenly found herself unable to proceed, pausing in sheer revulsion.

It was then that her husband, sensing her horror, wheeled about to regard her. Without a reason to maintain the masquerade, he stripped away his hood and goggles, revealing not the face of any handsome youth — a hunter and husband — but only the nightmare features of a hateful tuurngaq, twisting and leering from the depths of the dwarfish and malformed mass that served as a head.

And as the spirit reached out its arms to gather her up in its matrimonial embrace, the parentless girl screamed and screamed her despair, in futile breaths that were swept up and lost upon the uncaring winds.

Pijariiqpunga (for Part One)

OTTAWA — We were finally seeing the secret collection.

For about a month now, there had been whispered gossip that a friend of my father, a distant uncle really, owned a secret collection. This collection, it was said, was comprised entirely of photographs of nude women. Rumour had it that he had purchased them while in the army.

The nudity itself wasn't an item of curiousity. Unlike many other cultures, Inuit did not regard the naked form — male or female — as a focus for either lust or scandal. A human being without clothes was only that: an unclothed person. Boring.

Nor did Inuit ever idolize the human form in a Renaissance manner, as an object of beauty or perfection. In fact, Inuit never seem to have been concerned with nudity at all, and if you examine some of the oldest Inuit lore — the legends and myths — you will find that wherever there does arise any hint of eroticism, it is entirely unrelated to nudity. It is as though nudity has no relation to eroticism whatsoever.

No, our fascination with my uncle's collection had nothing to do with the idea that his pornographic images were at all "dirty," an idea that did not exist in Inuit culture. Instead, we were wondering why someone would be interested in such imagery. We wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

Bizarre and freakish

To tell you the truth, the idea of lusting after some pictures all seemed rather silly. We wanted to see the collection because it was bizarre, freakish, and thus we might learn the reason why he bothered to own it.

"You know you can buy anything with money in America," my uncle told us as he opened up his suitcase. "You can even buy people, or ask them to do anything for you." He was always going on about his travels to America with the army; for some reason, that land and its excesses held a special fascination for him.

The suitcase was now open, and there they were, piled right on top of his clothes and his bugle. (That was the other weird thing — that he owned a bugle and was a "pisiti," skillful one, at playing it.)

There were the naked ladies.

We had assumed that he would pass the photos around, and show pride in them; but when he reached into the case, he only tiredly shuffled the photos around a bit with his hand, feigning indifference, perhaps trying to seem worldly and thus bored at the sight.

Peering over his shoulder, you could easily see that the rumours were true — they were in fact photos of naked women. It is only now, with my adult sensibilities, that when I think back upon that time it occurs to me that my uncle was sort of hoping we would be shocked by what we saw.

He himself, having travelled abroad, had already absorbed the southern concept of pornography. In a sense, he was now bragging about how the world and its diversity, its bizarre entertainments, had altered him. Made him wiser, he hoped? Perhaps we would admire him?

At the time, we lacked the cultural basis upon which to label the photos smut — so they were, unfortunately for my hopeful uncle, neither shocking nor offensive. Now, ironically, they are not exceedingly offensive by today's standards either.

Pornography based on cultural cues

What was then considered pornography is relatively common in modern media. Whatever various religious or political moralists may have to say about it, the popular acceptability of the naked form continues to skyrocket, and one has only to crack open the average mainstream magazine or peer at a common television commercial to see a great deal of proudly paraded flesh.

But such parades, while veiled as an acknowledgement of the beauty of the human body, are most often displayed in a seductive context, as though whoever watches the commercial or the magazine ad — whether male or female — is expected to be aroused by the sight of the bare skin.

Whatever you may think of it morally, right or wrong, it is important to remember that such methods — such flesh parades — are entirely based upon cultural cues. If you haven't been taught that something is smut, then there is no smut. If you haven't been reared with the concept of pornography, then pornography does not exist.

To my child's mind, there was nothing really memorable or striking about the naked photos. They seemed to pose a greater mystery than ever. Southern men collected these, just as my uncle had?

Hilarious poses

The photos were glossy black and white prints. The women in them, typically, had very light hair and skin. Mostly, they shared similar features: long wavy hair, small noses, shiny lipstick, large bouncy looking breasts, overly long legs, and mostly pudgy, somehow doughy-looking arms — as though the women didn't work very hard.

They had painted fingernails and toenails that gleamed under harsh lights. And although they were shown naked, they didn't seem at all cold. A lot of the photos featured exposed breasts, but these were hardly scandalous in a culture where babies were openly breast-fed.

The really hilarious thing about the pictures were the poses of the women: with their legs and hips were all twisted around, and their chests stuck out. They were what in our culture was known as "qaqajuq," what little kids do when they are trying to gain attention by deliberately acting cute and adorable, wriggling and jumping around so that adults will notice them.

Well, the family wasn't sure what to think of uncle's collection, but he was sure to expect great teasing about it, especially from us kids. Maybe he should have kept it to himself. Everyone just wrote the collection off as one of uncle's personal idiosyncrasies, one of the many quirks he had picked up as a result of being in the army.

Of course we asked uncle why he had the photos. He wouldn't say. We finally left it alone, figuring it was some silly personal thing we couldn't understand — his own isuma, his private thoughts.

But that fact didn't stop us from mercilessly teasing him about it. He suffered for about a month or so, and it started a kind of taunting war between us brats and our uncle. We would of course ask any visitors who happened along: would they like to see all our uncle's girlfriends? He would in turn avenge himself upon me by chanting whenever I was sullen or crabby:

"Raigilliujunniiqputiit qinutuungugaviit (you are no longer Raigili — Rachel — as you are always crabby)."

"I'm going to spit in your bugle!" I would yell, knowing how precious it was to him — somehow sensing the unspoken link between the instrument and the naked ladies. He would respond in kind by singing,

"This one is to be left at the floe edge," summoning forth primordial fears of infanticide.

It was never a lasting battle, though. I was a fickle enemy. Truce was always declared when he gave me a pack of spearmint gum.

Those times were at the end of our long journey to Spence Bay. We had spent months living in a tent over rough ice, and would soon be en route to Gjoa Haven, where my father, a new minister, was to start up his church.

Cultural confusion

Secure in my child's world, where any person's eccentricities were merely silly and amusing, I could not feel the sadness for my uncle that I now do. For my uncle was a man who had somewhere lost his understanding of what culture he should call his own, and had thus lost sight of where to see himself as belonging.

In later years, I learned that my uncle was not the only Inuk who had been trained by the armed forces — which I had viewed as a sort of aberration. Shockingly, so had my father, as well as several uncles and hunters whom I knew.

My father's training had occurred at the tail end of World War II, when the military had built a sort of militia out of Inuit men, for the purpose of fighting in cold environments. The Inuit soldiers were trained and given .303 rifles, and in fact a ship was suppposed to pick them up, to bring them to God only knows where.

But, luckily, that ship did not show up, and another potentially disastrous episode in post-colonial Inuit history was averted.

Such knowledge went a long way to making me paranoid, and my overactive child's imagination and only partial understanding of the world grasped hold of it, giving me terrific nightmares. What, I wondered, if my father been killed in the war and I hadn't been born?

Or, worse, what if I had been born and not known my father? What if I had been an orphan, or an unwanted child? It was suddenly not a far stretch to my uncle's songs of being left at the floe edge...

But unlike my father, my uncle was a soldier who had travelled abroad. The army had become his culture, reworking him in its own image, as is an army's function. Taking him from the Arctic, from the Land, it had given him the experience of new lands and alternate forms of knowledge. Somewhere, at some time, it had given him his beloved bugle — and the ever silly suitcase full of naked ladies.

Why then, in his worldliness, had he returned to us? He took pains to seem so macho and jaded, and yet craved acceptance from our closed little family from the East.

Unfortunately, such acceptance was the one thing that his own new, strange ways would continually block. Although he was always a good hunter — something ever valued among Inuit — he remained what we considered "soft," preoccupied with scented colognes, and obsessed with having his hair perfectly slicked into place with some sort of cream.

We were living in Spence Bay at that time. My father was from Cape Dorset, as were my immediate cousins and other assorted relatives. We were "modern" and "capable" Inuit, considering ourselves to be complex and sophisticated, yet possessed of tremendous traditional knowledge. We were of the proud seacoast peoples.

A new culture

It occurs to me that my uncle, too, had still retained pride in our lifestyle — the lifestyle that had once been his before the army, before his travels, before the suitcase of naked ladies. But he had been given a new culture, one that in comparison to ours seemed to him far richer and more advanced.

And yet he had left it to seek our culture once again, after having returned, after finding that he was no longer the same person, the hunter that he had been before the army. Instead, he had come to exist in two separate and distinct spheres of culture, spheres that he could not reconcile.

When living his Inuit life, he would find himself suddenly craving the life of a soldier and a traveller. When living his worldly life, he would suddenly crave the old life, the life on the Land. Caught in between worlds, he could be happy in neither, and thus had built for himself a sort of cultural purgatory.

We never saw the naked ladies again, and after a while even lost interest in the subject. We were content in our lifestyle, but my poor uncle never did quite manage to fit in. He, like his collection, remained a sort of oddity, existing somewhere in the twilight. But he was loved, and perhaps that is all that matters in the end.

And I can still remember his bugle — the sound of which we all enjoyed and which thrilled him to no end — signalling our bedtime with the playing of Taps, resounding into the long, cold night.

Pijariiqpunga.

The dog team somehow knew that I had been left in charge. They formed the last link in a chain of watching. They watched me, while I watched a seagull noisily calling and swooping at my father, who in turned watched the seal he was stalking.

Damn that stupid seagull, anyway. He wouldn't shut up. Not only was the bird the source of my headache, but he was jeopardizing the hunt itself. It was as though the seal was his buddy, as though he were trying to warn the creature before my father could get within rifle range.

"Great," I thought, "we're miles from nowhere, and being harassed by some crazy bird. No seal for us..."

And to top it all off, glaring at that dark dot — which I actually doubted was a seal — was beginning to give me snow-blindness. The glaring landscape was burning itself into my retina, and I was starting to see small black dots when I blinked. My thirst was still with me, and I thought it would surely kill me before my father finally ever nailed the seal.

The one thing that served as a pleasant distraction was my wonder at how patient my father was, stalking in the slush and the layer of melt water over the ice.

The bird's deliberate attempt to sabotage his stalk was obvious now, and it was only by luck or some unknowable circumstance that the seal had thus far not comprehended the gull's warning cries.

I tightened my grip on the sled, remembering that it would shoot out like a bullet when the dogs heard the rifle shot. I myself would have only two choices at that moment: either to hold on with all my strength, or be lost like untied supplies.

Suddenly, the dogs sat bolt upright. They executed a little shuffle forward, leaning, as though they were getting ready to pounce. To my eyes, however, nothing had changed in the scene before me. My father was a bit closer, the gull was still crying out, and the seal still lay there, oblivious to his own looming peril.

Yet, even though they were mere dogs, the qimmiit were vastly more experienced hunters than I. They had intuitively sensed that my father was getting in position to shoot. It was a good thing that I hadn't been lost too deeply in daydreaming, as I would have otherwise missed their sudden anticipation, their movements that rippled with furious energy. Instantly, I seized the sled anchor, ready to release it — as was my duty — and to bounce along on the inevitably insane hurtling movement of the sled speeding forward.

I heard the crack of the rifle, and we all stiffened, just before I realized that the dark dot was now moving. I watched, numbly, as the seal slipped forward, disappearing into its hole.

My father had missed.

When we reached him a few minutes later, he was fuming. He furiously whipped off his anorak and swore,

"Huqutaungittupanalulluk!" (Roughly translated, it means, "Damn that stupid thing!")

"That seagull warned the seal just as I was ready to shoot!"

So it had not been my imagination.

Pijariiqpunga (for Part Two).

"Where are your glasses?" my father asked irritably.

"I left them at home."

"Put my extra ones on."

He folded the screen he had used for stalking the seal, then pulled off his hip-waders and told me to fetch his sealskin boots - special boots, having water-tight stitching, and strips skin sewn onto the bottoms for traction.

"Ataataak, I'm hungry." I flopped over on the caribou-covered seat, where I had been sitting, to dramatize my starvation. Being a child, I possessed an innate sense of exaggeration.

"Well, if you're hungry, get some tunnuq from the grub-box. And get me a tea from the thermos, and some bannock." He rubbed cream on his nose. Unlike myself, he had fair skin, and his long nose froze in the winter and burned in the spring. I had once made him a caribou nose warmer, which he even politely wore for a while (and probably quickly removed when I was not within sight.)

My father had decided on a little break before heading on. Just because he had missed this seal didn't mean that the hunt was over. While I munched away, he wandered off, presumably because he didn't want me to see his anger.

At some point, I napped on the sled, dreaming vaguely of seagulls. I thought that I was awakened by the sound of a .22, but I concluded that I had simply been dreaming.

My father came back in much better spirits, squatting down for some tea. I kept waiting for him to comment on the seagull that had ruined his stalk, but he would not. I wondered if seagulls always did that....

I knew what came next, a tougher and more dangerous trek to the open water. The dreaded flow-edge. Large cracks had formed. Seals sometimes fed on the cod that were abundant there. It was extremely dangerous. There, the dogteam sometimes became overexcited, dragging the sled into the black, open water.

It did not take us long to arrive.

My father patiently led the dogteam through a narrow path alongside the winding ice-cracks. It looked to me that if we were any closer to the water, we would be in it. The snow was hardest nearest the edge, softest away from it. It was difficult to avoid the water without becoming mired in the melting banks of snow. Still, the dogs pulled us on, until my father noticed a spot wide enough for seals to come up through the cracks for air.

The next phase of the hunt began, and there I was again, waiting forever in a silent hell of boredom.

I had thought that at least waiting for seals to surface would be less tedious than stalking, but I was wrong. The peculiar density of the water surface was breaking up the light into hypnotic patterns, and soon I was fighting to stay awake. I bit the insides of my cheeks in order to keep my attention on the hunt, for if I failed to control the dogs while my father waited ready with his rifle, no seal would surface long enough for a shot.

My hands and feet were going numb....

Suddenly, my father leveled his rifle with blinding swiftness. Two shots cracked out before I could realize what was happening. Klack! Klack! Just like that, it was all over.

He lifted his harpoon and thrust it into the side of a seal, now floating lifeless in the ice crack. I barely gathered my wits in time to keep the idiot dogs from leaping into the water. Like me, the less experienced qimmiit were still in training.

Later, when we were butchering the seal and my father was showing me the anatomical parts of the animal, I made a joke about the seagull who had warned the first seal, the one that my father had missed as a result.

My father smiled grimly, and said that such a thing would never happen again.

"Why not?" I asked.

"I put out a warning for other seagulls," he said.

Getting up and walking over to where he had pointed, I saw the warning he had provided for future birds that might think to cross him.

A dead seagull.

Pijariiqpunga.

Once, there was a time when I had to be an extra African. Honest.

It was when I was at college. My West African roommate, Lydia, was trying to organize a cultural dance and song performance for the school. There were few other students of her ethnicity, so she was forced to improvise. Such improvisation consisted of badgering myself and Tessa (my other room-mate) for days, urging us to pretend at being African for her show.

"Come on, you'll be great."

"How can I learn all those dances in time?" I complained.

"Look, I'll do the singing, you and Tessa can mouth along, and I'll teach you the steps."

"Yeah right. My shoulders can't even move like that." I was referring to the way in which she wanted us to push our shoulders in and out rapidly, while getting our feet to do something altogether different. Please note: it was not that I was lazy. I was studying ja dancing at the time, so I had some limited experience in choreography. It was just that the African dance movements were somehow ... foreign, strange to my nervous system.

"It's easy", Lydia would continually say, grabbing my arms and forcing me into rhythm. "Like this ... move your bust up and down." Then she would sing. As I remember it, the words went something like,

"Gelete imole, a-koso ele imole. Alala obaiyo me, a-koso ele imole."

In the "ele imole" parts, I was to rock my elbows forward and back, then step, step again, do a kind of difficult heel-toe thing, then repeat it all over again on the opposite side.

Lydia would cheer even the most minor resemblance of proper form. But when she performed it, the dance was like watching a fish swimming. It was fluid, ephemeral.

With me, it looked more like a car moving on square wheels. Clunk, clank-a-clunck. My arms were waving around like a drowning man.

She was patient, though, ever insisting that I try again. "This time," she would say, "try doing it without sticking out your butt. Tuck it in like this," she would demonstrate.

I must have gotten something right, in time enough for her cultural presentation. I think Tessa and I even learned enough of the song to fake an enthusiastic facsimile. The students loved our show — I think.

Afterwards, Lydia was understandably proud of herself. And of us.

"You look just like a Mulatto!" she beamed.

"What's a Mulatto?"

She explained that it was a light-coloured African as a result of intermarriage.

That made sense. In the summer, my whole family gets quite dark within a short time of exposure to the sun. I'm coffee-coloured to begin with, so my skin always has a head start in terms of tanning easily. As a joke, I've often been able to pass myself off as Philippino, Spanish, Polynesian, Korean, or any other mildly dark-skinned person. Of course, having multi-varied friends as templates has been helpful, as well. I guess my repertoire could now include Mulatto.

One of the things that I have always found to be somewhat insidious about the politically correct movement is its tendency to portray humanity as one great hive, a featureless and homogeneous mass wherein uniformity defines perfection. Personally, I cannot stand uniformity, and I thrill at the countless differences between the cultures of humanity. Intermingling and interlearning can only strengthen any individual, and a society of strengthened individuals is ultimately a stronger society. Do we really want humans to adopt the politics of birds, wherein the collective pecking of the flock keeps each member in order?

Humanity's colours shame the rainbow. It is in difference — not sameness — that mankind stands midway between animal and god.

After the show, Lydia presented me with a gift. She had had her mother sew a hand-made, traditional batik outfit, made to measure for me. It was stunningly beautiful. Of course, I wore it so frequently that it started to mold itself to my body shape. The only time that I did not wear it was when I went to sleep. For that I had a "lungi" from India.

But that is another story.

Pijariiqpunga.

There are few things as personal as deciding what one considers acceptable to eat.

I'm writing this because someone recently mailed me to asking what a warble fly larva — a delicacy in some parts of the Arctic — is called in Inuktitut.

I supplied the name, tuktuup kumanga, which translates roughly as "caribou lice." I must confess that I have never partaken of the little critters, and probably never will. For those of you who are fond of them, bon appetit!

I cannot judge. My own criteria for what is edible is completely arbitrary, having a sort of private logic. For example, I will not eat whale meat — it's too much like eating a sentient being. Paradoxically, muktaaq, the skin of the whale, is one of my favourite delicacies.

For similar reasons of apparent sentience, I could never eat horse, cat, raccoon, dog, or wolf meat — though all are savoured somewhere in the world.

There are some foods that at best turn me off due to alien colour or consistency, and others that are just plain disgusting. The "off-putting" list mainly consists of: yellow custard (which reminds me of something so fantastically gross that it can't even be mentioned here), canned beans, sauerkraut, coleslaw, and those weird supermarket jelly salads that have marshmallows in them. I label such things, "Oscar the Grouch food."

However, the infinitely disgusting list (or what I like to call, "What were you thinking?" foods) consists only of the various beetle and worm delicacies that are popular the world 'round. I would like to say that the worst are the sort that are eaten raw, but even the cooked ones compensate in hideousness by thrashing about as they are prepared.

But there are always variations, special conditions for each animal. Snakes and other reptiles I could probably handle, depending upon which body part I was eating. Same goes for anything from the sea. I even promise to try it raw, if it is traditionally consumed that way.

Speaking of sea and raw, I love sushi (that's where my dollars go when I feel like a treat), not only because it reminds me of my own native foods, but also because of the ambiance and relaxing surroundings of Japanese restaurants.

Polar bear: I can eat only a bit of it before it becomes too much for me.

Caribou and Arctic char: I can never get enough of them, in whatever state they come in — dried, aged, frozen, whatever.

Seal: It has to be young — not a smelly old bull. And I prefer it fresh, as opposed to aged.

Walrus: I can handle about one bite. Some of my friends are walrus meat addicts, but I was simply not brought up on it.

Rabbits: They just look too much like little people when they're skinned. Besides, I'm allergic to white meat (at Christmas dinners, I have to specifically request dark turkey meat).

All in all, except when my weird imagination kicks in, I think I can try just about anything safe to eat. But before I finish, I would like to address one strange food item whose origins have always pu led me. That is milk.

Don't you think it's a bit weird that many peoples of the world have adapted to gathering and consuming cow milk? What I'm essentially asking is: how and why did someone key on to this? It's difficult to imagine someone — anyone, no matter how eccentric — taking the first sip and saying to the others, "This tastes pretty good, you should try it."

Eating beef I can understand. A cow even looks like it would taste good. I remember, however, when I saw a cow on a farm for the first time; after watching them walking in their own poo, I couldn't eat beef for a while.

But I'm fully recovered now. Now that it's summer, I can't get steaks on the barbecue grill fast enough. But I just don't get it with the milk.

As a final note, I can understand eating veggies and fruit quite well. They're not only tasty, but they look good as well, so if you're not going to eat them right away, you can use them as decoration for your kitchen. Fortunately, fruit is a delicacy in any culture. Apple anyone?

Pijariiqpunga.

How could I get through to this little kid?

"It's okay to fight back against big kids."

"But father said never to fight," he sputtered passed his tears. His long eye-lashes were sticking together, and his big brown eyes were encircled with moisture.

Danny was a soft-hearted sweety. He wouldn't have hurt a fly. He was like a little angel on loan to us. He didn't possess the natural toughness that even his younger brother, Taqaugaq, possessed.

Such thoughts were cut short as I suddenly noticed a bruise swelling up on his cheek. I instantly saw red.

"Who did this to you?" I demanded, more harsh than I needed to be.

"Please don't fight them back." I quickly wrung from him a name, that of a girl whom I'll call "Jane."

Hiding my true feelings, I assured him that I would not seek vengeance (secretly, my head spun with thoughts of retribution). Nobody, but nobody, touches my precious little brother and gets away with it. Even if I had to pay with jail time, I was ready.

Many times in the past, when I myself was attacked by bigger kids, I had swallowed my pride and refused to fight. Not today. I was going to get Jane for this — somehow, somewhere.

My fury was so all-consuming that it drove me, robot-like, toward Jane's tent. "Look at how stupid her family is," I muttered venomously, "tying their dogs too far up on the shore, where they can't even get fresh water." The words "tied up" reverberated through my head.

I seized some rocks, flinging them at the helpless dogs. They yelped and tried to dodge away. With each stone, I spat out, "How do you like it when it's your turn to be helpless!? I hope this one breaks your leg!"

"Hey, what are you doing?"

I wheeled about to see that a man had stepped out of what I had thought was an empty tent.

"Don't throw rocks at those dogs! What are you doing?" he asked in shock.

I turned to go, making no effort to hide my contempt.

"Come back here! I have something for you!" he shouted after me.

Reluctantly, I shuffled back to him.

"Come inside," he gestured, seating himself on a platform. He gave me a bowl of rice pudding, and some tea. After I had taken a few mouthfuls, he said quietly,

"You must never mistreat dogs."

"I was mad." I glared at him. "Jane was beating my brother. I didn't like it."

"Is that a reason to hit a helpless animal?"

I responded with silence.

"Do you want me to talk to Jane's parents, get them to tell her not to fight?"

Before I could think of an answer, I was startled by Jane herself, who suddenly walked into the tent. To my horror, she addressed the man as "uncle." He asked her to sit on the platform with him.

"You must not fight," he told us. "You are children who know better." He watched us carefully. I tried not to stare as tears escaped Jane's eyes.

"Gee, you're tough," I sneered in my mind, "why don't you snivel like a little baby?"

"And as for you, it wasn't right to throw rocks at the dogs, even if you were angry. Their dog spirit would not have liked it and would extract justice from you. Animals must never be mistreated, even the mosquitoes. They have a spirit too. If you're angry, come to me and talk about it. That is the wise way. You will learn wisdom if you control your feelings and talk about them instead of hurting others. That is not right, and it is not for Inuit to live that way."

He made us look at each other, promise not to live in conflict, but as friends. Strangely, I began to feel sorry for Jane, that she had been admonished for her behaviour out in the open, like a little child. My heart warmed toward her somewhat. Time eventually made good friends of us.

That day, as I departed, I glanced over at the dogs to see if I had inflicted any actual injury. I had not, luckily enough, and left the tent a much better person than when I went in.

Pijariiqpunga.

Ever have a boss who not only personally detested every atom of your being, but also made every minute at work a living hell?

Now, in the various jobs I've had in the past, most of my supervisors have been terrific people. I count myself lucky to have worked on some exciting projects. But one year, in one of my first jobs with the GNWT, I held an experimental position in my department. The deal was that if the trial term went well, the position would be made permanent.

Little did I know that I was going to have Attila the Hun as my supervisor. Hereafter, I shall refer to this infernal personage by the secret moniker that he/she/it had earned within the department: "Old Poison Lips."

Lips was of an ancient breed, that being the bully, and like Lips' kindred bullies, Lips needed at least one target to pick on — preferably the shyest and least authoritative individual available, that being me at the time. Besides being somewhat naive, I tended to be insipidly honest, and to do things by the book. I might as well have worn a bull's-eye.

From the day Old Poison Lips became aware of me, I was suddenly showered with projects to be completed overnight, forbidden to attend conferences, banned from working with my team. I was incessantly chastised in front of my peers.

These slights, as well as constant acts of petty sabotage, made my job nearly impossible. One day, I was even approached over coffee, whereupon Lips — who was of the First Nations persuasion — proceeded to inform me that I would never be recommended for a permanent position, because Lips didn't "like" me — and even other Inuit, according to Lips, didn't "like" me.

I fought to retain my cool, and requested a copy of Lips' observations in writing. I received a couple of spoken words, unprintable here, but naturally, no documentation.

I think I'd have gone mad if it hadn't been for three factors: my colleagues, my friends, and my karate classes. I had been studying martial arts simply to stay in shape and do something other than feel sorry for myself; but ultimately, it was the discipline that such classes offered me that would prove invaluable throughout that hellish year.

And there was a certain teaching that clung to my mind and guided my approach to Old Poison Lips. I had faith in the teaching, and it finally proved itself by the end of my work term. It was simply:

Don't follow the snake into the hole.

It is the principle that if one continually yields, ever backing up when presented with an attack, one is akin to a snake backing into its hole. If an attacker impetuously follows the snake into the hole, he will eventually find himself trapped when the snake finally strikes him.

All year long, I backed up.

It eventually came about that my work was being disrupted, as usual, by Old Poison Lips. I was used to such occurrences by now.

This time, however, the disruption was due to Lips running a business — selling meat — out of our department, and without a license. I quickly warned Lips that this was very, very illegal. I even threatened that I would file a report if Lips didn't knock it off. I was dismissed with some colourful verbiage, and a wave of the hand.

My threat was far from idle. I did file that report — to the delight of the entire department. Old Poison Lips was caught completely red-handed, and investigated. Naturally, it made the remainder of my term much more manageable, and Lips didn't bother me again.

Bullies don't want to fight you — they just want an easy victim. When the victim shows some claws (coincidentally my very name, Qitsualik, means "One Who Claws"), the bully moves on to easier targets.

Lips shouldn't have chased me into the hole. It's a pity and a pain when any situation degenerates to the point of unavoidable conflict, but at least there are inferior and superior tactics for such eventualities. Therefore, I'm grateful for my snake-in-the-hole lesson, although there is a southern saying that amounts to the same thing:

"Give 'em enough rope, and they'll hang themselves."

Pijariiqpunga.

The waves had begun to crash upon the shore more strongly.

We were stranded on Grant Point, the mainland adjacent to King William Island, left there by a freak mechanical failure. My father's boat engine had given up the ghost just as we were preparing a return trip.

What had begun for me as a fun, summer camping trip was now too much of a good thing. We were forced to subsist upon fish. We had fish morning, noon, and night. We had it dried, cooked, raw, fresh, and aged.

All that accompanied the fish was clear tea, since we had run out of sugar and biscuits quite some time ago. In my boredom, I was beginning to try different "flavours" of plants as tea substitutes, but the only one that came close to being drinkable was Labrador Tea, which we labeled "spider food," since we had discovered hordes of spiders living upon it.

Sometimes, aircraft would fly overhead, eventually giving me an idea. I wrote a huge SOS in the sand at the beach. I then lined the letters with the spider food. This way, they would contrast with the sand colour, being more visible from above.

I informed my father of this, saying that I had learned it in Girl Guides. His face was concealed under the motor that he was disassembling, and he grunted something in acknowledgement. Encouraged, I then began to lecture him on how we should build a smoke signal fire. Like on TV.

Days later, I stared across the body of endless ocean, so hauntingly beautiful, and at the same time lonely. The sun seemed to mock our plight by offering one brightly shining cloudless sky after another.

How could I stand one more day of fish? Whoosh, whoosh, swiiiish, swish — the waves would gather momentum to gently break on the beach, shuffling over the pebbles on the way back. Endless, timeless whispering of eons past. A green crest suspended in air, curving forward, foaming as it sparkled in the sun, blinding one to any other sight as it backed away, ready to reform and crash again.

Please God, I entreated, just give us one rainy day. Or even some wind. It seemed like we were not only stranded on the mainland, but held prisoners of time as well.

I had carried my hundredth load of freshly caught fish from the lake, and could not be bothered to even help clean one without fear of screaming at the sameness of it all. I was losing weight because I was finding it impossible to dine on fish anymore.

Every day, I had rebuilt my SOS, until even that was intolerably tedious. My signal fire had never been built, being impractical. I had run out of ideas to assist in our rescue and stave off the tedium.

One day, a family arrived by boat. When I woke up that morning, lo and behold, I could have crackers with my tea! With jam! Ambrosia! God loved us again.

Strangely, even the day they had arrived upon heralded a break in the routine. It was thrillingly overcast, intriguingly misty — a fairy tale landscape. I hardly heard the adults chattering and gossiping around me. I just stood outside, feasting my eyes upon the different sights.

They tugged us behind their boat, enroute to Cambridge Bay (Iqaluktuutiaq), and we were soon back in civilization again. The ice-breaker, the "Lady Franklin," happened to be moored nearby, and we caught a ride with them back to Gjoa Haven. Captain Thomas was happy to help our family, as he knew my father from previous visits.

Ironically, I used to beg my father to take me on every single trip. But I guess I found that there can be "too much of a good thing." The landscape and seascape were breathtakingly beautiful, the food was of a type that I never could have imagined myself growing weary of, and my activities were all ones that I had thought I enjoyed.

I hear a lot of people groaning, around this time of year, that their holidays are over. But just remember, people: if you had a holiday all year 'round, it would no longer seem like a vacation, but like work instead. Everything in moderation.

Believe me, I know.

Pijariiqpunga.

There was only one hunter whom my father would readily admit was his equal. That hunter was Nuliajuk, whose name derived from that mythological progenitor of sea mammals — today most commonly called "Sedna." Often, my father would boast that only Nuliajuk was faster and more sure with a fish leister, or that only Nuliajuk's dogs were better at finding an aglu (domed seal breathing hole).

Nuliajuk walked great distances with sniffer dogs, endured freezing bli ards, suffered poor visibility and strength-sapping cold. Nuliajuk persevered through it all, often with enough good cheer to offer a friendly wager over catch size. Not a single word of complaint was ever uttered by Nuliajuk.

In those days, a hunter was measured by skill and patience. But experience was still a critical factor in any hunt. At the time when my father, of the Cape Dorset Inuit, first settled in among the Netsilingmiut, his experience had thus far consisted of hunting large mammals, such as bears, walrus, and whales.

But this was a new place, where life mainly depended upon the elusive ringed seal, an unusually cautious animal living below the sea ice. The People of the Seal, however, the Netsilingmiut, had become masters of seal hunting in their time, and Nuliajuk was one of the greatest among them.

Who had taught this hunter, whose name derived from legend? No one could say. But my father could and did trade hunting secrets freely with Nuliajuk, exchanging his hard-earned gems of knowledge for Nuliajuk's own.

In the spring, you could watch them fishing together, peering into an ice-hole near the shore. Their leisters were angled to the sky, their lures clutched in their left hands. Hours were spent waiting for a ravenous char to snap at the bait, whereupon the leisters would suddenly strike with martial speed.

At a particularly accurate strike, other hunters would gasp in amazement. At a miss, there was friendly cursing. Then, it was back to watching the ice hole, no larger than a dinner plate.

It was all quite amazing to witness, as a hunter had to account for refraction in order to know where to strike.

For those of you who have never spear-fished, the fish isn't where you would expect. As the sunlight hits the water, it is bent — refracted at an angle dependent upon the water's specific density — so that your eyes are seeing the fish several centimeters from where it actually is. If you stab at the image of the fish, you will always miss. You have to account for refraction. Nuliajuk was an old hand at this.

She was the role model for us girls.

One day, my father was visited by one of his god-children, who also happened to be Nuliajuk's granddaughter. My father, acting as a midwife, had caught the girl at birth, so that she was ever after his arnaliaq (literally, "one who is made female").

Custom dictated that the girl was to give him her first catch. Barely six years old, she entered his tent, carrying a fish as large as herself. A fierce little huntress, she resembled a miniature version of her grandmother, Nuliajuk.

This was the brand of confidence that Nuliajuk left us girls with — confidence not only to trust ourselves as female hunters, but also as good family people. She taught us that life consisted of hardships to be endured, but that great rewards naturally followed great perseverance.

Hers was a skill available to all, the skill to provide for one's family and oneself, as well as the skill to inspire the community in which one lived. She demonstrated that the most complete human being is one who brings natural talent to blossom through hard work.

Thus, Nuliajuk made equals of men and women. Can we not do the same with the resources and knowledge available today? I know that I emulate Nuliajuk in many ways, though I don't currently have to catch my own dinner.

But I know that if I have to, I could and would. And I know that my father would be proud of me for emulating Nuliajuk, just as he was proud of himself for doing the same.

P.S. Congratulations to commander Eileen Collins, the first woman to lead a U.S. space mission!

Pijariiqpunga.

Two cannibals were eating a clown. One paused and looked up at the other, saying, "Does this taste kind of funny to you?" - Old joke

There was once a hunter who visited an unknown people. Upon arrival, a blind old man approached him, warning, "You are among cannibals. They will kill and eat you. Stay in my home. They won't attack you there."

Grateful, the exhausted hunter decided to nap in the old man's iglu. He had not been long asleep when a strange noise awakened him. He saw the old man's two sons shuffling toward him, carrying a large stone with which to kill him. The hunter realized that the old man and his sons were cannibals as well, that they had merely wanted him for themselves. He leapt up and seized his harpoon, surprising the sons, so that they were easily killed with quick thrusts to the heart.

Then the hunter hid behind some skins, and waited. Soon, the blind old man arrived. Crouching, he began to grope around the floor for the meal his sons had left him. As soon as the old man's probing fingers drew near, the hunter impaled him upon his harpoon. Wasting no time, the hunter fled. He had not traveled far, however, before he turned to see the other cannibals and their dog teams chasing him.

Fortunately, the hunter was something of a shaman. He faced the cannibals and rapidly began to fire arrows at their lead dogs. The arrows struck the dogs, making them turn toward the icy water. All of the dog teams rushed in, drowning the cannibals along with themselves. The hunter returned home, explaining to his people that they would remain safe from cannibals ever after.

- Old story

I can't remember what age I was when I finally learned that Indians don't eat people.

I was very little — that's for sure. My friends and I all held a marked fear of First Nations peoples, whom we believed - through various stories passed among us — were cannibals. It wasn't until I at last befriended an Indian girl at school that I learned differently, and I additionally learned that the Indian kids held the same fears of Inuit.

It was a strange revelation, and somewhat confusing. I explained to her that Indians were supposed to be savage people who kidnapped Inuit to eat. No, she told me, it was Inuit —or so their stories told — who were cannibals, capturing Indian kids and eating them raw. I corrected her, of course. We would never eat Indians raw. Maybe boiled.... (Just kidding!)

So we both soothed each others' fears and become good friends over the course of years. And, naturally, neither of us even once eyed the other hungrily.

Inuit are not unique in their traditional dread of cannibalism, which haunts nearly all cultures worldwide. The Inuktitut term for a cannibal is inuktuurniku, or "one who has eaten an Inuk." Inuit legends are rife with mention of semi-human cannibal monsters, betraying their age-old fear of the phenomenon.

There is the Netsilingmiut amayirsuk, for example, a huge crone that imprisons children within the hollow hump in her back, carrying them away to be devoured; or the nakasungnaikut, a man without bones in his legs, who crawls through the icy darkness hunting for normal humans, whom he ambushes and eats alive.

The dreadful nature of such near-human monsters serves as a clue to just how perverse the cannibal is perceived to be. The cannibal is not at all the usual sort of bestial monster, the one with several limbs and an appearance/lifestyle so alien that there is no hope of identification with humanity.

It is not the simple beast, the animal-like monster that, although it stalks, kills, and eats people, is somehow understandable. After all, it is natural for bestial predators eat other creatures not of their own species. Wolves eat caribou. Bears eat seals. Owls eat lemmings. We all comprehend this simple dynamic of nature.

But the cannibal is not a common, ornatural, and thus an understandable occurrence. The cannibal, in common human thinking, is a deceiver — a traitor. One who eats his own.

And it is within the next few articles that I shall discuss this phenomenon, real or imagined.

Pijariiqpunga.

In folklore, cannibals make the very best villains. In a way, they are the ultimate symbol of gluttony, the lust for food taken to such an extreme that even one's fellow humans are no longer exempt from consumption.

Similarly, cannibals are a symbol of betrayal. As predators, there exists an unspoken understanding between humans that they are not to turn their predatory skills against each other — but will instead cooperate against those animals that are not human.

Cannibals, however, have violated this most fundamental social contract — not to prey upon those of their own species — having removed themselves to a plane of thought that is seemingly alien to the rest of us. The cannibal is a creature of chaos, choosing to remain outside of the usual social contracts that ensure human safety: in other words, a monster. The monster is not predictable, so the monster, the cannibal, is unsafe.

And to whom is the monster image most useful? Well, parents, of course. A most difficult task, faced by any parent, is in making their child understand the dangers of the unknown.

Children incessantly wander off while parents aren't looking, meandering into nebulous dangers. It would be easy if the parents could simply explain such dangers, cautioning the children against them.

Unfortunately, most explanations of danger only confuse children, or simply don't impress them. For this reason, societies across the ages have developed strikingly similar children's stories — mostly cautionary tales against wandering away from the safety of home, at the risk of being eaten by semi-human monsters that exist "over there."

Unlike many subjects, eating is something that even the smallest child can comprehend, and therefore the idea of a monster that gobbles up children is easy to grasp. The cannibal is the parental metaphor for the thief, the abuser, the kidnapper, the pedophile — all the horrors an adult can imagine, but cannot adequately explain to a child.

Yet, over an extended period of time, cultures do pay an inevitable price for the cannibal-fears that parents convey. An accumulation of such fears, over generations, can result in a society that defines its sense of integrity only against other, more supposedly "savage" cultures.

If such stories are not explained to children as they grow — if they are not eventually taught that those "others" are not actually cannibalistic, but that the tales were only to serve the purpose of disciplining them when they were younger and less comprehending — there exists the good chance that the children will retain their fears unto adulthood, passing on to their own progeny an exaggerated, brand of xenophobia (or perhaps we could could say "anthropophagiphobia").

We can easily see the effects of such compounded xenophobia — whether deriving from cannibal hatred, or from other sources — manifested in the various ethnic conflicts entrenched in the histories of nearly all societies, from the most basic and ancient band-level groups to the youngest and most sophisticated nations.

Closest to home, there exists the ancient Indian-Inuit enmity, as I've already noted in the first article of this series, an enmity revolving around cannibal fears projected from each society toward the other.

As one follows the northern side of the taiga up into the northwest, from the peoples of the Padlermiut to the Haningayormiut to the Kogluktomiut to the Avvagmiut to the Kittegaryumiut to the Kikiktarugmiut, one finds an increasing prevalence of traditional myths and stories that refer to conflicts with numerous Algonkian-speaking Indian peoples along the treeline.

Such tales normally refer to raids by Indians upon Inuit, and follow a distinct pattern: the Inuit men go hunting, only to later return to find that Indians (nastily termed Iqiliit, or "People With Lice Eggs") have raided their village, and either exterminated or captured the Inuit women and children.

Wrathful, the hunters track the Indians to their camp to find them gathered around the fire, alternately congratulating themselves on a successful raid, or snacking on some leftover Inuk. Sated and thereby unaware, the Indians fail to notice the Inuit circling round their camp, whereupon the Inuit leap up and fill the Indians full of arrows.

Some Inuit cultures, in fact, actually were so used to such skirmishes that they had developed a special barbed arrow for killing people.

Pijariiqpunga (continued in Cannibal: Part Three).

While Inuit displayed in their tales a traditional dread of Indians, the Algonkian and Athapaskan peoples were all too eager to return the favour, filling their own folklore with stories of the loathesome northern cannibals, the Eskimantsik, or "Eaters of Raw Meat" (from which comes the word "Eskimo").

The Algonkian-speaking and Athapaskan-speaking Indians occupied a great deal of sub-Arctic land in Canada, in the form of similar yet distinct nations that ranged all along the treeline. Depending upon their respective areas, Inuit had to contend with a great number of tribes, fighting a sort of "cold" war with elusive, and therefore grossly misunderstood, treeline peoples.

Even at a glance, one can appreciate the vast potential for cross-cultural misunderstanding. From southeast to northwest, the Inuit clashed with Naskapi and Montagnais (both known today as Innu), west main Cree, western woods Cree, and Athapaskan peoples such as the Chipewyan, Yellowknife, Hare, Kutchin, Koyukon, and Holikachuk.

The problem is that the taiga has always acted as a sort of fence, keeping either super-culture from fully knowing each other. The treeline is the dividing line between two distinct worlds.

On the northern side were Inuit, whose technology had already been so superbly adapted to the Arctic environment that Inuit were fearful to leave it for the "cannibal" Iqiliit-infested woodlands.

On the southern side were the Algonkian and Athapaskan nations, whose lifestyles were perfectly suited to their sub-arctic forest lands, and who feared straying too far north, away from the cover of the pines, and into the clutches of the man-eating Eskimantsik.

The Algonkian folklore was brimming with exceptionally ancient legions of woodland cannibal ghosts and monsters, the most famous of which was the dreaded "Wendigo," a man who had transformed himself into a monster by eating human flesh, and who was doomed to forever stalk the woods and northern "wastes" in a mad search for raw, human flesh.

Already armed with such beliefs, it was not difficult for the northernmost treeline Algonkians to identify the Wendigo with Inuit, for the Inuit tendency to eat uncooked meat was vastly monstrous to them (few of the Algonkians ate quaq.)

Unfortunately, the treeline only served to keep the super-cultures just far enough apart that there could be little understanding between them. Each super-culture could only observe the other from afar, generally consumed with ignorant fear.

With the only contact consisting of occasional encounters (wherein neither party understood the other's language or customs), often in the form of raids or skirmishes occurring over millenia, is it any wonder that lurid rumours developed on both sides?

Nor is it any wonder that the most common accusations were those of cannibalism, for human beings naturally have a tendency to dwell upon, to study and examine, their worst fears — evoking maximum terror in their effort to imagine "just how bad it gets". And the key tool in such primal psychotherapy is the alienation of others, the need to define oneself as opposed to the "monsters."

Yet a monster is a difficult thing to concretize, for the truly inhuman monsters of nature are only, in the end, mere animals: the bear, the shark, the venomous serpent. These animals may possess fearsome or deadly traits, but they generally avoid humanity, and are easily dealt with.

Therefore, man turns to himself, looking at his own kind for those who might play the monsters. And it just so happens that cannibals fit the bill exactly. The unspoken assumption is that, unlike beasts and birds, cannibals have made a conscious choice in their diet. They are the perfect monsters, for they masquerade as humans, having human traits and talents, while perversely eating their own. They live among their food.

But make no mistake: I'm not saying that cannibal legends are entirely the result of cross-cultural fear. Are the claims of Indians and Inuit completely false? Are there true cases of cannibalism among either super-culture?

Based upon the evidence available, the answer might appear to be ... yes.

In fact, there are many documented accounts of cannibalism occurring among Indians and Inuit, but not necessarily each toward the other. Where cannibalism does occur, each super-culture, it seems, tends to "keep it in the family". But you'll see exactly what I mean next week.

Pijariiqpunga (for Part Three).

One reason for the Inuit fear of cannibalism was its very real threat.

The truth, however, is that while Inuit believed the Athapaskan and Algonkian Indians to be cannibalistic, the real cannibalism occurred instead as aberrations that cropped up among Inuit themselves. There may be a kernel of truth within the ancient Inuit stories of hunters lost out on the land, accidentally blundering into a "strange" people whom, it turns out, want him as quaq.

Yet while such "lost among the cannibals" tales constitute wonderful horror folklore — occurring the world over — it seems far more likely that the real cannibals were individuals born of madness and starvation.

Knud Rasmussen, in his informative travels, was told of many instances of cannibalism by various Inuit peoples, the most lurid of which is perhaps that related by Qaqortingneq — an old camp leader of the Netsilingmiut — regarding a middle-aged man named Tuneq:

One winter, many years ago, hunting was a failure. Day after day went by and nobody had anything to eat. People died of hunger or froze to death, and the quick lived on the dead.

Then Tuneq suddenly became disturbed in his head. He began to consult the spirits, and it was not long before he began to do so through his own wife. He used her as a medium: qilaq. He did it in this way: he tied a line to one of her legs and made her lie on the platform; then he tugged at her leg and let the spirits answer through her leg. He did this often, and it was not long before he said he had received the answer that he was to save his own life by eating his wife.

At first he only cut small pieces from her clothing and ate them, drinking water with it to help him to swallow it. People who saw him say that he behaved like a man possessed of a wild and evil spirit. Bigger and bigger were the pieces he cut from her clothing; at last her body was quite exposed in many places.

The wife knew that the spirits had said her husband should eat her, but she was so exhausted that it made no impression on her. She did not care. It was only when he began to feel her, when it occurred to him to stick his fingers in her side to feel if there was flesh on her, that she suddenly felt a terrible fear; so she, who had never been afraid of dying, now tried to escape.

With her feeble strength she ran for her life, and then it was as if Tuneq saw her only as a quarry that was about to escape him; he ran after her and stabbed her to death.

After that, he lived on her, and he collected her bones in a heap over by the side platform for the purpose of fulfilling the taboo rule required of all who die. He was going to hold death-taboo over her for five days.

But people say that the ghost of his wife often walked through her own bones, Tuneq waking up at night as the bones he himself had gnawed began to rattle. Sometimes they moved up and down, and it happened that the man sitting up on the platform would be hauled off during the night by some invisible power. And when he then suddenly awoke there was no one in the snow hut, only the bones lying over by the side platform, rattling.

— Knud Rasmussen The Netsilik Eskimos, Reports of the Fifth Thule Expedition, Vol. VIII. Copenhagen. 1931: 137

For me, the story above (which Qaqortingneq and Rasmussen both seem to relate with ghoulish delight),affirms my suspicion that the tales of the cannibal "societies" are merely that, since they seem to follow a universal folkloric pattern that occurs from Africa to Asia.

Meanwhile, the stories of true cannibalism, as above, are obviously cases of isolated, monstrous behaviour, rather than of monstrous culture.

But, then again, I haven't gotten to the Indians yet. There still remain the Mohawks and the Aztecs. Were they cannibal cultures, or were such accusations fabricated by priests and explorers?

I guess I'll have a look at it all next week.

Pijariiqpunga.

Interestingly, most such accusations of cannibalism seem to originate from among the ranks of syncretists. It is telling that — in the Americas, anyway — only the largest and most well-organized nations are accused of it. A good eastern North American example is the Iroquois. A Mexican example is the Aztec. Such accusations are not of ritual cannibalism, but rather that the cultures were thinking, "Oh goody, stew."

It is quite possible that colonial powers — clergy and traders both — confident in the supremacy of their own cultures, might have been unnerved by the sight of high civilization among those native Americans they had pre-judged to be "savages." As I've already stated at the beginning of this series, attribution of cannibalistic practice is a popular method by which to strip a foreign culture of its legitimacy.

Yet is it possible that there was some truth to such reports? The occurrence of cannibalism is a fact. New Guineans, for example, still proudly cling to their cannibalistic roots — and there exists actual film documentation of the outbreak of the kuru disease among them. Similar to mad cow disease, kuru spreads through the practice of feeding cows their own rendered dead.

Then there are the contemporary cannibals: Jeffrey Dahmer, claiming "love" of those he pickled and pan-fryed; Andrei Chikatilo, claiming that certain parts were "tasty", that he liked to "nibble" them; Ed Gein, claiming that womens' heads were preferable for their long hair. Say what you want about psychosis or simple evil, these characters prove that cannibalism is not entirely mythical.

The psychopathic cannibals actually provide us with a clue as to how the human race approaches the eating of its own kind: cannibalism represents special circumstance. All occurrences of cannibalism represent some attempt by an individual or society to correct an imbalance, a loss or threat to social or personal paradigms.

While mythical accounts typically portray cannibals as having a mere dietary preference for human flesh, true cannibals are always self-limiting in their consumption, depending on their goals. Criminal cannibals act to fulfill a distinct psychological need. Starving cannibals eat to preserve their lives. Societal cannibals eat specific parts to:

1. Honor or assume the strength of enemies and/or ancestors;

2. Celebrate the capture or killing of an enemy (ex: Aztec).

3. Mark an important change (ie: ancient Greeks eating their kings).

This seems evident even in some missionary accounts:

...severed the head from the shoulders, throwing it to the crowd, where someone caught it to carry it to the Captain Ondessone, for whom it had been reserved, in order to make a feast therewith.

— 17th century account of Father LeJeune, in describing the Iroquois killing of an Algonkian captive.

It bears out even in what we know of other mammals. Nearly all rodent mothers, for example, tend to cannibalize their young when under extreme duress, in what seems to be an instinct to limit resource shortages. Walrus are known to produce occasional cannibalistic rogues, who actually band together to hunt down non-cannibalistic walrus. Again, the trigger seems to be stress.

The point? As ever, any extreme is a bad thing, and a label is the ultimate extreme. Under the lens of objectivity and wisdom, there are reasons behind any form of behaviour, no matter how deviant it might at first seem. Likewise, there are complicating factors in any situation that occlude the truth.

Accusations of cannibalism were always a form of social control, and this has not changed today. The cannibal is the metaphor for the monster, or those whom we wish to depict as monsters. Ultimately, if we favour wisdom, we must choose our words carefully — for a word, like an impelled fist, is a manifestation of will, and will is the only true fire that we have stolen from the gods — a fire that may forge a nation, or blast it into sterility.

Who next becomes the cannibal when our mood again turns?

Pijariiqpunga.

It is difficult, sometimes, to field the e-mails I get from students and educators of various countries, especially when they obviously expect to hear about Inuit as being one of the last innocent peoples of the world, untouched by social or political problems. The peoples of many other countries really do believe that Inuit live their day-to-day existence as in the "Nanook of the North" film, igloos and all.

With inevitable awkwardness, I try to inform whomever I can. Invariably, my own difficulty lies in trying not to seem angry, for it is embarrassing for me to have to explain that Inuit now run so many well-funded institutions, and a few enjoy so many modern amenities, at the same time that poverty and crime and substance abuse run rampant.

How do I reconcile such facts, for example, with descriptions of traditional Inuit sharing practices?

It is rare, then, that those from other cultures can comprehend this paradox of Inuit modernity. But over the last few days, I corresponded with a New Zealand father and daughter who did understand. The daughter immediately seemed to grasp the inadequacy of her class questions, while the father understood the importance of what he termed "harsh reality." It greatly heartened me.

So I wanted to share this event, as well as to thank Polly and her dad.

***

Dear Rachel:

My name is Polly. I am 9 years old, and I live in New Zealand. I have some questions for you:

Do Inuit eat seals, seaweed, polar bears, and cows? What do Inuit spend their time doing apart from, hunting, fishing, traveling, building igloos and playing in the snow?

These are questions my class asked for a school project. Don't blame me if they're really stupid!

***

Hi Polly:

Coastal Inuit eat seals (but then again, so do Scandinavian and African coastal peoples — since seals are yummy). The seal specialists were always those known as the Netsilingmiut (pronounced net-sil-ING-mee-oot), which means "People of the Seal" in Inuktitut, the most common Inuit language.

Coastal Inuit eat seaweed (then again, so do people from the Maritimes provinces of Canada).

Some Inuit eat polar bears, except for the liver, which contains so much Vitamin A that it is highly poisonous.

Inuit eat beef imported from the south into stores in northern communities. Inuit go grocery shopping like everyone else, since they can't all hunt all the time.

Today, Inuit pretty much live as southerners do. They live in houses. They watch cable TV and use the Internet. The government and churches have pressured Inuit to stop hunting, fishing, traveling, and playing in the snow, because they want them to go to church and pay taxes.

Unfortunately, there is not a lot of business in the northern communities, so many are unemployed. They get angry, frustrated, and sad.

Unfortunately, many kill themselves, use drugs, drink alcohol, or sniff solvents to escape from their unhappy lives. The children attend elementary and high school, college or university if they can. The adults hold any jobs that they can find, and generally have to work in offices all day long. Only on their days off of school or work can children or adults go hunting, fishing, or traveling (or the children can play in the snow).

Very few Inuit know how to build igloos anymore.

***

Dear Rachel:

I'm Polly's dad, and I just wanted to say thanks to you for your detailed reply to her questions. She's very excited to have made contact with a "real" Inuit person on the other side of the world! I was sad to read about the ways that colonization has affected the Inuit people. In New Zealand a very similar thing has happened to the indigenous people ( the Maori), who have mostly suffered after being colonized by European people in all kinds of ways, with high rates of unemployment, drug abuse etc. Your answers to Polly's questions have injected a bit of "harsh reality" into her class project. I think that's a good thing. I don't like the idea of school projects that treat other peoples like objects of interest and gloss over the uncomfortable facts. Once again, thanks for your reply, Polly will write back herself sometime soon.

***

Thanks, Polly, to you and your dad.

Pijariiqpunga.

In darker moods, I bemoan the seeming inability of many North Americans to understand Inuit thought. Nevertheless, quite a few have come close to complete understanding. They know who they are. As well, many haven't, but they might not know who they are.

Take Inuit story telling, for example, an admittedly fun activity that I — hopefully — am contributing to in a small way, both by right and tradition.

These are the unikkaaqtuat, — "that which you play at telling." Heroes, fools, monstrosities of the capricious elements, grotesque abominations of night-born fever.

In most vulgar telling, in mechanistic translation, the "themes" of such tales may seem no different from those of any other cultural tradition. And, repulsively, such theme conformity has in recent years enjoyed promotion by the "politically correct" movement — that Orwellian religion adopted by those who, reveling in banality, would "rescue" us all from our ethnic and social differences, rendering the human race as dry and colourless as mud brick.

Never.

Never will the Inuit cosmology be identical to the Welsh, or the Welsh to the Bunyoro, or the Bunyoro to the Indonesian. Despite the fury of political correctness, not all human beings think the same ways.

I would ask of those who claim to fully understand my culture's themes: where did you aquire your understanding of Inuktitut? Can your mind think like that of an Inuk?

These unikkaaqtuat are our worlds. They reflect our minds as well as our lives. When we see ourselves thus reflected, it is as though our thoughts have birthed new realities based upon our shared ancestry. We are lifted from the mundane, transported back along the lines of ancestral thought.

The Inuit cosmos is ruled by no one. There are no divine mother and father figures. There are no wind gods and solar creators. There are no eternal punishments in the hereafter, as there are no punishments for children or adults in the here and now.

For those suit-and-tie, high-heels-and-broach types out there, stop telling me that I'm supposed to worship the "sea goddess" Sedna, or that I'm supposed to spirit-travel as a shaman, or that I'm supposed to drum-dance or build igloos or let spirits guide me.

And don't you ever dare to tell me that I'm somehow resistant merely because missionaries have beaten my culture into submission. You weren't there.

You don't know, because you cannot and will not learn the Inuktitut mind. The insistence that I return to my culture's past not only runs contrary to the Inuktitut code of respect for the mind of another, but it is also no different from some old-fashioned missionary telling me what to think and believe.

I was there. I saw yesterday's colonists telling Inuit what to believe, for the sake of money and status — to facilitate their pioneering efforts, their trade empires, their swollen congregations, and their cheap labour.

Now I see new colonists pressuring Inuit to return to the "old ways," telling them that they are deluded and foolish to believe in Christ or Jehovah. Can they not realize that the modern faiths now belong to Inuit as much as the old ones ever did? Can they not understand that Inuit have not been converted, but have only adopted and even engineered Christianity to suit their own needs?

Yet before I slam a righteous door in so many faces, let me address those gentler, worthy souls.

You can know the Inuit mind, and you can know it through the unikkaaqtuat. But as with any worthy knowledge, its acquisition is demanding in discipline, and simple in approach.

Listen. Only that. Defy the comparisons of themes and universal cultural images and, most of all, seeming. You may read a tale that reminds you of Robin Hood, perhaps, but that does not mean that they are the same.

Listen to what the tales say, to what they say about the Inuit mind, and don't try to read into them. For those of you with the opportunity, talk with Inuit, but genuinely listen to what they have to say, and shut up until they are finished, or you will miss out.

The one that cares tries, and the one that tries has embraced the universe.

Pijariiqpunga.

"Sometimes I still dream about him," a fellow Stringer Hallite (or is it "Haller"?) once confided to me. I know what he means. I have Mr. Holman dreams too. In them, he is very far away, like a distant radio signal, but still quite big, as in life.

Mister Holman, of Stringer Hall.

Even today, I can easily picture him standing outside of his office, holding a bag of donuts and a Styrofoam cup of coffee that he's picked up on some errand. He wears his old fashioned, brown leather bomber jacket, and soberly sensible crepe-soled Wallabies. His only concession to modern dress is a dark pink, button-down shirt, or some brightly coloured tie.

His look is one of a staff-sergeant in the army (which he had been at one time), or of an aged Norman Schwarzkopf. But I liked him. He was easy to talk to, and if you were blunt with him, he was blunt right back. Like the time he called me into his office after noting that my math marks were not exactly stellar.

"How come your math marks are going down?" he asked in his gruff way. I squirmed a little. I knew this had been coming for a while.

"It's that I'm not sleeping well," I began lamely, pussyfooting around the real reason that I had already hypothesized long ago.

Quiet glare.

"I don't think I should be on the pill cause I'm not having sex." I plunged right into it. "Mrs. Moreby thought I should be on it to clear up my pimples, but I think it's doing something to me."

"What? You're on what?"

"Norynil One. She said it would clear up my pimples, plus I have to be under an ultraviolet lamp once a week. She said it would regulate my period."

"I'll talk to her. I want you off those right away, you hear me?"

"Yes sir." We always had to address him that way.

I made a fast exit, leaving a baffled but concerned Mr. Holman behind. I miss that. He had a way of drawing what was important out of you.

Another time, I was explaining to him that I had a real problem relating to my father, that our personalities were so enmeshed that it was hard for me to have any objectivity about what he thought and did.

"Maybe," he had told me, "you are too much like him, and you project a lot of your problems on him. After all, you admire strength in him, and his creativity, the same way you admire those traits in yourself. It only goes to follow that you would hate things about him that you hate about yourself."

I felt like a bolt of lightning had struck me out of the blue.

Mr. Holman was an elder and he didn't even know it.

Many years later, I would find myself asking my friend, "When you dream about Mr. Holman, what is he doing?"

"Well, just standing there, being himself." There was a long pause.

"Sometimes I wake up and I'm missing those people, and Mr. Holman, like they're still alive. I wake up with tears in my eyes."

Me too.

In one of my dreams, he is an old, old man. He had secured funding for Stringer Hall, to run it for one more year. I had come back, even though I had already graduated, because nothing else would really feel normal.

He is supervising a shipment of supplies that he had ordered for Christmas. Some Stringer Hall kids couldn't afford the airfare to return home to their families for Christmas. No matter what was going on politically or financially, Mr. Holman always made sure that such children had a grand time where they were. There were huge tables of turkey, pumpkin pie, and assorted candies. And every single soul got a Christmas stocking.

In this particular dream, he turns to me, and says something to the effect that it is not easy to feed 400 students. I answer as best I can, telling him to try and hang in there for another year, that only he could pull off a job like this. It's all beginning to fall apart, he says. Not if you don't let it, I insist. He nods and walks away.

(Continued next week.)

Even in the dream, he has a slight limp — the result of a war wound that he never talked about. Actually, his only tangible connection to the army was a framed poem called "High Flight," and a photo of a B-52 bomber that hung in what we called the "Rogue's Gallery."

It was right next to a photo of me posing proudly in a group of students on our first meeting with Pierre Eliot Trudeau, who was then the prime minister of Canada. In it, I'm wearing some kind of purple, ruffled creation straight out of a department store catalogue, and black glasses.

I wonder what ever happened to the Holman's personal collection of old photographs, photos of how we lived in the past. There were the old campsites, Aklavik as a hamlet. Some of my favourites were photos of our leaders today, as they were when children.

I wish there was a way to set up some kind of a memorial to all of his great work, maybe open a library, or name a street after him. Maybe even an Internet address list of all those who grew up in Stringer Hall? It could be called "The Stringer Hall Club" or something. I wonder if a reunion is possible, if anyone would be interested.

At the very least, it would be a good excuse to listen again, together, to old Santana singles.

As an adult, I've run across several other Stringer Hall kids. They always hug me, and say things like, "Remember when you came in really drunk and got grounded for a month?" Sheesh — nobody ever remembers the great grades I got, or the time I saved the basketball game against Grollier Hall by slam-dunking past their tallest guard. (Why did they have so many tall kids over there?)

Stringer Hall is no less a common bond today than it was then. I don't know if Mr. Holman would have approved or not.

Despite some minor rivalry with the Grollier Hall kids, the only kids that were truly distrusted, perhaps even disliked, were the "squares." I guess that even the term itself goes to show how much time has passed.

The squares lectured us all against the dangers of smoking, at a time when smoking was the least of our troubles. Don't have sex till you're married or you'll be considered "cheap." We all know now, in retrospect, how trivial this advice was. Save your money for a rainy day. Ladies don't spit on the sidewalk. Too bad there wasn't a different group to advise us against the real dangers, like suicide and substance abuse.

Years later, I literally had to practice spitting and smoking on the sidewalk in order to break free from the inner straight-jacket that my overly proper and unforgivingly strict upbringing had laid upon me. Yet even when I really finally drank for real, I made sure I always tipped the taxi-driver, because that's what ladies did.

I think, tragically, that what at last bought my mental freedom was the blinding agony of my younger brother's suicide. Compared to that, many things paled in importance. What did I care about a society that had failed him, and myself to a degree? I realized I had a choice. To move forward, or freeze forever.

I guess, in a way, that is what makes my dream of Mr. Holman so symbolic to me. He stands there in my unconscious mind, and I remember that it seemed that he could foresee an uncertain future for us, and in some way try to shore up the fissures in it. Despite our surroundings, despite our difficulties, he would fight to enrich our lives as much as was within his power.

I wish I could say that he had had some witty, parting shot for me, some bit of last wisdom either in life or dream. But such was never the case.

You see, he was a strong father substitute in a time of need, and none of us were ever really quite close to him. He was always a distant figure, looking off somewhere, lost in thought. He was a worried man, standing alone and haunted by his hopes for our much greater and brighter future.

Pijariiqpunga.

Nothing in the world cuts your ego down to size quicker than a sibling's acidic appraisal of your performances — past or present. In our family, love was a double-edged sword. The delivery could fall to the right or left, depending on the bearer. It was hard to tell the difference at times and in the example below, you be the judge as to which way it fell.

Ring...

"Hiya. So you're writing now?"

"Yea, I'm really enjoying it, how do you like it so far?"

"Ahh, they're all right."

"All right?" (Blood pressure rising.)

"Yeah, yeah, they're okay, I guess."

"Hey you! (Trying to laugh it off) Do I pick on you guys too much?"

"Naa, I'm used to it by now. Besides we're better at it anyway."

"Haa! You're so funny!"

(Still on the phone — long distance by the way.)

"Remember when you were a teenager and you got so fat, you could stick a bullet in your bellybutton? You'd pretend it was an emerald and then you'd do this crazy belly-dance to no music."

"I did not, you're making that up you little..."

"It's true, (in that annoying voice only younger siblings can register on your nerves) and that's not the only weird thing you did. Once, we had a whole entire conversation when you were asleep. Your eyes were half open and everything. We thought you were possessed. You were sitting right up and talking to us. Honest."

"No way you silly iquq."

"You're the silly iquq. The only way we knew you were sleeping was you weren't making any sense. Like we'd ask you something and you would just nod and say something like 'cook the fish' then pass out again."

Our family was weird in that there were nine of us, staggered over a wide age range, who grew up in "shifts". There were four girls and one guy in the first group, and then three boys and a girl in the next group.

The first five of us went off to boarding school a thousand miles away, literally in another part of the Arctic. We lived partly on the land and as my father used to say "became useful." For those under my father's care, this could be a formidable task.

Back in those early settlement days, Father had to travel with missionaries, explorers, RCMP members, (special constables or recruits). All his children assisted in hunting and shared in the daily pressures. Our family maintained a hunting and gathering life-style not only for our immediate needs but for the community's as well.

The first group will know what it means, to talk about breaking camp, ready and packed in minutes flat. Dogs, tents and all — rain or shine.

My two older brothers of the younger set got the best of training in hunting, surviving and fishing. Perhaps years of practicing with the older ones, helped father get his training down pat. Perhaps it was due to the fact that instead of merely camping, they actually got to practice their skills.

Back to my phone conversation above...

"You know, us younger ones never really got to know you that well. You older ones were always away."

"Yeah, I know, that's really too bad. I remember the last time I saw you, you were really just a teenager. How's your little girl?

"Doing really well. She's starting to walk now."

"By the way, what are you doing having kids? You're just a kid."

"A kid? A kid? I'm nearly 30-something years old!"

My secret ammunition was that I used to have to change his diapers. But I thought that as an older sister kind of thing and that I should at least leave him with a little dignity.

"Yeah, yeah. Listen I'll call you again not this coming Sunday but next, okay?

"OK then. I'll be here."

"All right, nagligijagit."

"Uvangattauq, see you later. Take care, big Sis."

"Take care little Bro, say hi to your family for me."

"Will do. You too, bye." Click.

Pijariiqpunga.

"Antiscerosin", or something akin to that, was printed in large white letters on a small tin box I'd found in an old tent ring.

"I wonder what it means," I whispered to myself.

Perhaps it had held medicine, since it looked to be about the right size for such a purpose. It was about as small as a sardine can, and had a lid that unscrewed, although it was old and rusted — far past its original utility.

I'd found it in a large tent ring near our summer camp. Perhaps it had come from a camp once occupied by passing explorers.

Our family would spend every summer on the mainland, across from King William Island, at a place called Sandy Point. We'd spend the summer camping, fishing, storing dog food for winter. At such times, we were surrounded by myriad tent rings of encircled stones and lichen-bare ground, as well as burial sites and other evidence of recent to ancient Inuit habitations.

The land surrounding these places — which would now be considered "heritage" sites — was typically sheathed in lichens that had accumulated, virtually undisturbed, over untold harsh winters and balmy summers. Our family would often explore these old sites, being careful to follow the timeless rule of non-disturbance. We were allowed to see, but not to take. Such things were ittarnitait — the ancients — those which are not to be touched.

Half the fun of viewing these old sites was the history left behind told in stone and bone remnants. Over here: it was where a family had thrived on seal; you could tell how well their hunting had gone by the number of young seal bones left behind. Over there: a group had only camped for a short summer caribou hunt, as evidenced by smaller tent rings — the kind used for quick overnights. The piled skulls were of course devoid of antlers, which had been carved into tools.

A site that still haunts my memory was of one old grave situated among several, scattered, smaller graves — all the typical cairn-like structures of piled boulders securing the skin or blanket-enshrouded bodies. Compared to its neighbors, this grave had been particularly well kept, as if someone had repeatedly come back to restack the rocks.

This was a clue that it was not an ancient grave, but an old one nonetheless. It was probably not Netsilingmiut, since older Netsilik burial practices involved leaving the body, in its caribou-skin bag, out to the elements, only encircling the deceased's form with rocks in order to denote that a burial had taken place — long after the body itself had disappeared though the depredations of scavengers.

Yet this body lay under rocks, some of which had given way to expose bleached bones and a partial skull. The armchair anthropologist within me guessed that the deceased was likely to have been a woman, as the skull seemed exceptionally graceful and slender, yet too large for that of a child. About her neckbones lay the remnants of a necklace of semi-precious stones — perhaps jade.

Who had loved this person so much as to bury her wearing her necklace, and to look after her grave so well for so long? My mind latched upon her, upon the mystery of who she had been and how she had died.

But there was no exploring further. Traditional teaching exhorted that the suvulliviniit, "Ones Before", were not to be disturbed, so I could look no further into that grave than the narrow window which the elements had provided me. And I could not remove the necklace, of course, not even one tiny green stone.

In those times, disturbing a grave was not only distasteful, but abhorrent. Taking items from a grave, especially those items which had belonged to their deceased owner, was exactly what it sounds like: grave robbery. Such a thing was ghoulish, and — to most Peoples — no less than the most severe violation of taboo. Just like most cultures the world over, Inuit were both respectful and fearful of the dead, who of course still existed, but had merely shrugged off their mortality.

And ownership was ownership. Steal from the living, and they will not rest in life. Steal from the dead, and they will not rest in death.

(Continued next week.)

Inuit dead were so respected that much-needed items were buried with their owners. One can best appreciate the strength of this practice when remembering how tough life used to be in the Arctic, as well as how pragmatic Inuit were forced to be.

Unless one expressed that he or she wanted an item passed on to a living friend or relative, it was left with its owner. Keeping a precious soapstone lamp might ensure the survival of the group through winter.

But, no, it went into the grave. Passing a good harpoon on to a living hunter who could use it to feed the living, might seem like a good idea. No, into the grave it went.

Amulets, tools, miniature bows and arrows for beloved children, favourite pieces of clothing — all were given up at the right time. Not all Inuit cultures were so strict, but the Netsilingmiut peoples, where we lived (we were originally from North Baffin), certainly were.

We used to stumble upon these things, long before the terms "heritage", "archeological", and "historical" came into use. We saw many old bone structures. We came across caribou pit traps, fox traps, and ancient fish weirs. There were remnants of old sod huts, wooden and bone tools, stone lamps, ivory miniature amulets and personal charms.

Perhaps these treasures were too common. After a while, folks began to talk about how "white people wanted them." Visitors began to encourage Inuit to collect any such findings, ready to pay highly for them, since they were valuable curiosities in the South.

It began with little steps at first, just a bending of custom. People began to approach my father and ask, say, of old fire-bows they had found: were these "what the white people wanted?" Was this or that item considered collectible?

I've heard of cases where make-shift ivory dentures were literally bought out of the mouths of individuals. As such ghoulery became increasingly common, it became increasingly accepted, resulting in the ultimate disintegration of the old taboos, and the vulnerability of the dead.

And the can in my hands was labelled "Antiscerosin". So it was that I found myself in the strange position of guessing whether it held any historical importance or not. And it was not alone. There were also the sun goggles I had found with it, in the same old tent ring. They were of the old-fashioned sort once used by mountain climbers, cold-preserved leather surrounding twin yellow glasses.

The can had come from a tent ring which was much larger than usual, as if built as a supply tent. It had almost certainly been canvas, since the size of the tent would have necessitated too many skins to make it practical. There were other bits of debris, such as rusty cans, which might have once contained some kind of meat.

In all of my amateur wisdom, I deduced that those camping here had neither lived on native food, nor had used native style tents. I fancied that someone had run out of their meds and panicked, maybe leaving their goggles behind. It couldn't have been an Inuk, since no self-respecting hunter would ever have forgotten such a precious tool.

It was indeed tempting to tie all the clues together to make a larger story within which all occurences seemed to make sense. But the truth, I have to remind myself now as then, is that the old sites, their encampments and their graves, were always layer upon layer of intermingled history and happening. They are a hidden sea of images, glimpses into divergent pasts, slumbering beneath their single veil of lichen.

Robert Service wrote aptly: "The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold..." As well, I might add, the Arctic doesn't easily give up her secrets, no matter how many people have pitted themselves against her.

I had no way of knowing whether or not the owner of the can and goggles had died out on the Land, or even whether one of the graves around me held his body. And the artifacts I had discovered in the tent ring might have held historic value, but I left them anyway, just in case.

Pijariiqpunga.

The best educational tool available to traditional Inuit society was the mentoring system.

Every Inuk knows how intensively the Inuit culture has been studied, but there are likely few who have wondered why other cultures marvel at us so much.

Ingenuity is the greatest reason. They wonder at how and when it occurred to us to master the cold, to thrive in a place where even those most ancient of life forms — trees — cannot survive.

Who would think to use the insulating properties of snow in housing construction? What pressures and ideas, the rest of humanity wonders, impelled us to overlook warfare and territory, to live in bands without leaders, where even the weakest individual's opinions were respected?

We have a cold weather technology that not even modern industrial prowess can yet surpass. It is still best to wear a caribou-skin qulittaq in -60 weather. And there is no other culture that has so effectively partnered with canines for the benefit of travel — a technique that is still preferred by many to skidoos, and unmatched for extended travel over the land. The utility of huskies was a hard-earned lesson to those earliest explorers of Antarctica and the Arctic.

Yet, as important as cunning itself has been the manner in which Inuit once taught and learned.

Obviously, one's first mentors were parents or other close relatives, as well as favourite aunts, uncles, and older cousins.

In practice, however, any mentor was an individual of skill, one with specialized expertise to offer. Such mentors were not so often chosen as found, like necessary pieces required to complete the pu le of a young person's life.

Useful skill of any sort was the measure by which one's worth was measured in traditional society. Apprenticeship under a mentor was therefore taken very seriously. As one acquired mentors and skills, so one became a valued human being. It was a matter of pride and self-fulfillment — the drive to be useful to others. The mentors themselves were the trailblazers, the standard in any respective skill to which one aspired.

So Inuit did not receive a packaged set of pre-determined skills. An individual found his or her skills by finding his or her mentors. In this sense, the society itself was one's university. The teachers were one with their very courses, the content springing from their very being.

The Inuktitut language was the great facilitator in such a process. Its very age has lent it a wonderful flexibility, so that old words may flutter up from near-oblivion, allowing a partial grip upon ephemeral concepts. Equipped with this language, capable of invoking images even of extinct giant beavers and woolly mammoths, the mentor was able understand the apprentice's thoughts, to present his or her own in a way that was relevant to the student.

The mentor soon came to know well the foibles, strengths, and weaknesses of the apprentice. They were a team, practicing together and living the knowledge itself.

The mentors themselves, like pearls along a gossamer thread, were the lifeline of the new generation, with each child reaching back to the minds of those before. In this sense, the knowledge was passed from one to another, so that the whole society formed an efficient and remarkably strong web of varied skills. It was a living archive, not merely constituted of facts and opinions, but of tangible minds and bodies.

Creativity a most respected factor in Inuit learning. Inuit understood that a portion of one's skill invariably came from the self, from one's own imagination and personal observations. Therefore, in teaching, the mentor never imparted the full extent of his or her knowledge to an apprentice, with the understanding that there are natural gaps that the healthy apprentice must fill in with imagination alone. The mentors might have appreciated Albert Einstein's opinion that, "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

Finally, it's a well guarded secret that in teaching others, you never pass on all the factors you know. That way, there was knowledge you kept to yourself, like keeping a part of a family recipe. In this ancient formula as it were, you added your own spices.

Pijariiqpunga.

Western peoples gaze upward on certain nights, and talk of the "man in the moon," in reference to its series of craters that they tend to recognize as a face. And although not all cultures see it this way — with the Chinese thinking it resembles a hare — Inuit might seem to agree with Occidentals on this one.

In fact, if Inuit myth were true, the moon-man would be a distant ancestor to some of us.

One of the most common myths among Inuit cultures is that of the Moon-brother and Sun-sister. Generally, the story tells of a young woman who is mysteriously fondled.

In some versions, she has just given birth, and so has to remain alone for a time with the lights out, as a matter of taboo. In other versions, she and some others put the lights out in order to play games.

One way or another, she is fondled by a stranger, whom she discovers to be her brother, Tarqiq. (In the post-pregnancy version, she discovers his identity by marking his nose with soot.) Despairing and ashamed, she goes a bit crazy, chewing him out and running about the community with a lit piece of moss, shaming him before everyone else.

In order to shut her up, the brother Tarqiq chases her about so doggedly that their pursuit takes them up into the sky, where they continue this chase as the Sun (she with her torch) and Moon (he glowering after her).

The story exists in some version or other across Inuit North America, and has always been the marvel of anthropologists and folklorists. Here's the reason: Just as it is almost universal among humanity to assign gender roles to the sun and moon, it is almost as universal that the sun is male (being bright and hot, as is typical of testosterone-poisoning), while the moon is female (being subtle and temperate). The Inuit sun and moon model defies this tradition by making the moon male and the sun female.

Now, it is important to remember that myths do not spring solely from the imagination — they are always inspired by something humanity observes or values. Such is the case with all sun and moon models from culture to culture.

In non-Arctic cultures (the majority of humanity), the sun is a giver of life, since it, in tandem with moisture, allows plants to grow. This, of course, is of vital importance to agriculture, making the sun invaluable. As well, the sun is the largest object in the sky, constant throughout the year. With its great importance and pervasiveness, a patriarchal agrarian culture is naturally going to consider the sun to be male, with the moon as his wife or mistress.

This means nothing to Inuit. Farming is impossible in the Arctic, so Inuit have never been agrarian. What is there for the sun to give life to? It is obviously pleasant, since it offers warmth (maybe this is why the underdog in the story is the Sun), but it is not especially necessary for life. In fact, the sun is more or less absent throughout a third of the year.

This means that the moon is as pervasive as the sun in the Arctic, being bright enough to act as a substitute for the sun during winter hunts. In the cold of the winter, when the sun abandons the land, the ambient moon is a welcome friend. It allows people to feed themselves as well as under any agrarian sun by illuminating the hunter's way.

This is perhaps why, of all supernatural beings in Inuit cosmology, the moon is considered the friendliest, a fact that Rasmussen and other explorers quickly noted.

Unlike the vengeful Nuliajuk and ferocious Narssuk (of Netsilik myth), Tarqiq (the Moon) is thought to like people — although he is excessively frisky. Tarqiq was thought to overcome barrenness by impregnating any woman who slept outside.

In fact, women were advised by their families not to sleep outside, barren or not, since Tarqiq would leave them with child. Personally, I would worry more about the polar bears.

So you can see what I mean about the man in the moon, although to Inuit he was always much more than a face. To some, he may even be an ancestor.

Pijariiqpunga.

A few years ago, I was doing some work with the RCMP, having the good fortune to visit Arctic Bay — a peaceful community, strongly tied to its elders, and nestled at the base of a ring of hills like the precious chick of a solemn mother bird.

It was there that I spent quite a few hours talking to my older cousin, Kudlu. I could always find her in the work-shed out back of her house, where she sat like a traditional Inuk, constantly sewing caribou-skin clothing for southern game hunters, who invariably underpaid her.

She did not speak English, nor did my husband speak Inuktitut. But with myself as translator, we nevertheless had some wonderful three-way conversations. Kudlu was a story-lover, the source of innumerable old yarns, especially those concerning monsters and shamanism.

She would tell such tales with shivers of mingled delight and horror, pausing between stories to comment on clothing — such as remarking about my husband's military parka, "It's okay for a few hours. Then snow builds up in the crannies around the stitching, making it cold. Caribou doesn't get cold." There is no formal training for such knowledge!

Kudlu listened to radio and television like anyone else, and raised very modern children. She possessed contemporary knowledge. The thing that was most interesting to me, however, was how Kudlu processed such knowledge, reconciling it with the things she had learned as a girl in a traditional lifestyle.

I have no doubt she was convinced that some of the stories of the exploits of shamans were true, that there really might have once existed some of the rather horrid monsters owned by Inuit imaginings.

But I think that, despite her inclination to view folklore as reality, she nevertheless felt compelled to heed the things that modernity had revealed to her. The result was that she tended to mix belief systems, taking elements of one or another that she felt made the most sense, to produce an entirely new cosmology for herself.

I personally love such "cosmology-building," since I think it represents the very foundation of myth. So I would like to share my favourite Kudlu story, that of the "Shaman Committee," a modern Inuit myth in which one can recognize elements of Inuit tradition, science, theology, and pure imagination.

A long time ago, some of the most powerful shamans got together to form a committee. They conferred with each other for a long time, and decided that the best use of their powers would be to learn about the nature of the world and the moon. They were incredibly powerful, and knew how to fly anywhere they desired.

So they designated tasks to one another: this one would travel under the sea, while that one would fly up into the sky, while another would travel under the earth. The responsibility of all the shamans was to scout out wherever they went. After doing so, they would rendezvous back to where they had originally met, and explain to each other what they had witnessed.

In collective agreement, they at last departed upon their respective missions. They were gone for a time, flying everywhere in creation, until they finally returned and met with each other again.

They had learned some incredible things about the world. As the words and descriptions poured from each shaman's mouth, it was revealed that the Earth was in fact round, and unbelievably huge. Around it circled the smaller moon, which was also round, but barren and desolate. Beneath the deep sea were forests, from which came the driftwood found along the shores. Below the ground, however, there were vast lakes of flammable oils. And there was also much fire.

It was these oils under the ground that the shamans were most concerned about. They used their powers further to look into the future, and they learned the terrifying truth about how the world would end. The fire would light the oils, so that they would burn and crack the surface. The planet would split asunder. Fire would pour out of these great cracks, consuming all.

And the shamans looked no further into the future, terrified of what they has seen. But that is how they have always known the way in which the world will end.

Pijariiqpunga.

Sometimes I still worry about her. Whether she'd gotten enough food to eat, a place to stay and warm clothes to wear on any particular that day. She was, as I came to think of her, "My Bag Lady."

She worked the corner of Laurier Ave and Elgin Street in Ottawa. I would walk by her, on my way to work at ITC or ICC, as I rounded that particular corner. Sometimes I would spot her while riding the bus. She'd sit in that one corner day after day.

One fine day, a sunny one I believe, I'd paused to look down at her upturned face. A nice enough face, with fine lines of either concern or humour set in a somewhat plain aspect. Yet what struck me the most at the time were her cornflower blue eyes. She looked like she had spent a lot of time in the sun, and had somehow absorbed the colour of the sky.

I sat down and asked her how it was that she had ended up on the street. Laughing nervously, she said, "Got an hour?" I sat and listened. We sat on an old church bench and ignored the curious stares from pedestrians.

We must have been an unusual sight: me fairly dark and dressed in "corporate" clothes, sitting with an ageless woman in bizarrely eccentric garments, which had obviously seen better times. And, oh yes, hair so blond it looked platinum. She was like a fairy godmother from a fairy tale gone terribly wrong. And that was how her life-story unfolded.

I can't say she poured out her soul. After all, I was a total stranger. She owed me nothing. After a while, she paused for a minute to say that I was "okay." She had apparently seen a sparrow dead on the sidewalk after I had walked by. Those sparrows — damned if they didn't report her to the police all the time. They spied on her. Damn things, she had to watch out for them.

I left her with a bit of money and she said a profound thing. She told me that whatever thing might sort out her life was a thing for which money was no substitute. Strangely, I was tempted to agree with her on that one, even if I didn't on some of her other philosophies. Even if I didn't know exactly what the "thing" was.

I asked her what she was going to do come winter. She guffawed loudly and said that she'd be way out of Ottawa by then. She'd leave, with the birds, to sunny California. I offered her my old parka and perhaps a blanket.

Sorry, she said she didn't accept gifts from people. You never knew if they would be deliberately contaminated, no offense meant. Same when I went to shake her hand. Medical experiments had been done on her and other homeless people, she claimed, and she didn't want to pass on any viruses to me. I guess a hug was out of the question.

Of course I asked the obvious question of shelters. Too many kooks, she said. And some were violent. I felt so badly that there wasn't anything I could do but pass her a few measly dollars. Then I went home to my warm, comfortable apartment, whose only problem was whether the curtains were a "neutral enough" colour.

Close friends and family suggested not getting directly involved. You never knew what could happen to you with someone so mentally ill. I continued to chat with her whenever I could, and sometimes she would have coffee with me in some Java joint.

I could even, at times, understand her logic. Somehow, I knew that was more important than anything. Despite all what life had thrown at her, there was still some warmth and hope.

One day, as I was reaching to pass her a bill, she grabbed my hand and said "You be careful now. Don't let them get to you." Then I never saw her again. I assume she's flown South for the winter, with the birds. But not sparrows. They remain for the winter.

Pijariiqpunga.

We couldn't believe it — we were walking on a road! And there were trees! We had never seen them before, and they were every bit as beautiful as we had imagined them to be.

We were walking on Indian land. As our eyes searched the forest, we could easily tell that the Indians must have been very skilled, must have known this peculiar environment well, in order to live here.

It was surprisingly difficult for us to walk among the roots and branches, over the uneven forest floor, with twigs and moss occasionally falling on us from above. We were used to the hard, frozen ground of our home. It was a good thing that we Inuit kids, who had been flown over a thousand miles to Inuvik, were young and flexible enough to evade crippling culture shock.

To us "Qarmaaliit" (as we were derogatorily known by the other groups of native peoples), our exile from home was at once a horrible odyssey and a grand adventure, on the scale of Alice in Wonderland. And what a wondrous land it was, if you could overcome the situational drawbacks inherent to it.

We came to know her as Mrs. Knoxley, but as we emerged from the needle brush that day, she appeared as a strange apparition hunched over a small garden patch — a garden, we knew, that was an anomaly even in these sub-Arctic climes. Almost as in a story, like Kiviuq stumbling across the Spider Woman, we approached her with caution.

She beckoned to us, indicating where to step among the plants she had carefully placed in scant, soft dark earth. She immediately seemed like a sweet old lady — an impression later proven to be true — totally engrossed in what she was doing, almost as if, in her garden, she were recreating her own part of the universe. Here, she chatted away, were something-somethings. And over there were dah-dah-dahs. She spouted off the names of the plants as if we knew what she was talking about.

We responded with, "Wow, that's great!" and truly meant it. We had never seen anything like it before. Her garden was amazing, with cold-stunted cabbages and carrots and herbs defying the harsh environment.

Nearby, we found a beautiful patch of moss, with tiny flowers sticking out of it in clumps. I took some, later keeping the treasure in a little plastic bag in my locker. Every day, I'd take it out and wonder that the thing was still alive.

That is, until the day one of the older girls in my dorm tore its tops off. She was pretending to play airplane with her hand, and with each pass, she'd swoop down and rip off another little part of the plant. It survived for only a while afterward, before I had to throw it away when it became dry and lifeless.

On some level, the kindnesses of Mrs. Knoxley, juxtaposed with the cruelties of day-to-day institutional life, seemed to epitomize my time at residential school. With all the stresses we had to endure under that system, dealing with conflicting cultural values and the absence of family, we had to take kindness and caring wherever we could find it. Mrs. Knoxley was one of only a few people who treated us with any warmth and humanity at a very critical time in our personal growth.

Small mercies will make or break a life.

I've noticed that plants, however grand or tiny, seem to mold themselves to whatever environment they are given. A flower will wriggle out from a crack in concrete, and a tree will flow right through a fence in its path. Some plants have a harder time than others, but they persevere — insisting upon life.

While willows grow tall and mighty in the south, they nevertheless thrive in the north as well, altering themselves to grow low and out of the wind, to hug rocks and terrain that allow them life. And perhaps we ourselves were willows straining against the storm of social change, and the harshness of our situation.

Sometimes, it is as though we were part of the garden, tortured and beleaguered by our environment, yet never quite stamped out — thanks to Mrs. Knoxley's caring ministrations.

Thanks to little kindnesses.

Pijariiqpunga.

I have already written of how many Inuit groups used to fear the wrath of Nuliajuk — known to southern art collectors as "Sedna" — the fingerless, lice-ridden hag beneath the sea — mistress of marine mammals.

I was thinking of her the other day, as well as of the dreaded amayersuk, the cannibalistic crone who kidnaps children, tossing them into the great hole in her humped back.

Then I remembered the mention of monstrous hags in other folkloric traditions, and started to ask myself: what's with the hag thing? So I sat down with the books, and soon found that it was worse than I had at first suspected - human beings around the world are positively obsessed with their fears of hags.

Japan is rife with them, such as the knife-wielding, cannibalistic adachigahara, who treasures the blood of children, and ambushes wilderness travellers. Variations include the horned hannya, and the tongue-flicking nure onna. Also similar is the yama-uba, a hag whose hair transforms into serpents, catching her victims and pulling them into the opening in the top of her head.

There is the langsuir of Malayan folklore, once a woman who died in childbirth. She is marked by her long nails and hair, the latter concealing the hollow in her back. A corpse may be prevented from becoming a langsuir by placing eggs under her armpits, beads in her mouth, and needles in her hands.

There is the azeman of South America, an obsessive hag who drains the life-force of sleepers. She can be stopped by throwing down a handful of seed, which she is compelled to count.

The British Isles are worse than Japan. There is the Celtic banshee, the anglicized version of the Gaelic bean sidhe or bean sith, meaning "woman of the fairies, a crone - often attached to specific families - whose keening foretells an impending death. A variation common to Ireland and Scotland is the bean nighe, once a woman who died in childbirth, now a ghostly hag who washes bloody clothes by the river. The sight of one is an omen of one's own death.

Others include the adh sidhe of Ireland, sharp-toothed hags that rend the flesh of sinful persons, and can only be seen by such individuals at midnight.

There is the black annis of Scotland, a massive cave-dwelling hag, whose claws are iron and whose one-eyed face is blue. Being cannibalistic, she loves to snatch children from their beds.

There is the Baba Yaga of Russia, an ogress that flies about in a giant mortar and pestle, and whose hut dances upon massive chicken legs. Her favourite dish is children, of course, whom she rends with stone teeth, or crushes against her stone breasts.

There is the Berchta of southern Germany, an ugly old woman used to frighten children into behaving. Although kind to good children, she may cut open bad ones in her search for food, afterwards resewing them with iron chains.

There is the nocnitsa of Eastern Europe, who prowls about villages at night, with the intent of tormenting children. Mothers may keep her at bay by drawing a circle about their child's bed, then placing an iron weapon underneath it.

Even in Judeo-Christian and Islamic lore, there tell of Lilith, said to be the first wife of Adam (before Eve). Refusing to acknowledge Adam's supremacy over her, she was exiled from Eden, and later spawned generations of demons and monsters. When most of her progeny were killed, she took to killing human babies in vengeance. In the Middle Ages, the names of three angels were inscribed upon cradles and amulets to ward her away from sleeping babies.

The word "hag" comes from the Old English hagge or hoegtesse, a witch. The specific European monster known as a hag or nightmare is a hellish crone that visits sleeping victims, riding their backs throughout their dreams.

When the victim awakens looking haunted and dishevelled the next day, he is known to be "hag-ridden." Death was ultimately the result of repeated visitations. The "mare" of the word "nightmare" pertains not to a female horse, but instead to the Old English mare, a demonic hag. So the word "nightmare" actually stems from what was thought to be the visitations of such monsters.

So what's going on here? Are old women really all that scary?

(continued next week)

Are old women really all that scary?

Possibly.

Well, the simple reality is that the old possess power. Whether the young want to admit it or not, an older mind holds more facts. And when the mind acquires a new fact, it isn't merely added to a sum. It is combined with the facts before it, spawning an infinite number of new ideas. This is power.

Now, an old male is not complex. A male goes through one major transition in his physical life, which is puberty. The boy disappears. The man - husband, hunter, warrior, father - replaces him. And an old man is exactly the same as a young one, generally having the same role in society, and the same utility to it, even unto death.

An old woman is totally different. Like a male, the female passes through puberty, marked very distinctly by her first menstruation, an occurrence accompanied by no small amount of ritual across the world. Also like the male, this time marks the female's ability to have children, until recent times perceived as the major contribution of every single individual to their society - the defining factor in being human.

With age, however, the female diverges from the male, in that she eventually undergoes menopause. Menopause, or the cessation of natural procreative ability, is the second major phase in a woman's physical life.

Now, it is important to remember that although we today know a lot about the human body in advanced old age, much was unknown before the advent of modern medicine. The average lifespan, throughout most of history, was approximately 30 years.

It has always seemed to humanity that men undergo no major changes other than puberty. Long-lived women, however, have been observed to undergo menopause - a sort of procreative reversion to pre-adolescence. Think, for a moment, of how this comparatively rare phenomenon (remember, most women didn't live long enough to reach menopause) must have been perceived by early peoples.

Not only does an aged woman become haggard, grey, and wrinkly, but she also loses the ability of procreation. At the same time, however, her very age makes her a wellspring of knowledge from which a community of the young can draw. But beware: don't get on her bad side. The hag may assist her allies, but she is wily enough to undo her enemies in an instant.

She's scary.

In this sense, the hag becomes a supernatural being, exaggerated in fancy to mythic proportions, possessing a wealth of preternatural powers. In the real world, it can be this very tendency to mythologize an old woman that drives her to live at the edge of her community, perhaps even forsaking it altogether, which further compounds her folkloric image as the witch in the wilderness.

So is it any coincidence that most hag-monsters victimize children - which are a symbol of the potential of life - stealing or consuming that which they have been denied? Such monsters naturally drain the life-force from the young, for their very hag-like state has left them with a deficit in this area.

Or is it any coincidence that many folkloric hag-monsters, such as the Inuit amayersuk, possess a hollow in their bodies, into which they may abduct their victims, or by which their horrible secret nature may be identified? Such hollows are much like an inverse womb, a trait that represents the fact that, while young women may bring life forth from the depths of their bodies, the hag possesses a hollow that instead only consumes it.

Thus is fear, as usual, a matter of hysteria. And perhaps we would do well to realize why we, like the many cultures before us, fear the hag so greatly - a fear that has translated into either hatred or respect over time, but remains fear nonetheless.

And perhaps each of us had best catch ourselves before seeing the aged woman, she whose womb has become a hollow that no longer issues forth life, as a hag to be feared. Perhaps we had best assess her mind before her womb, lest we leave her with a hollow only in her heart.

For, after all, there is no point in fearing what we will become. Maybe the vision of our future selves is the most inescapable terror of all.

And given hatred or respect, let's err toward the latter.

Pijariiqpunga.

I love to gaze at nativity scenes at this time of year. There are all varieties, all shapes and sizes, from minuscule ones that you can place on your shelf to life-size replicas all afire with splendour and radiance. Some are clay with painted faces, others white porcelain, trimmed with gold. There are collections that you can set up yourself, with as many sheep or angels as you wish. In many, Mary is depicted as adoring her new baby, while Joseph is off to the side, looking on. Wise men kneel before the rough wooden cradle, and there is a star above the whole scene.

To me, it is a symbol of what has become the drama of the Christmas message: the Christ child recognized as the coming King; God's love for mankind as he reaches out to us in our own form. And not only to us, but to all creation as well, for a variety of animals are present, surrounding the cradle in the manger as witnesses to this marvellous event. There are choirs of angels in the starry sky. There are rejoicing shepherds.

I try to imagine what it must have been like to have been a lowly manger owner, kind enough to give shelter to travellers, one of whom was heavy with child. Did he also give them supper to eat? Who owned the sheep? Where did the wise men stay? Did they bring tents?

We are given an opportunity to guess at what Mary might have felt, knowing something of what lay before her, perhaps mulling it over in her heart.

How, then - as I observe our Christmas traditions today - did we stray so far from the simplicity of rejoicing in the humble beginnings of this truly grand faith? How did we go from that simple message - Good News for Mankind - to the complexity and insanity that we consistently experience at this time of year? Its transformation over two millennia is as startling as its original message.

I'm not humbugging Christmas, here. I enjoy my holiday celebration, even a bit of the commercialism, as much as everyone else. In some past years, I've even enjoyed it a teensy bit too destructively for my own good. I'm sure that many people can say the same. But I still wonder if we, in our fantastic rush to get it further, faster, better, and more fun, missed the major point of it all?

I don't even object to the mixing of other traditions, so called "pagan" elements, into the holiday season. Everyone has their way, and most of the festive stuff is tribal in origin anyway. I like Santa Claus, Christmas trees, Disney cartoons, and even the endless reruns of "A Christmas Carol". On the other hand, I can do without the "Nutcracker Suite" either in skating or ballet form. Or carols sung in country 'n' western. But I still hang up my socks on Christmas Eve, and some poor soul had better fill them up. (Or I'll pout on Christmas day).

As I get older though, and have gradually become more inured to the same old societal embarrassments — poverty within one of the world's wealthiest nations, unchecked violence, the refusal to build much-needed housing, etc. — I rejoice more frequently in the simpler things of life. I guess that's why, this time of year, it's particularly significant that the star shines brightly over Bethlehem, and breaks through the darkness of night.

(As it was away in a manger, so long ago.)

Pijariiqpunga.

As everyone knows, Inuit have always been the most gentle, peaceful people in the world. Right?

Well, as with most things, the truth regarding such a topic resides within some shade of gray. Just as there are no true absolutes in life, so there is no absolute truth to the idea that Inuit are strangers to violence, or even warfare.

The need for organized violence in any society is of course shaped by necessity, the environmental and social parameters within which varying forms of violence become options.

Violence is always in origin a "problem-solver." Whether effective or not, it is always intended to right a wrong, to address a lack — whether deemed defensive (resisting assault, theft, or invasion), acquisitive (taking food, slaves, territory, etc.), retaliatory (avenging murder, rape, vandalism, or insult), or merely as a cathartic expression of frustrated rage.

The simple fact is that Inuit, over the broad range of peoples who lived from one end of North America to the other, actually engaged in a startling amount of violence, much of which was organized. In this series of articles, I'm going to be using my own definition of war, which is essentially that of organized violence. Webster's defines war as "armed conflict between nations, tribes, or other groups," which doesn't necessarily refute my own, so I'm sticking to my guns.

Also, I'm going to cite a lot of examples of Inuit violence — tastefully, of course. The examples will derive from peoples ranging across the North. Naturally, I don't want to put a bee in anyone's bonnet by dredging up some unsavoury fact about their ancestry.

All of our ancestors — this is addressed to non-Inuit out there as well — have displayed some sort of depravity at one time or another. So, wherever possible, I intend to omit references to specific peoples, whether they be Igloolik, Netsilingmiut, Copper, or Aleutian. These articles are intended to inform and evoke thought, not to make some readers ashamed of their ancestry.

With all of that out, I'd first like to admit that you will have to look pretty hard among Inuit histories and folklore in order to find anything that obviously resembles war as it is fought today.

After all, Inuit have always been nomadic. In its most recognizable and organized form, war derives from stability. It is based upon the principles of land, territory, and cultural solidarity. It is necessarily launched from a base-point, a home ground, and most often involves the specific goals of seizing ground from an enemy, who also campaigns to do likewise from his own base.

Having had no permanent bases, and lacking even the concept of land as property to be held or defended, the culture of war took no root in any Inuit society. The very idea of territorial warfare might have been laughable to pre-colonial Inuit.

As I've pointed out before, the Land - Nuna - was always considered an environment within which animals and people resided, not as an object with distinct parts that could be divided up and actually owned. There were therefore no constant bases from which to launch campaigns, nor was there any ground to take even if there had been.

So what about resources? Again, resources — such as food or slaves — were no reasons for Inuit to go to war. Inuit tended to follow their food (caribou, for example) to wherever it was seasonally available. The caches and larders of other peoples were rarely worth stealing, since this sort of theft would invariably have taken up too much time, energy and risk for what amounted to a very small prize, especially when compared to the availability of animal prey.

Slaves, a very real reason for raiding among most cultures, were kept by Inuit only rarely. They were not highly valued, since they merely represented another mouth to feed. In the south, you can make a slave tend a crop for you, but you can't send him out hunting, since this is tantamount to setting him free.

Instead, the most common reasons for Inuit conflicts tend to derive from the most ancient and primal human characteristics, old like the culture itself: passion. In fact, the recognition of this fact by ancient Inuit offers us some clues as to why various traditions have come to exist.

We'll have a look next week.

Where conflict occurred among Inuit, it mainly originated with passion.

The Inuit exterior, one of respectful quietude, might, over time give non-Inuit observers the idea that Inuit are entirely non-violent. Seeing the lack of public displays of aggression, a lack of fist-fighting or open combat, for example, observers might get the idea that Inuit have always found ways to get along with each other peacefully.

This illusion, where it occurs, belies the reality of human nature: violence will always find expression in one form or another.

Traditionally, Inuit violence has typically been internalized, like most of the Inuit passions. In an unforgiving environment, it has been of benefit to learn how to suppress individual emotions in the face of larger concerns — for example, famine, storms, cold, and so on.

It is not that Inuit were unemotional, but rather that they had decided for themselves when it was appropriate to express certain emotions - such as in the safety of the home, for example.

Due to necessity, emotional displays became selective, often finding unconscious expression in dances, gaming, and song. Because survival was a constant challenge, the group could not afford to let an individual's random displays of emotion disrupt their lifestyle.

Aggressive displays, in particular, were reviled by Inuit as a sign of madness, chaos that could not be tolerated. Invariably, such displays were not worth one's trouble, since they could cause a person to be ostracized, and perhaps even physically removed from the group.

Yet the emotions themselves remained, and often popped out at the strangest times. Non-Inuit observers, given enough time, have nearly all recorded a similar phenomenon: Inuit at first seem stolid, highly disciplined, and unaffected by any emotion whatsoever. Faced with a crisis or failure, the response - so popularly recorded by explorers as being typical of Inuit - is invariably the traditional expression, "It can't be helped."

Yet, just as the explorer resigns himself to what he perceives as Inuit stoicism, he is shocked to witness or hear of an Inuk exploding into sudden violence.

Geert Van Den Steenhoven, for example, has related in Legal Concepts Among the Netsilik Eskimos of Pelly Bay, N.W.T. a story that was told to him as follows (1959:73):

I. traveled on Kellett River together with A., S., and some others, who on their sleds had been visiting their caches. The weather was beautiful and we walked to and from each other's sleds, while the sleds were moving all the time. A. was seated on the back of S.'s sled and the latter sat in front of him. A. was eating a fish. I was driving my sled behind his. One moment when S. was turning towards his dogs or so, I saw A. suddenly make a lightning stab with his knife at S.'s back — a would-be stab, to be sure. Then he immediately looked around himself. But I looked already in another direction. S. is the son of I. And it was known that A. and I. did not get along well. It was my impression that this stab was prompted by an altogether subconscious impulse and that A. only became aware of it after he had done it. I believe he could just as well have really stabbed S. out of these feelings of resentment.

Knud Rasmussen, during his famous Fifth Thule Expedition, encountered this phenomenon first- hand. He wrote that he had come to consider one of his Inuit guides to be a close friend, a gentle and friendly soul.

He was surprised, then, when huddled together one evening with his guide in a snow- shelter, the guide suddenly attacked Rasmussen without warning. A struggle ensued, and Rasmussen repeatedly tried to calm the guide and remind him of their friendship, while the guide continually shrieked his disgust at Rasmussen's ego and displays of wealth.

Apparently, Rasmussen's access to southern technology, and his willingness to distribute it throughout his expedition, had gradually built up a deep envy and resentment within the guide.

The guide, however, had kept his feelings under control, so that Rasmussen had not even noticed. Finally, once he felt safe and away from public scrutiny, the guide let it all out.

It is this old Inuit tendency to repress, and thus pressurize, violent impulses that forms the basis of Inuit conflict.

Next week: Revenge.

Any Inuit escalation to the level of organized violence has always been humble in beginnings, originating with one motive: revenge.

The most common cause for revenge was being made to feel insignificant. Personal ego was of extreme importance to traditional Inuit, which in part explains the strong respect dynamic in Inuit culture. The recognition of one's isuma - personal and untouchable thoughts and opinions - was of paramount importance.

Additionally, Inuit worthiness was always relative to personal competence, with one's worth directly measured by one's ability to survive, and the ability to survive measured by one's skills.

With these facts in mind, it becomes easier to understand why even the slightest attack upon one's ego was considered tantamount to physical maiming, and cause for bloody retribution. The most common slight occurred not in the form of verbal abuse, but instead in the form of actions that diminished another's significance. A hunter, for example, might flaunt his superior knowledge, a bold attack upon other hunters' egos.

Even in Inuit culture today, there remains a tradition of playing down one's own skills in public, saying for example, "Ah, I'm no good." This derives not from true humility, but rather from a tradition of preserving oneself from the retribution of others.

In traditional culture, one had to constantly take care not to accidentally offend others by openly parading one's ego. The dynamic has been mistakenly labelled as "envy" by observers, but it is actually one of assault and revenge.

Where care has not been taken to avoid this dynamic, the results have often been bloody, setting the stage for ongoing feuds. Thus has Inuit culture established a system where relative peace is maintained through the observation of tradition — a sort of balance where every individual's isuma is respected, yet no individual is to be considered "greater" than another, lest all hell break loose.

Nevertheless, this was not a perfect system, for in a culture where no one was allowed to dictate the behaviour of another, it also became impossible to prevent conflict between two individuals who insisted upon antagonizing each other. Since Inuit culture is traditionally quite sensitive to the feelings that kindle an act of violence, rather than focusing upon the act itself, Inuit societies tended to recognize that controlled expression of ill feelings had the best chance of exorcising violent tendencies from people.

For this reason, many Inuit societies developed safe forums, such as song duels or punching contests, where the aggressors could publicly express their pent-up feelings towards one another, and thus achieve a kind of catharsis.

Such devices denote an understanding among traditional societies of just how delicate the balance of peace could be, of how hard a society might work to keep the peace within a small group. And it is interesting to note just how easily this balance is disrupted by rapid change, such as the presence of southern observers.

Observers - through no fault of their own - naturally tended to praise the skills of a given hunter that they had come to focus their studies upon. By attaching themselves to a specific Inuk, making him the "star of the show", so to speak, they had inadvertently caused others in the group to feel small, and thus had made their "star" a target.

Asen Balikci, for example, tells with bewilderment of a sudden conflict between two fishermen who had always been good friends. Fisherman A had formerly been studied and filmed as the "exemplary" Inuit hunter, while his friend B had not.

While fishing, A stopped to cut up two fish for them to eat, one from his own catch, the other from B's. B mistakenly thought that both fish were from his own catch, and angrily rebuked A, who treated the whole matter as a joke.

Suddenly, B attacked A, so that a third nearby fisherman had to step in and separate the two men. This is a clear case of ill feelings derived from the placement of one individual above others, thus upsetting the cultural balance of ego.

Yet there was not always a third person to step in and separate two aggressors, so that the ultimate result was murder - an event that often sparked a conflagration of vengeance killings between families, at times escalating without limit. While revenge precipitated murder, murder precipitated warfare.

(Continued next week.)

Where warfare occurred among Inuit, it represents an escalation of murderous reprisals, an alternating series of vendetta killings, each side displaying more savagery and ferocity in response to the latest attack by the other.

The murder - even accidental killing - of a loved one was thought by many Inuit peoples to be a just reason to demand vengeance. It was the avenger's right and duty.

Make no mistake, however. The family of the victim, the males of which were invariably the avengers, would seek vengeance with or without the larger society's approval. Having no actual laws, but instead a series of traditions and taboos, the recognition of an avenger's right to avenge his dead relative was more like a sort of societal nod than an actual way of enforcing law.

The society itself - as an institution - would not move to avenge the dead, but neither would any of its members interfere if relatives "justly" insisted upon retribution. The vengeful impulse was, in such a situation, considered to be a natural one.

I personally remember the time when my "Big Sleeve" (a kind of cultural partner, of which I've written in past articles) experienced the death of his son. He was overwrought with grief, naturally, although the death was a completely accidental one. The son had been shot by a friend.

Even though my Big Sleeve knew that the friend had not killed his son intentionally, he was - for a time - extremely tempted to kill the friend. His tendency to want to exorcise his grief through vengeance was aggravated by the fact that, by Inuit tradition, such was his right.

Additionally, his desire was considered by others to be understandable rather than abominable. Among his people, this was known as akigiaq, "to win back" - meaning the right to win back the piece of himself that had been taken from him with the death of his son.

To his credit, my Big Sleeve realized that he was merely blinded by grief, and thus chose not to exercise his right.

Nevertheless, akigiaq was very common in old times. The death of one individual, intentional or not, demanded immediate reprisal. P would kill Q. Q's family would avenge him by killing P, and perhaps a couple of P's relatives for good measure.

P's family would avenge these murders by forming a party to slaughter even more of Q's family. Q's family would retaliate by attempting to completely wipe out P's family. And et cetera.

Geert Van Den Steenhoven recorded a good example, which I'll relate below without use of specific names and locations. I don't want individuals today to feel accountable for the actions of their ancestors.

Once there was the "Red" group, whose members included U. There was also the "Green" group, whose headman was X.

A feud began with the murder of Y by some of X's Green people. The family of Y was determined to avenge his death. Armed with bows (with which they were quite skilled), the Red revenge party soon reached X's hunting grounds. One of X's sons spotted them and ran off to warn X and the Greens of the approaching Red party.

X realized the carnage that was about to result, and sent his sons far away to safety. X hid himself away. When the Red group approached, they began to insist that X and his Green allies take up their fighting weapons (of different manufacture than hunting implements), and face them.

Those among the Green group, especially the women, tried to defuse the situation by insisting that X and the other Greens did not want to fight. Nevertheless, the Reds insisted until X (who did not possess any fighting weapons) took up his hunting gear. He and some other Greens eventually assembled to face the Reds. Some of the Greens even recognized in-laws among the Reds, but this did nothing to abate the Reds' fury.

The Reds massacred the Greens. Dying, X admonished the Reds, claiming that the Red reaction was extremist - that they had slaughtered more men than was their due.

The Reds remained unmoved, in return pointing out to X that the Greens had originally overwhelmed poor Y ten to one.

X seemed to agree with this, and his dying wish was that Y's widow be repaid in precious iron objects.

(Continued next week.)

In the last article, I had provided an example of a retaliatory attack by one camp upon another — murder inciting murder — that was all-too-common among Inuit in the old days. In that attack, the so-called "Greens" were slaughtered by the vengeful "Reds."

It was implied that the Greens lost for a reason, that reason being that they did not possess "people-killing" weapons, as did the Reds.

Weaponry is a normal part of Inuit life. Even today, many Inuit rely upon hunting big game, for which highly damaging weapons are required. If you want to eat a large animal, you must not only be able to hunt it down, but also possess the means to kill it.

In old times, life was utterly dependent upon a successful kill. A hunter could not afford to let his prey escape. An animal that was not killed almost instantly would flood its system with adrenaline, becoming immune to pain. Such an animal could escape or, even worse, turn upon the hunter and end his life.

Inept hunters were soon dead, leaving behind only those bright enough to refine their hunting technology. This form of natural selection soon left behind cultures that crafted weapons causing maximal tissue damage. Added to this natural lethality eventually came the addition of specialized features intended to harm humans.

Barbed instruments, arrows or spears, were the favourites across the north. Arrows were preferable for their range. While heavy barbing was not necessary in most animal-killing weapons, it was known that a human's natural tendency, if hit by an arrow, would be to pull it out. The barbs of the arrow would cause as much damage coming out as from the initial wound itself. Assuming one survived the arrow, it yet might kill by causing great blood loss. Finally, upon releasing the arrow from the bow, the spin of the projectile would cause the barbs to turn, tearing their way into a wound. Out or in, the arrow would cause lethal damage.

The use of barbs was not unique to Inuit, but has arisen in many diverse ancient cultures. The Saxons, for example, were fond of their barbed angvar spears, while the Irish hero Cuchulainn wielded a barbed, maiming spear known as the gae bolg. It seems that barbs are a simple and popular device.

Alaskans were by far the most sophisticated of Inuit in their battle technology. Their retaliatory raids were large and constant. One of the most effective killing technologies they had developed was poison, originally intended for hunting whales - but just as effective against humans. Poison-tipped darts were hurled from sophisticated throwing boards which were, in design, not unlike the atl-atl used by the aboriginal peoples of Central and South America.

Many such weapons were made deadlier by the use of copper and iron tips (the origin of the iron is still in dispute; it is not known whether this was an indigenous technology that was later lost, or perhaps acquired from wayward Japanese fishing boats). With such dangerous weapons in use, it was not long before Alaskan Inuit began to armour themselves. Their clothes were hardened with applications of seal blood and resin, and there is some evidence of lamellar breastplates having been fashioned from ivory and bone. The wooden hats worn by Aleutian men were very likely intended as helmets.

Many Alaskan peoples even built permanent houses, set several feet into the ground, camouflaged by long grass, and containing secret compartments wherein women and children could hide from raiders. The ultimate weapon of such peoples inevitably became their dogs. Unlike the qimmiit of the east, which were bred for endurance and normally not considered "pets", the Alaskans developed the Malamute - a massive, incredibly strong husky, deliberately cross-bred with wolves.

The Malamute, whose name is an anglicised distortion of Malemiut (the Inuit who originated the breed), was intended to live as one with the family, guarding it against raiders and remaining loyal unto death. Interestingly, this might qualify it as a "war dog" - a dog bred to fight humans - not unlike the medieval German Rottweiler. A living weapon, it is gentle to its friends, and deadly to its enemies - as is the function of any such tool.

It leads one to wonder, of course, what Inuit might have developed before they were handed firearms.

(Continued next week.)

The extent to which European-descended colonists influenced Inuit warfare is unknown, although it seems that firearms afforded Inuit a more efficient means of feuding. Already preferring a range of weapons, a vengeful individual must have thought a gun to be a dream come true — until his enemy came to own one.

The cycle of firearms influence upon Inuit culture is ironic: spurring Inuit feuding, assisting rebellion against colonial injustice, then finally representing a means by which Inuit were subjugated. A

laskans, for example, feuded constantly, and were seasoned raiders. With the acquisition of firearms through trade with Russian promyshlenniki, Russian sea-otter furriers, raids temporarily increased in lethality. It was not long, however, before Inuit began to focus their wrath upon the promyshlenniki themselves, who increasingly began to raid Inuit camps for slaves in their seasonal otter hunts. Inuit resistance was hastened by confidence in their new weapons.

Such resistance was quickly quashed, however, by the superior firepower of the furriers. William S. Laughlin (Aleuts: Survivors of the Bering Land Bridge, 1980:129) notes that in the 1760's, a Russian named Soloviev made a show of force by lining up a dozen Inuit to see how many a single musket shot could kill. Nine were slain.

Similar conflicts seem to have erupted across the upper half of the continent at one time or another. There are 19th century Copper Inuit tales of raids by "white men." While the Inuit men are away hunting, the camp is raided by "whites", who butcher everyone except for some hidden children.

Returning, the hunters track down the murderers and kill them. Interestingly, the tales are strikingly similar to even earlier tales of Indian raids, or raids by other Inuit bands. This tale type seems to be an Inuit folkloric template, where the latest enemy can be inserted to suit the current culture.

Above all, the east seems to have remained the most peaceful. While horrible family feuds were common, there are no known tales of organized conflict between Inuit and colonists. The acquisition of firearms, however, does seem to mark an upswing in the number of vendetta killings.

In the early days of RCMP activity in the north, there arose numerous cases where legal difficulties were presented by such vendetta killings. Once the RCMP became obliged to enforce Canadian law upon Inuit, the formerly allowable activity of murderous vengeance suddenly became illegal. RCMP officers found themselves arresting Inuit who casually shot their enemies.

Courts found themselves trying defendants who could not comprehend that they had done anything wrong. Further difficulties arose with individuals refusing to be tigujau - or "grabbed," as it was known - for exercising their "rights."

It is to the credit of the RCMP that, as far as the enforcement of colonial law goes, they have been comparatively gentle. From their earliest days as the Northwest Mounted Police, their level-headed and non-violent conflict resolution has ingratiated them to most Canadian aboriginal peoples, including Inuit.

Eastern Inuit are fortunate to have been dealing with the temperate RCMP, rather than the more brutal colonial powers that have savaged other cultures. It is the challenge of today's RCMP to maintain this record, which includes the abolition of organized revenge among Inuit peoples.

It is this author's opinion that, as important as tradition may be, there are some traditions that Inuit can live without. Inuit now live alongside cultures whose traditions of war and conflict make their own seem minute by comparison.

The cultures that have lately colonized the Land have known escalations of violence to horrific levels, levels that Inuit might just as easily have achieved, if not for intervening factors. By now, some colonial cultures have become skilled at maintaining peace in a large society, but they have paid dearly for such knowledge with monstrous wars.

And as much as Inuit have suffered under colonization, there are some lessons that Inuit culture has learned for free. Inuit may be thankful that they know relative justice, that they no longer have to fashion weapons to repel raiders, that they no longer have to waste lives in ever-escalating feuds.

To what degree can violence escalate? Inuit, while knowing the bloodshed that all humanity is heir to, have never had to learn the dreaded answer that other cultures have found: there is no end.

Pijariiqpunga.

"Father, are you an angakkuq?"

With his usual way of answering a direct question, my father answered indirectly.

"Do you think I'm an angakkuq?"

"What did you see?" I asked.

"Nothing. All I did was wake up."

"Were you scared?"

"Yes, of course (suuqaimma) - (no wonder) - I didn't know how I ended up there."

"What did you do?"

"I was cold. I walked around, but I couldn't see a thing. The island was pitch black. I could hear the ocean and that was all."

I was quiet as I played with this in my head, trying to imagine the events as he had originally described them:

"I had drifted in my boat for a few hours, trying to figure out what the source of my engine trouble was. The spark plugs were fine, not yet rusted. In my concentration, I hadn't realized that I had drifted out of sight of land. Waves were rising. The sky looked menacingly dark.

"I took a quick break to light up the kerosene lamp, drinking the last of my tea out of a thermos. This would have to be my last drink before heading back to shore. A fast check for leaks revealed that a small gash had developed on the side of the boat, which would necessitate bailing here and there in between repairs. The engine was flooded, and I would have to dismantle it for repairs. The storm was picking up, looking serious. I wasn't worried yet, but I knew that I must sight land soon. This had been a short trip to check the nets and supplies, but if it got longer, the main concern would be lack of water - unless I was blessed with rain.

"If you get lost on the water, let the waves carry you - they eventually end up on some shore. On every sixth or seventh wave, really charge ahead, as this is the largest and strongest wave, which will propel you. Relax and bail, go with the flow until the seventh, then surge ahead again. On and on I went like this...

"I remember thinking of my warm sleeping bag, and I must have nodded off to sleep at some point. I don't know why.

"I awoke shivering upon some unknown shore. How could this be? Had I somehow drowned? There was a darkness around me, so total that I could feel it. I tried to feel my way along blindly, then stood up. As soon as I took a step, I instantly stumbled. My limbs were completely numb. It made me feel as though I no longer truly existed.

"Then there was a miracle. A light was suddenly shining down on me. Looking up, I saw a seagull flying. It's wing shone with light, and illuminated a path to my boat. Then I took out a canvas and built a shelter, waiting until I was rescued.

"I still don't know how I had been cast there in such pitch blackness, or how a seagull had come to help me. That is all I have to say about how I understood it."

Later, in my "reading" tent which was set up against my parents' house, I pulled out one of my comics. I often did this to think and find my own space. I tried to make sense of what my father had told me. I suspected that there must have been some explanation that science could offer.

Maybe, as I read this word in the comic strip before me, my father had an h-a-l-l-u-c-i-n-a-t-i-o-n. Maybe he had swallowed a bunch of salt water and it had affected his brain, got sick and had a bad dream, bumped his head or something.

Then again, I reminded myself, there were many things in this world we could not understand, as our minds were too "small." So what if a seagull actually illuminated his path? Just because it was odd didn't mean that it hadn't been from the Creator.

Perhaps I was a bit envious of my father. I longed to witness my own ripple in time, a sign of the strangeness of our universe. My days seemed spread out ahead of me, dull and boring. Among endlessly sunny days, I wished for just one of rain. And sometimes, my own imagination was as dark as that Black Island. Sometimes.

Pijariiqpunga.

When I was a kid, the Netsilingmiut called me uqalluriktuq ("one who speaks freely"). I think I came by that honestly.

Another major part of communication - body language - was much more difficult to come by, and much harder to comprehend. Even though my family was Inuit, it originated from various areas of Baffin Island.

My father's lifestyle, however, necessitated that we relocate to live amongst the Netsilingmiut peoples, whose ways were often quite different from ours. Frankly, it sometimes seemed that we might as well have been from a whole different continent.

I was a tomboy. I was not "lady-like." My slacks and boots were constantly covered in mud. My sleeves were never tidy, normally tucked up to my elbows. I hardly ever combed my hair.

But I was polite. I figured out that if I sat and listened patiently, it would be seen as good behaviour, and I could then hold conversations with adults. Really old people were the most fun. But as I mentioned earlier, body language took a while to learn.

In our family, we were quite loud compared to others, and expressed our opinions as they came to us. This was untypical of many other Inuit.

Whenever I visited homes, I was continually surprised to find that people hardly ever held lively conversations. I soon learned that this was their particular way of practising silent behaviour, forming "good habits" (especially in children) that would allow them to reflexively remain quiet during a hunt.

These families were very traditional, living exclusively off the land - a good hunt meant everything to them. Our family's way was to be silent out on the land, but to act the opposite back in camp.

There were other complications as well. The worst involved figuring out how to address people or behave in the presence of certain individuals, especially exceptionally traditional sorts such as elders. Here is how it would typically go in an elder's home:

I would walk into the door of the tent and wait to be noticed, or I would let out a polite little "ahem," or small cough. When I was finally told to enter, I would sit down way off to the side, making a huge display of becoming comfortable.

That gave the elder a chance to ask where my father was, or maybe whether he was out hunting. It would open up the chance for chit-chat, which I was not allowed to initiate. I would answer yes or no in the traditional way, either widening my eyes or wrinkling my nose.

When the elder was saying something, I would politely look down, and only look up when he was done. Of course I didn't ask questions, which would have been scandalously rude. There would be long pauses in between the elder's statements or questions, in which I was allowed to say, "Eee...," to indicate that I was hearing what was being said.

Sometimes I was asked what I thought about this or that. What did I think? If I didn't have an opinion, I would answer, "I don't know." And that would be the end of that.

On the other hand, there was no guarantee that I would not have an opinion. If so, the elder would be treated to an earful.

But the system was fair. If I was asked to speak, it was culturally assumed that I was now allowed my opinion. When it was my turn, I had the floor, and no one else could talk until I was finished.

I knew, as I had been taught by the elders, that when I was done, I was to indicate so, typically by saying, "Pijariiqpunga." It had no literal translation, but it meant something akin to, "That's all I have to say about that."

It meant that someone else could have the floor now. This didn't mean that the conversation went back and forth like English, or even that the speaker had to make some obvious point.

In fact, in English the statements might have been considered hopelessly long-winded and rambling. There could even be pauses - very long, completely silent pauses - in which no one spoke a word because the speaker had not yet indicated that they were finished.

It seems to me that this was a very civilized way of doing things.

(Continued next week.)

You had to walk a delicate balance as a child in traditional culture. If an elder told a joke, you had to laugh - even if it had not been especially funny. You, on the other hand, could never tell a joke, or you would be considered "aqittungajuq." Literally, one who has gone soft.

If I was exceptionally well-behaved, I got told a story or song. My enjoyment of this was not only due to the fact that it was entertaining, but that by custom I was allowed to ask questions — in a sense voicing my imprisoned opinions.

"Why did Kiviuq not suspect that his wife was really a fox?" "Who told you that story, your grandmother or grandfather?" "How deep was the lake the loon was in?" As long as I didn't stare, I was even allowed to watch the storyteller's face in order to pick up the visual components of the tale.

The most vivid storytelling was that accompanied by ajaraaq, or string-games. Dozens of ghostly forms sprang forth from the web-like figures produced between an elder's fingers.

Then I would snatch up my own string and try to replicate the figures before me, as the story sped by. I was copying the thoughts and knowledge of people who had already lived a lifetime before me, yet there was a common understanding between us in those times. The elders, too, had once been children like myself, sitting before their own elders, fumbling with their strings as stories incomprehensibly old filled their ears.

My family was known to visit with southerners quite frequently. So in these times elders took the opportunity of asking me questions about modern things they couldn't understand. What was it like in the treeline? Was it true that southerners lived in crowded places like bird colonies? How did they all manage to feed themselves when they didn't hunt? Had I ever seen a "horse?" Was the new store manager considered a good person even in his own culture?

I imagine that having to explain what I knew of the "new" culture made me a valuable source of information. It led me to eventually understand that not only were differences between cultures based upon language and custom, but also upon the way that people perceive and cope with the world around them.

I have come to believe, over time, that there is no actual formula for reconciling cultural differences. This shouldn't be surprising anyway. Just think of how complex and varied culture can be, swaying and evolving with every shift in a people's knowledge or beliefs, their motivations and circumstances. Many of us cannot even get along perfectly with our families, which are themselves sub-cultures less complex than an actual ethnicity. Even among the smallest circle of friends, relationships vary constantly.

I even know of an example where an Inuk father and his boy were visiting a friend from a different area. When the boy acted like a brat, his father apologized to the friend, calling the boy huqutaunngittuq ("damned nothing.") The friend was pu led, however, since huqutaungittuq meant "all right" in his own culture.

In traditional Inuit society, unless you are related, you cannot have a close conversation between genders. Therefore, the reluctance of many "traditional" female patients to speak to male doctors. Similar difficulties have arisen when Inuit have had to communicate with lawyers, police, judges, and so on.

Is it any wonder that reconciling collisions between cultures constantly necessitates a complex dance of negotiation and interpretation by specialists?

Many things get "lost in the translation," not only from language to language, but from culture to culture. Traditional Inuit were often overwhelmed with what they perceived to be the simple - almost child-like - thought processes of southerners. Similarly, many southerners have regarded Inuit as primitive and vulgar. They have been unable to decipher that which Inuktitut says through silence and "passive" body language.

The Inuit use of silence is a tricky problem. This leads many outsiders to label some as being uncooperative or non-responsive, when, in fact, it may be the opposite. The person might just be being polite, or might be conveying a thought or feeling without words.

In any culture, there are rules of how to speak, to whom and when. But the uncultured hear only the words, so that the unspoken is lost to them.

Pijariiqpunga.

You know, I hardly write anything regarding modern issues. At least, I usually try to imply my thoughts through stories of traditional Inuit life, or didactic folktales. Well, I have to break with that tendency for the moment, since there's something very important to me that I want to comment upon - and I don't feel that I can resort to metaphor in order to do it.

Last year, I had the pleasure of being a judge on a panel of three people whose job it was to comb through tons of applications to The Canada Council for the Arts. They were pretty much all aboriginal writing projects.

It quickly occurred to me that while there were many applicants from all around Canada, even, strangely, some from the U.S. and Japan, there was a noticeable lack of Inuit applicants. But I think my initial sadness at this fact was outweighed by bewilderment.

Why are there so few Inuit writers? I'm not talking about the tradition of oral storytelling, a fine yet separate art unto itself. While the arts of song and spoken tale often characterize Inuit culture these days, they are not in fact unique to it. Other cultures - including European - have equally rich oral folk traditions. There is no law, of course, that binds ethnicities to their respective traditional art forms.

And it is for this very reason that I am pu led by the lack of Inuit writers. In pondering this, I can only hazard a guess that most Inuit consider prose writing to be the province of Occidental peoples - a fact that simply cannot be true.

After all, many people get a kick out of the "Nunani" and "My Little Corner of Canada" columns in Nunatsiaq News. Then there is Michael Kusugak, whose books have understandably earned him no small amount of acclaim.

Yet there are other Inuit writers whose writings too often escape public notice. Just a few days ago, an individual calling him or herself "Oopik" wrote an excellent opinion piece in the "Politics" section of Nunanet's Political Discussion Forum. Dated March 4, it was entitled, "Language in Nunavut", and consisted of a commentary on Nunatsiaq News' article, "CLEY Bumbling Delayed Language Agreement".

Oopik's piece, in my opinion, was intelligent, reasonable, interesting, and most of all: well-written. I have read many feature articles in magazines and newspapers that were far worse than Oopik's commentary. Why is Oopik limiting him or herself to a message board?

Another example of someone who deserves to be widely published is Abraham Tagalik. Abraham's writings have appeared up and down many of the electronic forums of Nunavut. They are at the very least amusing, on average insightful, and quite often brilliant. If the man wrote books, I would be buying them.

Yet the talents whose absences I most notice are those of youth - the visions of fire and splendour intrinsic to the young. I know they are out there, since I have talked to some young Inuit who, happily, have absorbed the styles of prose and poetry typical of southern authors whose chosen genres are those of fantasy, science-fiction, and horror.

These youth, in their own way, follow in the best tradition of Inuit storytelling - the primary purpose of which has ever been that of entertainment - and they are to be commended for refusing to be locked into ways that some tell them are "Inuit". What is "Inuit" is what Inuit do, and nothing other than this.

If I had even two nickels to rub together, I would start some foundation that acts as a resource for Inuit prose writers. I do not belong to any organization however, and do not even work in an office, so I can do nothing but offer advice.

To the Inuit writers out there: you can write anything, anytime, anywhere, and anyway you want to. Writing, like any art, is a fever that resides in the blood. Do not listen to those that tell you your daydreams are a waste of time.

Write and read. Read, read, read, because the writings of authors you love will serve as the best instruction in how to express your own visions.

Stand up for yourself, and keep writing - because the world hates those who express themselves, yet always needs them.

Pijariiqpunga.

"Bucket Salm Pick!" Every time Enook missed the ball, he'd let out a string of Bucket-Salm-Picks.

What the heck was he trying to say? My older sister and I would look at each other and break into a fit of giggling every time he said that. We knew he didn't speak any English, so we figured he was trying to say something he had heard from the transient southern workers. God only knew where he picked that up and copied it - construction workers perhaps, or from some ship's crewmen.

Every summer, while it was light out, the Gjoa Haven community - or what there was of it then - would turn out for a game of anauligaaq (Inuit Baseball.) Anyone could play, men, women, children, anyone basically who could catch the ball and run with it. The only requirement was a sense of humour and an attitude of play. Bad sports just didn't participate, or got discouraged early on, as the game was more about social interaction than about athletic skill.

Such games were common among us tribal peoples, the local handicrafts officer explained to me. As soon as roads were built, and people began properly working for wages, these games and others like it would disappear. Progress, don't you know.

"Oh sure, whatever," I said, trying to pretend that I didn't take him too seriously. Everybody has a theory as to where the Inuit will end up eventually. Just because overdevelopment and syncretation had bowled over and crushed other areas didn't mean it would happen to ours.

Deep down, though, I knew he was right. I was spending from fall to spring at school, a thousand miles away. And I knew enough about global issues, by then, to afford myself a glimpse into the future. Not only were Inuit being swept up by the changes in their world, but they were actively participating. Many wanted the amenities brought up from the south.

In those days, to keep in shape for soccer and basketball - for both of which I was a high school team member - I daily made a solitary jog to a small lake about four miles away, did some sit-ups, and jogged back.

It cleared my mind and gave me some private time away from my younger siblings, whom I normally helped my parents look after. Sometimes, I would even do a toned down version and took one of my little brothers along. I would carry a lunch, and make a tea fire before heading back, so as not to make the trip so goal-oriented and selfish.

On those slower and more easy-going trips, my brother and I would look for duck eggs along the way, and catch char fry under rocks along the lake shore. There were no time constraints, so our walks would soon turn into idle meandering, after which we barely arrived home in time for supper, and an early sleep due to our grogginess from a long day of fresh air.

On one such trip, I eventually stopped to look more carefully at the lake that I visited throughout most of my childhood. As I did so, I thought to myself about the coming developments ahead.

The lake surface was clear and clean, like a polished mirror, overhead flights of birds reflected in its surface. I could see right down to the bottom, where pebbles of all colours stood out in sharp relief. I took a drink, more ceremonially than in need, and said to myself, "This is the last time I'll see the lake this way."

I knew that a push for resources would bring with it not only pollution, but social ills as well. I left the lake and never returned. It remains in my memory as I wished it could be. Forever untouched.

The same could not be said for the community of Gjoa Haven. Though the arts and crafts officer was right, no one now plays the same games outdoors in the summer. Roads have been built, and the grounds where we played are now occupied by a large school building. Enook's children now probably go there.

We did finally discover what Enook had been trying to say with his, "Bucket Salm Pick!" The words had been simple English expletives - swear words copied from migrant workers - that are best left undeciphered here.

In retrospect, I'm glad that he couldn't pronounce them.

Pijariiqpunga.

I was four years old then, so I apologize for my dim memory, as well as the fact that I didn't quite understand all that was happening. It seems to me that viewing such memories, in my mind's eye, is much like staring down a very narrow tunnel, where milky and unclear images are sharply contrasted with those that are disturbingly vivid.

Sometimes, the sequence of events — I'm sure — is utterly mixed up. I am not even certain of which colours and shapes are those held in actual memory, or substituted by imagination. Yet I know, or rather I feel, one great truth: those images in my mind are somehow important.

They are of a time and of events that may seem unthinkable today. Yet some part of my brain nags me into believing that they nevertheless should not be forgotten.

For now it will suffice to be a decent witness. In fact, a decent witness is all that I can be, since the best witness could be nothing less than the shadow of Death itself.

For it is this that I see in front of me, when I think back, and even though I am only four at that time, I can sense its grip upon those around me, and sense the despair and pain that they endure.

It is the time before the great and well-known tragedy of the Arctic Exiles. Richard Harrington is documenting, with his now famous photographic collection, the starvation of whole camps of peoples of Ennadai Lakes. Unbeknownst to some then, and many today, a lesser known famine is at once occurring to the north, in the Garry Lake Region.

The same caribou that have failed to migrate across the barrens that year have deprived large and small groups alike of the meat necessary to their survival. The Garry Lake People are one such group. They have always been an oddity in that they are both an inland and coastal people. That horrible year, as they customarily travelled South to hunt their fall caribou, they were unaware that they would not return that winter.

It is in that same winter that my father answers his call to serve as a missionary among the Netsilik peoples. We pack up everything we own, and leave our Baffin culture to trek for thousands of miles over treacherous terrain — a period of three months by dog team.

I am little, and thus am carried, and full of glee at the chance to travel extensively - a craving typical of Inuit. I accumulate the vivid and mostly beautiful memories of places we cross, of people we meet.

Yet it is the horror that confronts us upon reaching our final destination that clings most tenaciously to the edges and corners of my mind. My own guess is that it impacted upon my psyche with especial force simply for the reason that I was still, at that age, learning how to think, how to make sense of events in the world around me. I am struck, I remember, with that kind of forceful blow that only dreadful reality can deal, the sort of effect that causes a child to freeze upon realizing a horrible and previously unimaginable truth about the world.

I am greeted by the very raw essence of life and death, and my days as a baby wither behind me.

I see a man on a sled, attempting to rise amid caribou-skin blankets. He has just been rescued. He feebly gestures his thanks to all, or perhaps only to the powers that be, and sinks back in exhaustion. His face is hollow and skeletal, his clothes ragged, partly eaten.

I can only keep thinking that a small breeze might have bowled him over. As he slips down, he resembles a desiccated corpse lain to rest. Even his moan — betraying the fact that he still lives — is weak and sad, as if the effort of uttering it were too much for him. He is literally a man recovered from the brink of death.

Later, I will know this man as Pepper's grandfather - the man with the wooden leg and crutches, who eats with a meat grinder, as he doesn't have any teeth.

(Continued next week.)

Pepper's grandfather wasn't the only surivivor of the horrible famine that overtook the Garry Lakes region. In some ways, looking back, as difficult an ordeal as it was for the grandfather and his family, the sight of his condition was only a mere glimpse of the true horror that they had endured. Other families in that region have their own stories to tell.

To this day, I believe people must live with the scars of those times. Given their strength of spirit, those survivors were the best sorts of people to form the basis of a later community. There are no better foundations than the twin virtues of courage and perseverance.

It was long after Pepper's grandfather returned from the hospital, with a new wooden leg from the depredations of the famine, that I really came to know his family. My father became a hunting partner and mentor to Pepper's father. Pepper's father — I suppose — felt obligated to support my father in his missionary work, volunteering to assist him in working with the Netsilik peoples.

In a way, we were quickly accepted on a grass-roots level, and we children were provided with an irreplaceable experience. We were able to witness and participate in a way of life that no longer exists.

The films and ethnographies that I've viewed and read don't even come close to painting a true picture of the uniqueness of the wonderful peoples in that area, including the lesser known Eastern arctic Peoples — the Kingarmiut (Cape Dorset), Uqqurmiut, and others. Living in that time and place was like growing within a melting pot of fantastic cultures, and all the lore that they had to speak of.

How can one be impressed by the later works of social scientists, when your own father has fond memories of working with the great explorers? Of remembering Knud Rasmussen as "Kunuuti?" Of knowing that your friend's father had travelled with Henry Larson on the St. Roch, on its maiden voyage through the Northwest Passage?

When your own grandfather is the son of Captain Joseph Bernier (commander of the Arctic), your great grandmother his housekeeper and chef. When you have seen the so-called trailblazers of today — who now have libraries and missionary programs named after them — taking their fledgling steps. When you've babysat their children, helped set up their tents, and showed them how to put sealskin boots on properly. It does colour your view of history.

I feel the same whenever I read about discoveries of wooly mammoths intact and preserved. I know from scientific evidence that the creatures are tens of thousands of years old. Then I remember that all across the circumpolar north there is a remembered word for such a beast, preserved in oral tradition and figures in string games. It sends a shiver down my spine.

Sometimes I mine my own culture for nuggets of knowledge, as though facts are precious metals. Some of the knowlege comes from folklore: old monsters, great upheavals, strange animals, little people, giants, visiting star peoples and men in bizarre ships, trips to the moon and ocean bottom, great oceanic voyages and treks over ice and snow, and always the cast of heroes, villains, antiheroes, and tricksters.

Yet much of that treasure derives from the living people, those whose lives were — and often still are — breathing archives, offering glimpses into a past that no ethnography could ever know.

In the same way that the Arctic was long thought to be empty and desolate, only to be revealed as having unfathomable riches, so gradually dissolves the idea that Inuit are a simple and uncomplicated people. Just think of what those ancient hearts and minds have held, the eyes that have beheld lost worlds.

And to think that so much — a universe in each person — might be stolen from us by an often-forgotten famine, so long ago. Doesn't the thought make you feel like you have stepped under a shadow, almost invisible, yet subtly colder than your surroundings?

To think of those past minds, of what they represent, is staggering. Like a pebble you pick up on the beach for closer examination, details jump sharply into relief — the very details of each soul formed by the tremendous forces of countless waves, the oceans of time surrounding the island of our present existence.

See you at the beach.

Pijariiqpunga.

Youth and speed are no match for old age and treachery.

- Old Saying

"C'mon little creatures, time to clean up. C'mon pet slaves."

A call to clean up at our house in Gjoa Haven was like a potential call to mutiny on a pirate ship. Especially for my brothers in the summer. Perhaps even more so with me supervising them.

On this day like any other, my call was immediately met with various versions of, "Awww, can't I just finish this?" or, "Wait, I'm not done yet." None of my little brothers even bothered to look up at me from their respective activities.

"Up and at em!" I cried. "Who's turn is it to anit the qurvik?"

It was always someone's turn to attend to this most dreaded of jobs, in the days before indoor plumbing. One didn't even want to think about the qurvik, euphemistically called the "honey bucket."

Let me tell you, there was nothing reminiscent of honey about it. But even from the youngest age, we had been into borrowing English metaphors, mixing them into our Inuktitut.

I'm still not sure who invented the honey bucket thing. I do remember, however, how Abe Oopik used to call nouveau riche Inuit who had lost touch with tradition, "honey-bucket kids."

"Okay," I said, making up a new rule (one had to keep younger siblings off balance), "this week, we'll start taking double turns at anit-ing the qurvik. Whoever did it last week does it this week."

"So how come it's never your turn?" piped a smartass. But he was drowned out by, "It's not fair..." and other futile whinings of dissent.

"I'm telling Mom."

"Go ahead," I dared. "Just don't come to me next time you need money." The monetary threat was always a good tool.

"Tell you what," I said, having a sudden change of heart, "I'll pay you five bucks to empty it. Think of all the candy you can buy with that."

Someone quickly piped up with, "Okay, but only if I don't have to do the dishes."

"Deal."

But then I noticed that my other, less gullible brothers had taken off, knowing somewhere in their male brains that there wasn't a bloody thing I could do if they just flew the coop. Yelling wouldn't help, and too many complaints from the boys would eventually reach some higher authority's ears.

As it was, I was pretty much left to bustle around in an indignant huff, throwing and complaining as I picked up clothes, toys, and boy treasures that had been dragged in from lord knew where.

"I'm never having brothers again," I muttered past dripping venom.

My bribe of five dollars had worked only to a limited extent, and even my "hired" help soon abandoned ship under the pretext of "going to help my dad." The dishes only got partially done.

"How did those guys get so slippery?" I wondered. Where did they learn this avoidance of chores? Was it a brother thing, or a general kid thing? Did other kids in other families do that?

I had yelled, "Don't come back to me when you need more money!" at my departing brother. I was barely rational now. Their natures just didn't make sense to me. Maybe, I reasoned, they knew that if they peed me off in just the right way, I might actually be grateful for their departure.

When I was done cleaning, I found my father fixing his nets at the shore. My report was that I'd had to do all the work myself, as no one would help me. By the way... could I go for a spin on the speed boat? The answer was yes.

I was reversing the engine, pulling away from shore, when I spotted my rotten brothers running towards me. They were waving their arms for me to wait. I waved back, as I sped off. It was my turn.

You know, it's funny to look back on all of this, and then think of what terrific guys my brothers ended up becoming. After we all did a lot of growing up, I guess.

Sorry, guys. As you had suspected, it had actually been my turn to anit the qurvik. It was just one of those things so gross that only a boy should touch it. Hee, hee.

Pijariiqpunga.

I've never quite grasped whatever impulse ovecomes people when they want to view their dogs as status symbols. Although Inuit have been known to be proud of their dogs, such pride lies more in having an efficient team or pup-bearing bitch than in an individual dog.

And Inuit of course attach no significance whatsoever to a breed. You'll never hear a hunter bragging:

"This one is a pure bred Kimmik, from the finest Baffin line, acquired from Imaittuq kennels, which operates out of Arctic Bay. Imaittuq just had a litter, and I was lucky to slide in on their waiting list, since a friend of mine from this year's dog show happens to know the owner. But such a pedigree is worth every penny..."

I was astounded when I eventually learned that the dogs I grew up with are now recognized by kennel clubs as a distinct breed — the "Eskimo dog." although recent political correctness has allowed the name to give way to the "Kimmik." Even the latter name is extremely weird to me, since in my language a qimmiq is a dog - any dog, simple as that. So, when southern dog owners banter in English:

"What a lovely dog! What is it?"

"Thank-you. It's a Kimmik."

I instead hear,

"What a lovely dog! What is it?"

"Thank-you. It's a dog."

I think it took the experience of actually becoming a pet owner, and eventually mingling with other pet owners, for me to realize what great importance is placed on breed and pedigree.

Obviously, my dad's dog team was comprised solely of working dogs, a few of whom were so temperamental that you wouldn't want them as pets anyway; in fact, you wouldn't want to stand too close to them at feeding time.

Such dogs - while excellent bear hunters and sled haulers - were a class unto themselves. They understood that they were the dogs, and we were the humans. My experience is that most hunters' dog teams are similar. The dogs and humans are not part of a single "pack."

Instead, only the dog team is the pack, while the humans are a species that commands and maintains the pack. It is a symbiotic relationship that the dogs endure, because of their own needs and the fact that they know no other existence.

Their ability to consider themselves and their human overlords as separate, yet dependent, is displayed by the fact that a dog team will occasionally abandon its owner if the team feels the need to — and has the opportunity to escape. Every once in a while, my father's dogs would get loose and run off at high speed, their dreams of unfettered hunting at last realized.

He used to get them back by firing off a shot into the air. It would make them think that a bear —their most hated enemy, I'm still not sure why — had been bagged, and they would come racing back again, hoping for a piece of the action.

Yet as clever as this tactic may seem, it wasn't foolproof. There were times when the dogs did not respond to the rifle shot. In such an eventuality, my dad was simply forced to wait for a few days, knowing that the dogs couldn't catch a thing on their own, and thus would be forced to return out of hunger.

Having been raised in an environment where dogs were strictly valued for their utility, where with rare exceptions affection was peripheral, one can understand my rather slow adaptation to the idea of dogs as pets — especially house pets.

In adult life, various friends began the slow process of acclimatizing me to house pets. I never quite got used to the idea until living with my in-laws for a while, and getting to know "Emma", a plump yet dignified labrador retriever, who acts as though she had been Cleopatra in a past life.

Emma spends most of her time indoors in front of a heating vent, and has her own bed. She occupies her time by begging for pi a scraps, and getting armpit rubs from her humans. I love her.

I still remember when I showed my cousin in Arctic Bay - who is older and very traditional, speaking only Inuktitut - a photo of Emma in front of a Christmas tree.

"She has isuma (a mind)!" my cousin gasped.

(Continued next week.)

So I used to think that the idea of having a house dog was just plain silly, some kind of southern peculiarity. Inuit, I thought, understood that humans and dogs did not belong under one roof — dogs not under any roof at all, unless it was a mother with pups.

Imagine my surprise then, when I discovered that the Alaskan Inuit breeders of the Malamute husky (Mahlemiut), intended the dogs as home companions!

Incessant raids from hostile peoples, combined with a non-nomadic lifestyle, forced these Inuit to breed their huskies into exceptionally large guard dogs, whose function was to bond with their families. From what I've read, such dogs are affectionate to human family members, but fiercely loyal and protective.

Maybe the Malamute could be viewed as the Inuit version of the German Shepherd. Since discovering the aforementioned facts, I've met a couple of Malamutes: gorgeous, loveable brutes. For anyone who wants a good example — including its tendencies — just check out the enormous, wolfish dog in the movie The Lost Boys.

Okay, so some Inuit had house dogs. This realization constituted one more pick to chip away at my gradually eroding philosophy of distance between people and dogs - a philosophy that altogether dissolved soon after I moved to Ottawa.

My former belief in human-dog apartheid had never meant that I didn't love dogs. One of the things that kept me sane in Ottawa was my tendency to seek out dogs at every opportunity. A chance to play with or admire someone's pet was like a breath of fresh air in what seemed like the sterile, even hostile, emotional vacuum of the city. Yet, despite my love of the beasts, I still felt that they did not belong in the home.

The Ottawa Humane Society was located near my apartment, and I would stop in to visit on my frequent strolls to the park. It was like a kind of petting zoo for canines, while the park itself was another. After a while, I began to get a feel for the astounding variety of breeds.

I noticed an odd-looking pup one day, much like the old cartoon character of Deputy Dog. His voice was like a French horn. He reached through and past the bars of his cage, up to the shoulder, snatching at my coat with a disproportionately huge paw. It was almost too weird.

Well, I played with the pup for a bit, then asked the staff about him. The answers were typically,

"Oh, you mean Byron. He's a real character. Sweet boy, but nobody adopts him. Never had a pup going unadopted for that long. People are probably scared of his bugle voice."

All the while, you could hear Byron bugling in the back.

They said he was a coonhound - a bluetick coonhound. You can probably imagine how I responded.

"What the hell is that?"

But it led me off on a research trek: libraries, book stores, on-line sources, anything I could find on this alien breed that, to my Inuit sensibilities, hardly looked like a real dog at all.

Something in me wanted to adopt this dog very badly. I could tell that he was special. I could tell by looking into his eyes that he possessed great intelligence and soul, and I wanted to save him from his miserable circumstances. I just felt that he deserved better.

But I also knew that taking on a dog would mean time, money, and training. And I was living in the city. I couldn't just do it the Inuktitut way, and leave him outside all the time. He would have to live with me, in my apartment.

This was a hideous prospect — a dog, with filth and dirt and noise, tramping all over the part of my life that craved peace and serenity. My husband thought the dog was a great idea, but — at the risk of sounding sexist — of course he did. Many men love dirt and noise and a dog to be their "buddy". It's some kind of male compulsion.

I decided to do a test walk.

From the moment I had him outside on the leash, he took off like a cannonball. I could barely hold him. I had been betrayed by my own assumptions! This thing was strong, much stronger than any pup I was used to...

(Continued next week.)

My new southern dog's strength was only one thing I had to adjust to. From the time that he came into the house, he stubbornly insisted upon having the couch — my precious new couch — all to himself. I found a number of resources on bluetick coonhounds. Such resources, combined with loads of advice from "hound people" at the Humane Society, ensured that Byron's training sped along nicely. He turned out to be intelligent, sensitive, and responsive, but — as I verified with fellow hound owners — he was completely intractable. This ran contrary to my experience with huskies, who not only typically wanted to obey when told to pull a sled, but also had no choice in the matter. Byron quickly learned a great number of commands, but would never obey them unless first convinced that there was a good reason to. I had learned that it was important not to be overly harsh with hounds, since it only made them increasingly stubborn — a discipline requiring great restraint on my part, and again controverting everything I had ever learned with huskies.

And no matter how well his training otherwise went, Byron was always up on that couch when my back was turned.

I was surprised to find that I enjoyed having a house dog. It was comforting to know that there was an extra pair of eyes and ears watching the apartment while my husband and I were out or sleeping. But I also felt as though the powers that be were punishing or playing tricks on me. There was a great deal of weirdness centred around that dog, and his presence brought out the strangest behaviour in other people.

Soon after adopting Byron I wrapped up the research on the dog. It turned out that bluetick coonhounds were bred by Ozark Mountain (USA) settlers in the late 1700's, from giant French stag hunting hounds called Grand Bleu de Gascon, and that the blueticks were and still are used to track and tree raccoons — animals that are apparently quite tasty, having a useful pelt. It was a sort of hunting lifestyle as far from my father's as I can imagine.

I used to regularly walk the dog down at a large, wooded park in Ottawa (the Arboretum). On some days, there were literally dozens of dogs mingling and playing with each other, so much so that it might as well have been daycare. And, of course, the sheer variety of dog breeds also reflected the variety of owners. Most, I have to say, were perfectly nice people. But then there were ... others.

One of the first things I noted was the strange elitism surrounding dog ownership — especially of certain breeds. Some owners might openly brag about the lineage of their dogs, while others were so snooty that they refused to give many other people the time of day.

Why, the Inuit part of my brain kept asking, when they were only dogs?

Now, I usually avoid snooty people, but there was no getting around these sorts. Byron had the weird gangly limbs, and patterned fur, typical of a bluetick. His graceless run was more of a lope, long ears and lips flopping up and down, and he looked like a beast assembled from spare parts. You might have seen the dog on the TV commercial wherein the hound goes to the kitchen and makes a sandwich, only to toss it because he's out of mayo. That's Byron.

It seemed so important to southerners — especially dog enthusiasts — to peg a breed, and Byron was a rarity. So even though most of the dog-fops wouldn't normally stop to pour their iced tea on me if I were in flames, they nevertheless felt it necessary to grit their teeth and approach me about Byron.

The question, every time of course, concerned what breed Byron happened to be. Having poured my guts into the research behind him, I was always happy to answer in full, surprising them by putting on my new hat as a coonhound historian.

"Perhaps you should report him," the sour answer often came. "He might have been stolen."

So how come when they had a dog of a rare breed — which I don't care about anyway — it's because they're of haute culture, but when I had one it must mean the dog is stolen?

(Continued next week.)

Over the years that I walked my hound dog at that park, I was gradually schooled in the bizarre social dynamics behind owning a dog in the south — dynamics that had hitherto remained invisible to me.

I noted various subcultures, all of which were unwelcoming of outsiders. For example, there were those whose dogs were of a certain breed — perhaps Rhodesian ridgebacks. You couldn't win with these people. If you were unfamiliar with their dogs, they would brand you an ignoramus. If you did know something about them, you were branded a competitive know-it-all.

Then there were those whose dogs reflected a certain lifestyle. Most of the young lawyers, for example, owned shaggy little Tibetan lap-dogs. The owners were always over by the canal, dressed as though ready to play tennis, discussing real estate or stocks while their diminutive beasts bounced about their feet. Voices — even when laughing — were generally level and guarded, except when disrupted by the occasional, "Polly, don't go near the mud ... oh, she's just come back from the groomers!"

And there were the "rescue" cliques, comprised of owners who made a point of explaining to everyone in the park that their dog had been rescued from a former life of maltreatment. Such owners, when chatting amongst each other, always seemed to be trying to top one another for horrid stories of animal cruelty. But, to be honest, they always seemed far more concerned with asserting moral superiority over everyone else than with their actual pets.

Ah, and then there were the husky owners — overwhelmingly Siberian huskies. As soon as the owners found out I was Inuit, they would always start with,

"Well, isn't that interesting! You know, maybe you could help us with something. The breeder had already named our pup, and told us it was an Inuit word. I think she said it means 'strength' or 'beauty', but we forgot! Could you tell us what it means?."

The name was invariably gibberish, mock-Inuktitut that the breeder had invented to impress buyers by making the dog sound more "authentic". It was always something like Ookmuk or Ashvak or Kukushoo. Occasionally, the name would sound vaguely akin to excrement or some unsavoury bodily function, and you can imagine how popular I was whenever I pointed that out. But I soon learned that such owners didn't want to know the truth, anyway. They wanted to hear that their dog had a genuine, even flattering "Inuit" name, one that allowed them to possess their own little piece of a place they believed to be nobler than their city life.

And there were thieves. To my utmost horror, un-neutered dogs were occasionally stolen from the park while their owners' backs were turned. This was all-too-common, as I learned from my new friends at the Humane Society, since a park full of many-varied dog breeds was a powerful temptation to those who turned a profit from local puppy mills. The dogs would spend the rest of their lives caged, as breeding material to produce puppies intended for sale out of pet stores or newspaper ads. Since it seemed ridiculous to my Inuit sensibilities to neuter a dog, Byron continued to possess his God-given equipment until he was stolen one evening by two ladies in a van. They tried to drive away with him yowling inside, except that a friend of mine literally stood in front of them and barred their way!

To tell you the truth, the most level-headed people in the park seemed to be those who owned a couple of dogs, at least one of which was a mutt. Such people were typically unconcerned with pedigree, having nothing to prove. They owned dogs because they loved their dogs. And I think it was these people more than any other that crystallized in my mind the best reasons for owning a house dog. Consequently, I think I will always be comfortable with having a dog in the home from now on.

Well, you see, it was that ownership thing. I had been thinking on a different level. I had always seen the dogs as property, as tools that served a use like any other. But the southern dogs, at least the healthiest ones, were not owned at all.

They were family. And a true family lives under one roof.

Pijariiqpunga.
 

The Bishop was coming to town! What a thrilling time for our little community. It only happened once every two years or so, but we knew when it was happening. It seemed that everything, people and even objects, were readying themselves. Houses were cleaned spotless. We got new covers for our Mother Hubbard parkas; new mitts, boots — the works.

People prepared for days. Bread was baked, the church was of course readied, and the "airstrip" was created by shovelling a section of ice and snow off the frozen bay. The Bishop was flying in with "Rocky", or Rocky Parsons, who had been his pilot for untold years. The whole thing was like Easter celebrations and a frat-house party all rolled into one. You see, even if he was the leader of all "Anglicandom," he was the fun Bishop. Bishop Donald Marsh, Donald of the Arctic. He always seemed like the kindest and most pleasant man you could have met in all your life. He spoke Inuktitut, too. And when he was in town, we knew that the fun had arrived.

After services, he would sit in our kitchen, and we would get a chance to chat with him. He'd have changed out of his bishop's get-up by then, into a more sedate, black outfit. But he always had his collar on.

We were always polite, and thus refrained at first from asking the flood of questions we wanted to ask of him. Despite our shyness, he would cast his glance over at us, a twinkle in his eye, and the talks were on.

He would tell us of the amazing cities he had been to, speak of where he grew up, how he came North, how he came to love it, how he got the "call." It really did happen, he would tell us, God speaking to you out of the blue, telling you where to move and what to do. He had supposedly heard God as clearly as he could hear us, clear as day.

That was the day that my father and another fellow had been ordained Anglican ministers. We had taken photos of my father dressed in what we irreverently referred to as his "gown," along with the new minister's collar he had received that day.

What made it so special, the Bishop explained, was that my father was one of only a small handful of indigenous individuals who had gone through the rigorous training and had passed their tests to follow in the footsteps of Umauq (one of the very first and famous Inuit ministers), and others in their path to this life of service.

Had my father gotten the "call?" I asked him.

Pointing upwards, he told me that He called different people in different ways, and my father had received his "call" in one way or another.

Today, he said, he felt "big inside." Someday, he smiled, we would understand what he meant, once we had grown and dealt with the matters of adults.

I seem to recall reaching over to grasp the Bishop's hand, which I remember as being gentle and warm, and I inspected his bishop's ring. It was a huge thing, stars and other symbols all over it. We stared in rapt attention as he told us about its history and meaning.

His explanations had something to do with why his stole was of a certain colour, and why in some ceremonies he had to wear "a silly hat." About how people didn't have to kiss his ring like the Pope. He said that in High Anglicanism, there wasn't much difference with the Roman Catholic Church. We left only when he had to break for lunch.

We couldn't know, as children, that that very ring would years later rest on an equally gentle and familiar hand. The ring now sits on Oolateetak Idlout's finger, big and mysterious as ever. Over a very different lunch, a couple of decades later, I got to chatting with "Uncle O." We discussed many things: the changing climate in the north, social issues, where we had been, and where we were going to be. And, of course, we talked about Bishop Marsh, about his gentle yet powerful influence upon us all.

And in talking about him, I felt big inside.

Pijariiqpunga.

It must be the time of year. It must be because of the fact that I haven't eaten "in Inuktitut" for a while. All that fresh char, bags of Canada geese, caribou, young seal, tunnuq, pipsi, and mipku. All that stuff. The thought of the foods I love takes me back to when my "Little Aunt" one day announced we were going to eat "in White."

She had set up a table on our camping box, in the shack that was our temporary home at the time, while we waited for our house to be built. It was complete with cutlery and dishes. Then she opened a can of carrots — just a meal of carrots — showing us how to hold our utensils. She instructed us to say "please" if we wanted more, and "thank you!" very loudly whenever we were given anything. That was the White way, she explained.

The carrots were amazingly awful.

Maybe a can of peas would be better. Some peas were spooned onto our plates, and proved almost impossible to eat with a fork. We tipped our plates to our mouths, politely eating whatever was placed in front of us. With the peas gone, no one knew what to do next, since nobody knew about dessert. The mamaktuq (tasty) dessert stuff was what white people ate when they wanted a treat, but we couldn't envision it going with a meal. We didn't see it as food, since it was all just sugar, and you couldn't live on that.

Nevertheless, we were very proud of ourselves, feeling prepared in case we had to eat at some white person's home. Strangely, though, most of the white people we knew ate like us. Whether missionaries, explorers, or RCMP, they would come to our house for Inuit food. What was wrong with them? I wondered. Maybe they didn't like their own food. A diet of carrots and peas could drive anyone to scarf down some nice fresh meat.

Then there were those who would arrive in the Arctic, and wrinkle their noses at our raw fish or caribou. They viewed our diet as a barbaric hold-over from the Stone Age. Out of respect for these people, whenever we ate "Inuit way," we would hide our food, so as not to offend the sensibilities of those coming to visit. I've noticed that many Inuit still do this today.

Medical anthropology has proven the Inuit diet to be extremely healthy, and continues to do so. But back then, we didn't know that we were living on the diet best for us. It was just that, aside from taste, the southern ways of preparing food seemed more bother than they were worth.

After all, when we had finished our southern-style meal, there were dishes to clean up. When eating Inuit-style, all you had to do after a meal was lick your knife, wipe it on your shirt, and tuck it back in its sheath. Same with an ulu. You just gave it a quick wipe with a cloth, maybe oil the handle if you wanted to, and it was ready for the next use.

Everyone is built differently, which is why — I suppose — that different people like different things, regardless of culture. It's easy to say that someone likes a certain food because they grew up with it, but the simple fact is that such just isn't true.

It has taken me a few years, for example, to get used to the fact that my father likes turkey (which Inuit call "big ptarmigan") so much, or that his favourite desserts are blueberry pie and ice-cream. Not exactly a traditional Inuit diet. And, then, there were all those white people who came over to our house to eat with us, while other southerners thought they were crazy.

Maybe they weren't simply fleeing their string beans and wax beans, their peas and their carrots. Maybe they simply wanted variety. Isn't anything in life best when it's mingled, including a diet? Perhaps the best table is one set without an "Inuit style" or a "White style", but simply with what an individual wants to eat. Heck, I got used to peas and carrots as I grew up. I eat them all the time now (although only as a side dish).

However, those yellow, waxy beans make me gag...

Pijariiqpunga.

Following a severe winter, the spring thaw follows with a vengeance that is awesome to behold. Plants explode into growth, tracking the midnight sun. Birds flock as far as the eye can see, hailing from lands as distant as Argentina. The large mammals — caribou, musk-ox, narwhal, beluga and bowhead whales — undertake eternal and herculean journeys to their respective calving grounds.

For a few brief months, the Arctic is as alive as a jungle, which it once was an unfathomable number of years ago. And as their most distant ancestors before them also did, Inuit groups come together in this time, to celebrate life and prosperity in a way that is all their own.

It is the time for Qaggiq — the summer celebrations. Like its winter counterpart (coinciding roughly with winter equinox), the summer festival is not so much a forum for competition, as it is an exercise in generosity, a vehicle of expression for both the body and the soul.

The games may vary, but the message is perennial: to enjoy one's efforts, and to encourage others in their own. Opponents in the games applaud each other, regardless of which contestant "won."

Mutual animosity between the contestants is alien to these games. Ego rarely has a place in the events, and the ability to laugh at one's self is as integral to the festival as the activities themselves. Even though many of the events are as athletic as anything seen in the Olympics, the "game" aspect of the events is emphasized far more than that of the "sport."

Events include the harpoon toss, rope gymnastics, running races, canoe races, the "good woman" contest, mouth-pull, musk-ox, seal hop, aeroplane, Alaskan high kick — just to name a few. Some are modern variations on old traditions; for example, in the "good woman" contest, one races others to make bannock in the least amount of time.

There are a dizzying array of dances from all regions. The air resonates with singing and throat chanting. Everyone has a turn at drumming and the blanket toss. While many events are technically gender-specific, the atmosphere is so relaxed that genders often intermingle. I remember when I once saw an old man fillet a fish for drying better than any traditional woman.

There are formidable two-legged high jumpers of either gender. And what if you mess up your routine? Well, try again. Your opponent is likely to coach you, saying, "Here, try it this way. This works better for me."

Oh, and the food...

In order to understand the spirit of the games, you have to understand the roots of Inuit cultural survival. For specialized skills to be passed on from generation to generation in an unforgiving land, you had to have a mechanism not only by which to improve your own skills, but to grow into a healthier person through competition — a way to learn how to be an excellent human.

In this way, the festival is unique. The events not only represent the passing on of age-old skills, but a chance to grow and affirm one's identity in comparison to others. All, male or female, child or elder, participate equally and assert that all is well with culture and spirit. It is a way to maintain a wholesome society that reinforces excellence and at once encourages effort.

Today, those events of yester year have found themselves transformed into the Northern Games. July of this year will mark the 25th Anniversary of the Northern Games, held in Inuvik.

To those readers who are of this land's most ancient culture: whatever region you are from, you are as likely as I am to feel a belonging to these games. They are our own. As a song I once heard at a gathering went: "we are Inuit and we are still here."

What better way to celebrate this fact than with each other, thus affirming our uniqueness? From Alaska, all across the West to the East, Baffin to Northern Quebec, we are Inuit and we are still here.

To those readers of alternate descent: may this festival call to you as well. Come and enjoy it, and perhaps learn something of what has always been most dear to the Peoples of the Arctic.

After all, is this not a time for Inuit? And as anyone can tell you, "Inuit" is simply an Inuktitut word for humanity.

Pijariiqpunga.

"How come your sisters are so pretty, and you're so ugly?"

It was said to me when I was a teen-ager. And I believed it. In fact, I was used to everyone telling me it was a fortunate thing that I had a good mind, since I wasn't very pretty. I would need that to survive throughout life, I was counselled.

My father always told anyone who would listen that he was proud of my "good mind," that I was very even-tempered and never got mad without a reason, but look out if I did. (I have my grandfather's famous "Idlout temper," and I know all my cousins share this trait with me.)

As a young adult, I was pummelled by this society's idea of beauty. I was told by men that I was "pretty for an Inuk." Did that mean I was hideous anyway?

I received mixed messages from men that I met. On the one hand, they wanted to get to "know" me. On the other hand, I wasn't their female ideal, that which they considered desirable.

I was even further confused by the fact that everyone told me I looked more Japanese than Inuit. And when I hung out with other non-white ethnicities, they told me I looked "mulatto." Was that good or bad?

Fortunately, I was involved in athletics enough to keep in reasonable shape, so my self-image did not suffer from a sense of being overweight. I held on to this source of pride, taking my sense of identity from athleticism alone. My body was a well-functioning tool for what I needed.

If I was lacking aesthetically, I would simply have to make do. Cosmetics for white people frankly didn't suit me. I ended up looking more like a hooker when wearing the garish pinks and reds that were available at the time. Revlon eventually invented darker shades, but they weren't much better. I wasn't merely dark — I was sort of a weird coffee colour.

And even though my hair was technically black, it was never truly the raven black of my ancestry. I had freckles in the summer. So it became confusing, later, when women at cosmetics counters would tell me,

"This would suit your colour."

What colour was that? Inevitably, they would drag out the bronzes and golds, magentas and deep purples — which was fine, I thought, if you performed in Chinese opera. Even the dark or golden "flesh" colours were merely simulations of tanned Caucasian skin.

My skin colour literally neutralized them, so that they were invisible, rather than complementing me as intended. Invariably, I was left with old stand-bys, like simple black eye-liner. Oh well, at least it looked sultry and artistic.

As I got older, I realized that the mixed message was not coming from within, but from without. Obviously I didn't fit the North American (or even European, now that I think of it) ideal of beauty. I would have to develop my own sense of what was beautiful, and look for signs of it in myself.

I began to realize, with time, that there were other worlds than the one presented by my own society. There existed different cultures, each of which varied in its respective vision of what could be considered beautiful.

Popular society, it began to seem, tended to push its own perceptions upon others. Media and commercialism were the tools by which this was accomplished.

It did wonders for my outlook to realize that in old Hawaii, a thin woman used to be considered homely, while a heavy woman — the fatter the better — was absolutely radiant. It occurred to me that there were whole nations, populations that equalled or exceeded those of the West, whose skin colours were much closer to my own. The women of such countries had worn cosmetics suited to their own colourations since before the time when iron was considered a novelty in Europe.

It was liberating to find that my society's definition of beauty was a single opinion only, and that the trend setters of the commercial world were not truly concerned with beauty anyway but were simply engineering it to make as much money as possible.

Beauty had become a mere weapon in commercial warfare, and my ego had nearly become collateral damage — an unnoticed casualty among the conflict.

(Continued next week.)

As soon as I realized that society itself was being manipulated into reacting to some idea of beauty engineered by the commercial world, I was set free.

I no longer felt locked into my former perception that I had to live my life according to an exterior definition. It had always seemed that I was part of some caste system, based upon what the majority thought was beautiful. Society had always told me:

"Here, this is your place. Your looks are of limited appeal. You must, therefore, wear only the following clothes, cosmetics, and hairstyles, and pursue only limited ambitions."

The sentinels set to enforce this rule were my own peers, those who had bought the message in full, who already knew their "place", and would try to put me back in mine if I varied my hair, or bought clothing that was outside the norm. Their tools of enforcement were the twin daggers of disapproval and shame.

It occurred to me that, as much as I craved the friendship of my peers, I had to be my own very best friend. While charity is noble, there is nothing so pathetic as someone who portions out the entirety of their very ego to others, giving until nothing remains of their identity. This is little other than a kind of suicide.

And my first epiphany very shortly led me to another: it is in fact your individuality that a true friend values, that which attracts them to you as a friend. Those who revile your individuality are not your friends, but only predators of the ego.

So I dropped my dependence upon the definition of "me" that others had manufactured over the years, alienating many peers. I still do not miss them.

I began to experiment first with looks, reintroducing myself to my self. I put several new holes in my ears, bought two hundred dollars worth of make-up — which I had never dared do before. Then I threw out the make-up, went back to a cosmetics free look, and found a daring hairdresser.

The out-of-the-ordinary styles on my hair somehow made me feel "womanly." In retrospect, I think I was feeling the euphoria resulting from my new feast of freedom.

The final icing on the cake was my current husband. When I met him, I finally understood the importance of beauty being in the eyes of the beholder. He held me in his eyes, and my reflection therein was beautiful.

I should have known the whole time. Finding my beauty and killing off the ugly girl was like embarking upon a long — occasionally hazardous — journey, only to find myself returned home at the end.

There are those readers out there who have experienced exactly the same thing, are experiencing it now, or have yet to. There are the "ugly girls," who are only so because they still listen to the voices of the society around them, not realizing that popular opinion has merely blindfolded them. If they were only to remove the blindfold, they could find beauty shining back at them from any mirror.

They could blossom, and later be surprised that there was ever a time when they let such concerns bother them.

Why do some individuals feed upon the egos of others? Even Albert Einstein, in school, was told that he would amount to nothing. But Einstein was simply attacked on the point where he was most sensitive. Since his tutors knew that his intellect was important to him, they attacked his intellect.

In our time and place, the attacks are of the same spirit, but simply involve a different subject. Since exterior image has become so important to us, the most common attacks are directed at our appearance.

The need to fit a corporate beauty ideal has become the primary chink in our emotional armour. I think that because most aboriginal women are excluded from the ideal, they take such attacks especially hard, and can be very deeply wounded by them.

They incorporate such barbs into themselves, eventually turning a twisted, self-doubting gaze inward. Taking the attacks together with the racism that they routinely encounter throughout life, they sometimes ask themselves,

"Could this be true? What if I really am ugly?"

Isn't this a horrific thing, when the view of one's very self becomes poisoned? Is this not true ugliness?

Pijariiqpunga.

Every time I let the scarf slip downward toward my chin, I was reminded of just how cold the air had become. The woolen barricade over my face sometimes seemed like the wall of a warm but tiny room, a place where my heaving breath forced moisture to collect until it at last began to run down my similarly insulated neck.

It was easy to become lulled by the trudging. Wind battered at me from every side, as my awkward boots struggled for purchase on the strange mixture of fresh drift lying talc-like over the compacted snow, the latter nearing the consistency of actual ice.

I felt like a mite scrambling over hills of salt, trying to maintain my balance while resisting the wind, which was ripping the scarf and jacket away from my face.

Sometimes, in my peculiar sort of isolation beneath the layers of clothing, I would find myself lost in monotony, walking onward without thought, legs finding their way mechanically, by reflex alone.

In such times, I occasionally forgot the cold, let the scarf slip a little, wind worming suddenly into my private little world. The act of breathing it would make me gasp, its cold and dryness at once savaging the warmth and moisture from my lungs.

I fought my way up and along the hill, snow pecking at my eyes. Past rapid, painful blinking, I sometimes caught images of others. They were merely darkened shapes wobbling along in their own ways, frequently slipping and arising again. I knew that they too were in their own private worlds, sealed against the cold, aware of me only in the same way that I was of them.

I wasn't quite sure where these others were going — and didn't much care — but I thought about how long I had already been walking, how many landmarks I had passed. I noted to myself, with no small amount of impatient tooth-grinding, that I must be nearing my goal.

How much longer?

At last, I saw a welcoming light ahead, at first a diffused white haze, then gradually a level green injected with bits of red. The sign looming ahead of me, I felt a rush of confidence, knowing that I would soon have the chance to warm myself and wick away the accumulated moisture about my face and neck.

Realizing that I had at last attained my goal, I ran — half stumbling — across the parking lot and in through the doors of my neighbourhood Seven-Eleven store.

It was late evening, and I had been out of milk for my morning coffee, a potential disaster that I could not tolerate. What was with Ottawa, anyway, that it had such cold winters? My teeth were chattering. This was like living in the Arctic.

Soon after warming up, browsing about the store a bit, and acquiring my bagged milk, I stood by the counter while the clerk calculated my total.

I had picked up a nearby magazine that mentioned something concerning Nunavut on the cover. I was idly flipping my way through it when I noticed the clerk intently scrutinizing me — sometimes looking, sometimes rapidly averting his gaze as though afraid to be caught.

It was after he had asked for the money, and while I was fishing through my purse for exact change, that he suddenly mumbled,

"I ... uh, noticed the magazine. Uh, are you... Inuit?"

I beamed broadly as always, replying, "Yep!" Still smiling, I waited for the usual barrage of questions concerning the North.

The clerk seemed relieved that I was friendly. Then he gestured toward the outside, saying, "Boy, you must be perfectly comfortable in this weather!"

Pijariiqpunga.

Killing oneself is not a new phenomenon, of course. From when we are young, most of us are familiarized with the idea of suicide through famous stories, such as those of Anthony and Cleopatra, or Romeo and Juliet.

But the real horror of suicide cannot be conveyed by a story, nor can the devastating impact upon the loved ones left behind in the wake of a true suicide. It would be interesting — and telling — to find out whether or not our own society has a higher suicide rate than societies of the past. Are we the norm in this way, or are we freakish?

Inuit have a long-standing history of killing themselves when feelings of uselessness become unbearable. It is the price that Inuit have paid for their tradition, where competency is admired above all else, while incompetency is reviled.

A harsh past existence has forced Inuit to evolve into a hyper-efficient society. Only the capable survived, while the incapable were weeded out by the Land itself. In time, Inuit developed a culture of proficiency.

One's identity stemmed from one's usefulness. The awareness that one was not useful was one's worst nightmare. Without utility, there could be no sense of self. In a society that firmly believed in the transmigration of the soul — suicide or not — to a better world, escape from such an existence seemed preferable to life.

Early explorers and anthropologists were shocked at the high suicide rates among various Inuit groups. It seemed standard for the old and infirm, believing themselves to be a burden upon their families, to do away with themselves, sometimes going so far as to recruit their own friends or family members in assisting with the suicide.

But what horrified observers the most was that the old were by no means the majority in suicide — that often those who killed themselves were quite young, male or female. And all such Inuit killed themselves in terribly inventive ways. It seemed, upon closer inspection, that whoever felt isolated or derided by the group, sick or otherwise handicapped, was quick to die.

Times have changed, and Inuit culture is radically different from the way it was. Yet the tendency toward suicide has remained. Why? The answer is quite simple: the need to belong, to feel useful, still remains as strongly as ever. Inuit have retained this need, while having been herded into a modern system of living where the individual is marginalised or altogether disregarded.

What once was valuable — an independent life, free travel and subsistence — has been stripped from Inuit. Those who cannot "make it" in this modern, mechanized existence, who no longer have a way to prove themselves valuable, most often turn to chemical comforts such as drugs or alcohol. As a final recourse, they turn to suicide.

In misery, we all spiral downward. But such a spiral consists of steps, and it is each individual step that we must resist in order to cease spiralling.

I myself, when younger and miserable, have heard the siren call of suicide as a release from suffering, as has my husband, and others that I know and love. My brother gave in to it. And while I know that he still lives, but in another existence, he might have paused if he had only realized what he would do to me by removing himself from this world.

This is the greatest reason of all to live. Most of those who commit suicide have no clue as to what effect it will have upon those who survive them. The survivors are themselves deprived of their own reason to live — love itself. If you could only see into the hearts of others, you would see that people always love you a thousand times more than they tell you.

For those of you who consider suicide as a release, please pause. Study your life, for it is worth doing so. Suicide is not a madness, but merely a terrible mistake. It is possible that, if you pause to consider your life as you have lived it, you will yet find many reasons to live. Remember, you are the main character in the great story of yourself.

While still alive, it is always possible to change one's life, to reverse one's suffering — while in death, one is only powerless.

Pijariiqpunga.

How was the weather behaving? That was always our primary concern upon rising from sleep. "Go out and see the sila," my father would instruct. We were to scan the horizon, practicing our powers of observation. Was there anything unusual, out of place, not in keeping with the sila? What was the aspect of sila? Calm? Thunderous? Threatening? What was the colour of sila? Grey, red, or blue? The edge of sila — the horizon — what did it tell you? Was it dark? If so, a storm was on its way. Were the clouds white on grey, or grey on white? A critical difference. It was all-important to be able to read sila.

Sila and nuna (earth): they determined your existence. It was no wonder the word sila also meant "wisdom." A person with a "large sila" was wise. You didn't mess around with sila: she might determine your fate. While you stood at the floe edge, waiting in vain for the seal that never came, sila could cause the ice-pan upon which you stood to drift out to sea.

When sila was good, she was a real treat. There was plenty to eat, travel was a pleasure, and the very sun seamed to smile down like a blessing from above. At such times, it seemed as though the nuna and sila were in harmony. And, witnessing them, you felt as though you were in harmony within your own soul.

At other times, the sila was treacherous. It played tricks on an unsuspecting mankind. The sila might start out calm and well — then, like an injured friend, suddenly turn upon you. It could make you distrust your own senses by throwing mirages and all manner of wretched weather at you.

When sila was angry, there was no appeasing her. You had to make a personal decision. You could wait out her temper, miserable in your tent. You could don your water-proof boots, and boldly challenge the storm. It was always a gamble, a game whose odds only the oldest hunters had learned to play well. As suddenly as it had started, the fury of sila could abate, leaving behind flowers glistening with fresh drops of dew, shining like diamonds in clear light. The nuna felt refreshed. The wind was once again your friend.

When tales were told in the dark of winter, the teller would begin with the state of sila that day. "The day was windy...," for example.

So much of what humanity did was dependent upon sila. Sila was with or against us that day. Inuit looked to the heavens constantly, and to other cultures, it might have seemed as if Inuit were a tribe bent upon worshiping sila.

But while in ways sila was akin to a sky — mother, nuna to an earth-father, Inuit thinking was not as concrete as that. Sila and nuna did not possess exact genders, or familial associations; they simply were what they were.

And while nuna was typically friend, sila was both friend and foe. Earth was always stable and reliable; one could tame earth to a degree, forcing one's will where needed. Sila was always chaotic. And thus did order and chaos continually revolve around one another, ever exchanging roles and levels of influence. And all be damned who stood in sila's way.

Even today, traditional Inuit wisdom maintains that the body has its own sila. Sila is the air, and we who have our own air also have a part of sila — a part of its life-force. Such wisdom also maintains that people who have undergone surgery, or severe injury, have a "disturbed sila". This seems reminiscent of modern medicine's knowledge of electrolyte depletion, which hinders nervous functions. Or perhaps of trauma care's "golden hour", the precious hour within which the effects of shock must be reversed, or else nothing can save the patient. In homeopathic medicine, increasingly acceptable in recent years, many healing arts are based upon the principle of aiding a patient through the manipulation of magnetic fields.

It would be interesting to find out what traditional references to an individual's "sila" were meant to encompass. Perhaps science still has a lot to learn from ancient wisdom, which at times only lacks the vocabulary possessed by science. One who is silatujuq, "endowed with a large sky," has wisdom. And one can never have too much of that.

Pijariiqpunga.

This is one of those times that I wish I could escape the use of mere language to express a state of being. I wish that I could physically implant what I mean, perhaps by some sort of mechanical means, as in science-fiction, directly into the brains of others.

I want to express a state I call "walk alone". Inuktitut knows it as "inutuaq".

The songs and poems of many cultures have praised it. Great historical figures — and those overlooked by history — have performed it. Our former Prime Minister, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, had his self-described "walk in the snow." In Inuit thought, a great deal of importance is traditionally placed upon this lone walk, the walk of self-reflection.

The complex meaning of "walk alone" is intertwined with the Inuktitut meaning of the word "Inuk." Inuk means "person", to be sure, as well as "living one", "being", or "sentient one".

But "inuk," while referring to one (as opposed to the plural, Inuit), also carries the potential of denoting one person among many. When the ending of "uaq" is added to the word, it becomes "inutuaq", an altogether different thing.

Inutuaq denotes loneness, that the person one refers to is the only inuk — that no one else is present. A lone sentient. Therefore, when a person walks alone — inutuulluni pisuktuq — they are the only living one who walks alone. The only human walking, with no other humans present. Inuktitut, incidentally, is very focused upon human nature. Therefore, if you walk alone, you can bring a dog — hundreds — but you are still alone. You can walk with spirits, or any form of strange creature imaginable, but you are still walking alone.

When you walk alone, you are exercising your ability to be a human. You can announce to others, as you leave your shelter of choice, "I'm going out for a walk alone." It will mean exactly that. An ego, being, self, is out for a walk as a lone human. There will be no other presences. One is inutuaq.

There have been times when an adult is said to "walk alone." In Inuktitut, this is a loaded statement. It means the adult is alone in their thoughts, with their thoughts, and is deliberately so. In a group wherein individuality is traditionally valued, it is an option, and a sort of "walk alone" rite.

Tragically, modern society tends to revile the state of aloneness. It is assumed that those who deliberately take time to be alone are somehow troubled. Today, the individual who is inutuaq is considered potentially dangerous, and is therefore frightening. We live in a world wherein all eyes are upon each other, ever watching, lest one of us sneaks off and builds a bomb, or secretly plots an assassination.

In English, the term "loner" has become overused, and now denotes a kind of monstrous or freakish nature. It is assumed that we must do everything to bring such individuals out of their "shell."

Yet there was a time in most of the world's cultures when the state of being inutuaq was not only recognized, but was prized as being the balance to sociality, and the very wellspring of wisdom. It is in being inutuaq that shamans find their powers, that thinkers find their thoughts, and artists hear their muse. It is the North American Indian peoples that very nicely crystallized this concept with the popular rite of the "vision quest" — the lone journey in which one turns inward, and in doing so gains greater understanding of the external world.

And much like our Prime Minister of before, it is assumed that some kind of state of mind or decision is being reached by being inutuaq. There is recognition, among the wise, that little of importance can be accomplished among conflicting opinions, varying influences. It is with solitude that one can truly make sense of what is learned from others.

Like sponges, we absorb the knowledge that meets us. But it is the inward-gazing eye, in blessed solitude, that makes sense of our experiences — and teaches us our place within the whole. Thus can the state of being inutuaq, of the lone walk, complete our humanity.

Are we not Inuit — human — together? An island is defined as such by the sea around it, but the sea itself is defined by the islands within it.

Pijariiqpunga.

I despise advice on time management. I can manage my time well, but I rebel at the implication that it's right to be neurotic about minutes in the day. But I have a special reason, as you'll find shortly.

Oh sure, I like little shortcuts: laying out clothes the night before, make-up routines that take me out of the shower and door in fifteen minutes flat, etc. My distaste is instead for scheduling, resulting from the unwillingness of those who demand that I ritually carve up my day to cooperate in any way. Why must I manage my time, while people who demand I do so actively block me?

Let me give you an example. Once, before a Christmas trip, I had the bright idea of pre-mailing my gifts so as not to carry them. My holiday schedule was meticulously planned. But things began to go wrong as soon as it turned out that the post office worker refused to listen to me. "No, no, this parcel is going to... I don't think it weighs seven ... it was five on my scale."

After a great deal of wasted time, I left to find that the shopping I had been counting on was impossible — the stores had closed. I wasted even more time in hunting down a miserable fruit basket as a makeshift present for a friend.

It's far worse when the inefficiency is due to bigotry, as when I'm standing in a bank line, and the white teller deliberately tries to serve the white customer behind me. Sometimes, the customer has the grace to point out the injustice and let me go anyway, much to the chagrin of the teller, but it's really too late. The episode has cost everyone time.

My non-Inuit friends were appalled to learn that, because of their ethnicity, they had never experienced the time-consuming shopping hurdles that I regularly endured for the most basic necessities, such as underwear. From the minute my skin tone walks into the store, there's a security guard hovering about me.

If I'm in the underwear section, the male guards aren't sure what to do, so they inevitably pretend to be studying a certain bra. But even the most dedicated cross-dresser would never stare at a 34C bra for so long. I always feel like calling out, "It's not your colour." Such annoyances are incredibly distracting, and eat up time.

It gets even more strange when I shop with non-Inuit friends. One of my friends is tall, has red hair, and carries an ingrained authority resulting from thirty years of being waited upon, so that she expects service to be quick, friendly, and reliable.

Needless to say, I don't carry the same clout. I often have to do my own work — searching for my own shoe size, colour, or price range. I've even tried shopping in expensive clothes and make-up. It doesn't work. Remember the security guards? It seems to make them suspicious that someone "like me" could afford decent clothes.

It all makes me wonder, sometimes, if time management advice is unconsciously meant for a certain, shall we say, "classification" of people. It all assumes that one lives one's life according to an easy rhythm, a rhythm that seems to be denied to those of us outside the "norm".

And such denial doesn't have to be based merely on skin colour, but can be something as simple as an accent, level of income, sexuality, body posture, or a long black coat. But isn't time management — like most "professional" advice — really aimed at a certain type of lifestyle? It's a bit of a sinister code; those who are of such a nature that the advice fails them are not truly important anyway.

At that rate, the time it takes to read such advice could have been better spent in sleep, don't you think? For example, if you're not the sort of person who can understand what I've just written, you probably shouldn't have read the article up to this point. Too late for you, now, to nap a bit. As for me, I had to forego breakfast, lunch, and two coffee breaks to write this. Later, I might just have time to get a life.

Now that I think about it, that's exactly what I told the bank teller to do as I cancelled my account.

Pijariiqpunga.

I wanted to discuss a concept important in traditional Inuktitut thought: that of an animal being "nujuartuq", wild and evasive. But I first want to lead into my opinions with a story, and for that we have to temporarily go South.

It was a fine summer day, and I was visiting a southern town. I strolled with a friend of mine over emerald fields, between tall, dark oak trees. I don't remember what we were talking about — it didn't seem to matter.

It was one of those days when the weather is so comfortable that it seems tailor-made. Even the heat of the sun seemed so mild that it would sink in pleasantly, like a warm bath. It dulled our senses and lulled our brains, so that even our words to each other seemed as hazy as the occasional clouds of midges past which we walked.

It was perhaps because of this that we were all the more startled when a head-high clump of reeds rustled violently. The reeds parted under the sprawling bulk of the fattest swan I will ever see — a grotesque old thing that swaggered like a samurai out of the greenery, as we watched frozen in bewilderment, and something approaching horror.

The swan was about the size of a nine-year old boy. Its belly was greenish, slicked with the mud and algae through which it had dragged itself. Its beak opened with a guttural hiss, revealing a tiny pink tongue that flickered obscenely. With a few half-rolling strides, it was upon us, standing only a single pace away. It paused, and began to bob its head up and down, back and forth, in what seemed like expectation.

My friend and I, both grinning nervously, exchanged furtive glances.

"The damned monster's probably hungry," my friend said. "This park is technically a nature reserve. It's probably one of those birds that's gotten used to handouts."

I had forgotten. We were in some kind of park that was half "wild," at least by southern standards. There was no threat of bears here, but then there were obviously other weird things — like swans that walk right up to you and ask for treats.

It was very strange to me, as though the animals were asking for a toll to pass. While I watched the monstrous bird bob and hiss greedily, I could hear donkeys braying in the distance, along with sounds of peacocks, ducks, and Canada geese. This was an area where the latter two species — swans obviously making a third — stopped along their migration paths.

From South to North, or vice versa, this was the bird version of Disneyland. While here, no one hunted them even in hunting season, and the local Qallunaat deliberately brought bread with them when visiting — exclusively for the purpose of gorging the birds. They took genuine pleasure from it. Watching the things eat was like a local sport.

Despite their "bird brains," the wild fowl had quickly figured out what a wonderful place this was, and were teaching this fact to their successive generations. In only short walk through the park, I had noticed that all of the ducks, geese, and swans were breeding like crazy, some even intermingling with farmyard varieties to create these goony-looking, patchwork duck-goose creatures. I'm certain God was looking down and saying, "I don't remember making this one..."

As if that wasn't strange enough, many of the birds had actually decided to stay, unwilling to give up a good racket. Some of the Canada geese, ducks, and swans were no longer migrating at all, as I later found out. Why fly all the way to the Arctic when there were no predators and plenty of handouts right here?

And these birds were losing their otherwise natural tendency to be nujuartuq — to stay as far away from humans as possible.

As I watched, my friend removed some bread from a knapsack, and passed it directly to this hideously overfed swan, who gobbled it up impatiently, then resumed asking for more. I stood watching in mixed fascination and horror at it all. My Inuktitut brain rebelled at the very thought of this swan even standing next to us, much less asking for food.

In the Arctic, when I was growing up, it was hard enough just to get within eyeshot of them.

(Continued next week.)

When I was growing up, swans were always the epitome of the elusive animal, creatures that we could only watch from a far distance, perhaps the equivalent of about 10 city blocks. They seemed ephemeral, remote, nearly untouchable. I remember, as a girl, watching their elegant flights overhead or from afar. The long, graceful sweeps of their wings, as they landed, made them seem like so many ghostly sheets.

The swans were not normal prey animals. Contributing to this was the fact that they didn't taste particularly good. Some few individuals liked swan meat, but most of us considered it unsavoury and terribly stringy. Oh sure, one could catch swans — Inuit could catch anything if they put their minds to it — but the swans didn't have many uses.

Their skins made good wipe cloths, and their feet could be deboned and blown up as balloons for kids (we used to make the same thing out of ptarmigan throats and fish bladders), but they were not especially desired for such purposes. And there were so many other birds, such as ducks: more approachable, of greater utility, and quite tasty. So swans were pretty much left in peace.

It was the sight of them that used to thrill us, but only partly because they were beautiful. Even with having spent much time out on the land, we used to take special note of the swans. It was, for us, perhaps how a southern urbanite might feel if a bald eagle suddenly cruised into the city, roosting upon the edge of a building.

And we didn't feel such awe for the swans because of any spiritual or mystical attachments to them. In fact, I've never even heard of a swan featured as an angakoq's helper-spirit, nor have I ever heard of angakkuit lore mentioning swans.

Instead, they were intriguing because they were "nujuartuq."

Being nujuartuq, they were somehow more wary of man than most animals. Whatever it is that causes certain animals to feel an identification with humans, even the slightest comfort or ease around humans, they lacked it.

At any sign of people, they would distance themselves. It was strange that swans were this way, since the other birds species that were known for being nujuartuq were typically birds of prey, such as falcons and owls. Those less nujuartuq birds included ducks and ptarmigan, especially.

I've always thought of ptarmigan as the most stupid of birds. They would let you walk right up to them, seemingly unafraid or unconcerned with the human presence. This allowed us to simply hunt them with rocks. We could have used rifles, I suppose, but this would have been a gross waste of ammunition for a prey animal that was such a ridiculously easy target.

Instead of wasting a bullet, it was far easier and more economical to simply miluq them with a stone. In fact, stone-throwing for this very purpose used to be a common skill among Inuit children. My dad used to make me practice on a sealskin flipper floating in the water.

In all fairness to the ptarmigan, though, there is a good reason for them to be this way. The millennia have forced them to evolve some of the very best possible Arctic camouflage. I think they have come to rely upon the camouflage to the point that their reflex, when a predator approaches, is simply to lie still and hope for the best.

The most nujuartuq animals seem to be those that do not possess such devices as camouflage, and have to instead make themselves safe by remaining wary and elusive.

Since a good knowledge of various behaviours of the animals around them virtually came to determine life and death for Inuit, it is not surprising that the Inuktitut vocabulary has many words to describe the state of an animal.

One of the most interesting states is that of being nujuartuq. This is not the same as saying that an animal is wild or hostile. Instead, it describes a very specific tendency to be unapproachable.

An animal that is nujuartuq may actually be curious about nearby humans, and may even have a tendency to linger and observe the activities of people, but that animal will always flee if approached, and will always maintain an almost exact — and considerably long — distance between itself and humans.

(Continued next week.)

It's interesting to me that, despite the fact that Inuit lived in what might be thought of as a vast wilderness, they still developed the concept of "wild" (nujuartuq) animals. Being a hunting and gathering society whose technology had brought them to a decent comfort level, famine still a real yet no longer constant threat, I doubt if pre-colonial Inuit would have ever moved toward a farming existence — raising caribou, for example. And yet Inuit still share with farmers the tendency to denote that which is wild.

The phenomenon is like an irresistible stone that flashes from the bottom of a rippling pool, an illusion that grips and fascinates me. There is an ancient predator-prey relationship inherent in this term, "nujuartuq". Why bother describing an animal as being approachable or not approachable unless this distinction, this quality, is important to you?

With the exception of dogs (and barely so for early huskies), no animal species really lived in co-habitation with pre-colonial Inuit. But I wonder if this extreme state is the very reason for the development of the concept of nujuartuq.

Everything about Inuit language and tradition implies that early Inuit viewed themselves as a kind of oasis of humanity within an utterly alien world. Inuit were completely dependent upon a great chain of seasonal whims that drove all life in the Arctic. Seasons were not as clockwork, and could vary dangerously. In doing so, they brought temperature variations. The plants responded to such variations, growing best wherever the seasons would allow. The animals moved great distances in order to feed upon the plants. The humans, then, were forced to move in pursuit of the animals.

Such an environment was utterly impossible to control. Therefore, never did Inuit get close enough to animals that either human or animal became accustomed to each others' presence. The Inuit existence was one of constant pursuit. And I think that it is this very pursuit that the term "nujuartuq" was meant to illustrate — not the actual activity of pursuit, but the fact of it.

The need for a term at all probably stems from that Inuktitut tendency to conceive of human and animal actions as being completely unrelated. For example: animals produce young (piarrait), but never give birth (irniuq, "make sons"), as humans do.

The distinction is a critical one, and is not merely a matter of choice in words, but of actual perception. English possesses similar distinctions, but they are not considered as important as in Inuktitut. In English, for example, one could describe someone who assists in a human birth as a "midwife,"yet an assistant in an animal's birth would probably never be called an "animal midwife".

In Inuktitut, it was once vital to denote the behaviours and life-cycles of an animal in minute detail, so that in one word, one could say, "this is a two-year-old, juvenile polar bear, which is the runt of the litter." Nujuartuq stems from such needs, and became the word to describe a degree of "wildness" among the animals.

What, then, was the word held for humans that exhibited a similar quality? That term was "aallajuartuq". It literally denotes that someone is peculiar because of their expressed fear of strangers. The root of the word is "alla", which was used to describe Indian peoples (with the exception of some peoples, such as Chipewayans, who were termed "unaliit", or warriors).

Calling them the Alla was like calling them the Different. Because of mutual fears of cannibalism propagated by the folklore of either culture, Inuit and Indians tended to approach one another with great fear. The Indian tendency to fear Inuit, which Inuit noticed, came to epitomize the stereotypical misanthrope — Indian or not — and thus produce the word aallajuartuq.

It is this very comparison of terms that fascinates me about the word nujuartuq, and makes me think whenever I assess an animal through such an Inuit lens: is this one nujuaruq or not? The word is one of those terms that serves, at times, almost to define crucial aspects of traditional culture.

Behind the simple word is the weight of many, many centuries. Although not a physical object, it is still very much an artifact — a fascinating relic carved and left by those who went before. When scrutinized, it is a window into the Inuit past.

Pijariiqpunga.

I witnessed a funny thing the other day as I was walking by a lake. A group of seagulls had decided that they preferred the company of ducks, which were napping by the shore. I'm not sure of the twist of logic that my mind took, but I suddenly recalled my nephews when they were little. Maybe the fluffiness of the ducklings reminded me of some aspects of their personalities. They shared some similar kind of cuteness.

Perhaps I shouldn't have been so amazed. I had once taught an Arctic tern chick to accept a duckling for a sibling. They slept neck-to-neck, eating out of one bowl. As a child, I assumed they could "speak" to each other.

But here, by the lake, the memory brought to mind the fact that animals do have culture. They learn from one another, and pass skills onto offspring. And even different species can share culture.

The thought had originated in whimsy, but I began to contemplate it more seriously. It occurred to me that my nephews are part Inuit, part Chipewyan. Under the Canadian Constitution, they are termed "Aboriginal Peoples."

So which rights do they have? The father's? The mother's? In other words, do they have interchangeable rights? And to what degree do their descendants have to be one or the other? My grandfather was part Cree on my mother's side. Or does the fact that my father was half-white dilute our rights, even though culturally he was totally and 100 per cent Inuit?

And then another thing occurred to me: let's say I moved to Alaska and opted to become an American citizen. Do I lose my Canadian rights, or take on Alaskan rights? Who determines that? The American government? The Canadian government? Can I fish in the waters of B.C.? Or do I have to have an actual Indian band recognize me as a belonging to a First Nations people?

Here's another question: how is it that under the Canadian Constitution, aboriginal peoples are not all treated as one people, but are lumped under one Act? I'm always asked the question, "Do you have a band number?" for accessing medical coverage.

I'm stuck with explaining to every pharmacist that even though Inuit are considered "natives," we don't have band councils and, no, we are not a northern Indian tribe. Actually, we have what are called "N" numbers. (Good luck in finding a pharmacy that can correctly bill for your drug charges.) Where are the Northwest Territories? Up near Alaska? Past Hudson Bay? Believe it or not, I once had a lady ask me where Hudson Bay is.

"No, we're not called 'Eskimos' anymore."

Somewhere, someone must surely have written this stuff down. Do Inuit lose their "status" when they marry a "non-status" person? And I know that governments and organizations have been hashing out who can hunt and where for what seems like an eternity, because I've worked on the issue from the Inuit side.

Time and experience have taught me that most of my answers are already out there. I just have to access them.

But it's hard to believe that those answers are very definitive, since even today organizations seem constantly forced to sue for Inuit rights. And my suspicion is that many of the answers haven't been hammered out yet. How did it happen that Inuit came to need an instruction manual on how to be "Inuit?"

I look forward to the day when we can freely share information, goods, and services with our circumpolar neighbours. After all, common bonds of language and culture bind us together. When that happens, will we need our own "intergovernmental affairs" office? Will we be able to sort out communications via electronic means, through a common writing system? Will we be able to sit across a table and share "Inuit" humour?

Despite the criticism sometimes levelled at it, I'm pleased at the progress toward Inuit self-definition. Labels can be a good thing — but only when one is empowered to label oneself as desired. Perhaps one day it will be Inuit who state what "Inuit" are, and all that such a label entails.

One of my little nephews was once heard to say while playing cowboys-and-Indians,

"I'm not an Inuk or an Indian. I'm a cowboy."

I guess that makes me the cowboy's aunt. Can I be a cowgirl?

Pijariiqpunga.

I know I'm taking a risk, writing about someone who is still alive. Usually, before I write about anyone who has had a strong impact upon my life, I acquire that person's permission, or at least change their name.

This article is dedicated to my friend, Johnny Anaija, and those who know him well will agree that Johnny will — I'm certain — not mind, for reasons you will come to understand.

The greatest memory I have of Johnny is of him running and playing catch with us, everyone having a blast. I also recall Johnny playing tricks, "scaring" us from behind.

Or Johnny brainstorming as to what we could play next, to get the most mileage out of the day. He had this intense "living in the present" outlook that was hard to ignore, and no matter what foul mood you were in when a day with him started, you ended it happy, and with a bit more bounce to your step.

Some personalities possess an inner magic that can affect you that way, especially if they have terrific people skills, and genuine caring. What a heart of gold that guy has!

Johnny is "handicapped" — a label with which we tend to curse those who look different from us. He had polio as a child, and walked with a twist to his step. He was prone to seizures. As children, we simply learned to wait until he had regained his energy, before dragging him back to another rambunctious session of play. After all, a game of amaruujaq ("wolf") was just not the same without him. No one treated him any differently. As long as he felt up to it, out he was with us, back to normal.

That's how we really thought of him — as normal. He was only Johnny. We never treated him with especial gentility, or he'd whump our butts. We didn't allow him any special advantages in our games — and why should we? To give him an edge was to turn the odds in his favour, and who needed that when he was already so capable on his own?

Inuit stories and teachings often harken back to the same important lesson: always treat with kindness and respect those who differ in any way from yourself. Be kind to orphans, widows, and the poor. Don't even pluck the wings off of mosquitoes. Why? You could be next.

And as far as physical handicap in my life, I did indeed become "next". In 1995, a car accident broke my neck — separating the C-6 and C-7 vertebrae. Doctors weren't sure how to treat me. Most people don't survive this injury.

I remained in traction for months, holes drilled in my skull to lock my head in place. I felt trapped in a body that could no longer function as I lay in the hospital with neurosurgeons struggling to preserve my "normal" life. It was a further miracle that I recovered with very little paralysis.

But prior to recovery, I found that it was almost more than I could bear, to lose abilities that I had taken for granted. And understanding that I had always been taking them for granted was a tough lesson. It is with this somewhat wiser vision, this new knowledge in mind, that Johnny seems so especially resilient and powerful to me.

Johnny's determination taught me a lesson that I did not know I had been taught until I needed it many years later. (Perhaps the best teachings are just so.) It is vital to understand that an obstacle is relative only to one's will. The human will is a fantastic force, capable of penetrating any barrier. And this in itself is very Inuktitut, for in olden times, it was believed that to will something was to make it be.

But my favourite old belief is the one I first mentioned: treat others as you would like to be treated.

Sometimes, when you look for inner courage, you might see yourself. Or a friend — if you would be so lucky as to have had a friend like Johnny Anaija. I'm sure he's somewhere out there, telling a joke or two, prodding you into not taking yourself so seriously.

Johnny, here's to you, wherever you are. Thanks for the lessons, and don't ever change. We need people of your mettle.

Pijariiqpunga.

One of the things I most enjoy is the experience of hearing stories. It began with my father telling me tales to put me to sleep (although I would frustrate him by listening intently and then demanding more). And since I can't often hear stories told in Inuktitut anymore, I can at least read them. Consequently, I've developed an insatiable appetite for them in written form, and I love to plunder libraries in search of unknown ones, or different versions of those I already know.

But I've noticed a strange thing. Inuit stories, when written down, generally make no sense. Many seem unfocussed and often pointless, meandering and surreal. How is it that a story can make sense in Inuktitut, and then become gibberish in English?

It took me a while to figure it out: the anthropologists and explorers that took the stories down in English form were not translators. They did not comprehend that the culture — along with its conventions and style of thinking — has to be translated as well as the actual words. Only in this way can a story possibly make sense.

Let's take the following story as an example, the common (and much varied) story of the fox and bear:

The fox had followed the bear for quite some time, hoping for a meal. This wasn't the first bear she had ever followed, nor — if she had her way — would it be the last. But the fox was becoming frustrated. This bear never caught anything, and stupidly always searched among the rocks. For what?

After the bear had travelled for a long while, he finally collapsed in frustration. The fox, by this time, was more pu led than ever, and cautiously danced in closer. At last, she couldn't resist asking the bear:

"Why so depressed, bear?"

"Go away," snarled the bear. "You're always bothering me for a piece of whatever I eat."

"Not necessarily," explained the fox, in mock injury. "You know ... um ... you don't seem to hunt like most other bears."

"Shows what you know," answered the bear. "I'm after difficult prey this time. Ptarmigan."

"Ptarmigan?" The fox suppressed a giggle. "Ptarmigan are the easiest things to catch!"

"Oh really?" answered the bear. "Then you catch some, 'cause I can't."

The fox thought for long moments. "Very well," she muttered.

She then scampered off to find some ptarmigan. There was bloody havoc as she ambushed some among the rocks, ripping into the startled birds, leaving several corpses behind. But she didn't eat any. Instead, she scuttled back to bear. There, she informed him of the meal that awaited.

Intrigued, the bear readily followed her back to the site of the ptarmigan massacre. There were feathers and blood everywhere, and the bear complimented the fox on her hunting skills. Then he took his time in eating the birds.

The fox simply watched him in silence, her mind working.

"Well, they're not as tasty as I thought they'd be," the bear later commented, cleaning his snout. "But they're nice for variety. Thanks."

"Oh, no problem," the fox commented. "Say, you know .. we'd make a great team."

"Team?" the bear asked, stepping over the bones and feathers before him.

"Yes, team. It seems to me that there are things you can't catch. I have a similar problem."

"Well, what if we develop a system?" the bear proposed. "You hunt little hard-to-get things for me, and I'll let you have the meat from the seals I catch. I only want the fat anyway. Flesh just makes me sleepy."

The fox rolled her eyes. "That's no deal at all," she hissed. "I get your leavings anyway. That puts me on the same level as a seagull. If I'm going to hunt for you, I want you to hunt for me."

"No deal," said the bear. "You're not getting my seal fat."

"I don't want your precious fat, you damn bear. I want different prey, one I'm ... afraid of."

"What is it?" the bear inquired.

"Man."

"Men?" the bear laughed. "It'll be a strange day indeed when I'm afraid of one of those things. I saw one once. Slow. Weak. Easier prey than anything, but no good to eat."

"I would say the same about the ptarmigan," chuckled the fox. "So, can you catch me one of those men?"

"It's a deal," said the bear.

(Continued next week.)

"Perfect!" laughed the fox. "You catch me a man, and I'll get you all the ptarmigan you want."

"I'll have to find one, though," the bear answered.

"No problem with that," the fox said. "I know where there are some humans." And she quickly gave the bear directions to a nearby encampment of people that she knew of.

The bear huffed mightily, great lungs thrumming within his monstrous chest, and without another word set off to fulfill his part of the bargain — to kill and retrieve a man.

The fox smiled to herself at the sight of the bear swaggering off into the distance. She settled back and waited.

And waited.

Time had become a torturous blur before the bear at last reappeared. As she had expected, he brought nothing with him.

The crimson slicking his side had formed a trail that traced its way down one leg. Like a brush, each movement of the leg left blood behind, as the bear slowly ambled toward her. His head was low, his tongue lolling, and it was as he neared that she could at last espy the arrows projecting from his side, the shafts quivering like angry feathers with each pained step.

As when they had first met, he collapsed before her, his breathing shallow and agonized.

"Bear!" she cried. "How did this happen to you? I thought you said that humans were weak, easy prey."

Between short, rapid breaths, the bear answered,

"Humans ... weak maybe... but they had... dogs... weapons. I barely... got away." And the fox could spot just the barest glimmer of shame in his eye as he said this. "Help me... fox," the bear croaked.

"Absolutely, absolutely," said the fox. "Just don't move. I can fix you right up, good as new."

This as long ago. This was the time when form was fluid, and the strength of one's will served as the sculptor of reality itself. It was a time when a careless thought was dangerous, when humans and animals both remembered how to wear many forms. And so did the fox change, and make herself take on human form.

In this way, the fox could use her hands to grasp the arrows in the bear's side. As soon as she touched them, the bear gasped in renewed agony.

"Shhhh," said the fox. "Hold very still, no matter how much it hurts. I have to get the arrows out."

"Well," hissed the bear, "do what you must, then. Just help me."

"Don't worry," the fox grinned. "Before long, you won't feel a thing."

Then, with all her strength, she pushed the arrow as deep as she could into the bear's chest. For a moment, the bear's breath caught in his throat, and his eyes widened in final realization of what she was doing. Then, as she watched, the light faded from his eyes, so that they became cold and dead.

When it was all over, she stepped back away from the body, suddenly feeling very hungry.

"What a clever girl I am," she chuckled to herself.

It had occurred to her that if she could just trick the bear into attacking some humans, she might end up with food for several days. A bear was, after all, a very large animal, and she had always wanted to try bear meat.

Pijariiqpunga.

Although there are many variations of the story I've just told, this is probably the most common one. However, you won't find any relation of it that is as long as mine, or has the characters engaging in so much dialogue. I've deliberately included a lot of detail. Why?

Well, simply put, it's much needed. The records of such stories compiled by missionaries, explorers, or anthropologists are typically lacking in anything resembling cultural content. I'm not saying that I'm a master storyteller, but I'm trying to make the point that I'm compensating for aspects of the story that would normally exist outside of print media.

Scholars (the term is used herein broadly, and includes explorers and missionaries) have tragically overlooked the importance of gesture and vocalization in Inuit storytelling, probably because their own cultures consider these factors to be artifice only, not realizing that they in fact serve to explain the tale itself — in the same way that a jigsaw can only make sense once fully assembled.

(Continued next week.)

The problem with the way in which traditional stories have been recorded in print stems from the fact that cultural specifics have not been provided. The telling is often too basic, as though the story were nothing more than a series of events.

True, most such records are meant for academic purposes, and there is no demand for scholars to become entertainers, taking up the artistic wings of poets. It is understood that folklorists and anthropologists have recorded most of these old tales for the sake of cultural study alone, rather than out of aesthetic interest.

Yet a story lacking cultural references neither entertains, nor serves as a basis for accurate study. It is the lack of explanation regarding the way in which Inuit think — and therefore live now or in the past — that can destroy a story, and with it the cultural treasures it carries and conceals. Take the "Fox and Bear" story, for example. The form it is most often found in, in print, goes something like this:

A fox and bear were travelling together. The bear wanted ptarmigan to eat, so the fox caught some. Later, they became hungry again, so the fox told the bear to go get some people. The bear tried, but was shot in the side by a hunter's bow. The fox told the bear to lie down so that she could help him. When he did so, the fox thrust the arrows deeper into the bear, killing him. The fox ate the bear.

Now, the version above is about as interesting to read as the directions on a shampoo bottle, but this has always been acceptable for academic purposes. It fails, however, by the fact that little can be gleaned from it concerning Inuktitut culture — which is supposedly the purpose of putting it in print. It is of no entertainment value, either, since it makes little sense.

In such a dry, condensed version, the events seem disassociated, awkward, as though perhaps improvised by a bored storyteller, making things up as he or she went along. It might seem that, as with most fables, there is no particular logic behind a bear and fox forming a partnership. This begs the reader to dismiss the tale, outright, as childish fantasy. Dreamily, the bear seems simply to be the victim of a murderous fox.

Frankly, the greatest shame of recording Inuktitut stories in such a facile fashion is that it overlooks the sheer wit of the culture.

Inuit, instead of dismissing the bear and fox relationship, may immediately recognize that bears and foxes actually do travel together in reality. Since bears eat only the fat and organs of their prey, leaving the meat behind, they are quite often followed by foxes, who learn that they can scavenge the bear's leavings.

Such foxes are always scuttling about, just out of range of the bear, lest they become the next meal. So, far from setting the tone of the story with fantasy, this relationship instead adds realism for the Inuit audience. But a scholar recording the tale could never know this fact, and therefore — understandably — could never think to note it for the benefit of a reader. Thus is the tale, in print, already incomplete from the outset.

In an age when Inuit reabsorb their own culture through print media (not a bad thing, by the way), rather than through oral tradition, they — like any audience — must trust that print to fully inform them.

And without key facts — such as the real fox and bear relationship — clearly understood by an audience from the beginning, the true impact of the story cannot emerge. It is supposed to be a tale of great irony, since it involves the reversal of a traditional relationship. Whereas, in reality, the fox ever hovers on the brink of danger, eating the scraps left by the bear, the "Fox and Bear" tale tells us of a fox who tricks the bear into becoming her meal. In this story, the fox becomes the one who dines royally, by dining on the bear himself.

This tale should be a glimpse into Inuit humour and sense of irony, but the failure to understand — and thus record — unspoken aspects of the culture has allowed it to go forgotten. Thus does another facet of unprotected Inuit culture, like so many others, quietly become extinct.

(Continued next week.)

If a culture is to remain intact, it must hold on to two particular treasures: language and folklore.

Until now, Inuit culture has retained both fairly well, and is blessed when compared to many other aboriginal cultures of the world, some of which have been syncretized to such an extent that their languages and folk traditions have been irrevocably extinguished.

Inuit are perhaps fortunate that in the days of unchecked industrialism on this continent, the harsh climate of the Arctic acted as a firm barrier against northern development. Now that the South possesses the technological prowess to extensively plunder the North, there exist environmental and political barriers that serve as a semi-substitute for the protection once afforded by the environment itself.

It is, to me, a wondrous irony that the very land (nuna) and air (sila) whose harshness Inuit have struggled to survive against for millennia, have in fact insulated and protected Inuit culture from dissolution amongst the influences of foreign cultures. While the horrible cold and many other dangers of the Arctic have taken innumerable lives over the centuries, they have allowed Inuit to survive as a culture.

But that was then and this is now. While Inuit culture has survived in Arctic isolation, it is now very much a part of the global village — mostly due to electronic media. And it is no coincidence that, at this time, Inuit languages (Inuktitut, Inuinnaqtun, Inuvialuktun, etc.) are suffering greater linguistic erosion than at any other time in the past. The first treasure of Inuit culture — language — has survived repressive bureaucrats and residential school systems, but is rapidly crumbling before television, radio, and electronic print media.

But the erosion of language is the obvious loss. The less noticeable, and equally dangerous, loss is that of the second treasure: folklore. When we hear of such a loss, we tend to refer to it with words such as "tragic" or "sad" or "unfortunate," words that are perfunctory and reserved for meaning things like, "Too bad, it was cute like igloos and fur coats, but it isn't really needed today..."

And this is because folklore is foolishly assumed to be akin to a game, a flight of fancy, a form of primitive entertainment long outdated.

But folklore, despite being derived from oral tradition, still comprises a body of knowledge no less vital to a culture than any modern skill. Folklore, in particular, serves to tell the members of a culture who they are and where they fit in amongst the rest of humanity.

While I am ever eager for Inuit to fully modernize, remaining unsurprised that Inuit have exercised rapid mastery over any new technologies afforded them, I am desperate for Inuit to remember their past, and escape the doom of many cultures that have dissolved into larger nations to such an extent that they are now barely recognizable.

Inuit must take greater measures to more strongly identify and institutionalize language and folklore, before such facets of the culture have been irreparably damaged, or altogether forgotten.

While it is a good thing that ethnologists have recorded as much of the culture as they are able, they have barely scratched the surface.

The sanctity of individual thought (isuma) in traditional culture has ensured that much folklore has remained shrouded in secrecy; but it is time for Inuit to become the record keepers, for only Inuit can be the true authorities on themselves.

A paperback novel may be "just a story," but the folktales of your own culture tell you who your ancestors were — and thus who you are today. And while fame and fortune, progress and development, are terrific things, the one person you are alone with on your death-bed — the last thing you truly possess — is your self. And you will want to know what your "self" is.

Inuit have a golden opportunity. Because they have been spared the ravages of absorption into a more powerful culture, they still understand their traditions. Now is the time to set in stone the uniquely Inuit interpretations of the old tales, so that the cultural mind-set is not lost forever. It is from such records that the Inuit of today and tomorrow may define themselves.

You may not want to search for your cultural identity right now. Maybe not even years from now. But when you do, you'll want to know where to start.

Pijariiqpunga.

May my readers forgive me, as I interrupt the series I have been writing, in order that I may address an issue of such importance that my series pales by comparison.

I cannot remain silent about this invidious toleration of brutality against women, a matter that — to me — boils down to only one thing: courage itself.

Before I explain that, I would first like to address that detestable supposition that has become popular of late — especially among abusers.

The raping and assaulting of women is not part of traditional Inuit culture. Such events have occurred, but that does not make them a "tradition" any more than bank robberies are a tradition in Toronto.

Wouldn't most people agree that stories are a pretty central feature of Inuit culture — decent gauges of the pre-modern mind? There are many Inuktitut stories involving violence against women. But is this the same as condoning it?

Here is one such story: In a time of hunger, Imarasugjuk slaughtered his own daughter, commanding his terrified wife to cook her up. The wife was forced to conceal her weeping, since Imarasugjuk would beat her whenever he caught her doing so. Eventually, when he heard her sniffling, her only response was, "It's just the smoke in my eyes." Some tell that she is eaten by Imarasugjuk, while others say she escapes through trickery.

Is this a lesson that such abuse is traditionally acceptable, meant as instructions for how men should treat their wives and daughters?

Hardly. It is no coincidence that Imarasugjuk's actions are linked to cannibalism — the lowest a human being can stoop in traditional thought. The abuse and murder of the women are, in this tale, deliberately linked with cannibalism in order to mark this man as the epitome of all that is hateful to Inuit.

Another tale (sometimes attached to "Imarasugjuk") is that of a woman who is murdered by her brothers. Thinking their sister to be a liar, they stab her. With her dying breath, she causes all of the world's mosquitoes to fly forth from her wound. Is this, then, a way of saying that the brothers have done a good deed? No. Nobody likes mosquitoes. This is a condemnation of their deviancy.

It frightens me that these and similar tales have, by some, been taken to mean that violence towards women is acceptable to Inuit. Does the European tale of "Bluebeard", then, mean that southern men should kill wife after wife and lock their bodies away in a secret room?

Tolerance is a good thing. But when tolerance becomes a blanket policy, it throws a shadow within which monsters may shelter. Such has occurred in modern Inuit culture.

Our current abusers of women are not men — they simply happen to be male. And their goals are not truly those of sex and harm, but simple control. In their wretchedness, their perverse need to scavenge any shred of power, they use beatings and rape as tools of control. Their desperate hope is to lower others so that they may seem higher by comparison. Is it any wonder that such creatures are attracted to positions of authority?

Many male abusers favour women as targets for two reasons: to avenge their own feelings of sexual inadequacy, and because of a popular belief that women won't hit back. But they succeed for only one reason: organization equals victory.

Such abusers recognize each other, sharing common opinions. They socialize. They aspire to the same authority positions. When they get that authority, they quickly realize that when one of them falls, the rest soon will follow.

Under the too-broad blanket of tolerance that we civilized humans extend, they conspire to protect each others' vile interests. They organize. When one of them gets caught raping someone, their buddies rally to control the damage, telling us, "It's not as bad as it looks..."

They organize, and they win.

Yet what works for one camp also works for the other. The abusers have teamed up, and adopted traditional culture as a weapon — but can not women do the same? Women, unlike the abusers, have not thus far rallied in government, to rule on their own behalf. Perhaps now is the time. The good men, the real men, are eager to help. It takes toughness, but having a cause makes it easier.

It is, after all, a matter of courage.

Pijariiqpunga.

To be honest, this is very hard to write. It is about a man who I have admired since my youth, who influenced my ideas of how a government should be, who shaped my views concerning how people should behave toward one another. I can't write from the full depth of my feelings here — not about this. So while my heart remains mostly hidden, and thus safe, I will share with you my mind.

On the day that I am writing this article, it is also the day that I watched the stately funeral of our former prime minister, Pierre Elliot Trudeau. In that funeral, it was immediately obvious that the nation shared with grieving family and friends what otherwise might have been a very private and intimate pain.

Justin Trudeau delivered an astoundingly moving and passionate eulogy, as befits his legendary father. And while many moments summoned tears from my eyes, it was at the end of the eulogy that the arrows of grief most tore at my heart, with Justin's brilliant words,

"But he won't be coming back anymore. It's all up to us, all of us, now."

Justin treated us to a very personal glimpse into his own life, speaking of a trip where, at six years of age, he had accompanied his father to a military installation in Alert. He spoke of how he had been surprised with a "top secret mission," which eventually turned out to be the sighting through a window of a man in fur-trimmed red, busily building things over a table. He commented jokingly that it was then that he became aware of how powerful and wonderful his father truly was.

Well, I have a story of my own. A couple of stories, actually, but somehow, they both roll up into one.

The first occurred during a high school trip, taken by a group of us from our school, to view how "parliament worked" in our country. We were supposed to meet the prime minister. The whole thing began with a rather formal 15 minutes spent at his press office, which led me to believe that the rest of the tour would be the same stuffy affair throughout.

Wrong. I was surprised, upon finally meeting him, at his incredible warmth and cordiality. He actually took the time to chat with me, whereupon I was instantly impressed with his charisma and intelligence.

But what was truly amazing was the way he had of making each of us students feel that we were important — that our views and individual personalities mattered to him.

And I think it was this that had the strongest impact: the gift he possessed for putting people around him at ease, the gift that prevented even the most jaded of us from leaving with the impression that meeting us had merely been one of his many duties. After that, I think, he became my hero.

The second time I saw the prime minister was a few years later, shortly after the launching of the Anik satellite at Cape Canaveral — another school trip I'd been fortunate to go on. This meeting was less formal, and we got to banter a bit, exchanging a few questions. But at one point, he turned to me, tousled my hair, and said to me,

"I like your hair better this way." (I didn't wash my hair for a week afterward.)

That was the kind of caring and intelligent man he was. He made you feel as if you counted in the larger scheme of things. He was the kind of man who would — even years after a brief encounter — actually give a damn about a high school girl from the Arctic, remembering sufficiently to comment on her hair-style. My feeling is that this is why we, all of us Canadians, might share this brief moment, if only for a few minutes, past politics and posturing, to acknowledge that all of our lives have been touched by this amazing individual.

As Justin Trudeau said in his eulogy: "He's touched us all."

And what more can I add to that? Like a prince in some Shakespearean play, Justin holds back his tears until he reaches the casket, smothered with his father's trademark red roses, and finally trembles with grief.

Farewell to a great man. Farewell to a great leader. Farewell to a truly genuine hero.

Pijariiqpunga.

"How is this?" he asked. "Before, it was always easy to get back home in a day. Now it seems I shall have to make camp here, and not arrive until tomorrow." But he never reached home the next day, nor the next. And it continued in this way, until he at last died.

— from an Alaskan Inuit tale

Oh no, my boots are dragging in the water! Waves of cold seize and cramp my legs. My brain races: did my mother get off the sled in time? Is she in the water? I desperately cling to the tent pole attached to the side of the sled. My father is yelling something, but I'm concentrating, hanging on for everything I'm worth. My pretty green, woolen mitts interfere with my grip, but any grip is better than nothing.

I hear a kind of swishing sound as one of the dogs falls into the freezing water. I've made it to the other side of the wide ice-crack we were crossing. I finally crumple onto the ice. Strong hands haul me up. I hear that hollering again, and my boots are ripped off my feet. My mother is alive. She's also ripping off her own boots, but it is to give me her duffel socks for my feet, which now look oddly grey. Or is it blue? My father is alternately pulling dogs out of the ice- crack, and running back to where I'm frantically being warmed up.

"I thought surely we'd lost you," he gasps. "I don't know how you hung on like that. It looked like an angel was holding you in place."

Specifically, "in place" referred to hanging onto a sled, in mortal terror, while dragged across a fog-enshrouded, deep winter ayuraq (ice-crack), over the bleak Arctic Ocean. My father had shouted for us to jump from the sled, but I had hesitated, since it had been moving too fast. I had just barely hung on as the sled traversed the ayuraq, my legs trailing through the water. My entire body could have been trailed through there, too. It could have been left there.

Sometimes, I stop and think about the kind of dangers that Inuit routinely had to face in pre-colonial times — or even for much of post-colonial time, for that matter. Inuit still encounter a lot of death today, for social reasons, and in accidents out on the Land.

But only a few decades ago, death was a constant companion to Inuit peoples, who have obviously settled in some of the most dangerous areas of the planet. When I think about how it used to be, it is amazing to me that, today, Inuit can rise and plan their day with no expectation of mortal danger.

They can trundle off to the office or the co-op, perhaps to a friend's place, confident that their day will be "normal," that they will make it home in the evening. Compare this with what Inuit had to face before plastic or firearms, steel or electricity.

Even in the 1930s — not so long ago — theirs was a world without search-and-rescue protocols, without grocery stores or clinics, and every individual had only personal skill to maintain his or her very life. Only a few decades ago.

For Inuit of the past, the reminders of mortality were constant, and reflected in their cosmology. The world was inhabited by hordes of hungry ghosts and wrathful powers. "Goodness" was not defined as a spiritual concept, but instead manifested as an individual's good health, happiness, plentiful food, and companionship. Humanity itself, when well, was all the "good" that the world needed.

And Inuit understood death better in those days. It was near them all the time, and its nearness made it less strange — less fearful — than it is today. And they feared it far less than they feared a poor life.

Reaching the other side, our dogs are soaked and bedraggled. I have never seen such a miserable sight as this group of dogs, shaking off icy water, licking bleeding paws whose nails have been ripped up from scratching free of the ice all around us. We are forced to break camp, to gather and regain our energies.

We are lucky. We don't loose a single dog on this trip. Or person. This time, we are really lucky.

(Continued next week.

"Glorious it is to see .. the caribou... beginning their wandering to the north. Glorious it is to see the great herds... spreading out over the plains of white. Glorious to see."

— Inuit poem recorded by Knud Rasmussen in the 1920s

Rasmussen (The Netsilik Eskimos 1931: 224) once asked a certain Netsilingmiut hunter:

"What is it you desire most in life?"

The man responded,

"I would like to live without sadness and without pain, I mean without suffering of any kind, without sickness."

This makes a lot of sense, despite the fact that most people today, when asked the same question, would probably answer: "To live as long as possible."

Close brushes with death were pretty common with Inuit of the old days. And it gave them a perspective toward death that is uncommon in these times. They did worry about aspects of their mortality, just as people today do, but they were generally resigned to the idea that their lives would not necessarily be long. Instead of worrying about how long they might live, they fretted over quality. A lack of suffering was what they most desired — they feared becoming sick, maimed, lonely, or a burden to their families.

It was a fact, in those times, that every new day carried with it the possibility of death. There was no point in getting hysterical over such a reality — one simply had to get used to it. And they did just that.

When I was in Rankin Inlet a few years back, I was lucky enough to run into a very, very old fellow. Speaking only proper Inuktitut, he showed me the top of his head, bald except for the wispy remnants of snowy-white hairs.

The flesh of his scalp was a mass of scars, the cranium itself strangely indented, as though his skull had been crushed inward until it had become bowl-shaped. Gesturing toward his head, he explained that, long ago, he had found himself trapped against a towering wall of sea-ice, ambushed by a polar bear.

Lacking dogs, his gun jammed, he spent a small eternity defending himself against the bear. Time after time, it reared up and crashed its paws down upon his shoulders and head. He survived only by struggling to remain standing, since he knew that a bear attacks by forcing its prey down beneath it, when it can kill by biting off the victim's face.

He refused to allow the bear to knock him down, and after many attempts, it grew tired and stalked off, leaving him alive. But he had been severely wounded, his head permanently disfigured by its blows.

He told the story in the same way that he might have talked of buying something at the store. And, to top it off, he had only told it to introduce some other topic (a political one that I can't disclose here) of current interest to him.

I later heard that this old man died only a couple of days later. He was truly ancient, and it was no surprise, but it made me painfully aware that, if the man had not incidentally told me his tale, it might have died with him.

I realized that all too many of these living libraries are even now dying, their untapped knowledge, their histories and adventures, passing with them. For they will not tell such stories until the time is right, or until their stories are asked of them. Being traditional, they keep their thoughts to themselves, for this is Inuktitut.

But is it surprising that he wasn't excited about his brush with death? It shouldn't be, since this sort of thing was simply the kind of world his generation lived in. We might call it an adventure, but he simply knew it as day-to-day life. For him, this was the equivalent of a day at the office.

In such a world, dreams of a long life quickly dissolve, being at best unlikely. It is, however, still possible to dream of happiness — and this is just what traditional Inuit really valued.

Such values are reflected in the traditional Inuit views of what happens to an individual after death. It was important to think that material happiness might endure — even if life itself could not. And this had a direct impact on the approach used by early missionaries.

(Continued next week.)

The great sea

Has set me adrift,

It moves me as a weed in a great river,

Earth (Nuna) and the Great Weather (Sila)

Move me,

Have carried me away

And move my inward parts with joy.

— song of the Igloolik female shaman, Uvanuk, recorded by Knud Rasmussen in the 1920s

Early missionaries had to tailor their message to suit the particular spiritual needs of Inuit. Classically, Christianity promised the faithful immortality, one in which the great reward was the opportunity to praise God for an eternity. Inuit, however, needed to specifically hear that they were going to be allowed to do all the things — throughout eternity — that made them happy here on earth.

While Inuit had different versions of the after-life, their most popular realms of the dead promised plentiful hunting and joyful game-playing. It is the spirits of those in one such realm that we supposedly see when we watch the Northern Lights, as they play with a ghostly walrus skull.

It was being at peace with death that enabled Inuit to be at peace in life. In feeling that death was a reality, an inevitability for every living thing, they were free to maximize the quality of their current existence. One of the things that most astonished early explorers and missionaries was the Inuit love of freedom and personal happiness: an Inuk might work his knuckles to the bone to produce a gift for someone he liked, but then harbour extraordinary resentment toward anyone who forced him to do something he did not wish to do.

In a world of uncertainty and short life, the Inuk's quality of life was of paramount importance to him — he had no tolerance for anyone who inconvenienced him.

Thankfully, I have been blessed with an understanding of this attitude — not because of my culture, but due to the fact that I have nearly been killed so many times, sometimes in the South as well as the North.

The first time I was near death was in early childhood, afflicted with near-fatal spinal meningitis. Then there were a few close calls out on the Land, such as the aforementioned story of myself barely hanging onto the sled while crossing an ice-crack.

And there was the time, while at university, I was hitchhiking along a darkened stretch of road. The fellow who picked me up started driving me towards his house, confessing that he was going to murder me. I still have the nasty scar from when I turned off his ignition and jumped from the moving car (he stalked me like an animal throughout the woods that night).

The last time I was nearly killed was about a year after my wedding. My in-laws' car — with me in it — spun out of control and was catapulted into the air. It corkscrewed and landed on its side, turning end over end until finishing upside down.

My C6 and C7 vertebrae (neck bones) were separated. Doctors tried holding my neck together with a frame drilled into my skull, but it failed, so they resorted to surgery to fuse the vertebrae together with a steel clamp. It was funny how the doctors barely knew what to do with me the entire time, since they were unused to people with my injury surviving. They still can't explain why I'm not paralysed.

Let me put it this way: when you are nearly killed time and again, you start to get used to it. You never lose the fear of danger, but you do start to understand that life is a very temporary thing — and survival is always a matter of millimetres, of seconds, of minuscule details that barely preserve you.

Once you come to understand how dangerous the world truly is, you cease to take your life experiences — particularly your happiness, pleasures, joys — for granted. The positive things in your life are magnified a thousandfold.

Yet this is a sort of knowledge that generations before us have already held, a way of appreciating the world that we might share without trauma, without hard lessons, if we but remember how our ancestors used to life.

There is something to be said for the fact that they lived in a world without the illusion of safety that we so cultivate today — yet a world that they seemed to value more than we value ours.

Pijariiqpunga

"Finally caught up with me, eh?"

They traded handshakes like a couple of Roman gladiators, each gripping harder than usual. The statement was interchangeable. It didn't matter which man uttered it this time. What mattered was their time-honoured, macho game of cat and mouse.

My father didn't show the slightest bit of surprise at the arrival of the other. He knew that the man known as Nujaittuq ("No Hair") had been trailing him for a few days. Who wouldn't be able to tell, considering the flat terrain on which we had been travelling? It had only been a matter of time before Nujaittuq caught up with us.

"Catch any game lately?" Nujaittuq inquired.

"You know I'd never break the law," my father answered, countering with, "How about you? Are those ptarmigan feathers I see hanging out the side of your sled?"

On it went — one trying to pin the other with violating the law in any little way.

We had known Nujaittuq for a long time. He had been one of those first RCMP officers entrusted with civil and administrative duties since Inuit had started leaving the traditional lifestyle out on the Land, to live in settlements.

Many times, he'd had to enforce regulations which civil servants had not then known were inappropriate to the North. Southern laws regarding "hunting seasons" were established based upon the observed migrational/breeding patterns of animals in the South. Since those patterns occurred at different times in the North, following southern — style laws could result in disaster. It might be, for example, that birds were the most choice thing to hunt at a certain time, while hunting them was illegal, "out of season." At the same time, hunting seals was permissible but impractical, since the bulls were in rut, their hormone-saturated meat and skins barely fit for dog food.

Speaking of which, my father then turned to the subject of Nujaittuq's skinny, inadequate dog team.

"What are these, large lemmings?"

He would often deride Nujaittuq on his use of Siberian Huskies, issued to him by ignorant and misinformed bosses from some headquarters far away. Whoever had issued him those type of dogs, which were mostly trained to run in a long pair-after-pair hitch-pattern, must have been ignorant of the dangers of sea-water ice cracks. Inuit kept their dogs in a fan-style hitch so that if one dog fell into a crack, it wouldn't automatically pull in the other dogs nearest it. Even Netsilingmiut, using only two or three dogs, used a fan style.

Another complaint that my father had about Siberian Huskies, zippy and agile as they were, was that they were simply not tough enough. Not like ours (the breed is now recognized by kennel clubs as the "Qimmiq," or "Eskimo Dog"). They were not dogs for enduring sixty below, bli ards and a lack of food and water.

"They get me through the winter," Nujaittuq retorted. "I don't see you giving me one of your dogs to breed. Not that I would want one of yours anyway. What a mangy looking bunch."

"They do look awful, don't they?" my father was forced to agree. His dogs were losing their wooly winters coats, and now looked like crosses between musk-oxen and hyenas.

"When are they due for shots?" Nujaittuq asked.

"Shots? They're not due yet."

Both men knew this wasn't true. Both had ignored the regulation after it was discovered that this breed of dog often had bad reactions to the vaccine — reactions that sometimes ended up killing them. Instead, once a dog became infected with rabies, my father would quickly and humanely put it down. The early symptoms of a sick animal were easily noticed by someone who knew what to look for.

Nujaittuq agreed because he had learned how to live in the North. He was one of those early, highly skilled and adaptable RCMP officers, who understood that he was responsible for the welfare of the people, not the letter of the law. Using his brain, he knew where and when the law had to be bent in order to survive in the Arctic - a world that places special demands upon the life within it. And the land had placed its demands upon Nujaittuq as readily as upon any traditional Inuk.

But that didn't stop him or my dad from ribbing each other.

(Continued next week.)

After the inevitable tea break, and many more good-natured insults, Nujaittuq and my father traded biscuits. Nujaittuq liked the change to my father's hardtack biscuits, kept in their red box. My father, in turn, enjoyed the soft biscuits that Nujaittuq was issued with his rations. "Paulines" read the name on that blue box of Nujaittuq's, a box bearing the image of some crusty old mariner, steering a large, wooden wheel. One of my own personal games involved trying to guess what the pictures and words on different packages referred to. Paulines, I assumed, was either the name of the biscuits, or the company that made them. I had already guessed that "Redpath" made sugar, and "Amphorah" made the tobacco my father smoked.

After the exchange of biscuits, the two men exchanged survival skills, trading tips and trying out each others' rifles. Neither of them, even though they lived essentially different lifestyles, could afford ignorance of the land, and there seemed to be a free exchange of knowledge between them. These moments, when they caught up to one another, served as the times when they could compare notes and learn how to become better survivalists. My father had come to respect Nujaittuq, and never rejected him as some dumb southerner unworthy of Inuit knowledge. Neither did Nujaittuq look down on my father as some dumb "native." They were just men. Learning was the important thing here. Their cat-and-mouse game — each always catching the other slipping up — was their classroom.

"Come across any storms lately?" asked my dad.

It was a mean one. Nujaittuq had once gotten lost in a storm, had to have a search party come looking for him. As I had mentioned before, his Siberian dogteam, more used to treeline conditions, had been virtually useless in a storm. "Eskimo dogs," on the other hand, would have brought you home — blinding conditions or not. On top of it all, one of his bitches had delivered pups, and Nujaittuq had been literally stuck indoors. With Eskimo dogs, you basically left mothers and pups to nature and instinct. But with Siberian huskies, high-strung and temperamental, you had to make sure the mothers properly nursed and looked after their pups.

"Run out of pipe tobacco lately?" Nujaittuq counter-attacked.

During one of his hunting trips, my father had decided that it would be a good time to conquer his addiction to tobacco — only to underestimate its grip on him. Days later, he'd had to make do with leaves from a berry bush, until finally borrowing a pouch from, of all people, his friend and nemesis: Nujaittuq.

But in the final analysis, despite much ribbing and posturing, my father admired and was quite fond of Nujaittuq. It was not often that a southerner could earn the admiration of a good Inuit hunter. In this way did Nujaittuq exemplify those earliest of the RCMP.

"I'm going to Spence Bay to do a little work on the detachment there," Nujaittuq stated. "One of the things I have to do is inform old man Siva that he can't have two wives."

"Oh, why don't you leave the poor old man alone. He's not harming anybody."

"I'm surprised at you, Qitsualik." Nujaittuq knew my father had become a minister. "I didn't think the Anglican Church would condone such a thing."

"It's my own opinion and not the church's. You know he's an old man and needs looking after. If you take away his other wife, he'll get depressed and a doctor will have to be called in. Besides, I'm in the business of listening to people, not judging them. That's for the courts to deal with."

"That's my problem. As much as I don't like to do it, I have to inform people when they are breaking the law."

"Well, you were stupid enough in making them in the first place."

"That's just it. I didn't make the laws."

"Then why are you in such a hurry to enforce them?"

This was followed by a kind of depressed silence. Either realized that some aspects of the other's duties were unpleasant. Both, in their respective capacities, had experienced futile attempts to help those who were dying. They had attended tragic funerals, had dealt with accidental shootings, suicides and murders. Such things hit hard in small camps, where everyone knew everyone else's business.

(Continued next week.)

A lot of people, in general, went to my father to seek advice. Such is the lot of a minister. In those days, it was also the lot of anyone who was particularly good at anything, since Inuit value a skilled opinion.

Since the RCMP of those early days tended to impress Inuit with their multi-varied skills — acting like a combination of peacekeeper, postal worker, doctor, and overall wise man — Inuit tended to admire them, and thus Nujaittuq also was often approached by people seeking advice. I think that, for this reason, Nujaittuq and my father shared some common footing.

Loosely resembling community "leaders," an Inuk and Qallunaaq who each carried some stamp of authority, the two were virtually forced to work together. Each had some unique way of viewing the people under their charge: one spiritual, the other administrative. But both views entailed the need for deep social awareness, and this is where the men's duties overlapped.

It is to the credit of the early RCMP, and especially to the man himself, that Nujaittuq understood the need to combine his strength with that of my father, working toward the betterment of the community. They were uneasy times.

Back when communities were of a looser structure than they enjoy today, it was better to follow common sense for the survival of all, rather than the letter of the law. Despite the fact that game laws forbade the hunting of birds out of season — even when that was all there was to eat — people were hunting ptarmigan and collecting bird eggs.

Nujaittuq could have insisted upon enforcing the law, could have charged folks for poaching whilst muttering, "...it's just my job," but he knew the difference between theory and practice. The RCMP were at that time closer to their military (rather than policing) roots.

And soldiers — while often maligned in our politically correct times — are known for getting things done with great pragmatism. Nujaittuq's RCMP derived directly from those older Northwest Mounted Police, a handful of soldiers chosen for their coolness and adaptability, who won the respect of Canada's aboriginal peoples by resolving aboriginal-colonial conflicts without the bloodshed that so haunts U.S. frontier history.

Before Nujaittuq and my father parted company, a few goodies were always traded. My father exchanged some extra seal meat for packaged dog food: it made a good emergency feed for the dogs when game was scarce.

Nujaittuq taught my father how to mix it with hot water and Burns' lard for the necessary fat content in winter conditions. He also taught him how to make depressions in the snow, to act as eating bowls, and to cool off the dogs' dinner. There was no end to the teasing he received from my father about being the "dogs' cook."

In return, my father taught Nujaittuq how to cut the entire skin and fat off of the seal, which would remain less frozen than the meat, serving as a quick fix of protein and fat. He showed him how to cut it into thin strips, so that the dogs could save energy by quickly downing smaller pieces, instead of working away at a frozen chunk of meat.

By the way, the entire exchange was in Inuktitut. Neither my father, nor any of us at that time, spoke English at all. Nujaittuq was perfectly fluent in Inuktitut. He had simply found it necessary to master it as part of his job.

Perhaps, in light of this, you might be able to understand why I roll my eyes at modern-day talk of "cultural immersion" through crummy little workshops offered by consultants. Is anyone today serious enough, when they speak of cultural immersion, to do it as Nujaittuq did?

When working with the RCMP once, I had the opportunity to speak in depth with my father concerning the changes to northern policing over the years. At some point, the subject of Nujaittuq and the old style of RCMP came up, whereupon my father said,

"They don't make them like that anymore."

I guess they don't make Pauline's biscuits anymore, either. I haven't seen them around. Although, if you asked me to draw the picture on the box as I remembered it, I could probably do so with my eyes closed — the same way I can see Nujaittuq in my mind's eye, as I remember him.

Pijariiqpunga.

To this day, even on a long weekend, she could not get out of bed and just leave the blankets in a tangled mess. Her husband would tease her about her "hospital corners," neatly tucked in a square, the pillow just so, smoothed over twice and then once more, in expectation of an inspection that no longer came.

She knew this was neurotic, but the habit was too ingrained in her. She couldn't even bother to try changing it. The day just didn't seem normal unless this little chore was done.

It was a compulsion, sort of like piously refusing to shop on a Sunday, or — God forbid — going to a Blues bar on Cajun night. One of her friends had done the latter, becoming consumed by what she termed "Catholic guilt."

"Why do we have Catholic guilt when we're Anglican?" the women would laugh together. But beneath the joking was a kind of sadness, for such times reminded them of their regret over having acquired such a disciplined life from years of boarding school.

"Because being Catholic is really not that different from being Anglican," I told my friend. "You're probably going to be struck by lightning any minute now. Mrs. Holman is surely turning in her grave."

It all seems to have started from there — Mrs. Holman and boarding school, I mean. I should know. I've had my own share of what we used to call Catholic guilt. And for us Anglican Inuit residential school kids, there was never any confession we could attend in order to remove it.

I probably have a leg up on my neurosis, though. You see, I have a bit of a special understanding of our harsh upbringing. I had once gained a glimpse, a very small one, into the private lives of Mr. and Mrs. Holman, our residential school's superintendents. It was not in a close, personal way, or even in an accidental way. It was gained in more of a covert, snooping way.

As a girl in Inuvik, I needed to make some cash to cover such necessities as make-up and nylons (the bane of dressing for dinner, but I digress), or in order to take my friends out for an occasional coke, a plate of fries, or a movie. So I became Mrs. Holman's cleaning lady, working once a week on Saturdays, from 0900 to 1400 hours.

(Or however long it took to finish polishing the silver.)

Mr. and Mrs. Holman lived on the second floor of the staff quarters at Stringer Hall. Their place was fairly large, with a generous living room, bedroom, and a couple of bathrooms. I scrubbed all the bathrooms, changed linen, dusted and vacuumed, all in five hours or less. Oh yes, there was also the silver, which had to be polished, and each piece of art work in the living room carefully dusted.

In the huge living room, a grand polar bear rug — which must have been at least ten feet long — commanded the attention of anyone who entered. I didn't have to clean that, but I did have to wash all the base boards around it.

I must have been an industrious little thing, as I never got any complaints. Once in a while, Mrs. Holman would hold a spot check.

We senior girls were never permitted to know Mrs. Holman very well. She seemed a lot kinder to the boys at Stringer Hall, but never really warmed up to us. She was distant, constantly disapproving. I won't mention here, out of respect for her having passed away, the sorts of nasty names we had for her, as we were constantly chafing under her authority.

Needless to say, she was tough. For example, we all regularly had to kneel in front of her, so that she could inspect out skirt lengths, which could be exactly no higher than four inches above the knee. Blue eye shadow and mascara were frowned upon, as was overly sprayed hair. She constantly reminded us that such things were carcinogenic.

Runs in your nylons were a definite no-no. Certainly, being even five minutes late for supper — for which we all had to don dresses — could earn you a "CB'ed" (confined to barracks). We were held to militaristic standards of tidiness.

You have no idea how few rules I'm outlining here.

(Continued next week.)

I didn't want to be a snoop, but remember that — to us kids — Mr. and Mrs. Holman had always held a status akin to titans. From the time the government separated us from our families, sealing us away in the residential school that was to train us to behave like "decent" whites, there had been certain adults placed in charge of every detail of our lives.

As anyone knows, every zoo consists of two classes of being: animal and keeper. Mr. Holman was the supreme keeper — the Overlord, if you will, his domain the institution itself. But make no mistake: he was good, a stern but kindly man, who truly believed that he was preparing us for a better life.

Mrs. Holman, however, was a bit more of a paradox, seemingly remote in her dislike for us girls, yet at once intimate in the sense that she was our supervisor, the person whose eyes were upon every individual action.

She was, still is, an enigma — how could I not take the chance to learn more about her while cleaning her home?

So as I observed her belongings, I tried to get a feel for the kind of person she was, the sorts of things she liked. Immediately, I noticed that there were few photos of family, children or otherwise. The Holmans both seemed to possess a great fondness for aboriginal art, Inuit and Dene. They owned a massive collection, which, to me, bespoke an affection for anything northern. From what I could see of their things, they had lived and worked in the North for a very long time.

Mrs. Holman liked silver. All of her housewares were of real silver. She had more than a few items that were made of the stuff. Between all the silverware (much of which was probably antique) and the art pieces, my guess is that the contents of that house would be worth a small fortune today.

On top of her dresser, she had collected some foreign and expensive-looking perfumes in odd little bottles. This was strange, as I had never smelled any on her. She always smelled of laundry detergent and powder. As I was dusting, I also peeked at her lipstick. She seemed to like deep reds — the kind you saw on movie stars in old, old flicks. Again, I don't remember her wearing any.

She liked her chocolates.

It was a good thing that their two gigantic St. Bernard dogs were locked downstairs as I cleaned; they might not have approved of me poking around. Other pets included many birds, which Mrs. Holman kept in her office. Mr. Holman kept a tank of exotic fish (I gave him my own pet fish a year later, for safekeeping, since the Fort MacPherson girls were deliberately butting cigarettes in the tank). And now that I think about it, how did the Holmans get those animals up North?

I'm not sure what I had hoped to reveal to myself regarding Mrs. Holman, but other than the fact that she was a normal human, I merely deepened the mystery around her. I learned only that she indeed possessed a private self, but that self was as nebulous as the one I already knew.

When I finally left residential school, I gave the Holmans a black vase I had made in art class. It was just to thank them for a piece of their lives. I meant it.

Much later, when I learned that Mrs. Holman had passed away, the news left me with a sinking feeling, an emptiness, as though I forgot how to breathe for a moment. It was a strange sadness, the feeling you get when a possibility has been irretrievably lost. It occurred to me, in that moment, that the mystery of who Mrs. Holman was would never really be solved. I was like a detective who had built up a case over a lifetime, only to have all evidence suddenly vanish.

She has become a ghost that haunts me when I remember those halls, the red lipstick in that house, the silverware and artworks. Or when I clean up on Saturday, drying every last dish, being careful so as not to leave a single smear.

Pijariiqpunga.

(Roy Inglangasuk, friend and fellow resident, has built a Stringer Hall Reunion site.
Check it out at: http://members.tripod.com/dansir_tundra/)

"My younger sibling is more ajungi than me now." - song by Charlie Panigoniak

I'm the oldest of four girls in my family, not counting my half-sister from another mother. Actually, I'm the oldest of all my siblings, nine in total.

My youngest sister is now more ajungi ("capable") than me. She drives her own car, which she budgeted for and bought herself. Ditto for a personal computer, which she taught herself to use. She works, supports her own family, even though she's the youngest of us all. It's somehow amazing to me.

When she was born, I was already an unusually hard fourteen year-old. I had cared for many of my siblings up until then, and thought it would cramp my style to look after a fussy newborn with colic. Her cries were piercing, vibrating the air between her crib and my ears, drowning out my new Rolling Stones music. My only opinion was that it was definitely not cool of her to do that. And it was even less cool to have to change her diapers, bedding, spitted-up-on clothing, and what seemed like an endless supply of knit booties (from where do those bloody things originate?).

In order to escape, I would go for a two-mile jog. Up the hill I would run, stopping for numerous sit-ups at the top, then back down again. In between such jaunts, I had to invent things to keep me from having to care for the baby. I would overblow the importance of painting my nails and visiting with my friends. I would even babysit others' kids, as long as I didn't have to deal with my sister. It occurs to me now that I was simply sick of raising my siblings — I had done it all my life up until that point, and I suddenly wanted time for myself.

But freedom came with its price. Because I distanced myself, I missed many positive experiences associated with my sister's upbringing. It was as though she represented a second phase, an altogether new generation of family that I was not in touch with. Before I even realized it, the years had rolled by, and I did not know her as well as I wished to.

I think families need to make a special nod of respect toward youngest siblings. In a way, they have the hardest time, struggling to thrive while sorting their way through the mixed-up dynamics of titanic brothers and sisters. Like helpless spectators standing at the foot of a volcano, they must face the challenges of life amid the volatility of developing siblings.

They are too-often hailed as the "baby" of the family, when it is in fact they that have the unique challenge of avoiding emulation of older kids; it is easy for older siblings to define themselves, but the youngest has the additional task of doing so while growing out from under the shadow of those before them.

Time was kind, and much later treated me to the chance to know my youngest sister. She ended up spending a year living with me while she attended high school. I was delighted to find out that she was genuinely fun, an altogether good person.

She was there for me during my divorce. Once, she sent me a box of duffel socks she had made. My brother was there when we opened it. Let's just say that she hadn't quite gotten the gist of making duffel socks — it takes a lifetime of painstaking practice in order to do it free-style, with no pattern. But they were there, and her heart was in the right place.

My brother examined a pair and chuckled: "She's so brave!"

But, to me, the duffel socks incident sums up her character. She's the sort that old-timers used to say were of "true grit." And now, she's even more ajungi than me. After all, I never could make duffel socks — pretty or not — without using a pattern, and still can't. And, for an Inuit seamstress, that's the biggest test of all.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that her Inuktitut name is Qillaq. This is actually quite significant, since she's named after my grandmother. As per Inuit tradition, I'm to call her my grandmother.

She tries. She's brave.

So here's to you, my "grandmother" — you're more ajungi than me now.

Pijariiqpunga.

I don't get into the Christmas spirit until late in the season. It's too daunting to begin the endless, obligatory preparations. It all begins too early. September is barely past when advertisements show people happily building snowmen or dressing up as Santa. You end up moaning to yourself: "Didn't we just get done with Halloween?"

You know how it goes: racing for the "right" presents (any presents at all), dealing with grumpy people — broke people. How does one get decent presents while still having money left for rent? Visa payments loom on the economic horizon. This year, I swear to myself, I'm going to keep things simple — maybe buy books for everybody.

Despite my fighting it, every year Christmas takes on a life of its own.

I resist it, battling the "Christmas spirit." I don't want to feel it because the commercialism gets me down. It starts to feel like the businesses own Christmas, that they're brain-washing me into following their schedule, validating their priorities. And I don't like anyone who makes me feel like a pawn, so I'm relegated to some role resembling that of Scrooge or the Grinch.

But there's one thing that thaws me out, one seasonal cue that kindles my Christmas spirit.

I tend to watch "A Charlie Brown Christmas." You know, the TV cartoon? Honestly, I don't want to. It's on every season. At some point, I'm always ending up taking a peek at it, then getting hooked, and watching the whole thing.

I think I'm drawn to it out of a sense of comforting familiarity, but also the fact that the thing isn't as saccharine and vacant as most Christmas "children's" features. It presents a fine blend of the positive and negative aspects of the season, and I truly identify with Charlie Brown's disgust with the holiday commercialism. He's misguided in his own way, of course — thinking that Christmas is about quaint, cuddly traditions and ambience, but I still share his hatred of commercialism.

But all of this is adult rationale. Want to know the real reason why it works? It's the part following the point where Charlie Brown finally throws in the towel. In bewilderment and frustration, he screams and asks if there is anyone who knows what Christmas is really about?

It's Linus who answers, when he takes the stage in a soliloquy, drawn from the Gospel of Luke, chapter II, verses 8-14. It concludes with:

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men."

Once I hear this, Christmas has begun. Because it says it all.

In the course of writing about Inuit, I've been compelled to compare my culture to many others, thus researching much folklore. I've read of the Obon, wherein the Japanese honour their ancestral dead with open doors, food, and conversation. The Festival of São Gonalo in Portugal, where the patron saint of married couples is honoured with phallic cakes. I've read of the June Crop-Over Festival in Barbados, celebrating the harvesting of sugar cane. The Procession of the Witches in Beselare, Belgium, the Mongolian Naadam Festival that celebrates archery and horsemanship, and the Hindu Fire Festival.

But at this time, the grand pageantry of humanity's festivals only serves to make me realize just how important Christmas is — not just as a Christian holiday. And I'm not taking the Christ out of Christmas, here, but we must remember what Jesus most seemed to want: for people to get along.

And it is in this way that Christmas is most successful, most powerful. If we look at the sheer variety of festivals that humanity has and has had throughout history, how many of them are those whose main theme is good will itself? No matter how it was intended, no matter its pagan roots in the Natalis Invicti Solis of Rome or the Nordic Asgardsreid, no matter what annoying social and commercial overtones it has taken on today, few would dispute that it is essentially a festival of common good will. This explains its popularity, and its triumph. In the bloody, ravening history of mankind, it is distinguished as a time dedicated to kindness for kindness' sake.

We can't afford to humbug it. The fact that we have it at all speaks well for us.

Quviasugitsi quviasungnaami, and may you all have a Charlie Brown Christmas.

Pijariiqpunga.

"You must not thank for your meat; it is your right to get parts. In this country, nobody wishes to be dependent upon others ... With gifts you make slaves just as with whips you make dogs!"

— Inuit hunter admonishing the explorer Peter Freuchen, who had made the mistake of thanking the hunter for food (1961)

Once upon a time in Ottawa, a few years ago, I found it necessary to work with a consultant. Like most consultants, this guy loved getting together for long "business" lunches — and why not? A business lunch is a tax write-off, and a lot of fun.

The lunch is the part of consulting work where you get to have a nice meal, sling a lot of bull, complain about whomever you're working for this time, and generally run off at the mouth. It's the time when the consultant gets to theorize concerning the contract as though he were a NASA engineer, speculate on business opportunities as though he were the CEO of Nabisco.

In the two-hour lunch, he gets to trade handy gossip about others in the field, and pelt everyone else at the table with a barrage of trendy expressions, like, "par for the course" and "simpatico." At the end of the lunch, there is about fifteen minutes of actual work, then the matter of paying for the meal.

Now, when I first had a couple of lunches with this fellow, I was impressed with what a nice guy he was: every time the waiter or waitress brought the cheque, he would snatch it up and whip out a gold card. I would be halfway to my purse, ready to hear the damages for my own portion of the meal, when he would announce with Biblical solemnity that the meal was on him.

I was overjoyed the first time he covered the lunch — what a nice treat. The second time he did so, I was a bit less comfortable. It was weird, since I'm used to making my own way. The third time was just annoying. I tried arguing about it, but he paid anyway. After a while, things got surreal — he was chasing after the restaurant staff to make sure the cheque only came to him. It had occurred to me, by then, that he was not being generous. In fact, my husband was furious, and to this day still insists that the guy was ego-tripping, trying to look good by flashing his gold card around.

Whether the consultant intended it or not, his act of constantly getting the cheque had become insulting. What might have been a gift had turned into a means of seeming socially superior to those he was "treating." Now there might be those reading this who are thinking, "It's still free. Why look a gift horse in the mouth?" The answer is because it's a matter of pride and identity, a matter traditional Inuit culture understands very well. But first, let's talk about the social power of gift-giving.

A gift is not always a gift. Sometimes, it's a weapon, a tool of egotistical warfare that almost every culture has recognized and dealt with at some point in its history. Typically, he who holds the most power in a society also has the most resources at his disposal — the most toys. Such an individual is also the one who can afford to give most generously. And, if he executes the giving well, he can get back a lot more than he gave — in the form of lionization. By giving out gifts that the recipients could never themselves afford, he displays his wealth in return for admiration. In other words, he buys pride.

But this style of gift-giving is a dangerous game, because every society has the concept of reciprocity. It is expected that one gives in order to receive, just as one works in order to prosper. With every gift comes the unspoken promise of eventual return. Only among children is it normal to take from adults without giving in return (and even that is debatable, since children give adults the pleasure of their company).

So if an adult is given a gift that he cannot possibly afford to return in kind, what sort of statement is then made by the giving?

(Next week: Inuit, Haida, !Kung Bushmen — and the threat of a gift.)

If you give a gift that can never be repaid, you're making a statement about personal power. You're saying that, like a child, the receiver is potentially at your mercy. You are bragging, and that can rankle whoever you're bragging to. And when you insult them, there's a good chance they will want to retaliate.

So your "gift" can start a fight.

Every society has addressed this problem. In highly populous societies, gift-giving arrogance is not a severe problem. Such societies solve their problems through a system of established rights (not necessarily justice). Each individual in the populous society is apportioned rights. These might be the radically differing, classist rights of king and peasant, or the common rights of our own democracy. One way or another, rights solve the gift-giving difficulties.

In our own society, for example, one of our common rights is that of an individual to make as much money as desired. An individual then has the right to spend his money in any way he sees fit. If he wishes to lord himself over someone else by buying them an outrageously expensive gift, he has the right to do so. The only say the receiver has in the matter is whether or not to accept it — it isn't illegal to refuse.

But mostly, we've adapted our society to the reality of the situation: anyone can buy anything they want, and if they want to give it to you, you might as well take it. While I've personally heard of those too proud to accept a gift, the general modern sentiment is that one should always accept. Hence the saying, "Never look a gift horse in the mouth."

This expression supposes that any gift is worth having, and only a fool rejects that which is free.

In societies that are more hierarchical than ours, in which the individuals are ranked or set into classes, gift-giving becomes less of a personal gesture, and more of an assertion of status. One cannot afford to abstain from gift-giving. If one does not give gifts to social inferiors, one runs the risk of looking stingy, thus weak.

In Europe's Middle Ages, a time of feudalism, with peasants under knights under lords under kings, gift-giving was a tool of warfare as surely as a sword. Those of high social status were under constant scrutiny by others ready to displace them, and lavish gift-giving was a way of demonstrating to watchful eyes that you were doing well — you had resources to spare, which meant you were still strong.

The Indians of North America's Northwest Coast — Haida, Tlingit, Kwakiutl, Salish, and over two dozen other tribes — developed an elegant system suited to their rank-based societies. They had a number of related ceremonies that have by today blurred into one another, collectively known as the "potlatch" tradition (the term is a generalization applied by white traders, and derives from the Chinook trade jargon).

The potlatch is a grand festival in which there is a flow of gifts from the top of the social hierarchy to the bottom. He who can give the richest gifts — always the chief — gives out to those immediately below him in rank. They give to those below them. And so this trickle of wealth continues until it reaches those at the very bottom of the social scale (who, in olden days, were just above the level of slaves).

This functions as an official system of wealth distribution, but also as a distribution of pride, and an assertion of status. It is the method by which the more powerful display their might to the less powerful, and thereby verify their station. In this way, social order is preserved, and every ego at the potlatch is stabilized: you may have had someone show off to you, but at least you got to show off to someone else. The only ones who lose out in terms of pride are those at the very bottom, but at least they come away with lots of goodies — they're the ones who would benefit most from the saying about gift horses...

Now, like I said before, these sort of systems work fine for the larger societies. But what about those smaller societies, where everyone is supposed to be a social equal? What if there is ego, arrogance, without rank?

Next: Kaliai, !Kung, and Inuit.

In societies without statehood, there are no written laws to keep the peace. This accounts for the well-documented difficulties Inuit initially had in accepting — or even comprehending — "Qallunaat" laws. Many southern laws have always seemed at odds with the Inuit lifestyle. Echoes of these old difficulties resound even today, in northern discontent with the latest firearms legislation.

It is not merely that Inuit have had difficulty with southern laws, but with any law. Traditional Inuit did not maintain order through law, but through taboo and protocol — guidelines for proper behaviour. There were no concepts of crime and punishment.

But traditional Inuit were faced with long, lonely travel periods. Consequently, they valued the company of others, even strangers. The need for companionship, the consequent fear of becoming unwelcome, ensured that individuals obeyed taboos and protocols, which were nearly all engineered to help preserve a social balance, wherein no one was superior to anyone else, and no ego became bruised. Because individuality was of paramount importance, equality was of paramount importance.

Early explorers expressed great indignation at the Inuit habit of accepting gifts without thanks. When an explorer presented a hunter with a fine new knife, the hunter took it without a word. The explorer then labelled the hunter ungrateful. He was then baffled when, months later, the same hunter threw a freshly killed seal down at his doorstep.

This was only Inuit peace-keeping: there was no true gift-giving, no charity, but instead only continual reciprocity. 'A' took from 'B' and 'C', B took from A and C, and C was naturally taking from A and B. Taking was the right of everyone.

In this way, a down-on-his-luck hunter was still ensured something to eat. And it was equally important that no one could belittle others by lording handouts over them. This tradition lingers today, in the tendency of Inuit to eat without asking permission or thanking the "owner."

This is intolerable to most Occidental peoples, long ago forced to define ownership through law. The same factors experienced by modern Inuit communities are gradually rendering traditional reciprocity impractical.

Anthropologists still run afoul of the reciprocity practice today. Richard Borshay Lee, in "Eating Christmas in the Kalahari" (Natural History, December 1969), states that while studying the !Kung Bushmen, he had stingily hoarded his supplies.

In compensation, he decided to buy a gargantuan ox — that no Bushman could afford — for their Christmas feast. Soon after, numerous Bushmen approached him, insisting that his fat ox was actually scrawny, that he had made a foolish purchase. He was embittered, humiliated.

But he was shocked to see that, when the great ox was finally slaughtered, it more than filled every belly at the feast. Yet all the while that the Bushmen stuffed themselves, they laughingly complained about the "scrawny" ox, how it was "starving them to death."

Afterward, when Lee asked an elder what this behaviour meant, he was told of the Bushmen's tradition: they belittled anything provided for them, and anyone who provided it — even themselves. In this way, no one could ever be superior to anyone else, and fighting was avoided by keeping everyone equal and humble.

In "Too Many Bananas, Not Enough Pineapples, and No Watermelon at All" (The Humbled Anthropologist, Wadsworth, 1990), David Counts tells of his trading tobacco to Kaliai (Papua New Guinea) villagers in return for bananas. The Kaliai quickly gave him more bananas than he could eat, so he cut off trade.

This angered the villagers, until someone at last explained to Counts that he was never expected to keep everything brought to him, or even to think of it as trade. He was instead expected to redistribute the fruit to other people, and expected to take whatever he needed from others: just as they did amongst each other.

Such anthropologists probably experienced much the same emotions, when they assumed a gift is a gift, as did the explorers who went thankless for the shiny mirrors and metals they passed to Inuit. They had to learn that there is no true gift for one who is your equal.

And while we cannot return to past traditions, we can heed what they teach us — about what we can do to another's ego with a thoughtless display of wealth. And perhaps that knowledge can make us all a bit more humble.

Pijariiqpunga.

The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead

Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets

- William Shakespeare (Hamlet. Act I. Scene 1)

Cultural studies tell us there are few peoples that do not believe in ghosts — that is, the possibility of a person's animating force lingering, influencing the living even after death. Most cultures have innumerable ghost-stories to tell, and anyone who hears them will instantly notice dramatic similarities, even between those of cultures as radically different as Inuit and English.

But while it is tempting to write off such similarities with the warm glow of human "oneness," simply describing all ghost-stories as a common need for spicy horror and evidence of life-after-death, the truth is that the ghost, as a common concept, quickly breaks down when we examine any particular culture's definition of the phenomenon. While all ghosts are assumed to be somehow derived from a once-living person, cultures often differ on exactly how and in what way a ghost is a ghost. And when we examine this true derivation, we gain a glimpse into how a culture views death and the after-life. Therefore, we have much more than a good tale here — we eye the very cosmology of a people.

The following untitled story, which is especially common in Alaska and the Western Arctic, is a good example of how ghosts behave in Inuit folklore:

There was once a community along the shore. The people were quite peaceable, but there lived among them a single, nasty old man. He was cruel and greedy, and not a tear was shed when he finally met his violent death. The way in which he died is not especially important — what does matter is the way in which his body was treated.

Taboo dictated that a cadaver was to be wrapped in caribou skins, then carefully covered with heavy stones, in order to prevent wolverines and other scavengers from desecrating it. But these people had so hated the old man that they were loathe to even touch his corpse. So they carried his body away from camp, laying it down without first enwrapping it. They placed only a few stones upon it, not especially caring that animals would take their toll.

The people tried to get on with their lives. But there was an angakoq (shaman) among them who would not let them forget that they had violated a taboo. And so, when the hunting went bad, when no animals could be found, the angakoq blamed it upon their actions.

The people were eventually forced to move from that place. They travelled inland, where they found more animals to hunt. Time went by, and they again knew peace.

As generations passed, there came to be a boy who was very, very lazy. He greatly disliked hunting, preferring instead to tinker around with rocks and sticks. He also experienced weird dreams and ideas, and so became apprenticed to an angakoq. He displayed a talent for shamanism, but the rest of the people were still sick of supporting him. He found himself plagued by comments like, "Why don't you catch something to eat like everyone else? You eat everyone else's food, and never hunt anything yourself."

One day, tired of such derision, the boy resolved to prove that he could hunt (besides, people were beginning to be less and less hospitable toward him). He packed his kamotik for a long hunting trip, but when it came down to actually leaving, he wasn't sure which way to travel. He was too embarrassed to ask for advice, so he decided to head toward the seashore, where few hunters ever journeyed.

He travelled for a few hours, and quickly became exhausted. Just as he was getting desperately bored and hungry, having failed to spot a single animal, he noticed a tiny community ahead of him. There, in the distance, close to the seashore, he could spot several dark shapes: tents.

As he approached, however, he quickly noticed that there were no signs of life — no children, no hides or fish drying, no dogs. Pulling up amid the tents, he again fell to feeling sorry for himself.

"Just my luck," he muttered as he watched forlorn bits of tattered hide flutter in the wind. "The place is abandoned. Well, at least I can pick a tent to sleep in."

(Continued next week.)

The boy's suspicions were quickly affirmed: no one had lived in these tents for a long time. How strange, he thought, that tools and skins had been left, as though the people had moved in a great hurry. But he was in no mood to complain. It was getting colder, and he was glad to have an abandoned tent — weathered or not — to shelter in.

He unloaded the kamotik, noting while he did so that the dogs would have to go hungry, since he had failed to catch anything since leaving camp. As he unpacked it and the numbing wind began to rise, he became aware of just how poor he really was — the only things he owned were his dishevelled clothes.

Everything else, sled, dogs, tools, had been loaned to him by the angakoq (shaman) to whom he was apprenticed. He stared, for a moment, at the fine pualuuk (mitts) he was wearing, trimmed with luxuriant, tawny wolverine fur.

They, too, belonged to his mentor. He no longer owned pualuuk of his own. He felt at their odd insides, which had tiny talismans sewn into them. Turning one inside out, he could see a yellowed, ivory kanayuq (sculpin), a weasel adjacent to that. While he examined them, he remembered what his angakoq had told him: these objects held great power, especially when one spoke at them, "Help me, my pup."

It was all too bizarre to think about overlong, so the boy trudged off to his chosen tent. There was a fair bit of snow piled up against its sides, and a lot of old, hanging skins inside. He had no idea how to build a snow shelter, and he doubted if this snow was of the right consistency, anyway. And the tent was here.

Soon, he was fast asleep.

"Boy, boy.. go out quickly. The ghost is going to seize you. Boy, boy.. go out quickly. The ghost is going to seize you..."

The tent was shaking violently, and the boy was shocked to wakefulness by it and by the mournful voice that warned him over and over to leave.

Then that voice, so like the soughing of wind, was suddenly shattered by a hideous wail from afar, a wail that crested and died in a snarl of rage. Whatever was happening outside, the boy could now hear the panicked cries of his dogs.

They formed a chorus of terrified yips and whines, over which resounded as a single voice — something that gibbered and panted, but in a horribly human tone. It was a thing at once filled with malice and hunger.

The boy required no further warning. Too terrified to flee through the front of the tent, he instead dug frantically at the back, barging his way past rocks and ice to emerge like a lemming from the rear. With all the speed he could muster, he plunged into another tent and covered himself in whatever tattered skins he could find.

Yet, despite his trembling, he found himself desperately curious. After a minute or so, he lowered his covering so that one eye could peer over it. The entrance of this tent was still open, flapping in the wind, and through it he could see the back of the tent he had just fled.

There was a sickly green light in there, illuminating the tent like a great, dying lamp. As he watched, it seemed to move about the tent, side to side, as though searching for something. He suspected it was searching for him. And all the while, he could hear it talking to itself in that loathsome voice, saying something like,

"Where, oh where, is the skin and fat I'd like to taste?"

He covered himself again for a time, until the voice seemed to fade. Then there were the sounds of terrified dogs again, and at last silence. After a small eternity of listening, the boy once more peered out from under the skins. The light was gone. After some hesitation, he roused himself, and leaned out of the tent.

There, far in the distance, over a shallow mound that he had not noticed until now, hovered a tiny ball of light. Twisting and writhing in the air, it exuded its evil, viridian glow.

(Next week: end of the story; ghost-lore; Inuit conception of the soul.)

Almost hypnotized by the distant glow, by that ghost-light that spun and bobbed over the dark mound, the boy stared for a time. Between fear and cold, he became unaware even of his own shaking. It was not until he heard a pitiful whine that he suddenly remembered the dogs. If the ghost had harmed or killed them, he might not be able to get home.

He began to creep out of the tent, his gaze ever locked upon the distance. Using the abandoned tents for cover, he wove his way toward where the dogs and kamotik lay. He felt weak with relief when he finally came within sight of the dogs, seeing that they were fine. Balled up in terror, eyes stark and wild, they had obviously been panicked by the ghost's passing. But the ghost had not attacked them.

The boy immediately set to preparing the dogs to leave. From his new position, he could more clearly see the mound over which the ghost-light hovered: a single grave. It was old, and its rocks had been scattered, so that scavengers had been at it. He remembered, then, what his angakoq (shaman) had once told him about human souls that became inverted, hostile toward the living because taboos concerning disposal of their bodies had not been observed. This spirit was probably one such perverse anirniq (ghost), the offended dead.

The dogs were just about ready to go, when soft tones seemed to flow into the boy's ears. It was that same, mournful voice that had first warned him about the ghost. Now it said, "Boy... boy... hide yourself... the ghost is coming ..."

He was torn between heeding this protective spirit and trying to finish readying the dogs to leave. He decided that whatever the warning voice represented, it must be wiser than himself, so he abandoned the dogs and sled, and raced back toward his hiding place.

Just as he got there, the air was torn by a hateful cry — the ghost returning. The boy summoned enough courage to turn and look, and saw that the light had left its place over the grave, and was speeding toward the camp. As it approached, it increasingly took on the ghastly semblance of a human form...

The boy dove into the tent just as his dogs, noticing the ghost's approach, erupted into a chorus of terror. But he had not hidden for long when the gentle, warning voice again spoke to him, saying,

"Boy ... boy ... the ghost has seen your footprints, and knows where you are hiding."

In response, the boy desperately wormed his way in behind some old, hanging skins, hoping they would cover him. Just as he did so, a green glow filled the tent. The boy could hear frenzied breathing, like that of an animal, and the ghost's guttural voice muttering,

"Skin, fat, where?"

And there were the sounds of skins being shuffled about the tent. The boy tried to make himself as small as he could. He even thought about dashing out, perhaps racing the ghost to the kamotik. But even his breath froze in his throat when he saw a single, glowing hand, its fingers desiccated like dried meat, its nails long and broken, pawing about only inches from his knee. Numbly, he watched as the skeletal digits groped about for him, then finally withdrew. And after a time, even the glow subsided from the tent, as the ghost gave up and returned to its grave site.

When the boy thought he had given the ghost enough time to return, he fled the tent with all the speed he possessed. In seconds, he was again readying the dogs. Periodically glancing up from his work, he could see that the ghost-light again danced in the air over its grave.

At last, the boy leapt onto the kamotik. No crack of a whip was necessary, as the dogs forced the sled forward in a horror-induced burst of speed.

Minutes later, racing along, the boy felt that something was wrong. While he should have felt relief at leaving that forsaken encampment, his stomach felt leaden. The hairs on the back of his neck were prickling. Turning, he saw the streaming ball of bilious light, winding its way through the air behind him.

The ghost was chasing him.

(Continued next week.)

The dogs were fast, but every time the boy peered behind him, that horrible ghost-light was still there.

They raced for an eternity. Sometimes the ghost fell behind — at other times it surged forward with frightful speed. The boy couldn't think of anywhere to go, so he headed toward home. Always, the ghost was gaining on him.

The thought of home reminded him of his teacher, how the angakoq (shaman) had provided him with the things for his trip: sled, dogs, supplies — and the strange pualuuk (mitts) lined with old, yellowed talismans. He remembered what the angakoq had told him, how the pualuuk held power.

So it was that when the boy was at last consumed with utter desperation, when the ghost was virtually upon him, he yanked a pualuu from his hand. At the top of his lungs, he yelled the phrase his angakoq had taught him: "Help me, my pup!" And he cast the mitt backward at the onrushing ghost.

There was a terrible flash, accompanied by a roar of frustration. Suddenly, the ghost-light fell behind. The boy watched it recede, and it appeared to ripple, undulate, as though it were fighting something in mid-air.

But after a time the boy again turned his head, and again saw that hideous green light in the distance, closing on him. His lash cracked forward once more, and the dogs were all too-eager to increase their pace.

It was futile. The distance between the ghost and the kamotik narrowed quickly. The thing was nearly over the boy's shoulder — he could hear it muttering madly to itself — when he cast his other pualuu at it with the almost pleading cry of, "Help me, my pup!"

The flash nearly blinded him, but he could see that the ghost was wracked with effort as it fought off the power of the angakoq's pualuu. But, he knew, there was no third pualuu.

He gave up after that, numb with fear, hunger, cold, and exhaustion. He rode along like a limp bundle of rags as the dogs continued their race to escape the ghost. But the dogs were on their way home. They were racing back to their owner, the angakoq. And so, when they finally pulled up near the angakoq's dwelling, the boy wept with relief. Desperately, he stumbled toward the angakoq's igluvigaq, alight with a pleasant orange glow from within. He collapsed in the entrance, and soon felt the angakoq shaking him, asking, "Boy, what happened to you?"

It was the ghost itself that answered, with a sudden cry of hate and want. The angakoq's skin prickled at sound of it and his dogs, who had raised a great, mournful howl at the thing's approach. He stepped outside to see the spirit raging toward him, a ghastly, emerald figure that he recognized immediately, for he had known it in life. It was the ghost of the evil old man whose body no one would properly bury. The angakoq remembered admonishing the people so long ago, accusing them of breaking taboos, bringing this reversed spirit down upon them, forcing them to move to a new camp.

Now the angakoq called upon his bound spirits, which emerged from his mouth and sleeves. There were seven, six of which were savage tunrait, while the fifth was the spirit of his own great-grandfather. He set them upon the onrushing ghost. And while the battle raged between those entities, the angakoq sang ancient verses that seized the ghost, wringing it in the grip of unseen forces.

The boy, who passed in and out of consciousness for quite some time, finally awoke to the beautiful smell of caribou soup. He recalled the abandoned camp and the vengeful ghost as though it were all a distant nightmare. Looking around, his eyes fell upon the angakoq, who was stirring the soup, smiling at him, and saying,

"That is why people should obey taboos."

The End.

The reason I've told this story is that (aside from the fact that I think it's cool) it is a good example of how "ghosts" are regarded in Inuit folklore. A ghost, known as an "anirniq" (sort of personal breath of life; individual animating principle) is always treated as a resource, or an inverted resource — a curse.

(Next week: anirniq as a concept; ghost-lore of other cultures.)

While anirniq means "breath", the same word is also used to describe pure spirit. In Inuit cosmology, there was no difference between a breath and life itself. It was assumed that when a human or animal breathes, it lives. Conversely, there was observed to be no life without breath. It is understandable, then, how Inuit would feel that both are closely related, perhaps even identical, phenomena. Anirniq, whether as spirit or breath, derives from the sila (sky/atmosphere), the repository of all air and life. In this way, anirniq is a personalized expression of the sila. While the sila is one, a whole and un-individuated life-breath without mind and personality, the anirniq is a sort of life-breath "borrowed" from the sila. As breath — and life — taken from the sila, the anirniq becomes one's own, personalized life-force. The body and the mind put their stamp upon it, molding it into an entirely separate thing.

We can also glimpse some of this ancient thinking in noting the third, alternate, use of the "anir" prefix. "Anirpanartuq" indicates what is preferable or good, even durable. "Anirta" is used to indicate a happening that is fortunate or in the nick of time. "Anirpananaarpaa" indicates personal pleasure in having taken vengeance. All of these express some form of preference or opinion — what is personally desirable. This tells us that anir subtly denotes individuality. If such an implication is taken along with the indication of breath, we can see that anir comes to denote a "personal breath" — or personal life. Thus is an angel rendered as "anirnisiaq". And the word for God — "Anirnialuk" — does not mean as is so often translated, "Great Spirit", but is in fact something like, "The Great Living Breath".

In this way we can see that, just as individuality was always of importance to Inuit in a social context, it was of equal importance in a spiritual context. Everyone's breath is their own.

It is no secret that traditional Inuit existed within a delicate social balance, echoes of which still pervade the culture today. Inuit react fastest and most furiously when their personal — not cultural — rights are trampled upon. In olden times, personal affronts always spawned grudges that might at any time find expression in a knife between the shoulder blades. Vendetta killings were not just common — they were a normal facet of life. The past tendency of some Inuit to shift, without warning, from smiling individuals to avenging killers has baffled northern law enforcement for quite some time. But it is simply this: a traditional Inuk might kill if he thought his ego was threatened.

As the very living core of that individuality, such thinking was essential to the anirniq, even if it had been stripped of its body. The body, after all, was dispensable. It was a vessel that held the breath. The breath itself — the anirniq — went on long after the body had passed. But this is not to say that the body was of no importance at all. It was, in part, what helped shape the anirniq, lending it an identity. It was therefore important to an anirniq that the body be treated with respect by those still walking about. Funereal taboos were based around such principles of respect, and in many cases were intended to appease the anirniq, which would be lurking nearby — sometimes still in the body. Inuit reasoned that, as a thing that was invisible, powerful, and now freed, the anirniq was in a perfect position from which to take vengeance upon any persons who had offended the dead individual in life. It was especially important, therefore, to observe the taboos that expressed proper grieving. The anirniq had to be shown just how miserable the living were that the deceased was no longer with them. Much of camp life ground to a halt for a few days. Depending on the exact cultural group and its customs, dogs might not be fed, lamps not lit, fingernails or hair not trimmed, and so on. In other words, the living had to put on a good show for the dead.

If not, the anirniq might become angry. And there were few things more terrible than an animate breath, the force of personality itself, turned against the living.

(Next week: the shaman's uncertain slave; how a ghost is not always a ghost.)

Of all the classes of incorporeal entities in old Inuit cosmology, an anirniq is one of the most powerful. In state, it is very similar to a tunraq, and therefore possesses the tunraq's power to visit sickness upon an entire camp. The tunraq and anirniq differ in that the tunraq is always a monster — it roams land, sea, and sky, having nothing in common with humans. While a tunraq is generally translated as a "spirit", this is inaccurate. Spirit, in English, is a very broad term: it can refer to a disembodied soul, haunting spectre, manifestation of will, angel, devil, or even God (ie., Holy Spirit). The tunraq is a distinct species of incorporeal being. It has no origin, and comes complete with many of the powers normally attributed to an angakoq (shaman). It can change shape, fly, become ethereal, cause or remove sickness, and access facts unknown to humans. It can also possess a person (but not as in the movie "The Exorcist" — in Inuit folklore, it simply makes one sick or crazy). The tunraq can also possess any other nifty powers that serve to spice up whatever folktale it features in. If we need a European equivalent, the tunraq is perhaps closest to certain faerie beings, such as the Celtic pwca, having a nature completely alien to humanity. But even this is a poor comparison.

The anirniq, however, can originate with a human being. Because will is always the most driving force in Inuit cosmology, the anirniq's powers generally vary with the will of the individual who spawned it. A very weak-willed individual might have an anirniq whose powers are barely effectual, while a strong-willed individual could have an anirniq more powerful than any tunraq. It should be noted, incidentally, that while a tunraq is not an anirniq, a tunraq technically has an anirniq of its own, since an anirniq is only an animating principle — a life breath — that is capable of existing after the death of the body. Since a tunraq has no true body, it is never separated from its own anirniq, so there is simply no need to bother making issue of a tunraq's anirniq. When a tunraq possessed someone, it was assumed to have entered that person's body, basically choking out that person's anirniq with its own. Hence the angakoq way of "exorcising" such an entity, by sucking its anirniq (remember, it is simply a living breath) into his own lungs, then exhaling it out.

Due to the fact that an anirniq possesses the knowledge that its human shell once possessed, the most powerful sorts of anirniq are those of the very old, whose knowledge is assumed to make them formidable. And the very cream of this crop is the anirniq of an angakoq, who possessed knowledge of nature's secrets (not supernature; remember, everything, even tunraq, are natural in old Inuit cosmology). The reasoning goes like this: if the angakoq could harness invisible powers, how much more formidable might he become when no longer limited by his body?

Such power held by certain anirniit made them something to be feared — but it also made them a treasured resource. The same power that an angakoq could use to subjugate and enslave a tunraq to his will could also be used to capture an anirniq, and it was very common for angakuit to do this to the anirniq of their own relatives. One Netsilingmiut shaman, when asked about his "helpers", was recorded as stating that he owned seven entities that he could call forth while in a trance. Only one of these was a tunraq, while the others were comprised of the anirniit of a sea scorpion, whale, and dog, as well as the anirniit of two dead men, and the anirniq of the angakoq's own grandfather.

While an enslaved anirniq was no doubt considered to be of great utility to the angakoq, keeping it could entail great risk. It was assumed that, as with a tunraq, a constant battle of wills was played out between the angakoq and the captive entity. If at any time the shaman's will weakened, the entity might seize the opportunity to attack him. Much of the time, when an angakoq fell ill, it was assumed that he was embattled by one of his own helpers.

(Next: reversal, name-bonds, and comparative lore.)

As with a tunraq, an anirniq enslaved to an angakoq's (shaman's) will could be wielded as a weapon. The angakoq could send it forth to battle other incorporeal entities, or could command it to attack a human being. Also as with a tunraq, an anirniq might find that the person it was sent to attack was protected by talismans or that individual's own helpers. This could present a problem for the angakoq who had sent it out, since an anirniq that failed in its mission could become "kiglurittuq" — reversed, or backwards — and could turn upon its former master. It was as though the inability to fulfill its commands set the anirniq free from the angakoq's will, whereupon it could seek revenge against its tormentor. For this reason, angakkuit were very picky about who they chose to attack.

A human anirniq was an especially dangerous helper for an angakoq to keep. While it was useful due to its great power, it was perhaps more willful than a tunraq — mainly because it was "concrete," an entity that had once walked among the living and still remembered its own identity and human nature. It seemed more real than a tunraq (which to some extent was a flight of fancy, an elemental terror given shape by the human imagination).

One of the things that made the anirniq more "real" than other incorporeal entities in old Inuit cosmology was the simple fact that it possessed a name. As with many cultures, naming among traditional Inuit represented a distribution of power. The name of a thing was not merely the sound one made to indicate it, but actually constituted the thing's very essence — an essence that could be manipulated or transferred ever after through the name itself. For this reason, an Inuk might bear several names, having only one that was his true name, so that it — and thus his anirniq, which it represented — might remain safe from attack by evil entities, malevolent angakkuit, or the curses of others.

This pivotal element of Inuit cosmology led in turn to the supposition that Inuit bearing identical names shared something of the same anirniq. Their animating principle was one and the same. It should be noted, however, that this only became true when coupled with that other pivotal element of Inuit cosmology: will. Those who accidentally shared the same name did not share the same anirniq — this was simply chalked up to coincidence. But the deliberate act of naming a child after an already existent person infused the process with will, the will that both individuals are one and the same. So, for example, if a new child was named after an old hunter (still living), that hunter's already existent children would be obliged to regard the new baby as their father, referring to the child (even though it is younger than they) as, "my father." The baby and the old hunter have one identity between them — two bodies with one anirniq. In this sense, Inuit were believers in reincarnation, since if the individual after whom a child was named already happened to be dead, it was sincerely believed that this individual lived again in the new child. The dead individual had literally been reincarnated.

One of the things that ever confounds those who try to research old Inuit cosmology is the fact that Inuit beliefs were very fluid. Inuit did not practice religion. Religion is institutionalized, presenting a set of "facts" for its adherents to reference, so that when disputes arise the people have a central, spiritual authority to consult. A religion will never, for example, state that "perhaps" there is a soul; instead, it will factually state its existence, describing its exact nature. That is religion's purpose.

The angakoq was more doctor than priest, and while influencing cosmology, did not dictate it. Being non-religious, Inuit beliefs regarding an anirniq's nature varied from area to area, even from camp to camp, and were intertwined with fancy. Traditional Inuit were incredibly imaginative, and loved to invent weird stories, monsters, and cosmological speculations in order to entertain each other. In this way, the old beliefs were more ideas or theories than sacred convictions. And as camps intermingled over time, Inuit absorbed each others' ideas, and the ones that seemed most sensible stuck.

(Next: anirniq variations; the mistake of universal thinking.)

In traditional Inuit cosmology, it was assumed that no single person — not even the wisest angakoq (shaman) — knew exactly how the unseen powers worked. The assumption was that Inuit were, after all, only human, and so could only guess at the nebulous workings of nature.

Remember, there was no such thing as "magic" in Inuit thought. There was nothing that was considered supernatural — only natural. This outlook is typical of very ancient cultures, who regarded the working of miracles by humans to be a form of knowledge, rather than a violation of nature. When we use English to speak of the traditions of other cultures, our hands are tied in the sense that our terminology stems from a Judeo-Christian perspective. From the Judeo-Christian perspective, God is the master of nature, His workings being natural and lawful. Then English is forced to utilize special terminology to indicate powers exceptional to man. When a human being works a miracle through his own unusual will or secret knowledge, English refers to this as "super"-natural. So, in English, we are forced to use language that marks legendary powers as in defiance of nature, violating its laws.

Yet in many ancient cultures, including that of Inuit, no such separation of nature and "super" nature existed. Happenings that would today be considered magical or supernatural were once considered only to be mysterious natural forces. Individuals today labelled sorcerers or shamans were once only considered to be exceptionally learned people, those who had a better-than-average grasp of nature's mysteries. Today, they are regarded alternately as either priests or devil-worshippers, due to the Judeo-Christian perspective. But, in truth, they were more analogous to doctors or scientists — those who were informed, who possessed exceptional knowledge that could be used to influence the world. In other words, "magic" used to mean the same thing as knowledge (even the words "magic", "magician" and "imagination" all derive from "magi": a Persian wise man).

So, in this sense, magic did not exist for traditional Inuit. All was merely knowledge of one kind or another — a knowledge that no single person could ever master. This outlook was typical of the way in which Inuit were forced to regard learning. The ultimate form of knowledge was that which enabled one to survive, that of the Nuna and Sila (Land and Sky). Since the Nuna and Sila played by their own mysterious rules, it was up to humanity to learn to interpret those rules, to respect them in order to live. There was no supernature, only nature, and humanity had to be crafty in order to observe it, learning how to adapt around the whims of wind, water, temperature, light, animal migrations, sickness, bears, treacherous terrain, and the worst terror of all: the unknown — hazards that one is not knowledgeable enough to anticipate.

So it becomes easier to see why it would not be practical for traditional Inuit to establish a religion. A religion pre-supposes that humanity can predict nature, interpreting order in creation according to established religious principles. In a way, religion affords mankind a sort of mastery over nature. It works very well for societies living behind walls, engaging in standardized trade and agriculture, shaping the world to their liking, and therefore anticipating what will happen tomorrow. But for nomads, such as Inuit, existence was a great and constant chess game against nature: skill afforded the Inuk a better chance, but he still never knew what the opponent's next move would be. Knowledge was better than faith.

When Knud Rasmussen once asked his guide what Inuit believe, he was told, "We don't believe. We fear." It's a good answer, supremely Inuktitut in outlook. Because Inuit lived in an uncertain world, much of their time was spent in preparing for nasty eventualities — even those of an unseen nature. And much of the world was unseen to Inuit. Every individual was an island of sanity in a land where one never knew what lurking death lay over the next horizon. A storm? A hungry bear? A fall, resulting in broken leg? Those things today termed "supernatural" were only a normal part of this: a tunraq, a hostile anirniq, a vindictive angakoq. The unseen was the unseen, whether storm or spirit. It was best to cover all the bases, and prepare for anything.

(Next: pragmatism; ghosts; conclusion.)

Inuit were a precautionary culture, never quite sure when disaster might strike. Therefore, one could never possess enough knowledge. The practice of taboos was one such form of "precautionary knowledge," mainly pertaining to unseen powers. Just as Inuit were concerned with preventing fellow humans from taking offense (possibly resulting in hostilities), so they were equally concerned about animals.

Like a human anirniq, an animal's anirniq was released upon death, and it was thought that it might seek vengeance against whomever had maltreated it. So Inuit practised taboos around the killing and preparation of an animal, so that its anirniq remained passive. Netsilingmiut, for example, were especially strict. A seal was never allowed to lie on the floor — its anirniq would be scandalized at the idea of lying where people regularly trod — so fresh snow was brought in for it. A caribou skin could not be scraped too soon, or the scraping might accidentally wound its anirniq. A bear's anirniq remained on the tip of the killing spear for a few days, so gifts were lain on the skin to soothe its temper.

With any of these animals, certain types of work were forbidden for a time, just as during the grieving period for a human. As with a human anirniq, if the animal thought people regarded its death as trivial, it might lash out, bringing sickness and misery to the camp. Conversely, if it was emotionally moved by the good treatment of its corpse, it might reincarnate and let its next body be caught more easily.

So it wasn't that Inuit were convinced of any "truths" regarding the world around them. It was that they were concerned with surviving and making their lives as comfortable as possible under the circumstances, and were willing to adopt any practice that might facilitate this. The policy was: if there's a chance it'll work, we'll try it. This in turn explains the varying — sometimes even contradictory — information Inuit have supplied to anthropologists and explorers in regard to Inuit "beliefs."

An explorer might be told, for example, that the Northern Lights are the spirits of the dead, batting around a walrus skull. He might be told immediately afterward that the dead go to a place below the ground, where people play games and hunting is plentiful. He might then be cautioned about anirniit, which remain present after death, and can reincarnate into another body. The rational explorer would then, of course, ask, "How can all of these things be true? Which one is it: walrus skull, underground, or reincarnation?"

One might say that, in a sense, in Inuktitut, they're all true. But, more accurately, nothing is held "true" in Inuit cosmology, because it is not dogmatic. Traditional Inuit were concerned more with what might be, rather than what is. Their whole world was one of possibilities instead of facts, wherein it was wisest to anticipate anything, to remain adaptable. Consequently, their cosmology reflected this outlook. They believed in everything, and nothing — and thus every eventuality was covered.

So did Inuit believe in ghosts? Well, it is a noble thing to want humanity to be a global family, but many times people spot something they think they recognize from their own culture, mislabeling it, thereby misunderstanding it, and causing others to see connections that never existed.

The simple truth is that only ghosts are ghosts. The term does not in fact describe humanity's recognition of a common phenomenon, but only a specific cultural perception. After all, even in English, no one can agree on what a ghost is. Many think of it as a lingering soul, while modernists call it residual emotional energy.

In short, when a North American says, "ghost," he can only mean what a ghost means to him in his particular culture — that which his culture has taught him is a ghost. When the Brazilian Tapirape mentioned "anchunga", they meant only a guardian ancestor. When the Santals of Bengal mentioned a "churel", they meant only a malicious woman, dead from childbirth. When the Japanese mentioned a "kasha", they meant only a cannibalistic spirit that hungered for corpses.

And when Inuit spoke of an anirniq, they never meant a ghost, but only that living breath which animates and is in turn shaped by the body, set free upon its death. An anirniq stands alone. Pijariiqpunga.

"For these and all Thy many mercies, oh Lord, accept our thanks. AMEN."

At every lunch, we had to say that prayer. Often, it seemed He wasn't listening. Not then. Sometimes, not now.

It is ironic that children kidnapped from their families were daily forced to thank a foreign deity. The institution's policy was that we should appreciate our "betterment". It was the order of the day — in schools, courtrooms, churches, any other institutions. And as institutions went, Stringer Hall was a shining champion of harsh, mechanized assimilation.

Inspection upon inspection; two hundred pairs of socks, all alike, each with a dorm number upon it; everything numbered, from bedsheets to towels to toothbrushes. Once, when I visited my family, it took me time to realize that I didn't have to number all my things.

We only "visited" our families. Home was Stringer Hall.

I often wondered what the other kids thought of their experiences. No one really talked to one another; it was like we were fellow inmates (it was secretly called "the jail"). We knew we weren't "white." Whites were free and wealthy.

And I often wondered what the other kids thought of our lunch prayer. Some had come from dire circumstances, from areas where whole families had been wiped out by influenza, polio, and TB. What must it have taken for them to utter such a prayer, to an alien God that had allowed families to disintegrate amongst epidemics and foreign domination?

But this is not a racist rant. It is merely a reminder that conquest — in full ugliness — comes with grins and handshakes as easily as with soldiers and guns. Company men, government officials, and theocrats did not storm the North, casting Inuit into slave chains. They came to build trade empires and assert "sovereignty." They came as pioneers, di y with dreams of profit upon the frontier. But as time went by, many began to use ... sorry, co-operate with Inuit toward such ends. "Let's move some Eskimos to this crappy island so the Americans think somebody lives there." "We should use Eskimos to develop the north — we'll modernize their kids for a labour force."

The hideous thing about it all is that many individual colonists meant well. But profiteering takes on a life of its own. Even a well-meaning — but unquestioning — individual becomes a cog in the great profit machine. Inuit culture fuelled this machine.

Anyone who thinks it ever completely ended is a fool. But what of Inuit professionals? Leaders, lawyers, policy-makers? Come on — from the very beginning, it was profiteering Inuit who were helping round kids up for residential schools, who were cajoling families into relocating to the High Arctic. Inuit participation doesn't make a process honest.

Inuit beware, always. I still remember the cowing of Inuit: cooperate or suffer. Overnight, no one — in a culture where isuma (personal sentiment) was sacred — dared express an opinion, muttering that the "white people would get mad." To say that those times are no longer important to Inuit is to discount everything that Inuit are today, or ever can be. To say that it could never happen again is to beg for its recurrence.

Inuit were (are) incessantly told that they should be grateful. It's like someone mugging you, then forcing you to thank them — you do so, but you are only really grateful that they didn't kill you.

This might have been the spirit in which Stringer Hall children spoke their prayers. Little did we know that, long after our belongings were burned upon arrival, after we had flea powder dumped on us, had been forbidden our real language, had been denigrated and terrorized, the true struggle would begin against depression, addiction, and suicide — in an attempt to come home again.

But there is redemption. And the Phoenix does rise from the ashes, just as they say it does. The trick is that Inuit are adapting. They are learning not to trust a smile and a handshake, a promise of easy money or fair treatment. They are learning not to trust foreign leaders, nor even their own. Inuit can be thankful these days, and if their growing savvy prods them into taking a greater personal hand in their future, they will have even more.

But — as with the way I've come to pray — their thanks may have a much different meaning.

Pijariiqpunga.

Ever ask a child what they remember most about their birthday? Chances are they'll answer with something seemingly unrelated. They focus on things that went wrong, too, in that same strange way that when they find a hole in clothing, they'll stick their finger in it and work until it's larger than before.

So goes the memory of my first birthday cake. I feel as though I should remember more important details — things Reverend Whitbread was doing as he baked it, the time of year (summer?), who arrived that day. Instead, I best recall what a miserable failure the angel food cake turned out to be. It was one of those impossible recipes: real egg-white instead of powder, no fat whatsoever, the perfect balance of every atom. The slightest error could trash the whole thing. But, if anyone could bake it, Reverend Whitbread could. Then, no one is perfect. Maybe baking it in bread tins contributed to its downfall. Then again, maybe it was that unreliable, coal-burning stove.

On my seventh birthday, instead of the fluffy, angel food cake pictured on the mix box, there resulted a glutinous mess, like the devastated contents of an ostrich egg. I was disappointed, but oddly wasn't mad at Reverend Whitbread: only at the empty promise of the mix box picture. I felt like screaming, "You promised!" at it. But at least Kusik — my favourite dog — received a sugary surprise.

Over the years, I've seen other pastors struggle with cooking in Canada's Arctic. One of them, after trying frozen char, told me it was like "fish ice-cream." Ah, the weird things a kid notes at the time.

But he who actually pulled off most cooking, pulled off living in general, with marked skill was Reverend Whitbread. There were numerous accomplishments under that vast belt: constructing a church almost singlehandedly, translating famous Anglican hymns into Inuktitut, delighting everyone with his accordion playing. The man was a true jack-of-all-trades, and ribs have never surrounded a kinder heart. Many knew him by his Inuktitut name of Quinijuq ("Fat"). With his broad sealskin boots, extra-extra large Eastern style parka, and perpetual Pangnirtuq cap, his size and pronounced tan-line across an alabaster forehead were all that betrayed his British origins. My grandfather joked that when Quinijuq sat on the sled, it sank several inches.

I strongly recall Quinijuq's wife and children. His wife's name was Pat — that was how we knew her. They had two daughters and a son. Once, their son introduced himself in an aristocratic English accent, saying, "My name is Henry Martin David Whitbread." Thereafter, us kids endlessly amused ourselves by calling him, "David Martin Henry Whitbread", "Martin Whitbread David Henry", etc. What do you expect from kids?

Their family and ours sometimes camped together on the land, in the spring and summer. They had their own tent, sled and dogteam — the works. When they went to bed, they would have a final cup of tea with bannock, and slept upon a platform of caribou skins and blankets. Just like us Inuit.

With 24 hours of sunlight, it was hard to tell whether it was three in the morning or night, but it made no difference: both of our families raced outside in the waking hours, exploring with equal joy the vast tundra teeming with lemmings, duck nests and explosions of miniature plant life.

As I said, a child's memories are strange. All I remember is the sunlight flashing like diamonds from countless ponds; of hearing the cries of birds as they wheeled across the sky; of exhibiting to each other bizarre creatures we found living in the frigid waters. And I best remember the family that lived with us as Inuit — without concerns about culture — because of the lifestyle the land demanded of us all. They were days when one was Inuit because of one's lifestyle, rather than due to some institution's definition of heritage. Skin colour was insignificant.

My childhood memories of camping on the land can be summarized by one word: warmth. Of the sun, of the people around me.

Oh yes, and after the failed angel food cake, much relished by Kusik, Reverend Whitbread still managed to whip up a double-layered chocolate cake. That Kusik couldn't have. But we gave her the pan to lick anyway. After all, a birthday cake is for sharing, isn't it?

Pijariiqpunga.

If you look at the map of Canada's Arctic, you'll notice that — smack overtop of Adelaide Peninsula — is the smallish (by Arctic standards) and most grandiloquently entitled King William Island. It is adjacent to many other trumpeting titles, as though Arctic cartographers had attended a sale on royal names. There's "Prince of Wales" this, "Queen Maude" that, "Viscount Melville Sound" and so on. It's as though everything had been named by somebody obsessed with British royalty.

We, the Inuit, naturally knew them by very different names, such as, "Place for Fishing," "Large Inlet," or "Place to Hunt Caribou." And these sorts of names were in use during that one summer, long ago, when our family packed itself up and headed off to hunt beluga. My father had gone too long without his Eastern Arctic diet of large sea mammals. This, then, was a special sort of hunting trip from the very beginning. For me, however, it was to become my summer of boating boot camp — my very own tale of the sea.

Our goal was to reach the shore of Paisley Bay in our diesel-driven Peterhead boat, then cross the strait to Prince of Wales Island. There was still quite a bit of moving pack ice — ominous stuff that made long, extensive crosses over any broad area very dangerous. I had this dreamy way of regarding everything in those days (at about age 13, I'm pretty sure), and I recall watching the ice and thinking to myself: what better time for our father to instruct us in the ways of hunting by boat? I was only partially right, as it turns out. I could never have expected what my father really intended.

Many times, as we journeyed, my father navigated between opposing currents and past hulking icebergs. Below lay the beautiful and horribly alluring deep waters, all turquoise blue and shimmering even in the mild light. Occasionally, the water took on a metallic grey colouration as the sky became overcast, but at other times it alternated to the purest emerald green. We navigated our way through a paradise, and the scenery took my breath away.

It is strange to think back upon such beauty, when at once I know that this was possibly the worst summer I ever experienced. It turned out that this boat trip was the only good part, as I plummeted from paradise to hell shortly after our stop at Taloyoak (then Spence Bay). From here onward, we were officially on the hunting trip. As we left Spence Bay, I was still viewing everything through my child's eyes — it was all a lark. My father was the hunter, but to me it was all supposed to be fun.

It started with the sleep deprivation. I would try to snooze in the front of the boat, but this was nearly impossible amidst the constant thuds from its sides striking pieces of floating ice. I kept awakening with the thought: Oh my God! We've been struck! We're going to drown! We were all wearing life-jackets, but only my father (and maybe his partner who accompanied him) was able to swim. It's not exactly a traditional skill, since you wouldn't last ten minutes in the freezing water, anyway. At least I wasn't seasick.

Then there was my father's change in behaviour. Usually laid back and calm, he had suddenly become transformed into a bellowing monster, awakening me most erratically, at the earliest hours, with demands and questions such as: "Why haven't you made us coffee?" or "Wake up, wake up, help look for seals!" and "Go feed your siblings, and fetch some ice for drinking while you're at it!"

It was constant harassment, as we stopped and started along that trip, setting up camp and taking it down countless times, riding for ten-hour stretches by boat. And I was never allowed a minute of peace. The child was gradually shocked out of me as adult duties were assumed of me. It was constant lifting and sorting and checking. Why was this rope here and not there? Who was stupid enough to leave the rifles out in the rain? Don't fall while you lift those things. Are you deaf? Have you left your hearing on land?

When I had time to think, I wondered if the strain was making my father crack up.

(Continued next week.)

My father had never treated me like this.

"Take this rifle and be prepared to shoot when I tell you. Did you check this? How about that? Take over the steering wheel. Watch for rocks and icebergs. Steer this way — no, not that way! Why are your hands so stiff?"

I was a kid! Why was he making me do adult chores? What was wrong with him? My few futile responses went something like, "Why do I have to do it? It's too heavy, I can't lift it. Maybe I should get something lighter, like the sleeping bags. I'm too tired. I have to sleep."

It fell on deaf ears, as I was bullied into doing whatever I was told to. I resorted to trickery, shirking my duties while my father wasn't looking, figuring someone else would take up the slack. It was useless. Whatever I didn't accomplish in a day was left for me the next. Then I got told off with both barrels. Knowing there was no way to dodge my tasks forced me to keep up to speed for my own sake. After a while, I even started to anticipate what needed to be done — just to keep from being yelled at.

During that whole trip, my ego took a battering. I could not be fast enough, strong enough, patient enough, resilient enough. I cried for many a night. Then, I got angry. And, strangely, I was angry at myself instead of my father. Damn it, I wasn't going to be inept anymore. I was going to lift harder and carry further. And I was determined to do it with a good attitude. I would prove myself.

From then on, no matter what my father requested of me or challenged me with, I put maximal effort into it. If he said, "Throw me this thick rope," I would fling it with both arms, using my whole body to do so. I stood in soaked, icy boots, putting up with the discomfort until my own flesh warmed the water up to my normal body temperature. I went without food, water, and sleep, like a veteran hunter — and even when I did sleep, I awoke with alertness and focus. Gone were the earlier days when I would first warm up, then sleepily drag myself around.

It was then that the madness of it all came to make more sense. Suddenly, I was alert enough, at four in the morning, to witness a huge male bear swimming alongside of our boat: I still remember the monstrous thrumming of his breath. For the first time, I could tune into the hitherto unnoticed world around me, hearing a seal as he delicately bobbed to the surface to steal air.

It was then that I could look ashore and see that the coast was too rocky, knowing the wind direction was "wrong" for putting up a shelter. It was almost as though a dormant part of my brain had been activated. I identified with my ancestors, who once had to depend on the great land, both their home and teacher. There was no magic at work. I was simply seeing things through adult eyes now, suddenly understanding the necessity of adult behaviour, of knowing my world. My new eyes were teaching me to learn — a universal survival skill.

In Inuit tradition, a child has no duties until it is time (usually puberty) for them to awaken into adulthood. But when such a time comes, the child is an equal to the adults — a true human with the full responsibilities of such a creature.

Years later, it occurred to me that my father had never struck me, and never questioned my actual worth. He had simply decided I was an adult, expecting adult behaviour of me. And, ultimately, I shed my childhood not out of fear of him, but out of pride for myself. And I have treasured this experience ever since.

I once thanked my father for this rough-and-tumble way of teaching. He nodded his head, and said, "the child never knows more than the parent." I wish I could teach in this fashion to my own children, but I don't think I could be that tough on them. And my children are living under different circumstances, without the need for such survival skills.

Or are they?
Pijariiqpunga.

I've spent many an academic semester researching libraries and interviewing people about the High Arctic Exiles. But it is an often overlooked fact that those people originally from northern Quebec, now living in the High Arctic (mainly Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord), were not the only Inuit to be relocated. Herein, I'll refer to the others as the "Other Exiles."

I possess a set of distant memories, kaleidoscopic ones at that, that I cannot trust myself to speak of without breaking out into bouts of anger or depression. Some facts, I've had to research over time. My own group of Other Exiles have not written their experiences down.

Some accounts have only been recorded as a consequence of dealings with the justice system — untimely deaths, suicides, or accidents. And those deaths included many children, killed by disease and starvation, in circumstances forced upon members of my family, among others. One dead child could have been me.

In Farley Mowat's tale, "The Dark Odyssey of Soosie," from The Snow Walker, some of the events that took place after the relocation of some Other Exiles, a group of families from Cape Dorset and Pond Inlet, are described. The events of this story are often mistaken for those surrounding the famous case of the High Arctic Exiles.

Despite Mr. Mowat's efforts, the full extent of the horrors endured by these families will never be known until they choose to speak of them publicly, as have the High Arctic Exiles. As a child at the time, there was no way that I could have anticipated them, nor could I have known the relocation would result in the loss of several members of my family — lost through the government's ineptitude, company neglect and greed, and the simple apathy of an alien culture.

As Mowat states in "The Dark Odyssey of Soosie":

...the Hudson's Bay Company, with an eye to the future after the Depression, made a proposal to the government. Canadian ownership of the immense, high arctic archipelago now known as the Queen Elizabeth Islands had been disputed by the United States, Denmark and other powers. The Company suggested that Canadian sovereignty over these vast, uninhabited lands be strengthened by settling them with Eskimos who had been "made indigent by the current economic problems." The Company volunteered to do the colonizing, and the government accepted with the proviso that the Company bear full responsibility for the well-being of the settlers and agree to repatriate them if they should ever become dissatisfied with their new homes.

Of course, no one ever defined "well being," as six families were packed off on the Company supply ship Nascopie on August 14, 1934 (Mowat, The Snow Walker, p. 190). And it must have remained undefined as years rolled by, as people suffered from privation and disease, including polio, measles, and tuberculosis.

I've mentioned that these other exiles were not at all the same as the High Arctic Exiles, but some did relocate as a result of the High Arctic exiles. Government/Company reasoning went that, since the northern Quebec (ie., High Arctic) exiles were made up of peoples who were unfamiliar with hunting in the high arctic marine environment, other "Eskimos" who were familiar with such conditions would have to be sent up to assist them.

Many of these other Eskimos happened to be those who were working for the RCMP or the Hudson's Bay Company. Consequently, as a part of their jobs, they were ordered north with their families. My grandfather, Idlout, was one of those Inuit employed by the RCMP at the time, and so was commanded to haul his family north, to assist in the relocation effort.

Many families, some of whom still reside in the High Arctic, never managed to return to their original homelands, and I've heard too many accounts of the numerous requests from suffering members of respective exile groups to be returned south — pleas that fell on deaf ears.

My great-grandfather, Akomalik, refused to relocate at all. Not wishing to leave the place where his son was buried, and perhaps haunted by visions of an uncertain future without his family, he chose to take his own life, rather than live under the decisions of other men. But he was a very old-style, traditional Inuk, valuing isuma (personal mind) above all else. He was the real thing — an inummarik.

(Continued next week.)

The government pressures placed upon the so-called "Other Exiles" might be hard for people to comprehend today. The workers of today possess an unprecedented number of rights in comparison with those of the past. In the 1930's, you pretty much did whatever your boss told you to, despite the risk to life and limb — and especially if you were an Inuk being told to do it by whites. So there was no debate about whether or not my family "should" relocate to assist the High Arctic Exiles; my grandfather was commanded to do so, and that was that.

Pressure is a subtle thing, causing damage erratically over a long period of time. My great-grandfather, Akomalik, who killed himself because he could or would not leave his home, was only the first casualty of such pressure.

Idlout, my grandfather, was broken by the experience. He had been a proud hunter and acknowledged community leader, receiving a medal for his role in training Canadian soldiers in Arctic survival. He was even featured on the old two dollar bill, in a photo taken by Doug Wilkinson, working together with my father (to the left, blowing up a seal bladder) and uncles Ullatitaq and Paniloo, as well as Idlout's hunting partner, Kadloo. But by all accounts that I've heard, Idlout was haunted by his own "exile" experience, and the end of his life was marked by a downward spiral into depression, alcoholism, and ultimately suicide.

And there are so many others who have been affected by the same experience. There are so few left of what was once a proud, thriving family. The relocation, and the sickness that it precipitated, destroyed our cohesion and the cultural bonds that held us together and that gave us our sense of identity.

I still vividly remember one of my sick aunts from that time. I had been very sick along with her, with measles I think, but people were afflicted by so many illnesses that it was hard to tell. She didn't survive. That was shortly after we had all been relocated (we were relocated over and over again) to Spence Bay, and my mother had been evacuated out with TB of the lungs. I think I was four or five years old.

I remember that experience well, because it was the first time I had tried to eat with an ulu by myself. Inuit normally cut up food for their young children, but everyone was too sick to do it for me. So I ended up slashing open my left middle finger. I still examine that scar now and again. But at least I lived: my aunts were losing a lot of children to the diseases, to which to no one — child or adult — had built up any immunities.

Who knows? Maybe, some day, the stories of the Other Exiles will be recorded for us, as have those of the High Arctic Exiles. Maybe when some of today's kids grow curious about their roots, they'll dig into such stories. Hopefully, if and when that time comes, the surviving Other Exiles will be brave enough to finally speak openly of such horrors. It would benefit us all. After all, I've always thought it would be great to one day hear of an "Inuit History" course, wherein such events are taught to children as something to watch for and avoid in the future, instead of being swept under the carpet as only one more of the Canadian government's embarrassments.

I recently asked my father if he would like to return to the land of his origin — his own "re-relocation," so to speak. He told me something to the effect that he is content with the new family he has now, where he is. He added that he had already returned to Cape Dorset a year before, staying for a short while.

But many of the people he had known there, the people of his youth, were now gone. And he wasn't interested in a big, political display of "returning," trumpeting back in just for the sake of his own ego. Such things, he felt, were nonsense.

Besides, he had gone to the lake where his father had camped, and there he had seen the footprints of his father on the land. That, he said, had made him feel, "Much better. Much, much better."

Pijariiqpunga.

They were entirely black, their bodies nice and shiny. Most of them were wearing very little clothing. Some of the women were bare-breasted, either breast-feeding their children, or dancing with their families. They were Africans!

As with so many remote regions of the North, very few publications ever found their way to us. One of those that did, however, was the National Geographic magazine. They weren't very old, either, having fairly recent dates and gorgeous, new, glossy, bright covers.

Such was the magazine in which I beheld the Africans. It was a small window from which I could peek out into a wide and wonderful world.

The nakedness of the people in my magazine was not a big deal to us children growing up in a society where the human body was merely a vehicle for existence here on earth. To Inuit, flesh in any state held no moral overtones. And as for the breasts: how else was a woman supposed to feed her babies?

Even among Inuit, at that time, very few people bottle-fed their children. To think of an exposed breast as cause for scandal would have been not only impractical, but entirely laughable.

Yet the photographs in those magazines were like a source of information about those distant peoples, independent of what missionaries and ministers told us. Commenting through the lens of their own culture, with its moral and religious peculiarities, various clerics used to explain that those peoples in the National Geographic were tribal and savage.

The natives of that "dark continent," we were told, "did not have Christ." Many were dangerous and cannibalistic. They had not been enlightened as we had, and still practised sorcery, so that the "Lord's work" was thereby all the more important in that place. It was explained to us that they sometimes starved during droughts, and what small amount of money we could send for relief was of paramount importance.

I tried, as a child, to deduce from the photographs — which were so astonishingly clean and clearly laid out — what lay behind those black eyes looking into the camera. I tried to identify with those people, wondering what I might have in common with them. Were they even happy? Did they like their families? And if they didn't sleep in beds, as we did, what did they sleep on?

"They" always seemed to be cutting something down, or stirring something up, or boiling some kind of plant in a pitifully small fire. Children wandered all around in those photographs, and I could only assume that they were allowed to occupy their day as they wished, much as it was in our culture.

Were they shy of getting photographed? We often were. How did it feel to live in a place where there existed their kind of large predators, such as lions? And if they had fierce beasts like that roaming around, why didn't they have a pack of dogs to protect them, like we did?

Maybe, I thought, a lot of dogs would cost too much for them to feed. It was a problem that some older Inuit had started to complain about lately. Did these people know that they could dress differently, that they could get clothes if they wanted to? Did they even know that they could buy a portable stove to cook their meals better?

Is that what the missionaries and early teachers meant when they said that "they" lived in darkness and ignorance — that they didn't know how to live off the land properly?

Then I jumped from the Africans to other National Geographic issues, which featured Inuit from different parts of the circumpolar Arctic. From what I could tell, the information on those Inuit peoples seemed pretty much correct — at least insofar as I could tell from the places I had lived in the Arctic. I liked the fact that it was decently researched.

But I was a bit disturbed by some of the misunderstandings in it — like the statements that Inuit lived on seal and whale blubber, for example. I couldn't fault National Geographic, though, since Inuit customs varied greatly from place to place around the Arctic, so that any given Inuit people had trouble remembering what custom belonged to which group.

But what if the Africans had been misunderstood in the same way?

(Continued next week.)

Maybe, it occurred to me, the Africans just didn't want to talk about their lives. Maybe they were a bit like some of our elders, who were constantly dogged by researchers with questions about Inuit culture.

Often, to get rid of such people, the elders would anticipate what the researchers wanted to hear, telling them all sorts of outrageous bunk about Inuit. I translated for several of the elders myself.

There would be this gullible researcher, orienting his questions to coax out of the elder some tidbit that would make for a great book or academic paper. There would be the elder, with a straight face, spinning some yarn about being guided by a spirit, or having a little bird help him hunt — but there was always a mischievous gleam in the elder's eye, so that I could tell when he or she was pulling the researcher's leg. The researcher would take it all down so enthusiastically, and I would have to look downwards to keep from laughing.

I wonder, sometimes, if academics ever realize the extent to which members of indigenous cultures around the world play with researchers — anthropologists especially. As Aboriginal Peoples have become increasingly vocal about their own cultures, many such instances have gradually come to light.

A good example is the controversy over anthropologist Margaret Mead's 1928 book Coming of Age in Samoa. She noted the extreme sexual activities described to her by Samoan youth. Many critics have since stepped forward to challenge Mead's documentation, suggesting that the Samoans were deliberately hoaxing her.

I've read of researchers expressing outrage at such deception by indigenous communities. But, really, what do they expect?

Ethnographies are indisputably valuable, but you can't ask people to stop being human. Some folks ם in any culture — just don't want to be poked at, and others will always be prone to exaggeration, to telling tall tales.

Too many researchers pass their studies off as the "quest for knowledge", while neglecting to mention that a good paper will improve their academic careers, or secure them a lucrative book deal. So I have little sympathy for the ones that get bamboozled.

I remember having the most respect for photographers, whose results seemed more tangible. A lot of times, the photography sessions worked out quite well, with minimal hassle — like the time I interpreted for a photo shoot in Arviat, when I was living there.

One of the cameramen from National Geographic arrived in the community, and been directed to my small house to search out a good location for a shoot. David, (I think his first name was), decided to do the shoot during daylight hours, in an iglu built especially for that purpose.

After gearing up for the cold day, and after a small trek, we arrived to find that a couple of the elder women had dressed up in their finest beaded amautis, and were eager to attend the shoot. It didn't disappoint them. It was great fun, with a lot of laughing and joking as the elders were alternately serious and hamming it up for the camera.

That was the risk you took when working with elders. They sure could be a mischievous bunch. They were entitled to such antics, though: they had come by their elder status squarely and honestly.

Back at the house, over hot chocolate, I remarked to the photographer that it must be exciting to travel all over the world as he did, seeing different places and cultures. "It's a job," he replied with all his jaded, urbanite bearing.

Needless to say, the reply disappointed me. But still, magazine visions of jungles, baboons, rare birds, gorillas, and exotic islands danced in my head. There were mountains locked in an oxygen-starved atmosphere, giant red stars dying among the galaxies upon galaxies. There was a glorious, azure marble — the look of our planet as viewed from above.

Please, I prayed to the Creator: if there is such a thing as reincarnation, let me come back in another life as a photographer for the National Geographic. And please, I prayed again, don't let me get as jaded as David if I ever have such an opportunity.

What better way, I thought then, to touch another's life than through this simple act of pressing a button, and setting someone's imagination on fire?

Pijariiqpunga.

Were you aware that there remains a group of Inuit that are 100 per cent, bona fide traditional — untainted by the corrupting, post-colonial, industrial world?

Where can we find them? Well, they're very unusual, you see.

They tend to flourish under a sort of camouflage, making them hard to detect. Perhaps this is why they remain so traditional. Their appearance tends to vary radically. Sometimes, they hunt on the land, worshipping spirits and elemental deities. At other times, they wear bluejeans and baseball caps, dispensing down-home, rustic wisdom.

And then there are the times when they don business suits, seating themselves at boardroom tables to talk brass tacks over political issues. The one thing they have in common is their unsullied traditionalism and primal spiritualism. And with such good cover, how could anyone except very privileged experts tell them apart from us ordinary Inuit?

But the thing that best keeps them hidden is the fact that they don't exist at all.

It shouldn't be hard for anyone to admit that we human beings tend to approach anything as a resource — scheming how a given circumstance might improve our lives. This faculty allowed us to persist as a species. It is an admirable trait, except that we have a tendency to overuse it on each other, and it dates from the time that humans from the south started to mingle with humans from the Arctic.

It was to start an arts and advertising boom for southern businesses, suddenly able to showcase whole galleries of Inuit art, able to develop a distorted Inuit image to display on everything from salt-and-pepper shakers to promotional banners.

Any cold product invited the image, so that a waving cartoon Eskimo encouraged southerners to enjoy a nice, cold pop, and an ice-cream product that did not particularly resemble a pie was dubbed a ... well, we all know the thing (but shouldn't it be renamed "Inuit Pie?").

And on the Inuit side of the fence, southerners initially represented a boom in wealth to Inuit. As one Arctic Bay elder put it to me, "We should be grateful to Qallunaat that they brought us useful things, like axes and stoves."

I wouldn't quite put it that way, since we all know that what started out as trade was eventually corrupted, by a few sleazy authoritarians, into outright exploitation. But the point is essentially correct: for a while there, Inuit did all right for themselves — especially once they heard that southerners were willing to pay through the nose for crappy little bone toys, or idle carvings hacked out on a stormy day.

So, you see, there is a rich history of profiteering on the sides of both north and south; in fact, a sort of profiteering that history proves is routine whenever ethnicities meet. This profiteering can actually be a healthy thing, too, as long as one side doesn't start to take unfair advantage of the other.

And now that all of that is out, let me talk about a sort of profiteering that is highly prevalent today. It is a sort that was never really harmful to begin with (still isn't in many respects), but has become increasingly ugly as resources have gotten tighter in recent years. And, if unchecked, it promises to become a lot uglier in the future. It's the Inuit "enoblement" business.

It goes without saying that it is no longer game for southern media and businesses to present an overtly demeaning image of Inuit. Industries are more politically correct than they used to be, since even a whiff of racism can invite bad publicity and scare off consumer dollars.

This is good. The trendy, modern thing to do — especially in media arts — is to be culturally sensitive. Cultural workshops are popular, and the most sexy thing to know these days is something about a culture's folklore and traditions.

This is great — at least, until some unscrupulous individuals start to profit from a culture that never existed. We now live in a country — on a continent — where status is more important than ever.

You are nothing unless you are an "authority" on something, and all too often, people are willing to confabulate in order to become such an authority. And what better to confabulate on than a culture few of your peers know anything about?

(To be continued.)

I am continually amazed at the number of southern "experts" on Inuit culture who have sprung up in the past decade — especially in the media arts. The ones I have met seem to be the sort of individuals who habitually ride trends, knowing exactly what latest half-double-half-caf latte frappaccino is most stylish to order at a downtown coffee shop (news flash: it's all coffee).

It seems they are perpetually in the middle of putting a project together. It could be a movie, book, exhibit, video, or whatever, but it has something to do with Inuit culture — generally myth and legend. They are always on the hunt for some Inuk to involve in the process, usually as a "cultural consultant." They love to tell you how much they have "studied" Inuit myths and legends. They like to use words like "rich" and "gestalt" and "vision."

Generally, the totality of what they say can be translated as, "I've thought of a project that could make me rich and famous. It has to do with Inuit stories, which won't mean much homework for me, and will allow me to be as artsy as I want. I can hire real, honest-to-goodness Inuit labourers who — although they will never receive any actual credit for it (because that would detract from me) — will take care of all that yucky cultural stuff, and at the same time help me get funding for my project because there is real Inuit participation."

Unfortunately, while there are exceptions, there have arisen too many individuals who see Inuit culture — and especially folklore — as an easy meal-ticket. Even this would be fine, if not for the fact that such individuals tend to misrepresent Inuit along the way. Often, their projects are meant to sell. Consequently, thought is given only to what would look good to southern audiences, and not what is actually true of Inuit culture. In other words, such projects are typically poorly researched — often deliberately so.

To provide an example of what I mean, let me tell you about an odd experience I had. I was asked to participate in a certain large media project years ago. The project focused upon characters from Inuit folklore, but as discussion of it continued over the course of months, I was alarmed to note that the producer constantly injected religious overtones into the work. The producer insisted to me that Inuit truly had practised an organized religion in which the characters of folklore were worshipped as actual gods, and went so far as to insist that one character in particular was the Inuit version of Jesus.

Well, I argued otherwise, whereupon the producer responded with a nasty letter that I had been "brainwashed" by Christianity, and didn't know my own culture as well as I thought. I backed out of that project pretty fast.

But while I can't agree with the producer, I understand how dangerous my own position was to the project. I was threatening the very theme of something that had involved a great deal of time, money, and potential lionization for the producer. And this just illustrates how ludicrous the phenomenon I am describing can get. Such projects hinge upon the presentation of Inuit culture; but in the drive for profit and ego, factual cultural content becomes secondary in importance.

Is it any wonder? Actual research (I mean more than reading a couple of library collections of Inuit myths) requires a lot of work — work that could be put into production. One has to care about the culture before one can present it properly.

So, as I said, I'm startled by the number of southerners I've run into who are declaring themselves experts on Inuit culture just because they have taken a couple of books out from the public library, and decided to do a project.

After all, I have a friend — an anthropologist named Jean Briggs, who was adopted into an Inuit family for quite a span of time, back when I was a girl — who still today admits to pu ling out aspects of Inuit culture, even after all her field research. Jean admits this because she knows; she has done the work. So how could any other person become an "expert" just from reading a few Inuit stories?

But what do I know? I've been brainwashed.

(Continued next week.)

For many southern media types with dreams of making it big, Inuit culture is manna from heaven. Perhaps it was always so, since people have been making bad films misrepresenting Inuit for a long time now (Anthony Quinn screaming and packing his face with bloody meat comes to mind), but the international attention drawn by the institution of Nunavut has especially meant that the Southern world craves facts about Inuit of late.

Why?

First, there is plain old curiosity; with all the talk about Nunavut, people are bound to wonder what it's all about. But there other factors.

There is the folklore and mythology, for example. I get a lot of e-letters from European folks who, after reading my discussions of Inuit stories and cosmology, encourage me to write as much as possible about such things. One German writer explained to me that European peoples are fascinated by their own pre-Christian roots, feeling that when they read about those who still remember their traditions (ie., Inuit), it gives them a glimpse into what their own ways might once have been like.

Then there is what I call the "Anne of Green Gables" outlook — those who look to Inuit in hopes of seeing an ideal culture based upon the noblest traits of humanity. Once, when I was interviewed over the phone, the interviewer expressed that she was disappointed at my assertion that space exploration held no spiritual significance for Inuit. This led us to talk about social problems in Inuit communities, whereupon she sighed and told me she had simply been hoping that there was a, "better, happier existence out there somewhere."

Inuit are the world's cultural media darlings right now. Many consider Inuit to be an enigmatic and largely unspoiled culture — and they will pay big bucks to anyone who will offer them a privileged viewing of Inuit traditions.

This has, dangerously, invited a number of southerners to ride the gravy train, furthering their own careers by producing any number of media products that supply the need for Inuit culture. Such individuals, however, are simply hoping to cash in on what they perceive to be a trend.

Therefore, they must produce quickly. And in the rush to produce, who has time for actual research? Who cares if you produce a film with an Inuk speaking an Eastern dialect while wearing Western clothes? Who cares if the character in your children's book refers to the "sacred directions" or his "eagle totem," as only a First Nations person might?

I care. Too often do such productions count upon the supposition that there will be no one to police them. The thinking is that you might as well make up whatever you want about Inuit, because no one in the South knows anything about Inuit anyway.

But misrepresentation is misrepresentation — no matter how you cut it. While the old style of misrepresenting Inuit involved portraying them as childish and stupid, with barbaric traditions, this new style is shielded by the very rejection of the old. The thinking is that, as long as Inuit are portrayed in a positive light, it is perfectly fine to confabulate nonsense about their traditions. It is like someone telling you, "Quit complaining just because we said you eat whale fat. At least we said Inuit were smart. Didn't you like that?"

It is the Inuit "ennoblement" business. You can say what you want about Inuit — even if it's untrue — as long as you say it nicely. And so this business has spawned stories and "facts" on a culture that never was, a culture of Inuit that are all equally enlightened, wise, spiritual, peaceful, live an easy life, and are generally perfect.

But they are the imaginary Inuit, Inuit that just represent a dollar value, and are no more real than the waving Eskimo on an old soda-pop banner. Personally, I prefer the real thing: the human beings who love and hate and suffer and persevere, giving it their all to try to make a better life for themselves — just like people everywhere.

But I'm not as worried anymore. The southern media carpetbaggers are only right about one thing: they had best hurry. The brilliant success of Atanarjuat has proven that Inuit are more than capable of showing themselves to the world. And don't audiences usually prefer the real thing?

Pijariiqpunga.

Down in the dumps, there was always nagvaaqtat ("found stuff") to be had. Qallunaat threw out the oddest things: good china, medicine bottles, barely used clothing, barely damaged furniture.

My cousin and I had a blast until nursing station staff discovered we were using old needles as water pistols.

Other dumps were not as well supervised. At the beach, after the supply ship came in, "beach-combing" was a regular summer chore. Whatever got tossed from the ship's galley washed up on shore. Soggy onions, carrots and celery were recognizable as food; but who knew what the green, heart-shaped things were? I once opened one up with my trusty pocket knife, and found clumps of seeds concentrated in the middle. To me, they resembled maggots, and I wondered if that was how they had gone bad. I still don't like bell peppers.

Close to where we often camped was the grandmother of all dumps: the DEW Line dump site. Everywhere about the place lay the carcasses of old machines. Partially demolished industrial vehicles leaned into each other in the soft, sandy pit. Empty barrels lay rusting under the ever-present sun, next to leaky vehicle batteries, and drums of what looked like white mould. Sticky tar and oils covered the ground. Something glassy shone evilly, beautifully, emitting a sickly sweet smell.

It was not quite kerosene, not quite gasoline, but something else — something bad for you. Here and there, like crushed pale flowers, were dots of antifreeze. It all rested against the backdrop of innumerable barrels, like brownish-red hills across the horizon.

I remember standing silently, staring at that landscape, as though waiting for a garbage pick-up that never occurred. There was the cry of a gull in the distance, and the sound of the wind as it picked up sand to bury forgotten treasures.

Some of the best items were bits of plywood (wood being scarce) and polypropylene. My father even fashioned an agvik (flensing board) out of a sign, with the red letters "PROPERTY OF ..." still on it. Polystyrene made a fun toy. You could make boats out of it that would actually float.

One year, we were gifted with big yellow sheets of x-ray paper, which got turned into planes, hats, and patterns for sewing (although pilot biscuit boxes provided the best material). I made my own colouring book, and cut-outs of people and dogs. Such figures stood out in jarring red and, somehow, when a black crayon was applied to the yellow-orange paper, the dogs took on a sickly, grey appearance.

One time, we found a new can of sardines — a real treat, since we had run out of store supplies, and were getting bored of eating meat. I remember thinking that it was unfair how we had to save the sardines for my youngest brother, only a baby.

Now, I shudder at the thought of all the contaminants we had inadvertently exposed ourselves to. One of my friends, who works in the field of contaminants, once informed me about the leftover PCB's still saturating the soil and sands at the DEW line dumps. Who knows what health risks we took when living, for any time, next to such hazardous materials?

I was reminded of those dumps again recently, when I caught part of a television show concerning poverty in Nicaragua. It was about whole families who live within, subsisting wholly upon, incredibly vast dump sites. There was a little girl who had found a chick hatched from among some discarded eggs. She had cleaned it off with an old handkerchief, keeping the castaway as her pet. The two sickly little things, girl and bird, looked so much alike that the image haunted me for days.

It has always been a popular political view to see the Arctic as a great wasteland, a "safe" dumping ground for the most virulent of pollutants, a "practical" place for nuclear tests. But we are already beginning to see that Arctic ecosystems — and remember, human communities are certainly a part of the ecosystem — are affected even by airborne waste from as far away as Argentina. My mind hesitates even to contemplate overlong upon such horror.

We no longer have to go to the dump; the dump has come to us. Waste is inevitable, but are we destined to live with, or within, our dump sites?

Pijariiqpunga.

"But their magic arts are degenerating and growing more and more simplified. The Polar Eskimos are well-to-do folk; there are animals enough in the sea and meat in abundance; they are strong, healthy, energetic people, possessing a sufficiency of the necessities of life as demanded by an existence which is, according to their ideas, free from care. This state of things is doubtless the reason why the Angakoq system is not so highly developed there as, for instance, it has been on the East coast, where the struggle for existence seems to be much more severe, and where the failure of the fishery, and as a consequence famine, have been more frequent. The Polar Eskimos do not require to make constant appeals to the supernatural powers, and that is why their magicians have gradually forgotten the magic arts of their fathers."

— Knud Rasmussen (from the Reports of the Fifth Thule Expedition, 1921-24. Copenhagen)

Since the time that Occidental explorers first began poking around the Arctic, and especially into Inuit culture, they have consistently exhibited a fascination with shamanism. Even today, shamanism-related questions are those most commonly asked by southerners. Today, especially, urbanites crave simpler spiritual answers than many organized religions are willing to provide.

They often look to the cosmological systems of tribal peoples, hoping to discover paths toward peaceful unity with their environment, the unconditional societal approval they lack, something exotically stimulating and elitist, or (in rare cases) a "genuine" source of magical power.

In the case of Inuit shamanism, the aforementioned drive is terribly ironic, since shamanism is the one topic that Inuit traditionally will not talk about. The tendency of Inuit to avoid the subject has been a source of frustration to ethnologists from the time of Rasmussen (1920s) onward. While some literature on the practices of angakkuit has been collected, it is far from complete, and in many cases seems contradictory (at least, until one realizes that the beliefs are similar, but vary from area to area).

Most ethnologists, in their notes, admit that the information was very difficult to wring out of people, and many have expressed disappointment that they did not gather more than they could. Still, the reticence of Inuit to come clean on the topic has only served to make it more alluring to southern scholars. Everybody loves a mystery, so the saying goes, and institutions still crank out fresh young anthropologists who each believe that they will be the one to finally "crack" the code of silence around shamanism.

But why are Inuit so quiet about practices that, supposedly, served as the basis for their very cosmology and religion? After all, Christians are not shy to talk about Biblical miracles.

Well, firstly, the modern mistake has been in thinking that shamanism was a religion at all. It wasn't — it was considered a skill that only certain individuals (having the propensity for it) could learn. Shamanism did not dictate Inuit cosmology, either. The way Inuit viewed their relationship to animals, supernatural beings, anirniit (miscellaneous souls), land (mysterious Nuna), and sky (life-giving Sila) was completely independent from the practices of angakkuit.

Angakkuit have mistakenly been portrayed, over time, as priests. Perhaps, in time, Inuit might have developed a religion (probably based on the worship of Sila), and angakkuit might have taken on a role similar to that of priest. But they did not. Angakkuit, instead, were more akin to tradesmen — those who specialized in the most dangerous, unseen powers of the world.

Because an angakoq dealt with the most dangerous of powers, his (or her) own power was by extension dangerous. No one wanted to become the target of his wrath.

In old Inuktitut thinking, will is the wellspring of action, the means by which all things occur. The combination of intent and expression (ie., vocalization) could warp reality to make it reflect the mind of an individual. That which was concrete, or corporeal, was most difficult to influence, while that which was ethereal (such as a spirit) was more fluid and therefore could be accidentally influenced with an errant thought or word.

For this reason, an Inuk was very careful not to speak of shamanistic practices — and thus of the unseen powers dealt with by shamans — lest his idle chatter attract such forces and bring their possibly malign influence to bear against him.

(Continued next week.)

I have noticed Inuit elders becoming less reticent about discussing shamanism. Perhaps they feel increasingly alarmed as they see their traditions gradually eroding before their eyes, inspiring a sort of desperation, a hitherto nonexistent willingness to break the code of silence. It is better, some elders seem to feel, to talk about even unpleasant traditions rather than lose them altogether.

If I am right and this is the thinking of the elders, I agree with it. Frankly, I don't like to see traditional culture misrepresented. I worry about the increasing number of kooks I run into, with their own home-brewed versions of shamanism — always a mish-mash of actual Inuit cosmological beliefs (from different areas), beliefs drawn from First Nations peoples, and the usual smattering of New Age ideas.

In my opinion, such re-invention of shamanism is dangerous. The practices of angakkuit comprise a vital aspect of Inuit folklore, and many of us don't realize the importance of folklore (or mythology) until we actually lose it. Folklore is like the air — such a pervasive influence in our lives that we fail to notice it until it is gone.

Just as a human needs air, so does a culture need folklore, which acts as an invisible social glue. Not only does any culture tend to disintegrate when deprived of its folkloric traditions, but a drastic shift in folkloric perspective can spawn very real cultural catastrophes.

Between the mid 15th century to the late 17th century, Europe was consumed by witch hysteria. Many thousands of people were tortured and killed, having been suspected by the churches and local authorities of practising witchcraft. Much persecution was financially motivated — many "witches" were killed so that church and state could confiscate their belongings. But it was enabled by perverse interpretations of local folklore.

Folklore, re-invented, became an excuse to kill. Midwives, who had practised herbalism since time immemorial, were suddenly accused of concocting "witch's brews." Community folk dances suddenly were interpreted as "Black Sabbaths." Any Celtic or Teutonic good-luck symbol (other than one resembling a crucifix) inscribed on a door was surely a mark of the devil.

In October of 1999, Indonesian police arrested 22 people suspected of killing 20 villagers, who were thought by locals to be shamans. This was thought to be the direct result of superstitious paranoia, concerning shamanistic beliefs, that had escalated to a dangerous level among the local Muslim population. The victims were killed out of fear rather than fact.

In sub-Saharan Africa, anthropologists have spent years trying to understand the relatively modern phenomenon of "witch-hunting" that occurs, in seasonal cycles, across countless villages. It seems that villages faced with dissolution of their native cultures build up a kind of paranoid tension that travelling bands of professional witch-hunters capitalize upon. The witch-hunters coax the villagers into looking for "signs" of witches in their village, after which they grab whomever is least popular in the village, execute them brutally, and move on to the next village. Until next season.

I am presenting such horrors in order to illustrate the sort of extreme behaviours sometimes occurring in societies that have broken with their folklore. And while ours seems like a society too stable for such catastrophes, the loss of our folklore is still a threat. This is because the rapid erosion of folklore invites its re-invention; it invites unscrupulous individuals to pervert older beliefs in order to serve their own agendas. How many times has folklore been re-interpreted, even by missionaries in the North, to serve the ends of theocrats? How many times has it been re-invented to serve as a weapon of assimilation?

With this in mind, the coming forth of elders to discuss actual shamanism becomes all the more vital to the health of Inuit culture. While oftentimes distasteful, the presence of angakkuit was indisputably one of the strongest influences upon pre-colonial Inuit culture. It is by comprehending what our ancestors thought and felt that we lend them practical immortality, and thus does the culture have a firm base upon which to stand.

For Inuit can no longer count upon their isolation in the North to define them as a culture, and it is only by living generations acting as custodians of past knowledge — speaking the unspeakable — that Inuit will remain the magnificent people they are.

Pijariiqpunga.

Anyone who thinks that Inuit childhood was always carefree has never been to a spring camp.

Competition could be fierce. There were many children of different ages living together and trying — perhaps not hard enough — to get along. There were some particularly competitive personalities, but I think friction mostly stemmed from the fact that the kids tended to form strange alliances based upon common ages — those of one age against those of another.

Alliances were also based on the interests of the day, or who was getting along with whom (much like "Survivor"). Competition was permitted, if not exactly encouraged. Inuit are not an especially martial culture, but these were little people in survival training. The games were not only entertainment, but were developing faculties that would later contribute to practical skills.

The very first game of the day, for example, was based around waking up. It was important to get up early, to be alert. The last kid to wake up was yanked outside by his or her hair, naked and groggy, for the others to laugh at. It was cruel, but it sure got you up. Laziness, as an adult hunter, could spell the death of yourself or others.

Many games involved pain endurance. Everyone would line up in a row so that a designated kid could step on our toes. Then we would have our knees stepped on. Then our thighs. Those who cried out were eliminated, so that the victor would get to be the next stepper.

There were many games of stealth. There was harpoon tossing, sling-shooting, and — of course — marksmanship (only possible once we were strong enough to hold a .22, all we were allowed to touch at camp).

Rivalries entered the picture once skills were developed to the point of being considered useful. Children were often compared to one another. X was not considered a good shot, but boy could she run fast. Yesterday, Y caught a large fish — he must be a lucky fisherman. Wait until my boy grows up, and then you'll see who gets the most young seals. My daughter may not be very pretty, but she sure can sew boots now. Excellence in anything was noted and encouraged.

In my case, I tried to use my siblings and other kids as living lessons. My half-sister, for example, was having difficulty shooting, so I vowed to become the best shot I could. One of my youngest brothers always got dragged out of bed by his hair. I wanted to avoid that. I decided to focus on the things I was best at — especially those skills others were deficient in. I noted that many boys had difficulty with pain endurance. I did not, so I focused upon such games until I could bear the weight upon my calves without flinching.

It wasn't until much later that I realized others were also using me as the same sort of model, trying not to repeat my mistakes, just as I had done with them.

And it wasn't until adulthood that I realized such games offered us a chance to develop strong individuality in an otherwise very egalitarian, communal existence. Strangely, even though the experience served to individuate us, we came away from it with a deeper awareness of the group — perhaps because we now knew the strengths and weaknesses of all its members. Our heightened individuality, ironically, forged us into a better community.

Instead of a mass of people, we were taught to be individuals working together.

Everyone has a talent, and there is great joy in contributing it. One might even say this is the whole point of being human. And I think that is why even adults would sometimes jump in to play at our games — not so much to have fun, but to remember how to "work at play."

Baseball, anyone?

Pijariiqpunga.

One of the most common misconceptions is that translators do no real work - that, since the mechanics of languages are all the same (the most common mistake) , it must be easy for someone to translate from one to another.

The perception is that translation is a word-substitution game, whereas it is actually a process of completely breaking down a concept (often one that is specific to a culture), building it up again using concepts inherent to the language into which it is to be translated. This takes a great deal of mental energy, since in order to translate, one has to "role-play," stepping outside of either cultural context so that a given concept can be reinvented from one tongue to another.

A good translator's mind, in a way, cannot afford to be completely English or completely Inuktitut. And such reinvention, of course, means that the reconstructed, translated model - the "end product" - can vary greatly with the skill of the translator.

In this sense, a translator is not merely a linguist, but actually a sort of diplomat. It is the translator, and his or her grasp of the concepts innate to either tongue (serving as his or her toolbox or repertoire) that dictates how a concept is to be perceived.

How a concept is perceived is important, of course. It determines the emotional and psychological impact of a message upon its listeners. That is why, despite what futurists once predicted about computers doing our writing for us, we still need professional writers in this day and age. A writer is a sort of translator, too, but he or she breaks down and rebuilds concepts within one language.

Let's take the example of the magnificent words from the Bible, in Luke 11:9-10, and 13-14.

"And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them; and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
"And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men."

Anyone would be frustrated to find that a translator had rendered these words into the equivalent, in another language, of:

"Some angels came and scared them. An angel said to stop being scared because there was good news for everybody.
"And there was suddenly a whole bunch of praying, and saying, we like God and everybody should be happy."

The latter, anyone can agree, would constitute a terrible translation. It gets the basic gist of the message across, but the basic gist is just not good enough. Imagine a translator's frustration, then, when a client (by the way, government workers are the worst for this) demands, "Just do a quick version." Not only will that "quick version", frankly, suck, but it is bound to make both the translator and the client look like complete idiots.

We do not normally make conscious judgement calls about our own language. What I mean is that, while many of us do have to be careful of what we say, it is rarely a constant concern throughout every minute of every day.

Translators do have to be concerned over every word and every phrase. The very essence of the job is to make judgement calls on how something is phrased. This means that a good translator is constantly stretching his or her brain while at work, constantly thinking creatively.

This can be very taxing, especially after a whole day of translation. It is for this reason that translators must prepare beforehand, taking time aside before a job begins, in order to go into what I call, "translation mode." Like forcing oneself into a sort of meditative state, the mind must be gradually set into a mode that rests neither with one language nor the other. The reason for this is that each language requires its own style of thinking, its own culture.

I can always distinguish someone who has never worked with translators before. Such an individual is invariably shocked - even skeptical - that translation constitutes "work" at all.

They assume that language is a simplistic, instinctive process. "You speak both. Why can't you just yak one into the other?"

(Continued next week.)

Most people understand that Inuktitut stems from a completely different language group than English (or other Indo-European languages). Nevertheless, the ramifications of this fact are lost upon many. They do not understand that its differing origins mean that the logic upon which the language is structured — the very thinking itself — is different.

So I'll say it here and for all time: a native Inuktitut speaker literally thinks differently than a native English speaker.

The reasons why this is so have to do with the ways in which the two languages deal with the basic relationships between concepts, such as places, items, and times.

In Inuktitut, for example, one freely places oneself in any time. While it is true that English refers to different times, it is typically assumed that one is always situated in the present: I went to the store. I had just gotten home. I will go again. In all instances, the speaker is referring to possibilities or happenings from his or her place in the present.

In Inuktitut, however, it is normal to linguistically refer to the past or future as though it were the present. One is placed as present in the past, or present in the future. In a way, Inuktitut does not assume that one is always in the present, but instead makes the past and future a flavour of "now."

English can do this, but can only do so in regard to the past, and it represents a break with convention — a strange style that a few fiction writers and conversationalists use. "So I'm walking along, see? I come to the usual spot, and look over the edge to notice this guy waving at me…" Et cetera.

There are other major differences, as well. Double negatives, for example, are impossible in Inuktitut. Suppose you were to ask me, "Is it not necessary to do a report?" In English, I would first begin with an assertion, "No," then re-assert by following up with, "it is not necessary to do a report." I am addressing the situation, not the phrasing of the question. But in Inuktitut, I must address the phrasing of the question first. In Inuktitut, I must say, "Yes, it is not necessary to do a report."

Perhaps some readers will have already guessed, from this just how sticky the translation of legalities can get, whether of documents or live speech (referred to as "simultaneous translation," a process first used in the trial of Nazis at Nuremburg). Legalities require an exactitude of language, and much of the very legal profession itself is preoccupied with quibbling over the exact meanings of legal matters, even in the one language of English.

Imagine the difficulties that arise concerning questions of time and place when Inuktitut is involved. A lawyer, for example, asks a question in cross-examination: "Were you not at your brother's house on the evening of the fifth?" The English-speaker, forced to answer only in the affirmative or negative, answers "no." If that witness were an Inuktitut-speaker, however, he would have to answer "yes," because he is addressing the phrasing of the question, not the situation. Then there are complications arising from tense, which can make for an awesome legal mess.

(Actually, another complication arises in the example above. One cannot say "brother" in Inuktitut, since there is no such generic term in Inuktitut — an Inuk must state "one's sibling, same sex as oneself, older," "one's sibling, different sex from oneself, younger," etc. Inuktitut has few generic terms, as English does. It's vocabulary is expansive because it is very specific about how it labels items.)

One can see, then, that if the translator is to circumvent this potential mess, he or she must at all costs avoid literal translation. A true translator looks past syntax and into the actual meaning of statements.

So is it any wonder that an anthropologist who studies another culture is soon compelled to learn that culture's language? Or is it any wonder that a scholar, when studying the classic literary works of Greece or Rome, is soon compelled to learn Greek or Latin? A language is an expression of a culture, an indication of how a culture thinks, which is why a cultural shift also means a linguistic change. A people cannot be understood unless its language is also understood.

(To be continued.)

Not only is the profession of translating misunderstood on the basis of linguistics, but also as a business. Like writers, translators are either thought of as rich and famous, or as the scum of the Earth.

As also happens with writers, those who require the services of a translator too often display irritation over the fact that translators are necessary. A translator is rarely welcomed by a client, since the client resents having to “waste” money over a trifling matter such as language.

The feeling partly stems from the common misconception that any bilingual person can be a translator. To quote my friend, Betty Harnum: “Everyone has hands — not everyone can play the piano.” Few realize that translators are academically accredited. You get what you pay for.

Some clients, in fact, so resent having to pay for translation that they welch out altogether. Government departments are the worst for this, with administrators situated between a rock and a hard place, assigned projects requiring translation — without the budget to pay for them.

So some resort to letting the translator translate the documents, then delay on payment as long as they can. By the time they legally must pay, the administrator simply can't be reached. The departmental buck is passed until it is unlikely that the translator will ever get paid.

If the translator is ripped off, he or she has legal recourse, but this costs them precious time and money — and the client is usually counting on this. I know of several translators, including myself, who are due money they will never see. The only way to punish such crooked clients is by blacklisting them, dirtying their name in the freelancing community, so they will pay through the nose for future services.

Then there are the clients who simply want a biological translating machine — a slave. With the constant mantra of, “just do a quick one,” they bombard the translator with tons of material that must be translated within short, often impossible, deadlines. This is what I call an “assembly line” attitude, and no true translation can occur this way.

Generally, when you read over translations someone has hacked out in this way, it is simply gibberish. At best, it reads like baby-talk, and is simply embarrassing.

In my opinion, however, the biggest pitfall of translating is the potential to end up in hell-jobs, such as translating a serial killer's description of how he butchered several women. Hell-jobs result from clients withholding job descriptions, waiting until a translator has taken a job before releasing details. This is born of desperation — they just want to hook a translator any way they can.

I've had clients admit, at the last minute, that they don't even know what syllabics are, or that they don't have Inuktitut fonts on their computers (so they can't read what I translate for them). They just want you to sit down and do it all for them, making magic at one bargain-basement rate.

I had one lady explain a project to me for over two hours. When I finally brought up money, she smiled and asked, “Could you just do it out of the goodness of your heart?” She actually had the gall to be angry when I laughed in her face.

These negatives are contrasted by those few I've met who think of translation as a glamorous trade, with translators akin to diplomats. But while it is true that a translator sometimes plays a diplomatic role (such as in simultaneous translation), and while it is possible to make decent money, such is only possible when the work is available. The opportunities for work are like doors that randomly open and close, and the dry periods are lean indeed.

So let's be kind to our translators — they bring together and fashion understandings between the languages of the world. And as people who draw from creativity to do their job effectively, let's keep in mind that their professional integrity is important to them. It is important to them that others know and understand what they do.

And, given the reliance of Nunavut on translators for official documents and meetings — and given what Nunavut land claims negotiations owe to skilled translators — might it not be a good idea to declare a Nunavut “Translator Day?”
Pijariiqpunga.

The other day I was carrying groceries home and thinking about how heavy food is when you have to lug it a few blocks. But I remembered that, compared to Arctic distances, a trek from Value Mart is not that bad. Fifty pounds of fresh char, over rocky ground, can be a bit difficult. Those readers whose duty it was, as kids, to carry such catches may know what I mean. Fish, even gutted, is mostly water — which we all know is heavy.

Char in turn reminded me of ducks and geese, which we bagged in the fall. Other wonderful past catches included clams, berries, caribou, and that eternal staple of life: seal meat.

The world may turn in its uncertain ways, but it is nevertheless nearing fall qaggiq time — festival — and I begin to crave Inuit "soul" food. And food is never just sustenance for Inuit, but a way to renew oneself emotionally.

Autumn food preparation is my favourite activity of the year. I like to cook. Best of all, I like cooking outside, over a campfire. This is sad, in a way, since campfire cooking is virtually impossible for me now. There is nothing like it: the taste and scent is somehow different from oven-cooked food, as though the open air alters its chemistry for the better.

And there's quite an art to it.

First, you have to gather several bags of Arctic heather, moss or twigs, depending on how much smoke you're willing to put up with. You need three square rocks, roughly of equal size, as much like pieces of brick as possible. There are the matches, of course, and a bit of Kleenex makes great kindling. You'll be there with some very fresh ice water, tea or coffee of choice, some thinly stripped fish or caribou, and one large, flat rock. You won't use shale, because it cracks, and your rock will be nice and dry — assuming you don't want the moisture in it to heat and make it explode (children used to be allowed to play with this process so as to get it right).

You'll pluck some fur from your parka, holding it up to determine which way the wind is blowing, then arrange your rocks in a semicircular shape, the open side away from the wind. The semicircle is just wide enough to accommodate a pot or kettle.

You start the fire — not a raging blaze, just at a level that it stays under control. Once you're sure it's not petering out, you place water to boil above it. You keep feeding the fire a little, kindling and stoking it once in a while.

Eventually, you place the flat rock to heat near or in the fire, set the water aside once it boils, and fry some fish or caribou on the rock. Make some bannock afterward if you so choose (I always so choose). Throw tea or tea bags in the hot water, and holler for your friends to help you polish off the feast. Clean up by burning all non-toxic garbage, throwing sand onto the hearth. You need rest after all that hard eating work, so it's time for tea and scary stories, or (if anyone has the energy) playing games of strength.

Oh, and if cooking away from the community, don't forget batteries for your flashlight, as the darkness comes sooner now (unless you like stumbling around marshlands after dark; it's happened to me). Oh yes, and sand works best for cleaning your bannock bowl in a running stream. And don't forget to bring some freshly campfire-made bannock to your less adventurous family and friends; they will thank you, even if there is sand in it. But I digress.

Want to do all of this indoors? You'll avoid the mosquitoes, smoke in your eyes, and sand in your bannock — but you'll miss that wonderful smell of burning heather, and the glorious colours of an Arctic sunset, unlike any other in the world.

And there's the mood. You'll miss feeling as though everything fits in place, as though comfortable in your own skin — that mood of a human doing what humans have always done, are supposed to do, since humans have existed.

And don't forget to eat as much as you can, because the more you eat, the less you have to carry home.

Pijariiqpunga.

A friend of mine told me an interesting story.

She is Inuit, but her husband is English-descended. As it happened, she was in Arctic Bay visiting relatives recently, and while there, she and her husband had stopped in at her cousin's house. Dinner-time rolled around, and her cousin set to cracking out some food for everyone. The cousin was very traditional, speaking little English, and preferring an Inuit diet. So she threw down some cardboard on the kitchen floor (somewhat embarrassedly, as many Inuit are about eating in front of white people), and went outside to hack off a choice haunch of frozen caribou.

Once back in, she set the caribou aside to thaw for a bit, and then immediately got down to cooking for my friend's husband. She whipped up a box of Kraft Dinner, and microwaved a chicken leg. As she cooked this stuff, she chuckled to my friend that she kept such southern foods around for her kids, who liked to "eat like whites."
Soon, my friend's husband found himself seated at the kitchen table, before a steaming plate of chicken, cheese, and noodles, while my friend and her cousin knelt on the floor to dig their uluit into caribou quaq.

Instead of eating up, the husband stared dejectedly at the dinner plate, occasionally picking at the noodles - but mostly glancing enviously over at the women eating Inuit food.

Finally, my friend asked her husband if he would rather eat the quaq, at which suggestion he bolted from the dinner table and pounced upon the caribou.

My friend told me that her cousin later admitted surprise at the husband's food preferences. She had assumed that southerners only wanted "white" food.

I have to admit, it is great to see Inuit today openly celebrating their traditional diet. I breathe a sigh of relief every time I witness this, remembering that for the longest time, Inuit were ashamed to eat traditional foods in front of southerners. Admittedly, the fault mainly lies with some of the more strict missionaries of the early days, who used to consider the eating of raw meat barbaric and savage, and who used to chide Inuit for doing so. Inuit were encouraged to eat "decent" foods, such as beans and carrots. I still remember how Inuit used to deliberately feast out of sight of the white people, and I know some older Inuit, even today, still flinch at the idea of eating niqimmariit ("authentic foods") openly.

It is no secret that poverty has always afflicted the northern communities: despite how remarkably fat many "Inuit" organizations are, the common Inuk is remarkably poor. But one thing Inuit have going for them is a great diet. The South is rich with amenities, but many Inuit have no idea just how poorly southerners eat. The simple truth is that southerners prefer meat, prefer fat, prefer fresh fish, to almost anything else.

Southern diets are based upon the fact that there is not enough meat to go around. Pasta, bread, rice, corn, or any other grain-based food you can think of are solutions to problems of overpopulation. You take a bowl of pasta, add something salty, add some butter (ie., animal fat) - you have meat substitute. You deep fry some potatoes (in fat): meat substitute. You take some bread and drizzle gravy or cheese on it: meat substitute. Stir-fries, casseroles, salads, and stews are all ways to make a meagre meat supply go further.

If Inuit only had any idea how precious and expensive fresh beef is in the south. A single Inuk, eating a traditional caribou meal, is consuming the equivalent of a couple of fillet mignon, perhaps more. And I still remember how we used to catch scores of Arctic char at a time, keeping only the best, as long as my arm, for our own eating - while the rest were just daily dog food. We never even bothered to feed our dogs the pitiful little lake char that they serve in the south today, as a gourmet dish, to dignitaries and other VIPs.

I am not exaggerating at all when I say that, when Inuit eat a traditional diet, they eat like kings. For in other cultures, it was only kings who were important enough to deserve the fresh meats and fish that Inuit take for granted.

Nirttiaritti.
Pijariiqpunga.

There's a long-standing joke that every Inuit household has a resident anthropologist. When I was growing up, our community certainly had its share, as we lived next to the Utkuhikhalingmiut, who were considered one of the last wholly "traditional" groups of people in the North.

We lived in the then minuscule community of Gjoa Haven, on King William Island, of historic note since it is where the remains of the Franklin Expedition were finally found, at its north end, all having perished from lead poisoning from their canned rations.

South and east of it is a place called Utkuhikhalik, literally "soapstone place," lying near the mouth of Chantrey Inlet. Inland, it is by all Inuit standards a good fishing and caribou-hunting place. It is a great place to visit, but far too inland for the like of the sea-dependent coastal peoples.

Traditionally, soapstone was to be found there (the root word utkusik meaning "pot"), the only hard stone available before metals and plastic. Only pots and soapstone lamps were made from the dark, workable stone, due to the nomadic lifestyle - you could only have as many heavy things as you could carry. And soapstone, while valuable, was very heavy.

Soapstone lamps, proudly made by men of marrying age and presented as bridal gifts, were treasured from generation to generation. A valued woman always had her own lamp upon setting up her own household. We had a gigantic one, lugged all the way from Pond Inlet, so old that years of seal fat had given it a glossy patina, not unlike the verdigris of bronze statues.

It was to this once-pristine outpost that she arrived one summer night, in the early sixties. Out of respect for her privacy, I'll call her Panik, as she was later known by our peoples. A foreigner for certain, very odd with her wildly curly hair.

Though I've mentioned it was a summer night, it was a time of 24-hour sunlight - the dream of school children back then. It didn't matter when you ate or slept; it was all the same. The clock always got thrown out when school was not in session, and we were allowed to get into as much mischief as we were able to get away with.

By some secret adult reasoning, my parents had been singled out as guides to our newly arrived visitor. Our curious child brains had a new victim to process. We were amazed that she wore "men's" pants, and we giggled at her weird American accent. Her accent wasn't like the English we had gotten used to hearing spoken - she had a kind of drawl we had only seen in the rare black-and-white movie. And we stood aghast at the sight of all the stuff she had brought with her on the plane. She looked like she was ready to stay for years!

But we learned later through the children's grapevine, she only intended to stay for a year or so. And she was going to live out the winter with those exotic people, the Utkuhikhalingmiut. Maybe, we whispered amongst ourselves, she really was as weird as she looked. She was a learning fanatic. She wanted to know the language, and about traditional women's work. Her questions were endless. And it was revealed that she wanted to live with an Utkuhikhalingmiut family - as a family member.

It wasn't long before us kids realized that she was a potential source of fun, and she was basically at our mercy. Before we knew it, we were all competing to see who could teach her the most Inuktitut words, having loads of laughs while correcting her bad pronunciation. We showed her our pets. And we countered her questions with bombardments of our own, all about the place she had come from. But we tried to be polite. Tried.

Panik figured that Utkuhikhalingmiut, having less trade available to them at the time, would be the closest thing to pre-colonial Inuit that she could find. My father was Cape Dorset, not Utkuhikhalingmiut, but he was respected by them, and Panik asked him to arrange for her to be temporarily "adopted" by a willing Utkuhikhalingmiut family. This was eventually done. So the anthropologist spent early fall waiting for her new "family" to meet her, when they would arrive in Gjoa Haven for winter supplies.

(Continued next week.)

Panik liked her privacy, which was odd to us Inuit, so the anthropologist moved into a stone hut built by Roman Catholic Oblate missionaries. She waited for the arrival of the Utkuhikhalingmiut family that was to adopt her in the fall, with whom she was to live as Inuktitut daughter/student.

Throughout that time, she learned as much Inuktitut as possible, and we wondered at her habits. She had a tendency to take long walks by herself -without a rifle - which, in Inuktitut in those days - meant that one was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

But she wasn't upset. Just self-contained.

Fall passed, winter arrived, and it seemed that disaster had struck for our now land-locked visitor. She had to stay in Gjoa Haven until the ice completely froze over, when her "family" could make the trip.

Everyone respected Panik's desire for independence, but it was known that she had potentially dangerous gaps in her knowledge. So the children began to act as unofficial spies for the adults, keeping tabs on the anthropologist. That way, Panik thought she was receiving visits from curious kids, and the adults did not have to impose their concerns upon her.

Whenever we returned from a visit, the adults would grill us: "Was the primus stove on?"

"Yes, but she had it up too high. The legs were turning bright red and it kept burning out. It was very cold and there was sirmiq (ice-build up - a bad sign that the place would not heat up) on the walls and you could see your breath. It was like she didn't know how to clear the nozzle on the stove. She didn't have her bed made and the vent was open in the ceiling and letting puffs of snow in."

Not only were we to ascertain whether or not she had cold hands (she did, her hands were always tucked into her sleeves), but to see that she had proper food to eat.

And one day, my 10-year-old brain wondered to itself: what if she actually could learn to live like us? The idea became a fierce little fire burning within me. I understood a bit of what she was going through.

After all, I had Utkuhikhalingmiut friends. They were a shy and retiring people, unlike us coastal peoples, who were more up-front with our opinions. They were easy to get along with, once you got to know them, but you had to work hard to crack them out of their shells.

One Utkuhikhalingmiut friend of mine was picked on, in school, for being so reserved. Too often, I had to beat back bullies, hollering at them to leave her alone.

In private, she was fun. She had been brought up by elderly people, having lost her parents. She knew all kinds of throat-chants, songs, and games completely different from our own. She ate exotic stuff, like caribou tallow with whitefish, and disliked seal meat.

If she felt under too much scrutiny, she would clam up till you next saw her - whereupon her face lit up with the brightest smile, and she was talking as if everything was right with the world. I just chalked it all up to her personality - only later learning that it was a cultural thing. Maybe I had been culturally impolite to her. I had no way of knowing. Cross-cultural awareness was an eclectic concept in those days.

Panik herself departed in the early winter of that year, and we didn't hear from her until the following spring, when the men returned to the community to re-supply. In the meantime, what little gossip we could pick up as children didn't amount to much. As long as someone didn't claim her as a wife, she would be OK.

As it turned out, Panik had gotten into some self-admittedly tense cultural misunderstandings, but her stay with the Utkuhikhalingmiut had been an enlightening one.

It wasn't until decades later, studying some anthropology at university, that I realized what a task Panik had undertaken, what courage she had displayed in stepping outside her own cultural safety net to become a so-called "participant-observer."

Panik is an old friend now, and we still have lovely anthropological debates over the phone. We rarely agree on anything, but that's all right - I'm learning that some cultures learn as much from disagreement as from agreement.

Pijariiqpunga.

When I decided to run for the presidency of NTI, I had to ask myself - and be dead sure of the answer to - a single question: Why?

The answer represents a fusion of past memories and current times. There is a woman whom I have known for many years. She is old - an elder - and her voice is like the feeling of sun upon one's face after a long darkness. I have never seen her angry. Her very life is about giving. She is poor, perhaps because she cannot refuse another person anything.

For years, I was unable to call her. She could not afford a phone (or clothes). I was sick with worry when I lost contact, since I knew she had been having trouble eating regularly and housing herself. No one would employ her.

She's fine now, thank God, but you can understand how I was embittered by worrying about her, while at once hearing about celebration after celebration thrown by various Inuit organizations. I kept thinking, "Great - using beneficiary money to congratulate each other just for existing, while an elder has probably starved to death by now."

It was aggravated by the fact that I remembered how things used to be before Inuit organizations. If there was someone in a community who was doing poorly, it was everybody's business to help out - but especially a leader's responsibility.

By old-style reckoning, modern "leaders" who ignore the benefit of their own people are not leaders at all.

So here's my answer: I'm running to defend.

I'm running to defend the regions that, even though they are part of Nunavut, have been ignored.

I'm running to defend the communities that, even though they are part of Nunavut, have been ignored.

I'm running to defend the people who, even though they are beneficiaries of the land claim, have been ignored.

I'm running to defend a simple fact, as certain and unshakeable as the Land itself: the Nunavut land claims agreement, the beneficiary money that accompanies it, is the rightful property of Inuit.

Too long has the money circulated among the same people and concerns within secretive organizations, its benefits never flowing down to the common man or woman who truly owns and needs it. Too long has the Nunavut land claims agreement been treated as though it is something above or superior to Inuit, decisions concerning it confined to shadowy boards.

The party is over.

I'm going to see that every community - no matter how distant from the centres of bureaucracy, no matter what size - will own and affect the way in which our legendary land claim blossoms. The beneficiary rights will be open and understandable to all, as will NTI's current projects.

Too many of Nunavut's people, too many of its smaller communities, elders, youth, have been marginalized over the years. Power should rest in the hands of this marginalized majority, rather than in the hands of a few well-connected individuals.

For it was not a handful of officials that allowed Inuit to carve out a comfortable existence in the pre-industrial Arctic. It was the capability of the people, something that we Inuit are, something that resides in our very flesh and spirit.

And if we true Inuit are empowered by wise use of the land claim, could we not accomplish anything we put our minds to? If we could defy the Ice Age, laugh and play in the Arctic - a place that all other cultures fear - how simple it should be for us to house everyone cheaply, build schools, provide efficient health care and law enforcement, protect the weak, utilize the speedy minds of our youth, the indispensable wisdom of our elders, and recognize traditional roles - such as hunters and seamstresses - as legitimate trades. And employment? Why are there unemployed? We need everyone - if only the money were freed from above.

Remember:

We are the ancestors of those that come later, that are arriving even now. Just as we idolize our ancestors as being those who were skilled in yesteryear, so we are the skilled that will bring about a golden age we can enjoy today, and that others will know long after us.

We are the ancestors.
Pijariiqpunga.

Seven times down, eight times up.
- from the 18th century Japanese Hagakure

I've never known an Inuk to get upset because I didn't send a Christmas card.

However, I remembered recently that a friend of mine of Scottish ancestry was hurt one year because I didn't send her a card.
"It's Christmas!" she cried. "You always send people cards around Christmas! That's how it's done! That's how it's always been done!"

"But I'm calling you on the phone," I said (I was in the North at the time). "We're able to talk. Isn't that better than some piece of paper with cheap glittery stuff on it?"

"Well look, Rachel, I'm glad to hear from you and all. But, next time, send a card too," she said. "It's a tradition. Christmas isn't quite right without it."

I conceded, thoroughly chastened. And I did try to remember to send cards for a while, but soon I forgot again. I can't help it - I dislike cards intensely. They are someone else's thoughts racked up for purchase and they seem, therefore, somehow insincere.

So I was surprised to discover that card-giving is a fairly recent invention. It began in Victorian England and has been in practice for only about a century, compared with the seventeen centuries December 25th (a date fixed by Pope Julius I) has officially been the Mass of Christ.

I've been thinking about this because I've heard a lot of chatter about the meaning of Christmas. But I'm disappointed that it's often just treated as a huge party.

Christmas is a version of the winter festival celebrated by many cultures. Some of these celebrations began centuries before Christ. If you're Christian, it makes sense that the celebration is in honour of Christ. But for non-Christians, the winter festival is no less real, no less necessary.

Celebrations are necessary because it is the time before the worst of winter begins. It is a pause in normal events. All the cultures that endure winter have some kind of festival during this time, in anticipation of the hardships on the horizon.

I sometimes refer to it as the timeless festival, because it is as though we pretend, for a brief while, to stop the march of seasons and take time out for the joy of it.

It is no coincidence that the Twelve Days of Christmas cover approximately the same length of time as the traditional Inuit celebration of Quviasugvik. It's just the right amount time to recover from the hardships of the past seasons and prepare for those yet to come.

In even the most ancient cultures, the winter festival was always the time of feasts and games - when labour and normal codes of behaviour were set aside.

I think this is why, as times get tougher, we see more emphasis on desperate celebration, and it seems that Christmas and New Year meld into one. This is not necessarily a bad thing. In a way, it represents an attempt to return to older ways.

So treasure your hard-earned bubble of timelessness and return to work with a lighter heart. Think of it as a kind of "Santa Pause."

Pijariiqpunga.

Every culture has its favourite story themes, and Inuit culture is no exception. However, while many cultures share similar tales, some are distinguished by favourite themes uncommon to others. Inuit culture can be distinguished by a love for the "vanishing" tale.

Across the Arctic, Inuit have always told stories of those who vanish — not individuals who vanish (which would make a poor tale, since this would happen all the time), but of entire communities that disappear without a trace. Explorers as early as Rasmussen mentioned these stories in their logs, and most scholars have since assumed that tales of disappearing communities were merely an expression of Inuit fear — terror of a harsh land that might swallow them up, leaving no memory of their passing.

I think the theory reflects only Occidental terrors, and doesn't apply well to Inuit cultures. For a long time, Occidental peoples have thrived upon trade, often gaining a sense of cultural identity by comparing themselves to adjacent, neighbouring peoples. This is not true of Inuit, who in pre-colonial times did not strongly identify with community existence, since the family was the true social unit. The idea of one's culture being wiped out or forgotten is mostly an urban, southern concept — something Inuit have only recently learned to fear, since they now have to deal with living adjacent to larger, more aggressive cultures.

A community to Inuit used to be a flexible and temporary thing. Since individuals were trained to be self-reliant, trade was not something that Inuit existence hinged upon. Inuit groups knew of other bands or encampments, but their business was considered to be their own. In other words, pre-colonial Inuit had no interaction with other cultures, no national identity. They didn't fear extinction, because they believed at that time that they were the only real people in the world.

And yet, stories of vanishing communities created a bond between Inuit.

Taitssumaniguuq:

Once there was a hunter who was a bit of a fool. He didn't read the sila (weather) very well, and he was out on the land when a storm suddenly came upon him. He tried to race ahead of it, hoping that he could get back to his camp before he got lost. He was unsuccessful, and soon found himself directionless, while the weather only worsened around him. He was very worried, and cursed himself continually, when suddenly he looked up to see a light ahead of him. He was flooded with relief when he realized that it was the glow of an igluvigaq lit from the inside by a woman's kudliq. He raced toward it, and immediately saw others — a whole encampment of people.

He hitched his dogs hastily, and entered the first shelter he came to. A family was playing string games inside, and looked up in surprise when they saw him enter. Soon they were welcoming him. They laughed and played, and asked him about the lands he came from, while he sipped some of their soup. He felt a shudder of warmth run through him. The only one among them who never spoke or played was a young boy, an iliaq (orphan) by his appearance. The boy watched the others sullenly, idly picking at his ragged clothes. He seemed thin and wasted, and rarely ate. The hunter followed the example of the others, ignoring the boy, thinking he was probably addle-brained.

Soon, the hunter was settled down with these strange people, who were extremely friendly toward him. They had only dried meat and soup to offer him, but he happily accepted these, and they soon encouraged him to get some rest. He was feeling very warm and cared for, when the people around him began to talk about other things they had to do, other people they had to visit in other homes. They told him to get some sleep — that once he awakened, refreshed, he could stay or go as he pleased.

He had not slept for long when he was suddenly shaken awake. It was the iliaq boy, leaning over him and hissing in his ear,

"You are among a terrible people. They enjoy murdering people, and even now are fetching a large stone to kill you with."

(Continued next week.)

The hunter was still sleep-addled and could hardly believe what the iliaq (orphan) boy was telling him. His hosts had been kind. How could it be that they wanted to murder him? But the boy shook him violently.

"Go! Go or they'll kill you!" he cried.

So the hunter crept from the igluvigaq. As he did so, he paused, hearing voices in the distance. It was his hosts, arguing about the size of stone with which to crush his head.

Creeping over to their sleds, he sabotaged them, cutting all their dog leads so that they would have difficulty following him. Then he raced away on his kamotik, leaving them behind.

The hunter eventually found his way home, whereupon he told his family and friends about the strange community he had fled. There were many nods, for they had heard of such evil peoples, and they were enraged to hear that such a group had tried to murder one of their own.

A number of men — including the hunter himself — wanted to seek revenge. They wanted to make sure this monstrous community never had a chance to kill anyone else. Many days later, they eventually summoned up enough courage to attack this strange people. It took some searching around, but the hunter finally led some men back to it. They were armed with bows and man-killing barbed arrows.

They used all of their stealth to creep in upon the edges of the community, but not one of them could spot any people. There were no dogs, either. Closer and closer they crept, until they finally entered the community itself, stalking from igluvigaq to igluvigaq.

They were awe-struck to the point where they could think of nothing to say to one another. The murderers had entirely vanished. The camp was still there — just no people. They searched in and out of every igluvigaq. Over here, there still lay an unfinished needle someone had been carving. Over there lay a boot, partly sewn. A child's toy lay on the floor, as though suddenly dropped. But the lamps were all dead and cold. There was no blood, nor any sign of conflict. Every living creature in the camp had simply disappeared.

The stomachs of the men were churning with dread. They touched nothing in that camp, not even the food that lay uneaten.

With little other than fearful nods to each other, the men went home. And they travelled in silence all the way back. They each told their wives and families of what they had seen, in voices laced with fear. But they never spoke of these happenings again — until many years later, in whispered tales as the flames burned low, when their children's children were gathered 'round to hear of things forbidden and dreadful.

There are numerous versions of this tale. In many, the mystery people are cannibals. In some, they are deformed. Many versions simply have the hunter passing through the community, in which the people are a bit shifty, only to have him return at a later time and find them gone.

Across the world, we can find many instances of the "punished community" — cultures that have been blasted away for their sins before the gods, or before God. But the Inuit vanishing stories are differ in that no particular force (except perhaps a moral force) punishes the vanished people; they simply disappear without further explanation.

The non-Inuit folktales perhaps most reminiscent of the Inuit vanishing story are European (especially UK) tales of faerie communities, which often involve the so-called "Seelie Court." In some of these tales, a lone traveller stumbles across a party or a kind of meeting of strange beings, who may at first seem like wealthy, hospitable humans, but over time exhibit bizarre tastes or inhuman abilities. Generally, they aren't out to kill their guest, but he will be unable to escape if he accepts their gifts or eats their food. Sometimes, the guest is warned by a kinder faerie (reminiscent of the iliaq in the Inuit tale), or he may be canny all on his own. He finds clever ways to refuse the faerie hospitality without offending them, and eventually escapes. But if he looks back, or leads others back, he finds that the faeries have vanished without a trace.

(Continued next week.)

The European style of "vanishing community" story is similar to the Inuit in that both involve the threat to a lone traveller of becoming ensnared during his stay in an unknown community. The implication is that a traveller who indulges in the hospitality of a strange people for too long takes on something of their essence or nature (thus the threat in the European tales of eating faerie food, ingesting something of the faerie nature).

Once the traveller's nature is altered, the process is irreversible, and he can never again return to the lands of normal humanity. The Inuit version — especially the version involving cannibalism — is simply a reverse-style of the European, in that the strange people are trying to actually consume the traveller himself, instead of trying to trick the traveller into consuming food from their world.

My own feeling is that, when we view the Inuit vanishing community tale, we are viewing something that might eventually have evolved into the European style of tale. The European tale derives from the Occidental fear of being overtaken by a hostile, foreign people. This was a genuine Occidental concern, since much of the distribution of nations we know today from the "Old World" is a result of tribal peoples becoming displaced by larger, more aggressive cultures (such as Rome, or the Huns), in turn displacing others in their path.

In England alone, we can view a history involving many waves of displacements that formed the ethnic fabric of the nation — invading Picts, Britons, Celts, Saxons, Danes, and Normans. In light of such history, it is only natural that European (especially British) folklore would touch upon anxieties about the usually unpleasant encounters between alien cultures.

Inuit were also possessed of such anxiety, although not nearly to the degree that other cultures were. The primary "monstrous" people, to Inuit, were Indian peoples, who were largely thought of as cannibals who launched raids from the treeline. The truth, however, seems to be that Inuit and Indians pretty much raided each other at will, and many Inuit tales tell of various raids, massacres, and revenge killings (sometimes even of the adoption of Indian orphans by Inuit).

The Inuit vanishing community tale is something different, however. Such tales never involve a traveller stumbling across an Indian community. The community is, strangely, always Inuit. They are interesting in that they are not actually monsters, but simply an exceptionally treacherous people. So we have to ask ourselves: is this incidental, or is there an underlying meaning here?

I lean toward the latter opinion. It is very important to have the strange community as being Inuit. It is the very fact that the murderous strangers are Inuit that makes the tale a didactic one, shifting the emphasis of the tale away from a simple story cautioning listeners to "be wary of monsters out on the land," and moving it closer to a statement concerning social behaviour and proper living. In other words: the stories are not really about lost travellers, but about human communities themselves.

The key to the lesson is the vanishing itself. We must remember that there is no stated reason for an entire community to vanish into thin air (as has happened, in such tales, whenever a party of people returns to investigate the murderous community). Vanishing is the ability of certain supernatural creatures, but obviously not of Inuit. Similarly, traditional Inuit had no belief in an avenging spirit — such as the Old Testament Jehovah — to safeguard morality, punishing communities of the wicked. The closest thing might be Nuliajuk, who could withdraw her sea mammals if taboos were broken, but there are no tales of her swallowing up whole communities of wicked people.

This tells us that the vanishing community story is neither a tale of judgement, nor a tale of ethnic anxiety. In light of the fact that traditional Inuit were so socially aware, my belief is that this story is a lifestyle statement. It is a way by which the teller implies to the listeners the fate of a community whose structure is breaking down, a community wherein man preys upon his fellow man. To a people such as Inuit, whose very existence once depended upon mutual respect and social harmony, the ultimate fate of a predatory community is, inevitably, extinction.

Pijariiqpunga.

"The time has come," the Walrus said,

"To talk of many things:"

— from "The Walrus and the Carpenter" by Lewis Carroll

It was a perfect night for it. The moon hung coldly in the sky, a veil of shifting, charcoal clouds caressing its face. It was perfect for a game of amaruujaq — "playing wolf."

The wolf awaits at his post, waits for the villagers to meet their hideous fate. He howls menacingly, approaching the innocent victims. Most escape, barely, but some are not so lucky. They've been touched by the wolf, and have themselves been transformed, to feed on flesh and bone.

But this game of amaruujaq is not set in the windswept, frozen ice-cove of my childhood. Instead, it takes place at a modern day Army Cadet camp sponsored by the First Hussars, a militia regiment of Ontario. And the faces of those players are not the smiling, bronze, wind-burnt faces of Inuit children. They are the children of non-Inuit cultures — the little descendants of a post-colonial Canada. Only the moon seems one and the same. Well, the moon, and the players' enthusiasm for the game itself.

The explanation of how I ended up playing amaruujaq with a bunch of Army Cadets begins with my father-in-law, who asked a favour of me. He happens to be the Commanding Officer ("CO") of the local cadet corps (the whole reason I'm stuck in the South at all is because my husband's relatives live there). My father-in-law happens — luckily — to be proud of the fact that he has an Inuit daughter-in-law, something special for a southerner, I guess. Consequently, he asked me to lecture about Inuit to his cadets. This was last year, and I guess the cadets got a kick out of it, because I was asked back again, as a volunteer speaker on cold and the Arctic in general.

Well, this next volunteer stint was to take place at a winter camp out in the country-side, over a few days, on the edge of a wooded, semi-wilderness area. The whole thing was like herding cats, as a handful of adult officers tried to organize some 40 cadets of ages ranging from 10 to 16 years old — making sure they were safe, fed, and issued proper "kit." Such kit included a sleeping bag and useless, self-inflatable mattress — something we all slept upon, on the floor, together, with females on the kitchen floor and males in the main hall. It was lights out at 2200 (10:00 p.m.), and up at 0530 (5:30 a.m.). It was army ration packs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. No showers. One bathroom.

In other words, it was fantastic. Here I was camping again!

I was scheduled to do my "Inuit" thing, as all the officers called it, on the evening of the second day, and the cadets would be mine for several hours — a couple of senior cadets keeping the rowdy, smaller ones in line. I admit I was experiencing some anxiety, since no one could tell me exactly what they wanted me to do. So I had to mostly wing it, and hope the cadets were responsive. I gathered that I was expected to talk about extreme cold, to impart some Inuit tricks for getting around it, since this trip was technically called "Winter Indoctrination," and the theme was winter survival. That wasn't a problem, but I decided to spice things up a bit — tell some old stories, teach the kids some ajajaaq (string games), and show them how to play amaruujaq.

To me, this was all consistent with the survival theme. I wanted them to understand that Inuit have not simply survived for their millennia in the Arctic because of a few "cold weather tricks," but because they have shaped their entire culture, the way they relate to one another, to suit such conditions. Inuit culture has not thrived because we can make emergency drinking water by melting snow in skins on our backs; or because we can read natiruviat, snaking snow-drift lines that can determine wind direction and help one get home.

Our culture has thrived because of the way we train the minds of our children. And this begins with the manual dexterity learned from the shapes called forth from a simple string, or with the team work learned from a game such as amaruujaq.

(Continued next week.)

The army cadets started off the first day going out to do "fire building," starting a fire with a single match (in rather soggy, windy weather), heat a can of beans with it, then put the fire out safely.

The adult officers who were supervising, asked me if I would like to contribute, but they were going to fire-build in the woods — and what did I know about woodlands? Sure, I knew what made good kindling in the Arctic; even little kids could start fires where I grew up. But I felt that I wasn't qualified when it came to trees and brush. I agreed to come along, but just as an observer.

I didn't remain an observer for long.

The instructing officers quickly became frustrated with the cadets, who barely grasped any aspect of fire-building. Despite better advice, they chose the most crazy fire-sites — high ground, where wind scattered their sites every few seconds, or boggy areas where sites were instantly saturated with ice-water. One kid tried to start his fire in the crook of some tree-roots, it obviously not occurring to him that — if he ever got it blazing — it would burn a tree down. The Commanding Officer (CO) leaned toward me and whispered,

"Don't stop them. They need to learn for themselves why their sites suck. And don't worry about the kid at the tree there — he's never going to get his fire started like that, so the tree is in no danger."

The more I watched, the more I became convinced that something was wrong with these kids, but I couldn't place my finger on it. For one thing, they wouldn't use the natural tools around them, such as sticks or rocks. The officers explained time and again all about tinder and how to light a fire with it; but still, the kids would go from nodding at the lesson examples, even repeating back what they had been told, to wandering about as though lost and confused.

After a while, I couldn't stand it any more, and started taking an active part in the fire instruction. I stopped a boy who was dragging a dripping log over to his non-existent fire-site.

"Wait! Wait! Where are you going with that?"

He directed a stunned sort of look toward me, saying,

"Fire."

"Turn it over," I said.

He did so, revealing that the log was soaking wet.

"What do you see?" I asked him.

"Wet."

"So you remember what the CO was saying earlier, right? Is it good or bad for burning?"

He looked like he just wanted me to tell him the right answer, so that he could repeat it back properly, so that I would get out of his hair.

Another cadet, at another time, was emitting a lot of "ooches" and "ows" because he kept shifting his burning tinder around with his fingers, when there was a perfectly good stick sitting next to him. Not one cadet thought to ring any rocks, which were numerous in the area, around their fire. One boy thought he would be clever, and actually sat there rubbing two sticks together futilely — later explaining that he had seen this done on TV.

And I just about screamed when I saw two girls shivering as they used their bare hands to scoop icy water into a bowl — instead of just scooping the water up with the bowl itself.

Not one cadet ever thought to use their bean can label as kindling.

It came to me in a flash: Inuit have it much better than southerners. Inuit children are taught critical thinking all their lives. Classic Inuit education means teaching a child how to treat the world like a universal tool — an object can take on any use you can think of for it, as long as it makes you live.

These army cadets, conversely, were struggling because they had always been taught to cough up specific, pre-set answers to specific, pre-set questions. Every object or action had its designated place. A bowl was something that one put things into, never a scoop, because no one had ever "authorized" them to use it as such.

As any hunter could tell you, imagination is crucial to survival. But because survival had never before been important to these cadets, imagination had never become important, either.

(Continued next week.)

Dealing with these southern army cadets was as illuminating as any cross-cultural workshop, if not more so. I learned as much as I taught.

It occurred to me, while witnessing their unfortunate attempts at building a fire with a single match (they could have multiple tries, but they were only allowed to use one match at a time), that they were having difficulty not because fire-building is hard, but simply because they were approaching it as though it were a school project.

In my mind, one word summed these kids up: Suburbia. They were too used to their specific environment. It was obvious that much of their energy went into keeping adults — along with adult concerns — off their backs, to the point where they approached every learning experience as though it were an equation, a process with distinct steps.

A) An adult proposes a project (eg., "Today we're going to learn X.")

B) The adult asks perfunctory questions concerning the project's nature (eg., "Anyone know how X works?")

C) The kids wait for the right answer ("right" meaning whatever the instructor wants to hear), faithfully jotting it down.

D) The kids regurgitate whatever the instructor wants to hear.

E) The lesson ends and the kids are free from temporary bondage, so that they can get on with their real lives.

Inuktitut teaching is completely different, because it is not about lessons or programs. It is about tapping the children's natural talents, encouraging them to use their minds in an expansive, alternative way.

An Inuk child would not be taught to make a kamotik, for example, by being told one day, "A sled is made of the following materials... the pieces are set together in the following manner..." Instead, he or she would assist in the construction of a kamotik and participate in its use, so that the child can develop his or her personal sense of what makes a sled functional.

I once saw some hunters substitute caribou legs and frozen fish for slats in the kamotik. The fact that they didn't have enough wood didn't stop them. They were thinking in an expansive, adaptable way, instead of giving up because they didn't have the parts that were "needed" for a sled.

Without the tenuous web of infrastructure that keeps an urban environment going, such expansive thinking is the difference between life and death. It's what pulled our species out of an Ice Age, while most species around us went extinct. Think that cities are impervious to nature? Ask those residents of Quebec and eastern Ontario who endured the ice storm a few years ago if they feel that way.

So when it was my turn to have the cadets for the evening, to lecture them on cold weather survival, I decided that we had to start at the beginning — to alter their thinking. I had to dig down through the urban bull, and awaken their instincts, the animal part of the brain that is infinitely flexible, because its priority is staying alive.

Oh sure, I ran them through the standard tricks, such as finding water, conserving heat and eating proper foods. But I really wanted to re-orient their thinking toward survivalism, as in an experiment I once heard of. Some scientists had trained lab rats to run a series of mazes with cheese at the end. The rats got quite good at it, and the scientists wanted to see how a wild rat would stack up.

They were shocked when, instead of running the maze, the wild rat simply smelled the direction the cheese lay in, and chewed right through the maze walls to get it. I wanted these city kids, spawn of a southern metropolis, to break out of the lab. I wanted to be a wild rat (figuratively speaking, of course) teaching the lab rats how to chew through the maze.

So I spent a night on an uncomfortable, airless air-mattress, planning my lesson. Up to this point, I had been unsure of what to do, what I was going to instruct. But here I was, sleepless on a cold camp-kitchen floor, with the shockingly loud snores of little girls all around me (I hadn't known that little girls snored), and some ideas began to come to me.

They wouldn't be rats — they would be wolves. That, and I needed some string.

(Continued next week.)

Before I knew it, it was next day, and my turn to instruct the army cadets was up. Up until this time, I had been wracking my brain for the solution to a single, great problem: How was I going to teach cold weather survival to some urban kids who didn't even possess the basic skills of Inuit children?

In Inuktitut, we would have been making a priority of manual dexterity, spatial understanding, hand-eye co-ordination, and team working skills from the earliest ages.

I decided to begin with hand-eye co-ordination. I had seen these cadets trying to build fires earlier in the bush, and half the time their problem seemed to be that they couldn't physically handle small objects, such as matches or twigs for tinder — they just kept fumbling with everything.

And I had been horrified when I told a cadet to cut something with his knife, only to find out that he didn't have one. I asked around, and none of the cadets had knives. "How are you supposed to survive without a knife!?" I gasped.

The supervising CO just shook his head, saying, "I know, Rachel. That's one of the problems. The cadets used to carry Swiss Army knives, but we started to get complaints from parents who felt it was too dangerous to allow 'children' to carry sharp objects. So they have to request use of a knife from an adult now."

This was madness. No wonder the cadets had no manual dexterity. They weren't even allowed blades, like any Inuit child. They couldn't while away their time digging, cutting, whittling, boring, or doing any of the fun things that depended upon a knife — and consequently never developed the spatial skills that accompany such activities.

It was explained to me that parents were afraid the children would cut themselves, and I thought: So what? Of course they cut themselves, just like we did as well. But your finger heals and you know better next time. One who never cuts himself slightly as a child is guaranteed to cut himself severely as an adult.

I guess that I had taken for granted, as a child, the chance to handle a lot of tools Inuit regularly used in harvesting wildlife for food and clothing — matches, gas lamps, camping stoves, axes, knives, ulus, dog sleds, tents, ropes, fish-hooks, and rifles. I had assumed Qallunaat children all grow up with the same experiences, which they apparently don't.

When it was my turn with the cadets, I began lecturing about some cold weather tricks, which was expected of me. As I mentioned before, I went through a check list of tactics — getting emergency water, determining direction. But I really wanted to get on with what I saw as "fundamental" skills.

I had requested some string, and we all sat there cutting up lengths of it and tying bits together in loops. Once everyone had a loop of the right size, I began to show them ajaraaq — traditional string games. I showed them the "snow house", the "shovel," and "cat's cradle" (interestingly, a string figure from the times when white people used to teach their children traditional string games of their own).

I was surprised at how fast they soaked it up, at how most of them fumbled along, but gave it their all, nonetheless. I could tell it was frustrating for many of them, since their fingers had never been forced to exhibit such dexterity before, but they were young, and displayed an intense fascination with the games, with "getting it," that was very rewarding.

Then we were on to the most important lesson: team work.

It is a well-known fact that Inuit dislike being bossed around, a tendency that hearkens back to their roots. The greatest "cold weather survival trick" that Inuit ever learned was to collectively repress individual ego in order to work efficiently as a group — to be efficient without ranks and without a heroic leader to save the day.

Inuit learned how to live in as complete a state of equality as has ever been seen in a society, a society in which everyone agreed upon the single most important goal: surviving.

And it begins with Inuit games, since the games you teach your children set the precedent for the activities they carry out as adults.

(To be continued.)

Inuit have been very successful at political negotiation, adeptly arranging for their own beneficiary corporations and an Inuit-dominant territory. While just as burdened by the infighting that plagues aboriginal bodies around the world, Inuit have been able to set differences aside in order to achieve common goals. Why?

The ability stems from cultural training — that which modern leaders, in their eagerness to adopt southern administrative methods, too often abandon these days. Today, it seems we always hear individual leaders taking credit for initiatives, without any nod to those teams that did the back-breaking work.

Real Inuit culture is wonderfully non-heroic — emphasizing humility, mutual sacrifice and respect. There is a great irony here. When all individuals within a group contribute equally, all become equally important, so that every individual within that group is valuable. Thus do Inuit value individualism, as the very result of valuing the group.

But this principle is only ingrained through practise, for it constitutes an actual mode of thought, a way of life. And Inuit have instilled this mode of thinking into their children by encouraging them to play certain types of games.

So, when I was asked to show southern army cadets how Inuit "survive," one of the things I realized was that I was going to have to change their thinking. I decided I would lecture them on survival only briefly, but use the rest of the time getting them to play Inuit games.

The cadets eagerly took to the games, but my desired effect truly blossomed once I had them playing outside games — such as amaruujaq ("play wolf"). This is a chase game without teams, of course, wherein the roles of victim and wolf constantly interchange, so that a given victim is always thinking about when he will next become the wolf, and the wolf must ever think about again being the victim. There is no room for elitism, nor is individual achievement possible without the group. This a sort of game that is especially Inuktitut, in that it trains one to release natural aggression without resorting to the "us and them" thinking necessitated by team sports. Because of the constantly shifting roles in amaruujaq, every player must remain mindful of every other group member, without bonding to a team.

A player must constantly place himself in someone else's shoes: victim, wolf, victim again. I could immediately tell that the cadets were not used to thinking this way, for when they first began to play, they just about killed one another — tackling, choking, flipping, and ramming in predatorial glee. I remember walking over to one of the adult officers (who was wincing at the sight), and saying, "White kids are crazy."

But, as time went on, the game worked its magic. The cadets learned that, whenever one of them played rough, they would get it back twice as bad next time. The rough-and-tumble levelled out, softened, as each player realized that he or she had to remain aware of the entire group, and could not survive by acting as a hero among lessors.

They played amaruujaq long into the night, and — coincidentally — under the light of a great, glowing, full moon.

I went to bed pleased that the cadets had had fun, but I wasn't sure how much "survivalism" they had learned. I had taken a risk.

I only knew for sure the next day, when I went out with the third and final group of cadets who were to learn how to build fires. They fared no better than the first two groups, and in fact the individuals that comprised this group seemed less clever and attentive, on average. But I and other adults noticed something we hadn't seen in the other groups: these cadets, without asking permission, were helping each other. They were building fires together, trading materials and suggestions, treating the fire-building as a common goal rather than as an individual test.

Then I knew I had been right to show them our games, for they were thinking a little more "Inuktitut" now. There is lots of time to learn tricks for overcoming problems upon which survival depends; but in the long-term, survival for life means working with others in a harmonious way.

They had a lot to learn yet, but at least they had begun to learn it as members of one tribe.

Pijariiqpunga.

As regular visitors to these pages will have noticed, my writing engine has been sputtering for the past year. The words no longer come as easily as they once did.

Rather than try to run on less than all cylinders, it is time to turn off the engine and rest it a while. This will be the last of the Little Corner of Canada.

I have lost count of the years I have been writing this column but it's been fun, and I have enjoyed it very much. If I have put a smile on the faces of my regular visitors over the years, then I am very satisfied.

I like to think that This Little Corner observed a historic period of our people. We have settled our land claims. We have created our own territory and government. From colonial subjects, we are a people struggling back onto our feet. The first Inuk has been drafted by an NHL team. Our film-makers are winning national and international awards.

This is not to say that things are okay and that we have licked all our troubles. Far from it.

Too many of our people still drink and smoke too much. There is too much self-inflicted pain and suffering. There are too many school drop-outs. Most of our so-called leaders are inept and weak. The stench of corruption fouls the air around some of our organizations.

There are still government promises that remain broken. This little corner remembers very well being told that the government would always provide housing for us and that the rent would never be more than $67 per month. Why did the government massacre our dogs? That question remains unanswered.

I want to thank the loyal regular visitors to this corner. Thank you for your encouragement and your kind comments. Thank you to the editors and owners of this paper. Thank you to the people who translated these renderings.

Now that I no longer have to worry about deadlines, I will redirect this energy to beating Hilary in Scrabble.

Taitsumaniguuq:

A long time ago, there were two large families. Each family lived in its own area, one on the coast and the other inland, and each hunted according to its own lifestyle. In fact, the families were completely different from each other, even in size. The inland group was larger by far than the coastal people. Yet, despite their differences, neither of these families particularly cared about the other. Either group was content to live in its own way.

But there came a time when the climate changed, catching the inland family off-guard. It seemed that all the game animals had migrated away, so that there was little food to support everyone, and life became difficult. The inland people became desperate, and they deliberated long and hard over whether to stay in their area or not.

Ultimately, they looked toward the coast, where life was different, but there was lots of game to be had. This, they saw, was the solution to their problems. They did not even have to leave their traditional lands. Half of them could pack up and move out onto the coast. They could just spread themselves out, so to speak.

They did notice that there was already another family living on the coast, of course. But, they thought, this family was smaller, so what would some newcomers matter to them? It looked like this smaller family was only occupying a little section of the coast. Surely they wouldn't mind sharing a bit. In fact, it was all such a little matter that the inlanders were certain they wouldn't even have to bother asking the coastal family for permission. Permission for what — surviving? After all, the land belonged to everybody.

The coming of the inland family was a trickle at first. The coastal family was a bit surprised to see them, but didn't think much of it. And as time went by, it turned out that the two families were getting to know each other better. But there were a lot of odd encounters. Coastals and inlanders married once in a while, and such intermarriage was sometimes regarded with fear and uncertainty. And there were gross misunderstandings over culture. It turned out that the inlanders were pretty insecure, since they were new to the coast, and some of them became confused, even afraid. Many of the inlanders, who were cut off from the guidance of their family, started to take it upon themselves to do odd things.

A few became obsessed with trying to show the coastal people that the customs of the inlanders were the "right" ways, and they were occasionally willing to do so violently. When this happened, unfortunately, some members of the coastal family got violent right back at them. To the coastal people, such retaliation was fair and square. But to the inlanders, who were already twitchy because of living in this foreign area, any retaliation was labelled, "unjustified violence."

A few members of the inland family went the opposite way. These inlanders just loved the customs of the coastal people, thought they were inherently "noble," and wanted to completely abandon the inland ways in order to be just like the coastals. The coastal people were often accommodating toward this type of inlander, but mostly just thought of them as crazy. But, sadly, it was this very type of inlander that gave rise to the occurrence of some very unscrupulous sorts.

You see, since the two families lived very different lifestyles because of their very different areas, they admired each other's things. Both families hungered for the unique crafts and resources belonging to the other. There was already a great demand for "coastal things" among those inlanders who thought of the coastal family as noble. Additionally, the inlanders still living back in their traditional area began insisting that their relatives send back coastal foods, animal hides, and other resources. It turned out, after a while, that the inlanders who had settled on the coast were now not only supporting themselves, but also the people back home.

So some of the inlanders began to specialize in sending back coastal goods to their relatives at home. And as competition for coastal goods increased, feuding began. And it wasn't long before the most competitive inlanders figured out how to get ahead — by cheating the coastal people.

(Continued next week.)

Those members of the inlander family who made a profit by bringing much-needed coastal goods back home knew that they could only get ahead of their competition by getting the coastal people to receive less in trade than coastals were actually giving. The inlanders accomplished this by encouraging infighting among the coastal family members — the divide and conquer strategy.

It worked for a while, but eventually the coastal people saw what some of these inlanders were doing to them. Many of them began to demand a return to their original, coastal lifestyle, the way things were before the inland family settled among them. So they began to cut off relations with the inlanders, tried to drive them away from the coast, back to where they came from.

Now, by this time, the inlanders — at home and on the coast — had come to rely upon the wealth of resources the coast offered. There was no way they were going to go back to their original lands; they felt that the coast now belonged just as much to them as to the coastal family.

They were ready to fight for it. So mass skirmishing erupted between the inland family and the coastal family. But the feuding did not last long, since the inescapable fact was that the inland family was much larger than the coastal family. Fortunately, since neither side wanted to fight, they quickly negotiated a peace settlement — the coastals agreed to settle in their most prized traditional areas, while the inland descendants were to have the rest of the coast. Thus was the coast divided up, with either family agreeing that it would never trespass into the other's area.

But the peace was fleeting.

The inlander family was large, prospering in their new coastal lands. And there grew a greater and greater demand for resources, so that the inlanders began, over time, to enviously eye the lands belonging to the coastals.

The problem began with inlander members who, on their own initiative, trespassed into coastal lands to harvest whatever they wished. And as the flood of invasive inlanders swelled, the coastals became increasingly angered, and decided that something must be done.

The leaders of the coastal family decided to confer with the leaders of the inland family, to remind them of the peace settlement. But the inlanders had become smug and conceited over time, realizing that they had always possessed the upper hand. So they condescended to the coastal leaders, waving away their appeal. In the end, they issued an ultimatum to the coastal family: For small recompense, the coastals must move out of their current lands.

You see, as it turned out, when the peace settlement had originally been negotiated, the inland family thought it had been getting the better part of the deal. They had believed, when the deal was forged, that the lands the coastals would settle into was utterly worthless. This had turned out to be untrue. In fact, while the inlanders had not realized it at the time, they now saw that the lands belonging to the coastal family were very valuable indeed. Their position was:

"We know we agreed that you would have it. But at the time, we didn't know it was so valuable. Now we want a new deal."

The inlander family demanded that the coastal family move to the worst part of the coast, a place where hunting was poor, and life would be difficult. The coastals, finally, would be displaced from their traditional home.

The coastals decided that the word of the inlanders was worthless. Life was not worth living anywhere else. So they waged a war against the inland family, trying to drive them back inland, trying to take back the coast. But it was far too late; the coastals were too few in comparison to the inlanders.

And, by this time, the inlanders were only too happy to have such a war. This was their chance to say openly,

"See how aggressive that coastal family is? We were only trying to prosper, but they would deny us this. We tried to negotiate, but now they want to fight. We need to protect ourselves."

But, secretly, they whispered amongst themselves,

"Besides, this is finally our chance to get rid of those worthless coastals."

For why trade when you can take?

(Continued next week.)

So the inlander family and the coastal family went to war with each other. The war was desperate and terrible, as wars always are, with loss of life on either side. And as atrocities mounted, either family at last began to give vent to the hatred it had accumulated toward the other over time.

The coastals fought to avenge themselves for the wrongs they felt the inlanders had committed against them over the years. And they fought to take back the coast itself, the land of their ancestors.

The inlanders fought to once and for all sweep the coastals aside, to finally rid themselves of that family that had always been a stumbling block in their migrations to the seashore. They fought to overcome a people who, they believed, would deny them their place in the sun.

In a sense, the coastals fought for their past, while the inlanders fought for their future.

But the simple fact was that the inlanders were too powerful. They were many, and were already well-settled along the shore. In time, the coastal family was forced to surrender, in order to avoid utter annihilation, leaving the inlanders to deliberate over what to do with the surviving coastal people. Some of the most hateful inlanders felt that the remaining coastals would always be a threat, unless they were finally exterminated. Some of the most humane inlanders felt that the remaining coastals should be protected, assisted in recuperating from the war. Between these opposing factions, the coastals over time were never quite obliterated, nor truly aided.

The ultimate fate of the coastals was that they became exiles in their own land, their children enduring the humiliation of having to beg the approval of their conquerors' children for even the basic necessities of life. Theirs became a twilight existence, and in time, it became all but forgotten that any but one family had ever occupied all of the lands, from interior to seashore.

I hope you're angry, or sad, or indignant, or something like that, upon reading the coastal-inlander story I've told over the last few articles, because that means you're a decent person. But what I've just told is not some traditional Inuit tale; instead, it's a parable that closely mirrors what the U.S. calls the "Lakota War."

Why am I writing about it, and what does it have to do with the north? Probably much more than you would at first think. I've thought about it, off and on throughout the late 1990s, ever since I first read the Nunavut land claim agreement, and especially whenever I think about sub-surface rights. I've been thinking about it recently, with all the talk about water licensing.

Now, I generally have a policy of staying away from politics in my articles. Political issues are often subject to too many people jumping to too many conclusions, too fast, with too few facts available. I stick to culture and language, not only because that's where the true Inuktitut lifeblood flows, but because there are already enough people talking politics around the clock.

But sometimes there are points where culture and politics overlap, where they become indistinguishable from one another, and such a point usually occurs where a smaller culture is forced to demand its due from the larger culture that dominates it. This forces the smaller culture to define itself against the larger, and thus does awareness at once become political and cultural.

So what is this Lakota War? It's probably the single greatest attempt by aboriginal peoples of North America to repel a colonial power, and the tragic events leading up to it are something that every aboriginal person — man, woman, or child — needs to know about.

The violence of the war tends to be distracting. It saw amazing battles, ones wherein aboriginal peoples — the first true "army" of unified tribes — gave back as good as they got. And make no mistake: they were fighting a post-American Civil War army, one of the most formidable forces in the world at the time.

But, as I indicated, the war itself tends to distract from the really important events, those conflicts between aboriginal peoples and settlers that led up to it. Those events, in a nutshell, constitute a model for almost every aboriginal-colonial political situation in the world — even those of today.

(Continued next week.)

We're a naive generation.

In our hubris, we assume that we have achieved a level of political savvy that puts us beyond the need to study history. We have come to believe that we, unlike any generation before us, are tolerant and wise. We tend to call our new gospel, "political correctness."

We have become pretty smug, proving our goodness by openly decrying injustices of the past, the totalitarianism, the sexism, the racism. And in doing so, we have become comfortable with the idea that we are better than generations before us, that we have politically "arrived," and that history has no lessons to offer. Why study the deplorable deeds of those before us? We know that everything leading up to now has been nothing but an extended tale of horror and exploitation, so why not focus on tomorrow? And then there is that excuse of the laziest mind: "History is written by the conquerors, so there's no point in studying it, because it's all biased anyway."

Yet I say that history, any history, is useful for one great reason: if you can teach yourself to recognize what is broken, you can then fix it.

Aboriginal peoples, as exploited peoples, particularly need to adopt this approach. Inuit are no exception.

How many aboriginal people, Inuit included, know about the events of the Lakota War? All should know, because the Lakota War is a model for most aboriginal-federal relations.

In America, the tensions that mounted between settlers and Native Americans throughout the 1800s, are no mystery. As settlers pushed west, they increasingly intruded upon the traditional lands of numerous Indian tribes, which resulted in skirmishing back and forth.

But such damaging colonization of the American West was greatly accelerated by the American Civil War, which divided the whites between North (the United States of America) and South (the Confederate States of America). Think of how the Indians must have felt. It would be like having two strangers trying to kill each other in your living room. The United States won the war, of course, but was nevertheless left with a severely divided nation.

So, in order to get back on its feet, economically and politically, the government began to redouble its efforts to colonize the west — to assert its "sovereignty." The first thing it realized was that there were too many Indians, so it had to find a way to reduce their numbers. In 1866, General Philip H. Sheridan proposed a systematic program to wipe out the buffalo, upon which the Indians depended, summing it up with the statement, "Kill the buffalo and you kill the Indians."

I get a chill when I think of this and remember the old Canadian documents I've read, full of statements like, "Without the dogs, the Eskimo will adapt to settlement life." Or, "Since the family is the basic unit of Eskimo culture, separation of parent and child is the key to assimilation." And, as with the U.S., the federal government's overarching excuse for its forced relocations and its dismantling of culture was always, "protecting Canadian sovereignty."

In the American West, the rush of settlers carried there by new railroads, and impelled by government financial incentives, only accelerated tensions with the Indian tribes. The tribes of the plains were large at the time, and were skilled fighters. Years of lucrative trade with whites had armed nearly all of them with horses and rifles. When they fought, they packed enough of a sting that the government was forced to sign treaties with them — land claim agreements, if you prefer.

The U.S. and the Lakota, one of the largest of the plains tribes, signed the Fort Laramie Treaty in 1868. This treaty set aside traditional lands for the Lakota, and the federal government was obligated by treaty to protect those lands from white settlers. The land claim included some of the areas the Lakota considered most sacred to them, and the area was thought by the U.S. government to be pretty useless for farming or development. It seemed like a pretty good deal for both sides.

It was not to last. In 1874, George Armstrong Custer, having no regard for treaties with Indians, announced the presence of gold in the Black Hills area — the most sacred part of Lakota territory.

It started a gold rush.

(Continued next week.)

Custer's announcement of gold in the Black Hills set off a stampede of fortune-hunters, having no regard for the fact that prospecting in this area meant desecrating one of the most sacred sites of the Lakota people — not to mention outright violation of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty.

The Lakota were outraged, of course, but spent the next few years appealing to the U.S. government. What they didn't realize, unfortunately, is that the federal government possessed considerably less enforcement power than it pretended, and this was only aggravated by genuine greed for the gold. Economic development is, after all, what puts the glow in any government's cheeks.

Then, as now, money talks. In 1875, a Senate commission met with several Lakota chiefs to negotiate access for gold miners, even offering to purchase the sacred area for $6 million (not a large sum, even for that era). The Lakota, to their credit, had by then learned to be distrustful of new deals, and the site was just too important to them. They weren't interested.

Having been refused, the government promptly dropped its peaceable facade, commanding the chiefs to report to their designated reservations by Jan. 31. But the Indians had had enough, and the government's position set off a firestorm of armed resistance by chiefs such as the great Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Red Cloud, and many others determined to police their lands.

The federal response was to use the army to "herd" Indians encampments away from the Black Hills, systematically butchering any bands — to a child — that stood in their way. This common threat forged a powerful alliance between the tribes, who fought effectively (Little Big Horn, or "Custer's Last Stand", being an example) until they were finally routed in 1877. Sitting Bull eluded capture by bringing his band safely to Canada.

The U.S. Congress voted, in the end, to repeal the Fort Laramie Treaty, seizing 40 million acres of Lakota land — as well as the Black Hills, which were soon dotted with mining camps.

Now, having had all of that out, I hope the reader can intuit the point of these past few articles. I'm desperately afraid there are some out there, saying, "What the hell has all of this got to do with Arctic Canada?" I'm even more afraid that there are readers saying, "I see — she's saying that white people aren't trustworthy." No, no, and no.

The point I'm making is that the Lakota War is an example of a situation wherein everything goes wrong — in the worst possible way — between aboriginal peoples and a federal government, accelerating to a disaster point within the space of only a few years.

The events leading up to the Lakota War illustrate tensions that have existed time and again — and still today — between aboriginal peoples and respective federal governments. A federal government is not necessarily an evil entity, but it is an institution with its own unique interests. Those interests can often conflict with smaller, regional interests, and all-too-easily conflict with the interests of aboriginal peoples.

Aboriginal peoples — Inuit being no exception — are constantly in a surreal position, that of feeling as if a very large, very powerful stranger has come to occupy their home. It is a bit like having a bear living in your house: You are safe as long as the bear is minding its own business, but you know it means trouble if it suddenly turns its attention to you. One way or another, you can never really relax, because even if it isn't interested in you today, you know it would roll you if it got hungry tomorrow. It's just the bear's nature.

So the point I'm trying to make is that aboriginal peoples, including Inuit, who have a notably non-violent history with the Canadian government, can still never afford to take their eyes off the bear. Due to their cunning and perseverance in negotiation, Inuit have generally come to earn an unprecedented grip on the north, their home — a grip perhaps unrivalled by any other aboriginal people. But we must understand the history of this continent, so that we are not caught off-guard if that bear comes sniffing around, smelling new resources, asking for the re-negotiation of old agreements.

For negotiation is difficult, if not impossible, with one who already holds all the cards.

Pijariiqpunga.

As an adult, I was glued to that old Inummarik's bear story. But hearing his tale, seeing those scars, re-asserted all my childhood fears.

And something else.

As a pre-adolescent girl, I clutched at the qamutik, muscles taught. Why, I cursed under my breath, did my father favour hunting these animals? They tasted terrible (at least to me). Their skin was not worth the danger to life and limb — especially my life, my limbs. Didn't my father realize it might maim him, leaving me to try shooting it with a .303 that, frankly, I didn't feel confident with? How would I get back to camp with his body and whatever dogs had been injured? Would the dogs even obey me? Kusik would, maybe. She was the mother of them all — the best of them, at that. I started counting dogs I thought might obey me, ultimately depressed with the results. Fine, I would take Kusik, leaving the rest on the sea ice. I felt bad at the thought of them starving, but worse at the thought of doing the same myself.

And every time I looked down at those dread prints, those dinner-plates with toes, panic gripped me.

What if my dad missed and hit one of the dogs instead? What if the bear got away? What was to keep it from turning and hunting us? What if bears actually liked to eat people?

Would it kill us like a seal — ripping our faces off?

My mind was jolted back to reality as the sled hit jagged ice. I had never heard of a bear chasing a dog-team, but I still noted where to find the extra shells for the .222 rifle, which I was confident with. If there was trouble, I could at least help out.

An electric current passed through the entire dog-team, even though my father had not signalled to begin any chase. They quivered with some primal instinct, focussed, sniffing the air.

Bear.

No! Now what? It was bad for the dogs to bolt too soon. They needed to save their energy for surrounding the bear, containing it for the hunter's shot.

One or two of the experienced dogs were accelerating, a sure sign that their instincts were kicking in. Kusik, as usual, kept a steady, mature gait, attentive but not foolishly overeager. She knew the score. My father was the hunt leader, and it wasn't a hunt until he signalled.

He glanced over at me, ordered me to take the .303 out of its case. I passed it to him butt-first, keeping the muzzle well away from both of us, as per firearms protocol. I was prepared to jump at his signal. My job was to carry the extra shells, keeping well behind him and the dogs.

I could already see a distant, yellowed form, contrasted against grey clouds and glare. He was walking in his pigeon-toed, bear way, seemingly oblivious to our presence — or perhaps only to our importance.

"Qu-qu-qu-quq!"

My father's shrill call had only one meaning. The dogs shot forward as one, domestication set aside, exulting in their wolfish ancestry. Aside from pulling, this was their purpose: to aid their ally, man, against another predator. The hair along their backs stood straight like spines, teeth flashing ivory in the crisp air. But their attack was disciplined, sustained, heedless of individual concern.

A burst of fire, and it was over almost before it had registered with me. Fears dispelled, I simply stared at the body of that majestic creature. It was a moment before I realized that I had been admiring it the entire time — its irreplaceable beauty, its power and grace.

This time, we had been the predators, stacking the deck in our favour. Next time, who knew? It was impossible to keep the deck stacked, and this playing field tended to level itself.

My father thanked the bear's spirit for allowing us to capture it that day, saying that we hoped we would be as brave if, one day, we stood in its stead. Speak for yourself, I thought, looking upon that great frame, speaking toward it in my mind.

It will take a lifetime of summoning up my courage to face you. And perhaps I will never be as brave as you have been today, defending your life. I can only hope to try.

Pijariiqpunga.

If you could see a picture of my grandmother, you would know that she was a true Northern Beauty — raven hair, strong features, toned arms.

You would be able to see that she was not only sure and beautiful, but solid, emotionally and spiritually. She had to be, in order to raise a family of half a dozen (or so) boys, fulfill the role of a hunter's wife, and co-lead a camp of 30 extended family members. Not only did she have to provide enough direction and stability to survive in her unforgiving environment, but she had to see that her family actually thrived within it.

In photographs of her, she seems just under 40 years old, always running a busy Inuit household, a model of her time. She oversaw the making of an endless stream of hand-designed clothing, able to withstand the needs of the seasons, the wear and tear of a hunting lifestyle.

That would mean, among other things, successions of duffel socks, outer socks, sealskin boots, mitts, pants, parkas, woven belts, boys' wear — often specialized for alternating wet or dry environments. She also possessed the often-times secret Inuit sewing skills to construct men's hunting wear for different seasons and weather conditions. To top it off, everything had to be made according to her own region's idea of style.

To run a household of her size, and deal with the many game animals my grandfather provided for the camp, she would have had to process several hundred sealskins and countless char. She would have had to scrape and dry caribou-skin bedding for three households (her own, my great-grandmother's, and those of various aunts and uncles in the camps). She was also responsible for the gifts to myriad cousins, nieces, nephews, and us grandchildren (on both sides, of course).

As the wife of the camp leader, there were celebrations and meetings to organize and oversee. These would include Sunday services, requiring of each person a clean face and new set of clothing. I'm not even sure how she managed all of this along with the everyday stuff, like cooking, cleaning, and maintaining the home.

There was no electricity or running water, and therefore no dishwasher or vacuum cleaner to speed things along. And, of course, there was no TV to keep all the kids occupied — which was probably healthier for them, anyway.

She had a tremendous store of traditional knowledge to pass on to her children: how to light and maintain a qulliq, both summer and winter; how to make specialty Inuit "treats" like aluk, igunaq and ujjaq.

There were a lot of details about that lifestyle that I hadn't noticed until adulthood, until it was all gone. When I study old photographs, for example, I note that everyone wore woven belts. And then there was the complex beadwork, and the inlaid designs on their clothing — all time-consuming and intricate work; not at all for the faint of heart. It is a curse of adulthood that it is only by the time we are grown that we can understand the things we should have appreciated as children.

It is somehow tragic and unfair that her image exists now only in photographs, images that fill me with wonder and amazement at this incredible woman. Mostly, I wonder: Where did she find the time?

All of this work, and yet — unlike modern people — her face doesn't show a trace of stress or regret. She radiates life, fulfillment. Her children look healthy, lacking for nothing. The camp looks well cared for. It thrives.

Several of my aunts and uncles, in those photos, proudly display pets. Pets! Think about the resources required for such a luxury — but there they are, whether geese, seagulls, jaegers, ducks, or even a seal pup.

Where would my formidable grandmother, Qillaq, have acquired the sort of education necessary to run such an environment? What core of strength and discipline did she access in order to do so?

Perhaps simply from her own heritage, from my equally amazing great-grandmother, Arnoujaq. Her very name means, "Like a Woman," as though it were a tribute to the strength of women and mothers everywhere.

With this in mind, and as Mother's Day approaches, do I entreat each of us to regard the special power of the feminine, to regard our matrons, whose nature produces and preserves.

Pijariiqpunga.

It was my first year back from residential school — the first year that I actually got to live with my family after being away for so long. There were new experiences, such as learning how to deal with siblings who had sprung up in my absence, creating new family dynamics. It was all very exciting, but often-times confusing.

In residential school, I had lived with a couple of hundred children roughly my age. At home, I got to have a little sister. She was two years younger than me and cute as a button. While I often thought she didn't "get it" regarding a lot of things, you could tell she was working hard at it. Every year, she grew taller and smarter.

My father was a terrific hunter, but he was also a minister at that time. We lived in a little wooden house that he had built as an Anglican mission house, and all three of us sisters slept on a bed-platform. We were close to the coal-burning stove, so it was quite warm and cozy. My pet lemming had his nest behind the cooking stove, and would come out to greet me every morning. It was a very civil lemming.

As children, we were always bringing home animals. When we weren't, my father was bringing them to us, as in the case of my pet snowy owl (which wasn't as much fun as you might think — it just stared, rotated its neck, and demanded food). There were always boxes for various living creatures tucked away in odd corners.

And there was my sister's pet duckling. It was a loveable ball of fluffy down, which "peep-peep"-ed day and night. It would only eat bread soaked in milk, and never grew very big. I think it was missing something in its diet, something we were not providing. But it seemed happy enough, following us around everywhere we went.

One autumn day, we brought in some much more robust, well-grown ducklings that we had found near a lake. Being wild, they pooped all over the house, quickly becoming unpopular — especially when they peeped louder than the still-tiny original duckling.

My little sister was greatly alarmed, concerned that the bigger ducklings would conspire to eat her duckling in the middle of the night. We tried explaining to her that they wouldn't, even if they could. But she would not be swayed in her opinion, and one night insisted on taking her little duckling to bed with her, to keep it safe.

I'm not quite sure how to best describe what happened, so I'll state it plainly: The duckling was as flat as a pancake the next morning. She had rolled over her pet in the night, sleeping on top of it.

Now, I know it's evil, but I have to admit that, between the expression of horror on my sister's face, and the look of that utterly flattened duck, the comedy of it all just got to me. I forced myself to turn away, to pretend to be coughing or sneezing.

As much as I hated myself, I couldn't stop laughing. And I know I wasn't alone, because even my older sister was turning away — you could see her shoulders shuddering with her giggles. My little sister only stood there, emitting a plaintive, "Wahhhh!"

We gave it a burial in a shoe box lined with facial tissue, and a few flowers. To this day, I don't know the fate of the other ducks. I heard that my pet owl was caught by a hunter shortly after I released it to the wild, so it probably ended up as dog food.

In many ways, having a lot of animals as pets is a good learning experience. Pets teach us, and continually remind us, of the differences and similarities between other species and ourselves. Such an experience helps us to understand our own nature. Witnessing their various needs, various lives, various deaths, we learn to contemplate our own.

Ironically, while surrounded by dogs, Inuit have not traditionally regarded dogs as pets, since dogs have been reserved for work. It seems Inuit have always loved having pets, but these are generally "non-useful" animals, stumbled upon out while on the land.

(Continued next week.)

One could easily argue that keeping wild pets is a tradition among Inuit. A few years back, when I acquired several photographs of my grandparents, I noted an odd photo in the collection.

My grandparents were both concentrating on something in a bucket lashed to a qamutik. I examined it more closely, and realized that they were feeding a seal pup they were carrying with them.

This, I concluded, was probably the pet seal my father had been known to keep. It would come when he called it. He raised it to adulthood, but was later pressured into killing it so that a photographer could get a shot of "traditional" Inuit hunting.

Regrettably, this seems to be the all-too-common fate of wild pets. Those taken in — like my sister's squashed duck — never seem to last long. At best, they are raised until the age of release, but are later handicapped in the wild. They have no survival skills and no natural fear of humans, so they are easily bagged by a hunter — as was the fate of my owl. Inuit seem to have always recognized this problem, since folklore abounds with cautionary tales of pets that get out of control or leave forever after being taken for granted.

In Inuktitut, the word for pet is "tiguaq" — the taken one. The word is similar in flavour to "adopted." Not all animals make good pets, of course, but Inuit have never failed to experiment, raising anything they find. Wolves and foxes are known as the worst pet material, since they consistently resist domestication.

Loons, and some species of tern, are just too fragile to survive among humans, generally requiring some specialized diet. On the other hand, seagulls, jaegers, ravens, seals and polar bears by all accounts make excellent, highly intelligent pets. I've often heard stories of camps that raised polar bear cubs to adulthood — sort of "communal" pets. And I have several black-and-whites of people with their pet bear cub running around on a long tether.

It is hard to know what kind of balance to strike when wanting pets. We have a responsibility to other species to see that we don't screw them up by taking them out of their natural environment. But then again, we are part of their natural environment. And we have a responsibility to ourselves — as a human animal in the keeping of our own psyche — to maintain our psychological health through contact with the other creatures we evolved alongside of.

Felines used to commonly be accused of cruelty, of toying with their prey, but now we know that this is how they learn to hunt. Killer whales have been observed playing with live seals, tossing them back and forth for a while before eating them. A predator must understand its prey before it can catch it, and interaction with a prey animal in a "safe" environment is vital to such understanding.

We, too, are predators, but we have developed the ability to channel our tendencies into alternate behaviours. To some degree, our own interest in animals derives from this predatorial heritage. We use pets to practice our socialization instead of our killing. We learn to empathize with them, and therefore each other.

Yet as the potential destroyers of our environment, we have now become the stewards of it, bringing into question whether or not it is a good idea to keep wild pets anymore. Ironically, we can ill-afford our old learning tools.

Some overpopulated cultures have legislated against having pets at all. But it seems to me that the lack of them somehow makes humans more icy, stiff and neurotic. I don't want to see this happen to Inuit. Similarly, I don't want traditional skills to suffer for lack of interaction with the land and its inhabitants.

It is a dilemma, and one that I am not wise enough to solve at the moment. How do we nourish our love of animals without harming them? Too far to one side, and we end up lonely and neurotic. Too far to the other, and we end up with a duck pancake.

Although I often lie awake at night, thinking about the time my father offered to get me a gyrfalcon. It would have been beautiful, and I would have fed it lemmings, and taught it to hunt, and…

Pijariiqpunga.

If you hear enough Inuit stories, something may strike you as odd, perhaps even a bit eerie. Strangely, it is not the magical, imaginative occurrences — such as animal transformations and shamanic feats — that are so peculiar. Instead, it is that you may recognize things that existed in the ancient past, things that have somehow wormed their way into myth and legend.

Taitsumaniguuq:

A hunter was having the poorest sort of luck. He was paddling along in his kayak, despondent. He hadn't sighted any prey, and had pretty much given up. He was half-heartedly swishing his paddle through the water, watching the ripples trail away from it, when he thought he heard a grunt.

He looked up to see a distant figure standing on an ice-cake, and wondered why he hadn't spotted him earlier. It was obviously someone who had become stranded.

He paddled over. As he approached, he could see that it was a very short, heavy-set man. The stranded man looked quite dour, but even from this distance the hunter could see that his clothes were very finely made — perhaps the finest he had ever seen.

Saying nothing, the hunter brought his kayak up to the ice-cake, stepped out of it, and secured it firmly. While he did this, he periodically looked over his shoulder at the stranded man, and noted that the man seemed fascinated at the way the hunter secured his kayak. It was as though the stranded figure had never seen anyone secure a kayak along the ice edge before.

The hunter then stepped closer to the stranded man, hands up in greeting. The man simply glared sullenly, stepping back a pace. At this, the hunter stopped and asked:

"How come you're out here with no kayak?"

The man squinted distrustfully, before answering,

"My kayak drifted away. That's the third time this season, and it's beginning to upset me."

The hunter was more than a bit taken aback by this confession, and unsure of what to say, when the stranded man asked,

"I noticed you had a way of keeping your kayak from drifting off. Do you mind showing me how you did that?"

The hunter agreed, and walked the stranded man over to his kayak, showing him how to secure it. While he did so, his eyes kept glancing over to the stranger's bow, slung over his shoulder. The bow was so long (or perhaps it was simply that the man was so short) that its lower end trailed along the ground as he walked.

But that wasn't what the hunter found so remarkable. Instead, it was the workmanship of the weapon. Unlike the bows the hunter was used to, the stranded man's bow was constructed almost entirely from a single piece, perhaps whalebone. The cordage was perfectly lashed and wound, such that the whole bow seemed as much a work of art as a tool. The hunter had never seen its like.

He drew out his explanation of how to secure the kayak, giving himself time to think. Now, he was more puzzled than ever. He couldn't figure out how it was that this stranger possessed such fantastic clothes and tools, and at once was so incompetent that he could not secure a kayak, as a child might be able to do.

For a brief instant, the hunter entertained the idea that perhaps the short man simply had a very competent wife. But he quickly dismissed this notion, since it could not explain the bow — which the man himself would have had to make.

Somewhat disturbed, he smiled nervously at the stranded man, who smiled back.

"Thanks," he said, "I'll try to remember that trick. Now, can you give me a lift back home?"

The hunter's smile faded.

"I can't," he said. "This is just a one-person kayak. You'll be too heavy."

The stranded man began to laugh at this. For a moment, he was doubled up with laughter, and the hunter stepped away from him, wondering if he was crazy.

At the sight of the hunter's alarm, the stranded man curbed his laughter a bit, but still couldn't entirely quit chuckling. He beamed at the hunter and said,

"You Inuit… hilarious! I can make myself light or heavy at will!"

(Continued next week.)

"Quit joking," the hunter said to the stranded dwarf, more than a little spooked.

But the dwarf just kept on chuckling, saying:

"I'm not joking. All my people make themselves light or heavy at will. We do it all the time. It's easy. I had forgotten that your kind can't."

By the time the dwarf had finished this statement, the hunter had realized that this was not a human being he was speaking to. He had heard his father and uncles tell stories of these people, the "Tunit." They were a folk who possessed strange powers and knowledge, but lacked common sense. While they made many wondrous things, they were not as cunning as Inuit, and so remained few in number.

This explained why the stranded dwarf owned such a fabulous bow, why he wore such fine clothing, and yet seemed to lack the good sense to pull his kayak out of the water when he wasn't using it. It explained why he was stranded, why, as the dwarf had stated, his kayak had drifted away for "the third time this season."

And now this Tunik wanted a ride back home. The hunter was scared to oblige him, since he didn't really understand what kind of creature he was dealing with here. Would the Tunik kill him along the way? Once they arrived? If he simply refused the Tunik's request, would the creature become angered and attack him? The hunter couldn't see any good coming out of this.

The dwarf was now glaring at him, and asked:

"So, are you going to give me a ride or not?"

Seeing no alternative, the hunter agreed, and wriggled into his kayak. Once he was set, the dwarf took a flying leap, landing on the stern. The hunter winced, expecting to get doused with icy brine, but the kayak hardly even bobbed in the water.

He looked directly behind him, and there sat the Tunik, grinning fiercely, gripping the kayak with his legs. It was just as the Tunik had said: he now weighed little more than a feather.

So the two of them set off toward the Tunik's home. The dwarf gave directions, insisting that it was only a couple of days away. They talked little along the way. The hunter was very frightened, and felt as though he was being kidnapped. The Tunik seemed to sense this, and held his tongue, perhaps hoping that it would minimize the Inuk's stress.

What the Tunik did seem keen on was watching the hunter at all times. He seemed fascinated by the way the hunter did normal, everyday things. How he checked the ice and snow periodically. How he studied the weather patterns far off on the horizon. Even how he ate. It all made the hunter very edgy, and he was actually relieved by the time they came to the Tunit camp.

How does one go about describing a Tunit camp? The trick is to do the place justice in few words, for it is utterly inhuman, and therefore can never make much sense to our kind. But the hunter found himself there, as one of those rarest of Inuit does, experiencing it with his human faculties.

So we had best try to keep up with him, in terms that we can understand, if for no other reason than to facilitate the story. Let us just bear in mind that we look upon the Tunit through our own awkward little lens, as though trying to gaze through a window that is far, far away — and that the Tunit, in trying to comprehend us, might feel the same strangeness.

We can never fully understand what that hunter experienced. After all, he was a guest of the Tunit, and we were not.

Here resided a scene of unrivaled wealth and beauty, where even the most common sorts of tools were of a craftsmanship that the hunter had never before imagined. He could see now that the bow his companion bore, that which he had so admired, was very ordinary in comparison to the way the Tunit routinely fashioned their items.

Even the toys of the Tunit children were extravagant works of art. It was as though the Tunit would not tolerate that which was plain or ugly among them.

(Continued next week.)

Despite the dread that the hunter had borne since realizing the dwarf was not human, his awe at witnessing the Tunit camp was such that his heart began to fill with joy, eventually giving way even to laughter. Never had he beheld such perfection as existed among the Tunit.

For it was not simply the items crafted by the Tunit that were so fine. The beauty of such objects paled to that of the Tunit women. One of the many, many things that made the Tunit so strange was the great difference in the appearances of their men and women.

While the hunter noticed that all the men were, like his rescued companion, of dwarf-like stature, unsightly and dumpy-looking, the women were the complete opposite; theirs was a radiant, timeless beauty that he had never before envisioned.

The Tunik that had travelled with the hunter until now quickly spoke in his odd tongue to his fellow Tunit, gesturing at the hunter as he did so.

This is it, thought the hunter as he watched them, I'm as good as dead now.

But he was wrong. As quick as light flashes across water, smiles appeared upon the faces of the Tunit. They welcomed the hunter, bringing him sumptuous foods, and speaking of the feast hall that was to be built in his honour. They found him a luxurious place to rest, after which he awoke to find that all of his vulgar human belongings had been replaced with the finery that means Tunit craftsmanship. For a small eternity, he laughed to himself, pulling at the perfect string of the perfect bow they had given him — a weapon superior even to the bow possessed by his Tunik companion, that which he had at first so coveted upon meeting the dwarf.

So began the uncounted days of feasting, of dancing, of singing, of games and laughter that surrounded the hunter like a warm blanket does a child, dulling his memories of the world of men, so that it seemed he had always been one with the Tunit, counting himself among their number and ways.

For the Tunit seemed not to treat him any differently than one of their own, except perhaps in that they never tired of his company, always questioning, wondering at his mind, thinking him the wisest of beings for his knowledge of the land, his skill at hunting upon it and surviving without the powers innate to Tunit nature.

But they could not know that there was one other way in which the hunter always felt like an outsider while among them, a feeling that waxed like a cancer within him. Always in secret, always to himself, he wondered why none of the Tunit women offered themselves to him. With every attempt that he made at romance, the women would simply laugh in their ticklish, butterfly ways, brushing him off with the promise that they would meet up with him later. And later never came.

Time drew itself out. One day, the hunter snapped, muttering to himself,

"So I am like a favoured dog, one who is allowed to sleep in the entrance to the home, but not among the masters."

Firelight danced across his skin as he watched a Tunit female laughing next to him for the thousandth time, as the singing of others, in nearby tents, rang in his ears. But there was no return laughter this time. The day before, he had prepared his belongings, and he was ready to go. He intended to leave this place that had at last become empty for him. And he had arranged to be alone with this girl. There was one last thing to do.

Leaping up, he seized the girl, who at first assumed that the whole thing was play, and so did not resist him. He pulled her outside, sharply commanding that she silence her giggling, as he gazed away, off across the horizon. As he had guessed, the weather was perfect, and it was his intention to get away on foot.

"You like me, don't you?" he whispered to her in a hot, low voice. "I like you. I want to be with you, and together we'll leave this place."

She looked at him, stunned for a moment, as though unsure of what to say.

Then she screamed.

(Continued next week.)

The last thing the hunter had expected was to hear the girl scream.

He shook her violently, hissing through bared teeth,

"Shut up! Be silent, will you?"

Her mouth snapped shut. She regarded him through baleful eyes, clouded with tears. He cast furtive glances left and right, expecting the dwarfish males to rouse themselves, but there were none of her Tunit relatives in sight. He turned back to her.

"Look, there's no need for that. I want you as my wife. I've stayed here too long. I'm not a Tunik. Don't you want to meet my family?"

Her face was vacant, unreadable.

He took her by the wrist, moved from tent to tent, staying low, encouraging her to do likewise.

Eventually, they made their way out among the rocks, where there were places to hide. When the hunter at last could view the Tunit encampment from a distance, he straightened, quickening his pace. Then he turned to grin at the girl, pointing toward something in the distance and saying,

"Over there is the shore, where I placed my kayak. That's where we're going."

He was counting on what he knew of the Tunit ability to make themselves heavy or light at will, which was how he had originally rescued the stranded Tunik man from the ice-cake, so long ago. Now, he would make away with the Tunik girl in the same manner.

But at his words, the girl experienced a resurgence of panic. She wrenched herself from his grip, crying,

"Husband! Save me!"

"Husband?" the hunter gasped. He had never seen her with a husband, never in the entire time he had been among the Tunit.

For long moments, he watched her helplessly. Then a movement from the Tunit camp caught his attention. There was a distant, snaking line making its way toward them — a dogsled.

And here he was, caught on foot.

The girl was still screaming when the hunter bolted. Still, he would not leave her. He seized her wrist again.

"Come!" he snarled.

Now he was half-dragging her. Still, she cried aloud. But his lips pressed together in a grim line of determination. He doubled his pace, forcing her to keep up. He would not flee empty-handed from this place, like some bad dog with a stone at its heels. The kayak was near.

But the girl's husband was almost upon them, and the hunter didn't bother to look as he heard the sled-dogs approach. His hope was that the rocky ground would halt the qamutiq, forcing the dwarf to run after them. The hunter was sure that the stumpy males could not run well.

So he was surprised when he was suddenly seized by the shoulder and whirled around, and even further surprised when he looked into the face of the girl's husband. For it was the very dwarf whom he had rescued upon the ice-cake.

The girl took the opportunity to tear herself away, while the dwarf shoved the hunter violently.

"Why did you do this?" cried the Tunik, while his wife huddled behind him. "Was I unkind? Does your breed normally steal wives? What's wrong with you?"

There was a fragment of thought wherein the hunter truly thought of apologizing, of explaining his actions. But, by now, anxiety churned within him. Rage and fear wracked his face. He was the victim here, not the Tunit!

Blindly, he bolted one last time, but the Tunik caught him by his wrists. Like a trapped animal, the hunter writhed in the grasp of the dwarf, whose fingers were like stone.

The strength of the Tunit is many, many times that of men. So it was perhaps inevitable that there came the twin cracklings of bone giving way, the scream of the hunter's mad agonies. The Tunik, shocked at the hunter's fragility, instantly released him in surprise.

There were no words as the hunter fled, leaving the Tunit forever behind him. As before, he fled to his kayak, barely managing to get himself into the water. His wrists had been crushed.

Unable to paddle effectively, he drifted away and at last died alone. And thus did he fade from the memory of all living beings — all but any who listen to such tales as this.

(Next week: Who are the Tunit?)

The story that I have related over the past four articles is actually a fusion of two Inuit folktales, told in various forms all over the Arctic. These tales number among the many Inuit traditional stories featuring the Tunit - a strange, ancient people today represented within the framework of a peculiar mixture of paleoarchaeology and folklore.

The first tale was about a hunter who rescues a Tunik and is welcomed by the other Tunit as a hero. By itself, this is a "happily ever after" sort of tale.

The second story is of a hunter who tries to abduct a Tunik woman (again, the common female abduction theme in Inuit folklore). The Tunik woman's husband tries to restrain the hunter, but accidentally breaks his wrists, ultimately killing him.

Less commonly, you can find these tales told as a single story, and this is the way I chose to present them here. I wanted to provide a good, meaty example of typical Tunit-Inuit relations in the folklore, so that we can have a look at who the Tunit really are.

Let's deal with folklore first.

Tunit were the first people, those who were here before Inuit. As stated before, the males were commonly thought to be short and stumpy, dwarf-like, while the females looked just like the most beautiful of Inuit women.

The old stories agree on several points. First, the Tunit were prodigiously strong, even to the point of accidentally causing harm to Inuit. Second, they lacked practical survival knowledge. Third, they are now extinct.

Tales regarding their technology vary - some state that the Tunit were technologically lacking, having no knowledge of how to make proper clothing, fire or tools, and owning no sleds or dogs.

Conversely, many state that the Tunit were master craftsmen, existing at a level of skill that has never been seen before or since, and that when Inuit first settled in Tunit lands, it was the Tunit who taught them how to make bows and other valuable tools. Like mysterious, folkloric beings the world over, they were often thought to possess magical powers. Some tales speak of their ability to make themselves light or heavy at will, while others mention an ability to make themselves invisible.

The powers attributed to the Tunit are suspiciously similar to those attributed to another race of folkloric beings from Inuit tales - those known as "Inugarulliit." The Inugarulliit are much like the beings mentioned in the faery lore of Europe and the U.K. - tiny versions of Inuit, who can appear and disappear at will, and who sometimes exhibit various other magical abilities.

But while Inugarulliit can choose the size they want to appear, it is commonly said that they use lemmings as sled dogs. This would seem to imply that they are "normally" very diminutive, making them quite different from the Tunit - the males of whom are simply short.

Also, the folklore seems to agree that Inugarulliit technology is identical to that of Inuit, with tools and weapons so tiny they resemble toys. This, too, is very different from the Tunit, for Tunit tales seem to go out of their way to point out how abnormal the Tunit technology is, whether better or worse than that of Inuit.

Tales vary from area to area, and many change over time. Consequently, some stories have gradually come to confuse Tunit and Inugarulliit, so that one sort of folkloric people takes on aspects of the other. This is only aggravated by the fact that many of the written records we can access on Inuit folklore - tales recorded by explorers and scholars - use the English term "dwarf" to alternately describe either Inugarulliit or Tunit.

But whatever the reason, the nature of the Tunit has become more and more magical in Inuit folklore as the years have rolled by. Folklore has lent the Tunit something of the Inugarulliit nature over time, so that in many of the stories we know today, they exhibit magical abilities.

It might seem like nitpicking, discussing what supernatural powers have been attributed to the Tunit. But the importance of this becomes more clear when we remember that the Tunit were very real - a people known to modern science as the "Dorset" culture.

(Next week: the last Tunik.)

Inuit are extremely loyal to their oral traditions, always reluctant to alter story details. This tendency becomes stronger as one looks further west, with Alaskan storytellers refusing to even tell a story if they cannot remember a minor character's name.

Even in the east, it was normal for a storyteller who had forgotten part of a tale to end it prematurely, rather than substituting his or her own imaginings. This explains the segmented feel of many Inuit stories — most tales are actually only chapters of much larger epics. For example, the beloved Kiviuq (the wayward shaman culture-hero) is spoken of in many short adventures, but all "Kiviuq stories" are actually part of a larger, overarching epic, having a distinct beginning and end.

Thanks to such fidelity, we can use Inuit folklore as a kind of murky, cultural lens, snatching glimpses of the very real past. Tales are always drawn from the real experiences of their inventors — consciously or not. Ideas are shape-shifters, but they originate from somewhere.

In the case of the Tunit, the folklore would immediately seem to conflict. As already mentioned, some of the Tunit tales tell of their incompetence — others of their wisdom. Most stories portray them as a peculiar paradox, stupid in some ways while clever in others.

So which version is true? I think that we can detect the truth by setting folklore side-by-side with archaeohistory. We know that Inuit are of the Thule culture, while Tunit are the Dorset. We also know that the Thule, in order to adapt to an increasingly colder Arctic, developed ingenious technologies that enabled them to hunt sea-mammals efficiently. The Thule then moved into Dorset lands.

Try to imagine, then, what these people must have experienced, and what they must have thought of each other. The Thule/Inuit would have had admirable tools and hunting methods; but as newcomers, they would not have known the land. The Dorset/Tunit would seem more primitive by comparison, having far less efficient hunting techniques and technologies — but they must have had the advantage of wisdom, of knowing the land and the seasons in their part of the world, of knowing when specific animals come and go, of how to read the weather.

Many Inuit tales state things like, "The Tunit were incompetent, but they taught Inuit many things." This sounds almost insane, and yet it may actually be the honest truth.

It seems likely to me that the reason for this Inuit folkloric perception (also note the lack of open warfare between Tunit and Inuit) results from the fact that there was an exchange of knowledge between the two peoples from the time that Inuit first arrived in Tunit lands.

As newcomers, Inuit would not have known the land very well, and would have depended upon the Tunit — who knew it then as well as Inuit know it today — to teach them about the geography, weather patterns, and animal migratory patterns. In this way, the Tunit would have seemed knowledgeable to Inuit. And yet Inuit would immediately have noticed that the Tunit didn't think to use toggles on their harpoons, to build boats, to have dogs pull their sleds, et cetera. In this way, the Tunit would have seemed stupid to Inuit.

Then this would make the folklore true — to Inuit, the Tunit were at once wise and inept.

Before I end, I should note that Inuit are far from unique in having such folklore — that of shy, short-yet-robust beings, odd in their nature, possessing ancient wisdom. Many cultures around the world mention such beings in their folklore, the most well-known perhaps being from Europe, and especially Scandinavia.

Many archeologists and folklorists believe that these beings, like the Tunit, derive from older, primitive peoples that faded away in the face of migratory waves of technologically advanced peoples. As a land's older occupants dwindle into obscurity, so do they take on folkloric status to its current occupants. They are the long-ago ones, those who dwell in the bones of the world.

So Inuit are fortunate, for the last of the Tunit did not live so long ago. Not so much of them has been lost as otherwise might have been, remaining preserved in that loyal, wonderful, oral tradition. It is not much of a monument to the Tunit culture, but it will have to do.

Pijariiqpunga.

Saami is not his real name, but it's close enough.

Even if it were his real name, few people would know him — would know how he was — unless they knew him from childhood.

The "who" of Saami was this: he was the youngest child of a then-prominent family. The "how" of him was this: he was born a bit different. Only, I didn't know it then, and by the time it mattered, it didn't matter to me anyway. I'll explain.

Saami's oxygen flow had been disrupted when he was in his mother's womb, leaving him with a paralysed eye and speech difficulties. He spoke rarely, and even then quite slowly, as though struggling along.

Before meeting him, the rest of us kids were told to be gentle with him; he had a heart condition.

But to see him play, we would never have suspected a problem. He was terrific fun, a regular kid. He was just Saami — one of our friends.

And I guess comprehending that is the key to understanding his story and ours, and the attitudes everyone used to hold, and how all that changed, much, much later.

You need to know that Saami had a heart of gold. He never threw tantrums. He never harmed anyone. He was gentle as the day is long. And in the Arctic summers, that is very long indeed.

We played with Saami throughout the winter, when only the northern lights brightened the sky, back when it was magical, a ghostly ball-game played out with a great walrus head. It was not long after that we were taken to boarding school — where lessons quickly transformed those lights into an atmospheric electromagnetic agitation, a bombardment of particles producing photons, absorbed by rods and cones in our eyes, perceived by our brains as colour.

These were the days of our cultural downfall, our lessons in English enforced with strappings for speaking anything but that language. We were an uncivilized people on the road to "meaningful employment", becoming "part of the Canadian mosaic." Our old values not only became invalid, but were openly reviled. We were "Eskimos", "Qarmaaliit," "Eaters of Raw Meat".

These were the days of my harshest lesson: many people enjoy cruelty. I actually remember the day when it came to the forefront of my consciousness, crystallizing abruptly, like a slap. It was during lunch break. I was waiting for Saami's sister, my best friend, to come out of the gym.

I overheard a couple of jocks, laughing over Saami being placed in "OT" (Occupational Therapy) — pretty much janitorial training. Saami was referred to as that "slow guy," that "idiot." What was it to them anyway? I raged within.

The bullying got worse, of course, as bullying does, so that it oftentimes seemed like the kids in Stringer Hall and Grollier Hall were really in training to refine this very skill. And trying to protect someone from bullying is like trying to chase gulls away from an exposed piece of meat — you can work all day, but there is an endless supply of gulls.

The gulls were being trained by the teachers, by the merciless hours of degradation in and out of class — some criminal in nature. Some of the students were morally weak, absorbing the hatred from their teachers. Such moral weaklings exorcised their frustration by taking it out on physically weaker kids, such as Saami. The nature of the bully.

In retrospect, I don't think even one child could have been protected from the horrible treatment received at any of the "halls" established in the name of acculturating us. The institutions held all the cards, our parents knew nothing of what was going on, and I doubt that even a murdered child would have warranted much of an investigation.

But Saami's abuse leaves me with one primary question: Was this the "Canadian mosaic" we were supposed to join? The promise of such schools was that children who once played together, with all as equals, would later be encouraged to focus upon each others' differences, to think of some as superior, others as inferior.

This is better? You can't show me a lifestyle that is so rewarding that it is worth this kill-or-be-killed way of relating to others.

I can only hope that when Saami looks up at the northern lights, he still remembers the great game they once were.

Pijariiqpunga.

"And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon that is dreaming..."
- Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven

The Japanese have a culture-hero named Yoshitsune. He is the hero of a mythologized era when Japan was in the throes of civil war. Most folklorists think that Yoshitsune's era was around the 12th century, when Japan indeed was at war, but so long ago that its events have mingled with myth and folklore over time.

The story of Yoshitsune is long, but in one small part of it, Yoshitsune finds himself in the mountains. There, he encounters strange creatures known as "tengu." These are crow-men - their torsos are humanoid, but they have crow feet, talons, black feathers, little crow wings growing out of their backs and entire crow heads.

The tengu are the repositories of much wisdom alien to mankind, but they accept Yoshitsune as their pupil. Because they agree with his noble destiny, they do him the favour of training him. They teach him the secret martial art of the sword, "kenjutsu." After Yoshitsune finally leaves them, he gathers his own warriors together and teaches them this tengu knowledge. Thus, it is said that the most important skill of the samurai warrior class - the art of fencing - is the gift of these crow-men to warring humanity.

On Aug. 8, 2002, the BBC online world edition displayed a peculiar story - the startling observations of a team of British zoologists at Oxford University. These observations concerned a crow named Betty. Betty had been presented with a problem. Her food was placed in a container, a sort of miniature bucket, complete with handle. This container was in turn placed in a clear tube. The food-container sat at the bottom of the tube, out of range of her beak.

What did Betty do? She took a piece of straight wire (which she acquired from a male bird named Abel, incidentally) and bent the wire into a hook. This she used, held in her beak, to lift the food-container out of the tube. In subsequent tests, she did this over and over again, even though she had never been taught how to make a hook before. In other words, she had exercised creativity. She had thought of it on her own.
Most people would readily admit that this is pretty clever for a bird, especially since many young children would never think to retrieve an object by fashioning a hook.

But Betty's ingenuity really shines when we consider what the Oxford researchers pointed out. This is what really made her behaviour so special: it is the first time that a non-human creature has been observed to solve a problem by fashioning a new tool for itself from scratch. Even our closest non-human relative, the chimpanzee, has never been observed do this.

In the countless tests done with chimps over the decades, they have exhibited tool use many times, but no animal has ever actually made a new tool to suit a unique problem. Betty is a first. In other words, the simple crow has finally proven to the clinical world that it is not so simple.

This probably wouldn't surprise a lot of old Inuit hunters. Inuit folklore agrees with the Japanese that the crow or raven (same thing for our purposes) has always been the thinker, the trouble-maker, the cunning one - sometimes the saviour.

Crows and ravens, along with their distant cousins, the jays, are all corvids, from the Latin corvus, which just means "crow." The corvids all seem to have mixed measures of boldness and cleverness in common, which makes me recall that, when I was growing up, Inuit always thought of ravens as the best sort of bird pets. They were those rare animals that were considered to possess "isuma" (human-like awareness), which made them good companions. And it also helped that they were able to eat just about anything.

Like much of the rest of the world, Inuit seem to have mixed reactions to corvids - or more specifically, ravens. Just as the raven fades from a lighter, more admirable cast, to a darker, diabolical cast as we look from place to place across Europe, so it does the same as we look east to west across the Arctic.

(Continued next week.)

Most Inuit know the story of the raven and the owl. In this tale, the birds begin as companions. The story is set in those oldest of days when animals (and humans) could shape-shift at will, and animals used the same tools as man.

The owl and raven were said to be completely white. The pair begin in a state of boredom, desperately trying to entertain themselves, constantly thinking up games to play.

Eventually, it occurs to them that it might be fun to paint each other with lamp-black. First, the raven paints markings on the owl, who is very pleased after the job is done. The owl then tries to do the same for the raven. The raven, however, is severely distracted (the type of distraction varies, but most often he is excited about his new pair of boots).

The raven will not sit still while being painted. The owl, increasingly angered by the raven's impatience, simply hurls the paint at him, blackening the raven from head to toe. In mutual enmity, the two fly off separately, and have worn their respective colours ever since.

Given the popularity of this story, most people might be surprised to know that it is only the most recent version, a mainly eastern Arctic one. As we look westward, toward Kugluktuk, we find much different versions.

In one version, the raven is the angry party. Again, he starts out white. In this tale, a seagull is always stealing his food. Finally, the raven can't take it anymore, and he rails at the seagull. Laughing, the seagull blackens the raven all over with charcoal.

Incidentally, an old squaw duck — who also starts out white — tries to stick up for the raven, only to get blackened as well.

The raven's character starts to look a bit better as we travel west. In the eastern story, the raven deserves what he gets, since he is the fool that will not sit still. There is a hint of culture prerogative here. Eastern Inuit (of which I am one) have modified the story to suit their own priorities.

As the east fosters many seal-hunting peoples, it is only natural that such cultures dislike individuals lacking the discipline to sit still and quiet. The hunter who could not sit still while waiting over a seal's breathing-hole usually starved. To the east, stillness was survival.

In the west, where stillness was less vital, there was no need to turn the raven into a lesson in foolishness. As illustrated above, the western raven is deprived of his meal by the seagull, then punished for complaining about it.

If anything, this version is characteristic of that recurrent theme in western storytelling: conflict is to be avoided at all costs. Even when it seems justified, conflict simply begets greater conflict — and ultimately only disaster.

This is understandable when we consider that Inuit have occupied the west longer than they have the east, so that conflict, whether in escalation or resolution, takes on a desperate sort of tone.

As we look even further west, toward the Mackenzie Delta, the raven takes on an even milder personality. This time, conflict is absent; there is simply an accident. Here we find the ancestor of the eastern raven-and-owl tale, except that the two birds are the raven and the yellow-billed loon.

In this story, it is not so much that the birds are both white as that they both wish to become beautiful. So they agree to paint each other with various patterns. The raven does a lovely job on the loon. But as the loon takes his turn as painter, a man suddenly stumbles across them. The loon, panicked, flies away, leaving the poor old raven with a simple coat of black base paint. (In another version, the frenzied loon accidentally spills it on him).

We now have the raven as neither fool nor fighter, but simply the victim of cruel fate. Man is the bumbler.

Raven simply gets better and better as we look westward. By the time we view him in Alaska, he has been elevated entirely past fool, fighter, or even victim. There, raven is a hero.

(Continued next week.)

I shall now conclude my series on the importance of the raven to Inuit culture.

This has been an unusual series in that, from the beginning, it has been plagued with interruptions (the details of which I won't plague you, the reader, with). But such discontinuity has been useful in one respect: it has allowed some time in which readers can approach me, on the street, at the grocery store, regarding the articles. In each instance when I've been approached, the question has been the same:

What happened to the raven?

Honestly, the question delights me, but isn't surprising. The reason I've had ravens on the brain is that Inuit culture has always held such a special place for them. They are the great hecklers and pranksters of the Arctic's windswept haunts.

In the last few articles, I've been writing out a very, very ancient Alaskan creation myth — the story of how the raven finds himself existent, alone, the first being. His own existence is a mystery to him. All he knows is that he has the power to create other plants and animals.

His first act is to create a plant, a beach-pea, which produces a man from its pod. The raven takes responsibility for this accidental creation by caring for the man and teaching him how to survive. Now everyone wants to know how the story ends.

The truth? It doesn't. The raven's tale is not only one of the most widespread myths in Alaska, but also one of the longest. The raven is the great culture-hero and numen of Alaska, both creator and adventurer.

The creation of the plant and the man were only the beginning. It was the raven who deliberately made woman, realizing that the man needed her. As he did so, that first plant still lay on the beach, hatching out three more men. And so the raven created mates for them as well. Together, they were the beginnings of the human race.

They propagated while the raven himself flew all around the world, creating every kind of creature — even other ravens, images of himself. But he got into a lot of trouble as well; such as when he got himself stuck in a whale's belly, for example; or like the time when he had to will himself to be born to a girl whose father held the glowing stone that would later be shaped into the sun and moon. The old man wouldn't allow anyone but himself light enough to hunt by, you see, so the raven really had no choice but to steal it, providing light for all.

This barely scratches the surface of the wealth of Alaskan raven stories and, yes, many such stories are versions of those existent in the eastern Arctic. A nice, meaty, detailed telling of the raven's full adventures demands a more dedicated storyteller than I — as well as a text about the size of a novel.

All I'm trying to illustrate over the course of these articles, by discussing first the eastern raven tales and then moving westward to the spectacular Alaskan ones, is that the raven is the Arctic's special bird.

Across the ocean, the bird's image as a creature of darkness is just about set and final. There was a time when it was cherished in Europe. It was a symbol of the Celtic triple-faced goddess known as Badb, whose domains included fate and battle.

To the Norsemen, it was the ultimate symbol of wisdom, so that Odin, greatest of the gods, had the twin ravens Hugin and Munin ("thought" and "memory") sitting on his shoulders, whispering to him of all the things that they had witnessed while daily flying over the earth. Tragically, it was this very non-Christian reverence that caused the church to later demonize the bird, associating it with devils and black magic.

So I sigh a breathe of relief when I think of the Arctic, noting that it remains a place where this fantastic bird is relatively free of evil repute. West Nile virus, as we now know, is on its slow march northwards — a disease that kills corvids swiftly and rapaciously. May God spare the Arctic. I don't want to lose one such heavy wing-beat, the flash of blue-rippling-black, that voice that often murmurs like a man. Our raven.

Pijariiqpunga.

The smoking man sat on a bench, with little movement other than the occasional shift of his legs, crossed in an "S" in front of him.

What was he thinking? I wondered. He hardly ever moved, except to look up and smile at me. He was deathly quiet, but his face was kind. As a child, I thought of his eyes as "smiley."

Whatever haunted him was near to his thoughts, since a shadow would often seem to ripple over his brow. Maybe, I wondered, it was lost family. I knew that whatever he had experienced had been horrendous. From the little I knew of his family, life had been harsh to them.

I knew, for example, that they had been rescued from death by starvation. I had heard that many in their camp had been lost. It was said that, in order to survive, the smoking man had once stalked a lone caribou for three days — no sleep, no food, no drink.

Just imagine focussing your entire being, for 72 hours, upon a single target. Imagine forcing yourself to utter stillness, despite the cramps and hallucinations experienced from intense hunger and fatigue. Can any of us imagine life desicated down to such basic meaning, all extraneous aspects of it shed till only that dry, lonely, peach pit of instinct is left? The only meaning left in the world is survival — feeding yourself, your family.

Doesn't it make you want to laugh when people come home from a long day at work, talking of "stress?"

It was also said that the smoking man had run out of ammunition in seasons past. He had crept up on the caribou and leapt upon its back, tackling it with his last shred of withered strength.

Only the tiniest fraction of us can imagine such ordeals. But this does not alter the fact that the survivors of many such families still surround us today — families whose children and grandchildren are now our friends, our neighbours. Yet they live in silence on such past events, emotions locked in a kind of glacial mode, their suffering left unstated.

Like the smoking man, they are living records of the harsh realities of yesteryear. Underneath their calm demeanour lies long-spanning tragedy, their very survival a punctuation of triumph within it.

I knew this from the limited stories I had heard of unbelievable suffering. Here was a girl who had been forced to leave a sister while on a trek of starvation. Here was a mother who had to euthanise her own first-born child. Here was a couple who had to look away as an elder was cast adrift on a bleak pan of ice, one too many mouths to feed. And there were darker stories, rumours of murderous pacts between families, of cannibalism.

Even my family has its horror stories, those I won't address here. But as with the smoking man, they still pass over us, shadow-like, from time to time.

As I have developed a modern perspective, casting an ever more critical and (I hope) objective eye upon Inuit culture, I have occasionally wondered if such elders as the smoking man would benefit from therapy. I quickly dismiss such notions.

There is a reason why the smoking man sits in silence. It is the silence of the war veteran, of the refugee, the silence of one who has experienced more horror than another can know from words.

Most of us make a life of protective covers for ourselves. Like clothes over clothes, we lay one layer after another upon our psyches — protecting us, making us secure over time. Each layer is made up of ideas, of sentiments, perspectives, things we would like to believe about ourselves, the world, our place within it.

The smoking man — and those like him — had the world rip away those layers long ago. Every security, every paradigm, had been savagely rent, until only the most primal self, the human animal craving life at all costs, finally escaped death.

A person takes long years to regain such lost layers, and usually doesn't live to finish the job. Where would a therapist begin? How would one find a therapist who could even comprehend such trauma?

For the smoking man, for others like him, the very act of living is his therapy.

And so the smoking man now, as before, remains mute.

Pijariiqpunga.

"Oh, it'll be fun. Don't worry," I told her.

She smiled back, still looking unsure. Someone in the background wisecracked about painkillers, and I frowned inwardly.

My friend was heavily pregnant — as in due any day now. She was a first-time mother, naturally nervous about it. I still remember my own terror of the experience. Sympathizing with her, I was trying to make her feel better, telling her that it wasn't all that bad. It would be fun.

A load of crap, of course. There is a reason they call it "labour."

It's only magical and beautiful when you're the father; for the mother, it means being treated like a piece of meat under white lights, the high point of the performance a blur of surreal agony. The baby is magical — not the labour.

The experience is worse for first-time mothers, the whole thing complicated by fear of the unknown. Inuit culture has always taken this into account, hence the tradition of making light of labour. In Inuktitut, other women traditionally try to put a prospective mother at ease, assuring her that labour is easy.

My pregnant friend, however, was white, and I quickly noted that white people have a different way of handling it. I noticed that the tendency among Qallunaat is to make black humour of the situation. But while it did seem to help my friend a bit to hear jokes about how painful labour would be, it also seemed to make her more nervous.

I couldn't understand this southern way of doing things. Why make a new mother more edgy than she has to be?

Inuktitut and Qallunaatitut have always differed greatly on approaches to childbirth. For example, Inuit women traditionally gave birth in a kneeling position, allowing gravity to assist in the delivery. This is virtually forbidden in the South, presumably under the assumption that it will harm the child. But I have never heard of the Inuit way resulting in infant death — neither in reading documented accounts of early Inuit, nor in remembrance of traditional culture from when I was growing up. So I remain puzzled.

Every culture has its preferred way of doing things, so one culture has to forgive what seems eccentric in another. And there are few phenomena that human beings get so eccentric over as childbirth, which is extremely ironic, since it is such a common, inevitable, self-regulating process.

Childbirth does, however, represent the fate of the future. Looking at the state of our progeny is a bit like taking the pulse of our culture.

This explains some of the mingled awe and terror with which childbirth is regarded. It has always been viewed as a doubtful time for both mother and infant, spawning whole bodies of superstition. In Europe, for example, it used to be hoped that children would be born on a Sunday (a holy day), making the child immune to evil spirits. Many folklorists also think that this protective intention is the origin of the ritual of sprinkling holy water on a newborn. In ancient Mexico, a mother would wear a snail-shell amulet, in the hope that the baby would emerge as smoothly as the snail from its shell.

Among Netsilingmiut, mothers in labour sometimes recited numerous names. If the labour relented while uttering a particular name, it became the child's first and most important one. I'm not sure if other Inuit peoples used this practice, but it is possible. Inuit have always been very tricky with their names for infants, traditionally heaping names upon newborns in order to confuse shamans or spirits that might try to attack the child.

Yet all such customs have one driving emotion behind them: anxiety. Birth, like death, is an x-factor. Human beings thrive upon prediction, and thereby control, of their environment. It is maddening to know that something so inevitable at once remains so mysterious.

Yet while we might chafe under what seems like nature's tyranny, we can take comfort in the fact that we are also under its care.

My friend's labour went perfectly well, of course. As it turned out, there was no need for the anxiety. So why don't we take a lesson from Inuit tradition? At a time that is so difficult for new mothers, the rest of us might choose to alleviate — rather than aggravate — their stress.

Pijariiqpunga.

"It is the decree of heaven."
—ancient Mongol saying

"What will you do once you know?"
—Inuit saying

Flip through an encyclopedia of world mythology. You may notice an oddity if you do, the fact that there is little said about Inuit mythology — especially in regard to deities.

For other cultures, there are long descriptions of every kind of god or goddess imaginable: deities of the harvest, death, animals, wisdom, rivers, childbirth, the hearth, crossroads, love, drinking, or just about any other concept humanity can hold (even gods of writing, but I'm not relying on any as I put this down).

As the lens turns toward Inuit culture, one may note an awkward lack of Inuit gods. It used to be thought by scholars that this god-deficit was easily explained, Inuit seemingly having a primitive, simplistic culture. The thinking was that Inuit were not sophisticated enough to invent the concepts necessary for belief in deities or religions based around them.

Today, this view just doesn't wash. Even scholars, who can be cloistered and difficult to persuade of new ideas, have had to admit that Inuktitut ranks among the top four most complex languages existent — therefore conveying complex concepts. One of the benefits of being so heavily studied is that the world is coming to realize the sophistication of Inuit culture. A culture has to develop more than a few tricks if it is going to survive in the Arctic.

So with the eye of the world upon Inuit, one naturally asks: Where are the Inuit religions? Where are the Inuit gods?

The Oxford Dictionary defines a god as "a superhuman being worshipped as having power over nature and human fortunes." Superficially, this might seem to qualify several figures in Inuit lore as deities, but it has always been hard to make the label stick; mythologists usually default to classifying such well-known figures as Nuliajuk (or Sedna), for example, as supernatural beings.

The trick lies in the concept of worship. You only know a deity by whether he or she is worshipped. This is not an unwarranted question, either. All over the world, throughout the ages, gods have increased or diminished in their respective roles based solely on the degree to which they are worshipped. A figure who was once a full-blown god in a given area can diminish to the status of a mere spirit or bogeyman as a result of tribal invasion or the gradual shift in a people's lifestyle (usually the latter).

For example, many of the figures existent today in European faerie lore were once gods in their own right — their former status now forgotten, their religions long since trampled in the march of time.

It is because of the worship qualifier that figures such as Nuliajuk, or the incestuous brother and sister Moon and Sun figures, are hard to regard as Inuit deities. Worship, after all, denotes both honour and respect for a figure. Excepting certain obscure shamanistic rites, Inuit held nothing resembling honour or respect for the Sun and Moon, who have always been referred to more in the context of a story, for the sake of aetiology or amusement.

Nuliajuk was simply feared, and her propitiation was always considered a last resort — when hunts had failed and the spectre of starvation loomed. And no one could be said to have a personal relationship with Nuliajuk. She was no one's source of revelation.

As a neurotic woman dwelling beneath the sea, her one power was the ability to hold captive the sea mammals (which she herself had spawned), making it impossible to hunt them. This was always the result of one of her too-frequent tantrums. Only an angakoq (shaman) could visit Nuliajuk and cajole her into cheering up, releasing the sea mammals.

Typically, the angakoq's demand upon the people was their public confession of taboo-violations, which sped the process along. This may seem suspiciously like a religious ceremony, except that it is important to remember that shamans demanded such confession for almost any ceremony they conducted — regardless of whether Nuliajuk was involved. Besides, the intercession of the angakoq in Nuliajuk's case lacked the key element of worship on the part of the people.

So where, then, are the Inuit religions? The answer lies in that concept which so defines the Inuit world-view: necessity.

Necessity is the key to the lack of gods in Inuit cosmology.

Mythologically, any god or goddess is an elemental figure; it represents a fundamental feature of the world, such as earth, water or fire. Deities were always the figures that represented the orderly systems human beings observed in the world around them. When that order was upset, or when humanity feared it might be, the appropriate god was entreated to restore it. Crops failed, and a crop deity was prayed to. War was afoot, and a war god was prayed to.

In other words, gods ruled systems. They made recognizable models work, almost fulfilling the roles that scientific bodies of knowledge do today. Why try to propitiate some corn god when agricultural science will better secure the harvest?

Pre-colonial Inuit, however, did not live in a world of reliable systems. They were nomads, and even from the earliest days of the Thule, were pioneering new lands, their survivalist tendencies or sheer curiosity ranging them far and wide. Theirs was a never-ending odyssey.

What most people forget is that the Arctic is varied. No single area is completely like another. The animals never settle for long, and each area has its seasonal population, ever shifting and changing, like a great biological tide. Early Inuit had to be able to adjust. In doing so, they developed a very fluid culture, ready for unexpected tricks the land might throw at them. There was nothing reliable enough to be identified as a constant system. So Inuit culture began to depend upon only one thing: that nothing could be depended upon. Their culture itself became the only reliable system.

This is linked to Nuliajuk's (ie. Sedna's) superficial resemblance to a goddess. Over time, the closest thing to a predictable system that Inuit could identify was sea-mammal hunting, eventually necessitating the invention of a figure that commanded such animals — a figure that could be appealed to if necessary. This partly explains why Nuliajuk features most prominently in the lore of strongly seal-dependent Inuit groups, such as the Netsilingmiut.

Yet even seal hunting was not an entirely reliable lifestyle. Inuit were mobile opportunists, subsisting in any way they could, depending on what seasons and places offered them. Even Nuliajuk, therefore, was not a being that featured in their everyday lives. Factoring her into common existence was simply not practical, and so Nuliajuk never quite took on the status of a goddess.

Early Inuit were nevertheless deeply spiritual, inspired by the land and sense of mystical awe that it instilled in them. They generally regarded nature as permeated with a life of its own. They perceived will in it, though not always a conscious mind in the sense that man understands it. And they believed that this mysterious will — the very air an expression of its breath — regarded man with neither favour nor disfavour. All life, humanity included, drew life from this force (which was sometimes actually referred as the "sila," or the sky); but there was no way to relate to it mind-to-mind.

This sort of cosmology even resembles those of nomadic peoples genetically similar to Inuit. The Mongols, for example, believed in a sky god called "tengri" — a word that has been recorded as meaning "heaven," "god," and "sky." Early Mongols referred to the tengri in a way akin to which many pre-colonial Inuit referred to the sila. After their conquest of China, the Mongols eventually dropped belief in the tengri, instead adopting Chinese deities, which better suited their new city existence. Their needs had changed.

This makes sense. It is the state-dweller's way to rely upon systems, the nomad's way to rely upon the self. This is why few pre-colonial Inuit believed that there was any point in exploring relationships with nebulous forces. Inuit were concerned with whatever gave them a practical edge, practising a humanistic, even somewhat scientific, observation of nature. Their preoccupation was mastery, not propitiation, of their environment.

Pre-colonial Inuit have been haphazardly labelled "animistic" in the past, mainly under the assumption that all "primitive" peoples worship spirits inhabiting rocks, plants, etc. But Inuit not only did not worship spirits, they did not even worship gods. Comically, early Inuit cosmology more closely resembles the rationalistic religious movements of 17th- and 18th-century Europe.

If anything, Inuit relied upon only one, simple philosophy:

What will you do once you know?

Pijariiqpunga.

Pray thee, what's his disease?

A very pestilential disease, my lord;

They call it lycanthropia.

In those that are possessed with it,

...they imagine

Themselves to be transformed into wolves,

One met the duke, 'bout midnight, in a lane

... and he howled fearfully;

Said he was a wolf; only the difference

Was, a wolf's skin was hairy on the outside,

His on the inside...

— JOHN WEBSTER, The Duchess of Malfi

Long have humans recognized the powers that different animals possess, which we do not. Our modern aeronautics are of course inspired by the birds, whose ability to fly we have always envied.

But it doesn't stop there. Inuit have longed for the deadliness of the polar bear, the stealth of the weasel, the speed of the caribou. Europeans have admired the power of the bull, the light tread of the cat, the gentility of the lamb. All of us wonder what it would be like to swim and breath underwater, unimpeded, or to resist the cold without the aid of clothing.

As every culture has admired the abilities of the animals, so have imaginative people within each culture proposed ideas of what it would be like to become such animals. This has resulted in the richest sorts of stories; stories that have had an immeasurable effect on custom, religion, language, art, and almost every other aspect of culture. The animals that a culture recognizes — even in the most industrialized society — form the basis of its archetypes, one of the pillars upon which the society's ideals rest. Just think of how often animals are still referred to in everyday speech. We still communicate, as we always have, by using their traits as metaphors.

Ever since humans have admired animal traits, we have been trying to acquire them. We have always dressed up as animals, or worn symbols associated with them, in order to take on their "feel" — as though whatever they possess can somehow be transferred to us through sympathetic magic. A more extreme way of trying to assume an animal's trait is to ingest it (most usually a special part of it). But the most extreme way of assuming animal traits is to convince oneself that one has become the animal — a phenomenon that has never quite managed to disappear.

As already suggested, those seeking to take on an animal's characteristics tend to be desirous of superhuman powers, as well as exceptionally imaginative. In Inuit culture, those marked by both such traits were angakkuit (ie., shamans). Therefore, the lore of animal transformation, in Inuit culture, is usually lore pertaining to shamans.

The following story is a fantastic example of how, to shamans, animal transformation was considered a manifestation of sheer power.

Taitsumaniquuq:

Once, there was a Netsilik shaman who met a Utku shaman. Despite any attempts to get along, two shamans meeting almost always spelled trouble, since they could not resist the temptation to talk about each others' powers.

As they talked about their respective feats, each began to try to top the other. After all, others were listening, and reputations were at stake. Unfortunately, each began to offend the other, until at last a fight broke out.

The Utku shaman finally said,

"You are no shaman."

That was the last straw. The Netsilik shaman grinned evilly at the other, saying,

"If you're so wonderful, how about a contest?"

"Fine. Suits me," said the other.

So they stood outside and the people watched, aghast, as the two shamans duelled. The Netsilik shaman turned with a flourish, snarling,

"Defeat this!"

With that, there were gasps from onlookers as his features began to flow and shift. His face elongated, cheeks widening. His shoulders grew thicker, stretching and at last bursting the seams of his clothes, as he fell forward and shook himself violently. White bristles had sprouted all along his body, but still he grew greater and greater in size.

When he was finished, he raised horrendous black claws to swat at the air, and snuffed loudly, from lungs like bellows. He had taken on the form of his animal, and become a polar bear.

Some of the local children screamed at the sight, bolting back to their homes. Of those that remained, all eyes of the on looking community turned toward the Utku shaman, wondering how he would answer the challenge.

(Continued in Part Two.)

The Utku angakoq (shaman) tried to ignore the numerous eyes upon him, as onlookers waited for his response to the Netsilik angakoq's transformation. He frowned, rubbing his hands together as his enemy paced before him, the great bear edging ever closer.

Suddenly, he stamped the ground with his foot. From the moment it touched down, that foot seemed to ripple and swell, rending boot and pant-leg asunder. His other foot followed, and his body. The fingers of his clenched fists seemed to melt together into twin, club-like extremities. He fell forward upon them, shaking away the last shreds of clothing to reveal an ever-growing, woolen form. Back and forth swept a head crowned with monstrous, curving horns.

He snorted violently, pawing at the ground. Just as his enemy had become a bear, so the Utku angakoq had taken on the form of his own animal — a muskox.

At the sight of the Utku angakoq's transformation, the great bear seemed almost to hesitate. He stretched and crouched, gauging his enemy.

Like a typical muskox, the Utku angakoq stood his ground, horns lowered menacingly.

There was a scream from on-lookers as the bear bounded forward — a smooth, silent ghost — and the muskox stiffened, ready to slash. But the Netsilik angakoq/bear was clever, dancing away to one side. Speeding under the muskox's flank, his powerful limbs embraced a rear leg, and he bit deeply into a haunch.

The muskox, more startled than hurt, nearly dislodged the bear with a kick. He wheeled with his horns. At the sight of them, the bear let go, tumbling away to safety.

So did the combat go for some time, neither angakoq able to gain any advantage against the other — until the pattern at last broke.

Some say that it was the Utku angakoq, the muskox, who gained the upper hand by charging forward with devastating sweeps of his horns. Others say that it was the Netsilik angakoq, the bear, who made a crucial mistake in trying to get over his enemy's horns, to bite at the neck. One way or another, most agree that in a final, dire clash of the two, the Netsilik angakoq was caught exposed for a moment. Horns met flesh, and the muskox savagely gored the bear.

The fatigued Utku angakoq quickly became human again. He stood shivering for long moments, more from emotion than cold, watching the community gather around the fallen Netsilik angakoq. He too had shed his bear form, and now lay in a twisted, ruined heap. A ragged gash, streaming crimson, ran along one side.

Some kindly people gathered up the Netsilik angakoq, trying to nurse him back to health. It was of no use. He languished for days, before his life at last slipped away. The fight between the two shamans became legend, one of those stories that people tell in a hush, when it is time to speak of shamans and other dread things.

As I implied earlier, the folklore of animal-human transformation is the mark of an imaginative culture — to my thinking, a healthy one. It seems to me that one of the most tragic aspects of syncretism is that, in the past push to discourage traditional beliefs, the Inuit imagination has also been discouraged. And the Inuit cultural imagination has always been interwoven with its utter reliance upon all Arctic animals.

Think of the carvings Inuit used to make, the stories they used to tell, the cosmologies they used to invent! Inuit culture has only recently climbed out of a dark age of its creative spirit, a reticence to indulge traditional beliefs, brought on not only by past hardships, but by a distancing from the creatures that have shaped it.

Today, however, Inuit create art that is more skilled than ever before. They make films and write stories about traditional beliefs — free from fear of punitive theocrats. Elders break long silences, ever less shy about recording their old tales. And animals have, through some miracle, lost none of their importance to Inuit.

Ultimately, Inuit deserve to be proud. They exist in a state system, and have still maintained their connection to the land. Many cultures are not so lucky.

Like a final gift from traditional cosmology, Inuit culture has shifted its own shape, becoming some strange, wonderful, new animal of the world.

Pijariiqpunga.

And the birds cry out "ying-ying!"
Regard that bird: bird as it is,
Seeking with its voice its companion!
And shall a man not seek his friends?
Spiritual beings will then harken to him:
He will have harmony and peace!

— from a song of the Chou dynasty, China, 606-586 B.C.

And there's a hand my trusty fiere!
And gi'es a hand o' thine!
And we'll tak a richt gude-willie
waught,
For auld lang syne.

— verse from "Auld Lang Syne", traditional Scottish New Year song, late 17th century

Glorious was life
Now I am filled with joy
For every time a dawn
Makes white the sky of night
For every time the sun goes up
Over the heavens...

— Inuit song recorded by Knud Rasmussen in the 1920s

If you are anything like me, you have wondered from time to time why people (in the West, anyway) tend to sing "Auld Lang Syne" at New Year.

I had heard that it was Scottish, but that was all I really knew about it until I did some research. When I did, I was surprised to learn that the ancient Scottish (that is, Gaelic, or Celtic) attitude toward song was more than a little reminiscent of pre-colonial Inuit beliefs.

First, about "Auld Lang Syne." For a long time, this Scottish song has traditionally been sung at the end of social gatherings, participants holding hands in a circle, arms crossed in front of the body — especially throughout the first verse, chorus, and last verse. It first started to pop up in 17th century ballads, and the song's original author is unknown.

But the version we know today is a 1788 reworking by Robert Burns. Being sung at gatherings, it was only natural that Scots sang it at New Year, and the tradition has stuck over the years, with the addition that it has crept outward to other cultures based on those in the U.K.

While I was interested to learn all of this, I was far more intrigued when I dug deeper into some of the ancient traditions of the Scots — in other words, of the Celts. As with most cultures, the Celtic peoples (who included the Gaels of Scotland) held song as both a form of entertaining self-expression, as well as a learning tool. But even more strikingly, they believed that song could affect their environment — and if used to ill-purpose, could be lethal.

This is not unlike the traditional Inuit perception of song. But then again, the Celts were Qallunaat (white folks) as they were in ancient, tribal times, when their lifestyle was somewhat closer to that of pre-colonial Inuit than it was by the time their descendants first began to visit the Arctic.

The Celts tended to avoid written language. They viewed it as untrustworthy, the hallmark of untrustworthy civilized folk — the kind that lived in cities, like the Greeks. Instead, theirs was an exclusively oral tradition. And, in time, they produced a class of person whose sole expertise was mastering this oral tradition.

Such people were known as bards, and the task of every bard was to memorize the thousands of songs, stories, and riddles of their culture, as well as the secret names of every kind of bird, beast, flower, and tree.

And just as with Inuit angakkuit (shamans) who held similar lore, such knowledge caused a certain amount of supernatural power to become associated with the bard.

Now it is important, at this point, to bear in mind that humanity has ever regarded song as holding power. A song is an expression of will, and its use of rhythm and repetition can elicit an altered state of consciousness in both the singer and the listener.

Everyone has felt the direct impact of music upon their mind, their very nervous system, and nothing can so mould human emotion like music. The words themselves hold the same influence that words ever have, which is why poetry and writing — which are about the right choice of words, about how best to state something — is so influential. With words and music combined well, in a song, their power is increased exponentially.

For this reason, song is still perhaps the most powerful spiritual tool humanity owns. All-encompassing, yet deeply personal, it has been fundamental to worship since the most ancient of times.

(Concluded in Part Two.)

Due to its social and psychological power, song can easily be wielded by one human being as a weapon against another. Consider the fact that, despite the popularity of visual media today, songs of social/political satire are more common than ever — one can continually hear them on the radio, late night talk shows, comedy specials, popular music, and numerous other sources.

History shows us that one of the first things a tyrant will do, once coming to power, is censor musical lyrics. There is just something about song that drives messages into our brains more effectively than any other medium, and those who would become targets of it often realize this.

Just as the attribution of power to song is an ancient concept, so is the idea of using it aggressively. As an example, the most famous of Celtic (Welsh) bards was Taliesin, who is thought to have flourished in the sixth century. While there is a great deal of lore that is thought to have derived from a real Taliesin, there are many more legendary deeds attributed to the folkloric Taliesin.

Thought by many scholars to be the figure upon which Merlin (the magician from the tales of King Arthur) was based, Taliesin's beginnings are too long to describe herein, but suffice it to say that he is a figure of many incarnations, having come to own a vast body of lore.

When his adopted father is imprisoned by the wicked King Gwyddno, the youthful Taliesin appears at the king's court, demanding his father's release. As a bard, a master of songs and poetry, he is challenged by the bards residing at the king's court (these were the times when Europeans kept books, but still greatly relied upon their oral traditions). Taliesin confounds the court-bards by singing riddles to them, such as,

"Do you know what you are in the hour of sleep?

A mere body, a mere soul, or a secret retreat of light?"

When they can't answer, he taunts them with the verse,

"I marvel that in their books they know not with certainty

the properties of the soul, or what form are its members;

Into what part, or when, it takes up its abode,

Or by what wind or stream it is supplied."

Taliesin then confuses and horrifies them by singing of his numerous incarnations: that he has stood with God in the highest heaven, alongside Lucifer in the lowest hell. He sings of his time in India, of when Rome was built, and of his three residencies in the castle of a goddess. He sings of his times as many animals, many men, many women, and that after all this he has ended up here as Taliesin.

By now, King Gwyddno's bards are in such confusion that their attempts to answer Taliesin have reduced them to babbling idiocy. With that, Taliesin's final song is a spell that summons a great windstorm, ripping through the court and terrifying all within it — including the king. Thus does Taliesin secure the release of his father.

This Taliesin story is of interest to me because I love to note concordance between different cultural traditions. For the events in the story make perfect sense in Inuktitut. Inuit have always believed that preternatural powers can be expressed through song, and most important of all: Inuit have an ancient tradition of song-duelling.

Song-duels seem to have been especially popular among Eastern Arctic peoples, who used them as a way to resolve interpersonal conflict in a non-violent (at least, non-physically violent) fashion. The tradition was encouraged, not only because of its non-violent nature, but because it was great entertainment for the listeners.

The idea was very simple: each contestant would have a turn at inventing a song (sort of the Inuit equivalent of an evening at the improv) with lyrics that would humble, belittle, satirize, denigrate, revile, and generally humiliate the opponent.

The song was made up off the top of the singer's head, its dual purpose to poke fun at the subject while also amusing listeners. The subject himself could do nothing but sit and stew while the gibes were sung out, and listeners laughed aloud. And laughter was the critical factor in the contest, since it would determine the winner. The rule was "anything goes" — as long as it was funny.

(Concluded in Part Three.)

In a song-duel, laughter on the part of listeners indicates approval of the lyrics. Conversely, silence indicates disapproval. The loser is essentially laughed out of the contest.

Song-duelling is an ancient tradition that has dwindled in the face of modernity. Even in the 1950s, I never personally witnessed a song-duel, not even among the Netsilingmiut (among whom it is said to have been popular) with whom my family settled.

The written accounts we have of song-duels seem to indicate that it was primarily a male tradition, perhaps due to the fact that contestants typically liked to drum along with their respective songs. Drumming traditionally lies in the masculine sphere. But this is not to say that women were not participants. In fact, some peoples used a variation in which each contestant would secretly teach his song to his wife, who would sing it for him at the contest.

One way or another, song-duelling was a formal event, carried out in a common area, with allies of either contestant present. Neither contestant enjoyed a "home court" advantage. It was presided over by some neutral authority, generally an elder.

Here is part of a duellist's song, recorded by Knud Rasmussen in 1931:

What was it? On the sea's ice
For your daughter-in-law Teriarnaq — yonder
You conceived immoral desires
And yearned for her.
You are one with brief thoughts — and your thoughts never go to
Your poor wife, Akta;

There is only one reason why such a contest involves singing: music is the best way to deliver a message. Musical tones stimulate regions of our brain that are otherwise closed, allowing a message to be absorbed on many levels. The contestants could just stand and hurl insults at one another, but this would simply resemble a talk show, mutual streams of abuse breaking down into incoherent, counter-productive babble.

The power of song, potentially so destructive, also allows it to be applied in a constructive fashion. Inuit (shamans in particular) used to collect short songs or chants, what Rasmussen renders from the Inussuit dialect as "seratit." According to the lore of Polar Inuit, the original seratit are said to have been dreamt by the earliest humans, from the days when shamans had enormous power. While such shamans are no more, the seratit have nevertheless been passed down by word-of-mouth between elders, who keep them away from the young. Seratit are reminiscent of what Qallunaat would term "spells," "invocations" or "charms," and obviously would have been fiercely denounced by early missionaries for this reason. But pre-colonial Inuit once used them in the belief that their music-word combination (i.e., willpower set to rhythm) could influence nature.

Here is an example seratit, intended to add speed to a journey:
Forward, forward
ship, kayak, sledge!
Your large cheeks
You must smooth, to grow light-running!

It is the formulaic nature of the obscure seratit that distinguishes them from common "ayaya" songs (which I will term "folk-ayaya" songs herein, distinguishing them from an ayaya format used for song-duelling or seratit). Folk-ayaya songs nevertheless proceed from the same principle, that of a song's power. But while folk-ayaya songs are much less thaumaturgical than seratit, they are far more flexible and culturally relevant. The folk-ayaya is fundamental to Inuit culture, a way to tell stories, make jokes, and most important of all: to express one's individual sentiments — a concept virtually sacred to Inuit.

The cultural beauty of the folk-ayaya lies in its freedom from aesthetics. Intended to express the singer's individuality, early folk-ayaya songs were most often improvised, or were passed between relations to mark a special bond. They were free of any structure but that of rhythm, and the traditional punctuation of statements with "A-YA-YA-YA, a-ya-ya, a-ya-ya...."

Yet the most important use of the folk-ayaya was as an expression of great emotion, whether of sadness, joy, or sheer wonder. And this brings me back to my original comparison of Inuit song with the folk-traditions of Europe. It seems to me that the greatest power that a song ever had was to allow the singer self-expression, a way of issuing forth the very soul to play upon the air. Whether among traditional Inuit or early Europeans, it was once common to hear reference to "his song" or "her song" or "my song."

What does it say about us, today, that none of us has a song?

Pijariiqpunga.

If the odd little couple were together through an arranged marriage, it almost certainly had to have occurred long ago. Theirs was a mutual comfort with each other that most couples know only after many decades together. I write of them because it brings a smile to my face to remember their contributions to our small community.

I am not trying to prop up the odd little couple as exemplary elders. Like all human beings, they had their flaws. They were the product of a strange, largely pre-colonial world, one that many people today would have trouble envisioning, a world devoid of our laws, without a monetary system, without even a contemporary hunting-and-trapping lifestyle. I doubt if there were even a handful of people who knew we were part of the "Commonwealth."

The odd little couple lived in Gjoa Haven, although they didn't know that this was Uqsuqtuuq's "official" English name. Neither did they know that there was a Qallunaat church out there that had declared them Anglicans. They didn't feel that they needed spiritual maintenance. But, now that I think about it, they didn't seem to feel that they needed physical maintenance, either.

This was one of the characteristics that so marked them — their independence. In those days before modern goods, they got by with handmade tools. Their clothing, though not as elaborate as some styles, was just as functional. They caught and butchered their own game, and lived in a funny little hut. They chose to live alone, even though they had quite a few children and grandchildren.

One might have expected them to lean on the community, especially since they were in their late 60s (I think). They never did. They lived independently, with a certain resolve that only those who have thrived on the land can possess. Yes, their things were a bit shabby. Yes, they ate cod in winter, not what a well-to-do hunter would eat, but they were determined to stand on their own two feet.

Ironically, their lifestyle would be scandalous by today's standards. They had no careers. They were not upwardly mobile. They were not good consumers, contributing to the economy. They did not pay taxes, like modern Inuit. It is extremely ironic that today's standards would condemn them as utterly, perhaps criminally, useless.

Even by traditional standards, they were eccentric. But useless?

It is arguable that the odd little couple were the most useful people in the community. It was their spirit of self-determination that inspired others to work harder, reach further, and shoulder burdens without complaint. How are younger generations going to feel justified in complaining about hardship when there sits, at the edge of the community, an example of such self-reliance in a pair of elders? Far from useless, theirs was the most lasting contribution of all, a contribution of culture. Everything about them — their lack of affectation, their hard-work ethic, their self-sufficiency, their love of individualism — all served as an example to others.

We live in times when we are expected to network, make connections, publicize our lives. Individualism is shady, suspicious, something to be shunned. But Gjoa Haven today has a reputation for being one of the more pleasant and traditional communities — not an easy reputation to acquire in the face of modern social problems — and I do not doubt that the odd little couple had a lasting influence this way. Their descendants, to this day, are hard-working, hands-on people, responsible for schools and local government.

I ran into one of them a while ago. He was dressed all in quirky colours, as though he couldn't care less what others thought of him, and in his eye was that individualistic gleam of old.

Long live the independent spirit — however odd.

Pijariiqpunga.

The woman assumed that the noise outside had to be her husband, since she knew that no other families were camped nearby. So, thinking that her man was simply preoccupied and not paying attention (a phenomenon all too familiar to women), she decided to go out and ask him what had cut his hunting trip short.

She paused for a moment, suddenly aware of a new sound. Was it ... chuckling? It didn't quite sound like her husband, either. For the first time, she began to suspect that a stranger was lurking about outside. The hair began to rise on the back of her neck.

She stood listening for long moments, but the chuckling had ceased — if it had been there at all. Perhaps she had imagined it. But dread had settled into her now, and it was with stiff movements that she worked her way to the porch of the igluvigaq.

She bent down, listening carefully. Nothing. She crawled a little way into the porch.

"Husband?" she called.

Suddenly she was seized and pulled into the porch. She had only a glimpse, the merest flash of spindly limbs and a leering face, and something was pinning her down with fantastic strength. She twisted frantically as something — several icy cold things — found their way onto the flesh of her belly.

She screamed, but her scream was twisted in her throat as it turned into some awful mockery of a giggle; she was being tickled. And she realized then that the icy coldness she was feeling were many fingers, inhuman fingers, working their way across her torso.

She tried to throw her attacker off, but it held her down with preternatural power. Her head was wedged against the ground, so that she could see nothing. And the tickling was increasing now. It was not the kind of tickling that one feels in play, but a digging, raking, malevolent kind of tickling. She was wracked with it, twisting violently beneath it, and increasingly frequent squeals finally gave way to screeches, then to choked sobs.

The tickling never ceased, but only increased in intensity. It was nothing other than pain now. And her wails were such that she was beginning to have trouble drawing breath. Each gulp of air seemed smaller than the one before it, until she was wheezing, gasping for it in desperation. And over her own suffering, she could again hear that chuckling as she had before, except that this was in her ear now, as though the thing that held her was relishing her torment. As it chuckled over her, its fingers only dug deeper and deeper into her flesh.

She could no longer breathe, and she was weakening. That voice that laughed over her began to seem distant, and pinpoints of light began to dance before her vision, as darkness swelled inward and at last engulfed her.

Two days later, the man returned.

He was wiping frost away from his moustache as he approached the igluvigaq, so he didn't see it at first. But as he looked up and noticed the porch, he spotted a dark mass lying inside. He ran to it with an agonized cry, recognizing his wife. As he grasped her, he felt sick, for touching her was like touching an animal that had been killed some time ago — frozen solid.

He felt numb for some time. All was quiet except for the distant sounds of his dogs. Then, in that Inummarik way, he acted as though life went on regardless of tragedy. There were things to do.

As much as it pained him to do so, he dragged his wife's body out of the porch and examined it. She had been plump and healthy before he left, no sign of fever. Why had she died? No wounds, yet she had died with her eyes open.

He thought, for a moment, that a spirit might have attacked her. But they had no enemies, no one who would have sent a spirit to do such a thing. He was trying to puzzle it out when he noticed the finger-marks. They were like the scantest of little rashes, or scratches, on her belly and sides, and he was sure they had been left by an attacker.

And whatever has fingers, he thought grimly, can bleed as well.

(Concluded in part three.)

The man knew what had killed his wife, a thing that he had once heard of, called "Mahaha, the Tickler." But he knew little about it. He only wanted revenge. Certain that it was still lurking about somewhere, he resolved to bait it. So he disposed of his wife's body with the respect that it was due, and once finished, he put on a show of great fatigue, as though readying for sleep. But, secretly, he lay waiting for the Mahaha to come.

Time crawled by as he lay upon the sleeping-platform, waiting. At last, there was a shuffling sound in the porch. Someone, some thing, was creeping in, moving ever so slowly.

Still feigning slumber, he listened as it made its way to the bed. Past narrowed eyelids, he could see it rise up over him, eyes shining like twin stones under water. Its dark features split open in a yellowed grin, and the creature could not resist laughing.

"Here I am, father-in-law! Ma-ha-ha!"

The man rolled off the sleeping-platform, knocking the creature aside. Before it could respond, he had seized its ankles and yanked it off its feet. The feeling was eerie — the Mahaha was unnaturally light, and those ankles were hard as antler.

The igluvigaq was old, the floor icy. With a great surge of strength, the man whipped the creature against it. The Mahaha's head lashed violently against the ice, and the Mahaha made a peculiar noise.

It was laughing.

Again and again the man smashed the creature upon the ice, but the laughter only increased. With every blow, it laughed more loudly, more hysterically, until the man thought that he would go mad.

Casting the creature aside, the man fled, running blindly. In a blur of panic, he ran for some time before realizing that he was approaching a hole in the ice from which he had previously drawn water. He began to slow, wanting to see if the Mahaha had given up the chase. But he had not even turned before he heard its awful cry:

"Here I am, father-in-law! Ma-ha-ha-ha-ha!"

He sped to the water hole, leaping across it and wheeling about. Sure enough, the Mahaha was right there, grinning at him from the other side.

Perhaps the man went a bit mad, then. Perhaps he had simply run out of options, so that any desperate tactic seemed feasible. But for one reason or another, he did an odd thing. He squatted down by the water hole and muttered to the Mahaha,

"Before we finish, let's have a last drink."

He scooped up a handful of water, and drank.

The Mahaha, perhaps amused, maybe simply desiring to mock its victim, chuckled once again and squatted likewise, bending to drink.

Like bear to seal, the man was upon the Mahaha, bearing down with all his strength, forcing the thing into the hole. The Mahaha fought desperately, a flurry of thrashing limbs and spraying water, but the man defied each of its attempts to claw its way out. At last the struggling ceased. The Mahaha slipped out of sight, beneath frigid black waters, and the man knew that he had at last avenged his wife.

That was how the man defeated Mahaha, the Tickler.

I think Inuit culture should pat itself on the back for an original idea here. It is a rare thing to find a unique folkloric creature, and the Mahaha is basically so. The closest thing I've been able to find is a Finnish spirit called the Ovda. But while the Ovda will tickle its victims, it more often dances them to death.

So where does Mahaha come from? It remains a mystery. I'm sure there is an elder out there who knows but isn't telling. It may possibly be based upon reality, inspired by a madman or murderer executed for dreadful deeds — something that has occurred among Inuit before. Often, such lurid events find their way into folklore, becoming euphemistic over time.

Then again, if we are entertained by the Tickler, we might pause to consider that this might be the whole point of the story. Even ancient stories may exist for the sake of entertainment, rather than didacticism. After all, even the ancients enjoyed a good yarn.

And that, ironically, may be the most valuable thing that this ticklish tale has to tell.

Pijariiqpunga.

"So if you could just write down the different types of inukshuks there are, that would be good."

"Different types?" I asked. I was confused.

"You know, ones that are used for magical purposes, ones that are tributes to the gods, ones that mark sacred areas...."

Now he was really throwing me. This phone conversation was surreal. I wanted to ask him where he had gotten his bogus information, except that I was still flabbergasted by his use of 'inukshuks.'"

"Inuksuit," I said.

"Huh?"

"The plural is 'inuksuit.' Not 'inukshuks.'" I found it alarming that he felt qualified to write a book about an inukshuk when he didn't even know the plural form of the word.

To think, it had all begun with an e-mail.

Several years ago, I had a Web site that provided free information on Inuit culture. It was fun to run, and I got e-mails from all around the world, asking me this and that about Inuit traditions and words. But whereas the mail began as a trickle, a few letters a week, time saw that trickle grow into a flood of dozens, eventually hundreds. Many of the e-mails were getting tiring. Too many were from students writing things like:

"My professor has given us the assignment of explaining how eco-feminism relates to tribal subsistence strategies, and we're to use examples from Inuit culture. So would you mind writing up, in at least 5,000 words, your reasons why you think Inuit women are eco-feminists, providing real-life examples of Inuit eco-feminism that you have witnessed?"

This might seem hard to believe, but it is not an exaggeration — people were literally requesting that I just sit down, on my own time, and write up free university papers for them. In all fairness, I received the same number of requests from students in grade school and high school, although the university students were easily the most offensive — by the time you are at university, you should know better. Did they suppose that I was some ignorant fool, some Wild Child of the North, unaware of how university worked? Gee, I kept thinking, I wish I had had somebody to write up my papers for me when I was at university. They soon stopped receiving even courtesy replies.

You might be surprised to know, however, that the demands for free academic papers were not the worst of them. The most galling ones, by far, were from businesses and self-employed individuals who wanted to cash in on the global interest in Inuit, without having to do any of their own legwork. I received countless e-mails requesting cultural content for businesses, as well as snazzy Inuktitut names for companies or product lines. I thought it was nice enough that I would answer the latter, at first, but I would still receive back:

"Too long. Make it short, catchy. We need consumers to get a feel from the name."

What, was I their employee now? As these e-mail discussions went on, I became embittered, since I sensed that my kindness was being exploited. Sometimes, the e-mails would lead to further phone consultations. Here I was, taking a good chunk of time out of my day for the sake of someone who stood to make money, without even a thought of compensating me.

Only a couple ever offered anything in return, such as the one gentleman who needed a name for his new line of parkas. I told him that one of his parkas, in trade, would be fair, so he honourably sent me one. I wore it for years, and only recently passed it on to someone who needed it more than I did.

As for the others sorts, they soon had me in a state of self-doubt. Was I becoming hardened in wanting compensation for a name they stood to make money from? Education was a totally different thing — I would never begrudge explaining words to school-kids (as long as I didn't have to do their papers). But were the business types making me into a money-grubber?

I decided to ask a white consultant acquaintance about it.

"Do you think I should charge businesses for Inuktitut words?" I asked.

Scandal! "Absolutely not!" went the reply. "Knowledge should be free."

"Would you name a company, in English, for free?"

"Well ... no. But that's different."

(Concluded in Part two.)

I was disturbed by the opinion expressed by my southern consultant friend.

"Let me get this straight," I said. "You're saying I shouldn't charge for naming a company in Inuktitut, because 'knowledge should be free.' But you're also saying you yourself would charge if you named it in English."

"Well, that's right," was the response. "But Inuit have a tradition of giving, and you don't want to... sully that by charging."

"But it's my time," I said.

Silence.

"I don't mind doing it," I continued. "I just want some kind of compensation. Translation services for Inuktitut cost."

"Yeah," said my friend, "but what do you charge, 25, 30 cents a word? Hardly worth billing someone for one word. Might as well be free."

"But this isn't translation," I insisted. "Naming a company takes days. Corporate names are always a kind of word-play with multiple meanings. They always want short, trendy words, but the stuff they're trying to convey in a name makes for long Inuktitut words. It's hard to cook up something like that."

"Then don't do it," my friend said again. "Besides, you don't want them to trample on the, uh, beauty of Inuit culture by involving money and business. That kind of money's just too dirty for you."

"But you," I reminded, "said that you would charge if you named something in English. That doesn't sully your culture? That money isn't too 'dirty'?"

"Oh, man, look at the time," was the response. "Well, Rachel, it was really great talking to you, but I have a meeting to get to. We should do lunch, right, maybe next week?"

"Sure. Right."

This conversation made me somewhat ill, and only served to convince me that feel-good sentiments such as "knowledge should be free" are absurd. Human beings survive by knowledge that is anything but free, often having to earn it by working or suffering greatly. There is no better way to learn about bears than by surviving a bear attack, for example, often with some scars as a reminder.

But is this free knowledge? One may learn a great deal at university, but only at the exorbitant cost of tuition. (Hardly free knowledge.) And even a child does not really learn for free from a parent, since the child pays the price of yielding to parental will in return.

The truth: If knowledge is power, then it is also currency. Knowledge is mankind's first and most treasured currency.

Why, then, are some people so shocked when they hear of Inuit wanting compensation for their counsel?

The earliest explorers made careers (i.e., money) by exporting Inuit culture, and the global demand for it quickly spawned a market. In the past, Inuit have depended upon non-Inuit businesses to connect them with the South. But the Inuit embracing of industrial culture has meant that, today, they are well-connected to global media, now able to market their own culture as they see fit. In other words, they are gradually cutting out the middle-man.

With this in mind, this "knowledge-should-be-free" resistance to Inuit charging suddenly comes to more closely resemble what it is: the old school of northern marketeers trying to limit their new competition. Ironically, this new competition is that which used to be the product itself: Inuit culture.

I just didn't like the idea of people making money from Inuit without paying anything back, so I decided that the corporate types were cut off. From now on, in answering e-mails, I would only give free words or information about Inuit culture to students (but I still wouldn't write their papers for them). Oh, the business people were pretty peevish about it, and being cut off didn't stop them from trying several times over. I started to get sneaky e-mails, like:

"Hi my name is Kitty and I'm a litle kidd in grade 3 and teecher says we need to name our hamster. I think it woud be so neet if you name him, so can you pick us a short word that means 'market success' or 'cutting edge'?"

I guess these people thought that some deliberately misspelled words would convince me that it really was a kid writing in. Too bad they forgot to check their e-mail addresses. They were identical to those of companies that I had already refused two days before.

Pijariiqpunga.

I was on the phone, chatting with an English friend living in Ontario. I was telling her that I was sick of people complaining about the winter darkness.

It wasn't bothering me. I had missed the North, since work had necessitated some years in the South, and the darkness just seemed like a comforting reminder that I was back home (mind you, I later became sick of it and am now glad that the days are lengthening).
Anyway, in telling my friend about the short days, I noted her odd response.

"Oh, they're short here too, dear."

She didn't know much about the Arctic, and I kept trying to get across to her that Arctic days were really short.

"No, you don't get it," I said. "By six o'clock, it's pitch black. It's like blackest night in Ontario, like one in the morning."

"Oh," she chuckled, "nobody likes winter. It's always hard on my arthritis."
She was old. Maybe, I reasoned, she was just being intractable, set in her ways. I decided to keep trying.

"No, you're not listening," I said. "It's an Arctic thing."

"Now, dear," she again chuckled, "remember that winter is always a bit darker. You know, the sun is going down as early as 5:30 now."

"That's my point," I said. "It's going down at 5:30 where you are. It's going down at 2:30 here."

"Oh, stop exaggerating, dear. I can see by the clock when the sun goes down. We're all on one world, aren't we? The sun doesn't stay up at different times."

"Well, yes it does," I argued. "Think of time zones. They denote where the sun appears to a population at a certain point in the Earth's rotation. So the sun is going up and down at different times, relativistically."

"Yes," she said stiffly. "But there are only so many time zones, aren't there? And they still work up there, same as down here, or you wouldn't be able to phone me, true?"

"Yeah, but..."

The whole thing was reminding me of an Inuit etiological myth. Once, before many of the things we know today, there existed a couple of friends: a wolf and a fox. In those times, darkness reigned. All creatures hunted by lamplight. Animals had power, being able to transform themselves in order to use tools.

But, even so, some were getting sick of the darkness. One of these was the fox, who one day told the wolf that someone should will the world to be light all the time. The wolf, however, preferred to hunt in the dark, insisting that a world full of light would be annoying. So the two fell into bitter quarreling. As they did so, their powers manifested. The world grew alternately light and dark, sun and shadow circling each other menacingly.

But in the end, the fox was somewhat weaker than the wolf. Their friendship damaged beyond repair, the two went their separate ways, and now the night and the day circle each other forever more, with the darkness being somewhat more prevalent than the light.

It is interesting that night and day, darkness and light, warmth and cold, are often associated with argumentation. Two things that people never get sick of arguing about are light and temperature levels. To my amazement, I found that even Pacific Northwest Coast peoples have a day-night myth identical to the Inuit one. Wasps and bears take the place of fox and wolf, and they argue with song.

It seems that the animals in such stories almost certainly represent conflicting human opinions that just won't quit, an ancient acknowledgement that people get in arguments over the oddest things. And as with our mythical animals, arguments between humans may have far-reaching consequences, especially when both parties become entrenched.

So what did I do about my friend who refused to admit that the daylight exhibits unique Arctic behaviour? I changed the subject. After all, I do not want us to become the fox and wolf. But perhaps this was always the point of the myth. Rather than serving to explain night and day, maybe it was really meant as a cautionary tale against needless conflict. One way or another, sometimes it is best to leave a friend to exist peacefully in their world, while remaining at peace within our own.

Pijariiqpunga.

Moonlight draped its ghostly pallor over the hills behind our house. New snow crunched underfoot. We children had been left to entertain ourselves. I had my little sister in tow, on a piece of sealskin. I think my parents had hoped that she would soften it for them.

The first stop was Anna's place (not her real name). She was the closest available playmate, but she was delicate, too-often sad, disturbed about something. Sure enough, we entered her small hut to see her sniffling in the corner.

We hung around for a bit, but I could tell that there would be no playing with her today. Her father had been at her again. He was a vulpine man who rarely had anything good to say about anyone.

When he did, his words were always chosen to hurt someone else. He eyed us suspiciously, eating his canned tomatoes in silence, while we tried to cheer Anna. To my surprise, he finally offered my little sister one. He followed the act by wondering aloud why my little sister was so cute, while I was not.

Simultaneously, he motioned to offer me tomatoes, while carefully keeping the can out of reach. When I grow up, I thought furiously, I'm going to be just as mean to you.

Next stop was Sammy's house. He had an actual replica of a sled, complete with rope lashing. I was always begging my father to build me one (mostly so I could steal our most important dog, Kusik, for practice sledding), but it would remain to the future for him to do so.

For now, we had only the sealskin and Sammy's sled. So up the hill we trundled, with me having to push-pull my little sister along. It was like carting a huge stuffed doll with a will of its own, just heavy enough to be tiring. The silver moon was now high overhead. Usually, the dogs howled this time of night, but a spell of quietude seemed to have been cast over the frozen expanse. At the top of the hill, I stared at the night, marvelled at the number of stars.

Then the magic died. Once we began, the sliding was barely worth having to drag my sister up the hill each time. Whenever I ended up at the bottom, it was to find her still face-down, as though she had been shot, her mitts having flown off somewhere. Frustrated, I resorted to piggybacking her, sealskin rolled under my arms. Sammy and his sled always seemed ready to go, bunny-power incarnate, compared to our turtle progress.

In one stolen moment, I tossed my sister onto the oncoming sled and managed a little solo trip down. At the bottom, I was greeted by the sight of her once again. There she was, like a great fish, limbs moving idly in the snow, waiting for me to right her. She was just about upside-down.

Sammy was already halfway up the hill, and I stared after him enviously.

A brutal thought came over me then. What if I just left my sister where she was? I could go sledding. If she wanted to continue, she could damn well get up and play like the rest of us. I had reached the very pinnacle of my resentment at having to shepherd her.

Today, I understand where the feeling came from, although it was beyond me then. In a way, I had been poisoned. Venom had been working its way through me. Anna's father was a miserable man. Something in his past had poisoned him, and when I visited, he had tried to pass it on to me.

His was an emotional toxin, withering poor Anna over time. If he was successful, I would pass it on to my sister forever more. He meant to kill my relationship with her because, in his wretchedness, affection had become anathema to him. Like a breeding mosquito, he would perpetuate his cycle.

I picked my sister up out of the snow, as always. We sledded until we got cold, and went inside.

Many years later, I again saw that man, Anna's father. He was old, lonely, deflated. I was tempted to tell him that his trick had failed, but it was obvious that life had already repaid him in full.

Some cycles deserve to be broken.

Pijariiqpunga.

When hunting and wandering inland I must as often as I can make offerings to animals that I hunt, or to the dead who can help me, or to lifeless things, especially stones or rocks, that are to have offerings for some reason or other.

I must make my own soul as strong as I can, and for the rest seek strength and support in all the power that lies in the name. I must observe my forefathers' rules of life in hunting customs and taboo, which are nearly all directed against the souls of dead people or dead animals.

—Elder's answer to Rasmussen's question, "What do you most desire?"

What man is so mind-strong and spirit shrewd
He can say who drives me in my fierce strength
On fate's road when I rise with vengeance,
Ravage the land, with a thundering voice
Rip folk-homes, plunder the hall-wood:
Gray smoke rises over rooftops — on earth
The rattle and death-shriek of men. I shake
The forest, blooms and boles, rip trees,
Wander, roofed with water, a wide road,
Pressed by might. On my back I bear wide sended;
The water that once wrapped earth-dwellers,
Flesh and spirit.
Say who shrouds me
And what I am called who carry these burdens?

—Ancient Anglo-Saxon riddle

Anyone spending enough time talking to Inuit elders eventually realizes that doing so is tricky. If you are patient and respectful, you will find that part of an elder's charm is that he or she rarely gives a straight answer. If you are impatient and disrespectful, you will be annoyed by that very same quality.

One of the things to understand is that a true elder (not merely an old person, but one of known wisdom and experience) possesses a mind steeped in "classic" Inuktitut thought-patterns. While modern Inuktitut has been heavily influenced by English (or French), so that it has begun to express itself in Qallunaatitut (i.e., non-Inuit) ways of thinking, classic Inuktitut still derives from a pre-colonial mind set.

So what does all this mean? It means that, when an elder talks, he or she typically proceeds from old, even ancient, cultural assumptions. One of the most important of these is that you do not advise the elder; the elder advises you. Another is that you are not to guess at an elder's mind. Guessing at someone's opinion might, at first, seem like a way to prove mutual understanding, but in classic Inuktitut, it is utter rudeness. In classic Inuktitut thought, someone's mind is their only true property. Only the owner may comment on it. The older the mind, the more this is so.

The worst thing one can do, in the presence of an elder, is to comment on their thoughts or opinions. Such a thing is considered no less than a challenge to the integrity of their private mind, their isuma. The traditional way for an elder to deal with this is play the trickster, to begin a pattern of contradiction. For example: Ironically, by writing this of elders, I am committing the very faux pas that I am cautioning against (but essay writing demands a Qallunaatitut mode of expression, so this is the only way to set things down).

If an elder were to hear me talking of contradiction in elders, the elder's response might be to contradict me, saying, "No, elders don't always contradict people who question them." Dizzying, isn't it? But this is what happens when English thought meets classic Inuktitut thought. Contradiction is the old Inuktitut way of repelling a challenge to one's isuma. It is meant to puzzle and confuse.

In being an interpreter, my experience with non-Inuit who meet elders (sometimes even younger Inuit unused to elders) is that they expect pearls of wisdom to immediately drop from every elder's mouth. They expect the elders depicted in movies: direct and verbal. Too often, they blow it by trying to "identify" with the elder, trying to impress them with how much they already know. This, of course, merely sparks playful contradiction.

Even more often, individuals are left discomfitted by an elder's prolonged silence, or cryptic references that seemingly have nothing to do with the "topic" at hand. Sometimes, it seems like the elder tosses out nothing but riddles. They take control of the clock, and are anything but direct.

(Concluded in part two.)

English is a time-sensitive language, derived from the cultural traditions of densely populated areas, where time has become a precious resource over the centuries. Today, more than ever, English speakers must obey strict time limits, whether for the sake of formality, or simple politeness.

Among Inuit, there was much more time available in the old days, so that someone whose opinion was asked had the right to speak at will — especially if that someone was an elder.

But these are not the old days, and many elders, now faced with time-constraints upon their opinions, simply opt for silence. An instant contradiction is set by asking an elder to express their opinion within an hour. To many elders, being asked to time their opinion is tantamount to a violation of isuma, their personal mind, so that they simply refuse to speak at all. Tragically, much traditional knowledge dies in this way.

So, if Inuit are known for such adaptability, why can elders not adapt to modern time constraints? The answer to this lies in the very nature of an elder's expertise.

Elders are experts on one thing: life. They represent a peculiar combination of life experience and acute awareness of that experience. Their magic lies in the way they talk, the way they teach.

Put a cap on an elder's time and you will not hear the hidden music they create as they speak, the things to be learned from tales of their suffering and triumphs, the hardships they have endured upon the land, and their intense love of the same.

Unless you let them speak at will, you will never quite see the tears of what they once hoped for, and lost, nor will you come to see the sudden youthful flash in their eyes as they recount a blessed moment. Your life will be no different, because you will have taken in nothing of theirs.

It is important to remember that elders communicate in a kind of "elderspeak." To the unwise (or impatient or disrespectful), they will always seem silly and whimsical.

Their stories may at first seem rambling, nonsensical. This is not eccentricity, but their way of teaching. Qallunaatitut used to use a similar way, known as "riddling." While, today, we think of riddles as something to make children giggle, there was a time in Europe and the ancient world when they were a valuable learning tool, serving to jar the brain into lateral thought. They encouraged imagination (which Einstein called more important than intelligence), non-linear thinking, and most importantly: culture.

The hints to the solution of a given riddle were often symbols relevant to its culture, such as a style of clothing or domestic activity. Riddles were once a fundamental part of the Qallunaatitut oral tradition, and the wisdom of individuals was marked by the number of riddles they knew.

Riddling and "elderspeak" are related by way of their teasing method of inviting a listener's mind to untangle what it is hearing. They invite the listener to draw their own conclusions from the lesson, a highly personalized way of learning, at once stimulating the brain's ability to think creatively — a skill especially crucial to survival in the times when Inuit were nomads or when Europeans learned by their oral tradition.

Riddling has lost its significance in the impatient modern era, where lazy minds are allowed to flourish, and the way in which elders traditionally teach is going the same way for the same reason.

But it is possible that this style of teaching is simply fading because it is too subtle for its own good. After all, there is a lot to distract modern people, whether Inuit or Qallunaat. There probably is not much hope of resurrecting the riddling tradition, but as far as elders go, we still have some available to listen to, if we are willing to do so in the proper way.

The oral tradition is disappearing, and that is a fact. While this is saddening, it is simply a result of changing times.

But the loss of the oral tradition only becomes a true tragedy if we fail to record the knowledge that passes with the elders. We children are blessed in that we have this one fading chance to exercise patience, and hear the voice of tradition.

Pijariiqpunga.

There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of reknown. — Genesis vi:4

While cultures around the world may be drastically different in their customs, it is nevertheless startling to note how similar their folklore can be.

One of the things that most traditions seem to agree on are giants. For the majority of us, if we were to hear about an ahuizotl — a Central American monkey/fish monster — we might be a bit confused, having no frame of reference to compare it to.

But if an Irishman were to tell an Inuk a story about giants, or vice versa, either would understand exactly what the other was talking about.

As with most giant stories the world over, Inuit giant tales vary wildly, and are flavoured according to the part of the Arctic from which they come. In the west, for example, giants tend toward a malicious nature, while in the east, they are more like normal people in temperament — capable of kindness, and becoming angered only when offended. As in most cultural traditions, Inuktitut giants live an existence recognizable to human beings: hunting, using tools, wearing clothes, having spouses and children, but doing things in their own, slightly skewed way.

Giants are commonly associated with or derived from primal forces, which gives us a hint that they might often be a folkloric manifestation of ancient peoples that are no more.

The English word "giant" is a distortion of the Greek term for the giants of Greek myth, the Ge Genis, which means "Children of Earth" or "Earth Generation." The Greek giants sprang from the blood of the Titans, who were an older generation of gods usurped by Zeus and his newer pantheon.

The word "ge" in Ge Genis is related to the name of the mother of the Titans, the Earth itself, Gaia, from which we also get the "geo" in "geological." Therefore, the Titans and their progeny, the giants, represent a primal generation put down and suppressed by a more competitive, semi-urban, modern culture.

Giants in Inuit culture are no less primal, always associated with rock and water. It is tempting to think that perhaps the Inuit giants represent some form of memory of the Tunit people (also known as the Dorset culture), except that Inuit seem to remember the Tunit just fine as they are.

What mythologization there is of the Tunit makes them out to be quite strong, sometimes semi-magical, but they are invariably short. So the Inuit tales of giants must reflect something other than memory of the Tunit. It is possible that they reflect memories of an even earlier culture, before the Tunit, memories that might have been communicated to Inuit by the Tunit themselves. But we will never know for certain.

The Inuktitut term for a giant is "inukpasugjuk," which simply means "one who is in the likeness a big person." This is a cautious name, denoting that the inukpasugjuk is not simply a big person, but an inhuman creature that resembles one.

Generally, I don't like interchanging terms for folkloric creatures, since such interchange tends to degrade the exact nature of a given being. In the past, for example, I have argued that anirniq should not be translated as "ghost," since, if we start approximating an anirniq by labelling it a ghost, we expect it to act like one, which it does not. I can make an exception in this case, however, since giants and inukpasugjuit (plural) are so alike that they are almost indisputably the same thing.

The tales of inukpasugjuit are numerous, but there are a few that serve to characterize what Inuit, in general, expect of their giants. And there is one, in particular, that is an especially old favourite.

Taitsumaniguuq:

Once there was a man who went out hunting in his kayak. He decided to move out further than his typical hunting area, so he soon found himself in a place where he had never hunted before. He saw before him what seemed to be some unexplored land, covered in great hills. So he pulled his kayak ashore and went looking about.

(Continued in part two.)

The hunter was sure that he had never been here before, and he was hoping that his exploration would pay off.

Having had no luck in his usual hunting areas, he was wondering if there were animals to find here. With little other than a backward glance at his kayak, he began to wander inland.

Soon he found himself cresting oddly scalloped hills spattered with the dazzling hues of numerous lichens and berry patches. Winding around boulders of enormous size, he at last came to a stream, where there stood a single bull caribou. It was a massive beast, much larger than he was used to, and it seemed healthy enough for eating.

With a couple of well-placed arrows, the caribou was downed, and the hunter eagerly ran over to it, brandishing his knife.

But he paused when he neared the carcass. There was an odd thing: water was forming around the caribou. As he watched, hair rising on his neck, the water spread outward. In less than a minute, it formed a clear pool with the beast at its centre. It stopped spreading.

The hunter eventually overcame his fear and stooped to examine the water. He dipped a finger in it, tasted it, and found it remarkably pleasant. He sat staring at it and wondering for a moment, then muttered,

"Why not?"

He drank his fill.

After his drink, he found that the water had heightened his alertness. He felt crisp, refreshed. This was why he so quickly noticed the odd sounds. Pausing to listen, he became aware that he was hearing something like pounding noises, as of heavy objects being dropped.

They had begun as the faintest of noises, but they were getting louder with every passing second. The hunter waited, wondering if they would relent, but they only increased in intensity, until the stone under the hunter's knees began to subtly vibrate. It was then that the hunter realized that the sounds had not been getting louder - they had been getting nearer.

The hunter began to rise, backing away from the water, but it was too late. Looking up, he could see the heads of two inukpasugjuuk (giants) cresting a nearby hill. More of their massive forms became visible as they approached, two great pairs of eyes set in two great skulls glaring balefully at the hunter. As they strode, they covered as much distance as a fast man might cover at a full-out run.

The hunter screamed at the sight of them, and fled toward his kayak. He had never moved faster in his entire life, but still he could hear those great feet pounding the earth as they pursued him. Luck was with him, and he actually reached his kayak before the giants were upon him. He paddled away from the shore, and was just beginning to feel some sense of relief, when he turned to look back.

The water had not slowed the giants. Instead, they had merely waded out, and now loomed over the little man in his kayak. Monstrous hands reached down and seized the kayak's stern, pulling it back, turning it around.

In a moment, a giant held each end of the kayak, and lifted it — hunter and all — out of the water. Like two men carrying a kill between them, they strode back inland. Petrified with fear, the hunter shook silently as the inukpasugjuuk took him away.

The hunter was in a daze, and noticed very little as the giants carried him over a long distance, into strange lands. They spoke not at all, and the hunter was unsure of just how much time had elapsed when they finally placed him upon a great boulder, so that he sat at the level of a single giant's chest.

For the first time, he noticed his surroundings. About him were similarly large boulders, and low-lying, grey hills. He could see little, for the distance was foggy and indistinct.

The giants turned then, and one of them whistled. After moments of silence, there at last came the sounds of many inukpasugjuit feet. Soon, the owners of those feet appeared. Several inukpasugjuit stood up and walked out from behind some of the tallest boulders, while many others lumbered out of the mist.

The hunter was surrounded by entire families of giants.

(Continued in part three.)

To the hunter's surprise, the giants did not kill him. Instead, the great inukpasugjuit gathered around him, wondering aloud what to do.

The hunter could hear giant children giggling to their enormous parents about how "cute" he was, how fun it would be to keep him. This seemed to be an important issue with the families of inukpasugjuit, so the hunter sat helplessly for long hours while the giants debated it.

In the end, they decided that it was best not to let him go. The hunter was never asked for his own opinion on the matter. He was simply grateful that they had decided not to do something ghastly, like stew him up or pull his limbs off for fun. Besides, he thought to himself, eventually their guard was bound to drop, and he would have an opportunity to escape.

The time approached sooner than expected, for the giants quickly went on with their day-to-day business, and soon even their children lost interest in the man. He was frequently left without supervision, and realized that it would be no more than a matter of days before he slipped by these foolish inukpasugjuit.

In the meantime, they were not unkind to him, and their greatest offense was his captivity. But he realized, while watching them, how utterly unlike human beings they were, how they were like a parody of human nature. Their food seemed distasteful to him, and he avoided it.

They hunted, but when they butchered a caribou, they would throw away many good parts, like the fat, which they claimed was merely a gland. And they did not hunt with dogs, but with huge wolves that seemed to understand their speech.

Then a day arrived when the man told the giants that he was bored, that he wanted to do some of his own hunting. The season was still fairly warm, and he said he needed his kayak (which had been captured with him). The inukpasugjuit easily agreed, and soon the man found himself out "hunting," but in truth paddling back home as fast as he could.

A grin spread across his face as soon as he began to recognize things that he knew: a familiar boulder here, an old camp area there. And he was sure that he was just starting to see the thin trails of smoke from his community's cook-fires. In a moment, he would be within sight...

Suddenly, something seized his paddle, and he barely managed to jerk it free of the water, which had started to churn around him. The kayak shuddered violently, and he was blinded by salty spray that flew up at his face. He wiped at his eyes with his sleeve, in time to see that a great wall of water had arisen before him. He had never seen anything like it, this barrier of blue and white that boiled and roared and foamed before him, like a thing alive.

He looked left and right, and found that it completely blocked his path, towering above. It was impossible to pass. He realized that this was why the giants had been so complacent. Their powers had ensured that he could never leave them. There was no doubt in his mind that similar barriers, perhaps even more dangerous ones, were also in place on the land, so he back-paddled and turned his kayak about, returning to the inukpasugjuit, for he knew of nowhere else to go. Behind him, he heard the water-wall crash down.

Looking back, he could see a clear way to his community, to his family, but he knew that this was an illusion. The water-wall would rise up again if he tried to approach. He wiped at his face again, now removing tears.

Life became a melancholy blur after that. The man was driven to contemplate the most horrible, desperate measures, but ultimately decided to survive, to brave the situation in the hope of seeing his family again. And during his captivity, he learned much of the giants' ways, eating their food and eventually even feeling confident enough to master their teams of wolves.

It was while out hunting with the wolves one day that he had an extraordinary idea. If he could not get to his family, why not bring them to him?

(Concluded in part four.)

(Note to the reader: You're going to catch me using the term "Mongol-type" now and again. This is my way of dancing around the term "Mongoloid." Mongoloid, strictly speaking, is simply an old word denoting the common physical heritage of peoples descended from those earliest, Ice Age ancestors of Inuit. These are certainly Asiatic in appearance, but they nevertheless differ from other Asian physical types making up most of China, Southeast Asia, Thailand, etc. The Mongol-type peoples span the circumpolar world. We are natural nomads. We have always liked to spread ourselves out. And you can find our kind in Arctic North America, Greenland, Siberia, Mongolia, and the Asiatic steppes. We are mixed in with other gene-lines in Korea, northernmost China, Japan, Russia, and even Eastern Europe. We share: 1. A short, stocky build, with unusually high bone and muscle density. 2. Beautiful, epicanthus-shielded eyes, thick and streamlined and somewhat differing from those found in other Asiatic peoples. 3. Smooth, nearly hairless skin, of a pleasing bronze-coffee colouration. 4. A so-called "Mongolian mark," a bluish mark we are born with over the tailbone, fading as adolescence.

About 2,500 years ago (ie., appr. 500 B.C.), this was the state of humanity: The first of the great religions, those that were to inspire all others afterward, had recently sprung up (coincidentally, around the same time). Judaism appeared in Judea. Taoism and Confucianism popped up in China. Buddhism and Jainism in India. Zoroastrianism (which introduced the idea of ultimate good versus ultimate evil) in Persia.

Mystery religions (which would later influence Rome) appeared in Greece. Pythagoreanism in Italy. The first Rationalist Philosophy in Ionia. The superpower of the day was the Persian Empire, which owned everything from the Aegean Sea to Egypt to the borders of India. The Greeks, ever a collection of warring city-states and traders up till then, were just about to prove themselves; their total population of 2.5 million was about to defeat great Persia (population 14 million), upping their profile forever after. Further west, Rome and Carthage were on the rise, and would soon square off against one another, setting the stage for the Roman Imperium to come centuries later.

Eastern Siberia was heavily populated with nomadic peoples of Mongol-type form, the distant, Ice Age cousins of Inuit. As soon as they acquired horses, those that resided in northern Asia began to cause trouble for the Chinese (the Chinese, as with much of Asia at the time, were of a different, non-Mongol stock), raiding at will. This would presage a time of future conflict and disaster, and eventually introduce the rest of the world to the Mongol-type peoples in a nasty sort of way.

Meanwhile, in Arctic North America, the more direct ancestors of Inuit were beginning to become aware that it was getting colder. Much colder. The Alaskan ancestors of Inuit were adapting to this cold-shift in their own ways, and the different methods of adaptation taken up by various groups were forming distinct cultures. There were now many different cultures of Mongol-type people, as there are today. In the far east of the continent, one of the cultures that would have the roughest go of things was the Dorset, or those that Inuit would later call the "Tunit." The Tunit (I'll run with the Inuit term) did not adapt as well as others to the temperature shift. Like every other Mongol-type culture in North America up till then, the Tunit relied upon chasing inland animals, such as caribou - one of the things that kept everyone nomadic. The Tunit population began to dwindle (or at least, it did not increase) as food became scarce.

Another Mongol-type culture that was moving into the east would become known to archaeologists as the "Thule." These people would become Inuit, and it was these that would flourish by making a radical shift to a new kind of living: Dependency upon sea mammals.

(Concluded in Part Three.)

By 350 A.D., the old Mongol-type culture of Tunit (i.e., Dorset) would certainly have noticed the arrival of strangers in their lands. This was a younger, aggressive, more innovative Mongol-type people called the "Thule," and the swish of their sleds had already been carrying them eastward across North America's Arctic for the last three centuries.

These new nomads were dependent upon marine mammals, and the Tunit had never before conceived of the technologies they brought with them: dog-teams, toggling harpoons, large skin boats, lamps, waterproof stitching, countless specialized hunting paraphernalia. There is no evidence of major hostilities between Thule and Tunit, but the Thule lived fast, ate well, and dominated the landscape. It is no wonder the Inuit oral tradition insists that the Tunit were a shy, elusive people.

The odd thing is that this makes sense. History seems to imply that, when Mongol-type nomads are placed under pressure and organized by strong leaders, they burst forth in waves of innovation and enterprise. Any human culture does, of course, but the Mongol-types seem to do it so ... explosively.

Around the same time as the Thule were flowing across the Arctic, the western world was about to receive a darker, more horrifying introduction to the Mongol-type nomad — distant, Ice Age cousins of Inuit known to the Chinese as "Hsunnu," to the West as "Huns." Like North America's Thule, they were caught between northern weather and southern overpopulation, so they turned westward. Armed with their own innovations, they invaded Europe in 374 A.D. Their invention was the modern stirrup, allowing combat from horseback in a manner of unprecedented efficiency. They were unstoppable. Almost overnight, they conquered the eastern Germanic kingdoms, driving others ahead of them in waves, greatly contributing to Europe's ethnic distribution. Under Attila (450 A.D.), they clashed with the Western Empire, demanding tribute from Rome itself.

And this is where the Achilles' Heel of the nomad shows itself. They need to keep moving. They need innovation and leadership to impel their great waves. When Attila died (453 A.D.), the Huns found themselves with neither breathing room, nor vision. Apathetic, without purpose, they intermarried with conquered peoples (e.g., "Hun-garia") and faded away.

Luckily, over in North America, the Thule still had lots of room left, and no dire enemies to contend with. By 1000 A.D., they had spread as far as Greenland. But once they reached this limit, there was still the entire Arctic to cycle around within.

They could never know that there was an entire other world held in terror of similarly nomadic people, distantly related to them. At the time Thule had reached the easternmost Arctic, yet another Mongol-type people were swelling in numbers, in northern Asia. Within only two centuries, these nomads were united under a leader named Temujin, commonly known as "Genghis Khan." He envisioned universal Mongol dominion. With innovative military tactics, espionage, and communication systems of his own design, he conquered 7,821,400 square kilometres (85% more than Napoleon) in 20 years. His empire, at the time, was entirely nomadic. Genghis Khan's heirs continued the conquest, so that by 1241, they owned Asia, Russia, the Ukraine, eastern Europe, and had entered central Europe. They had never lost a battle. By 1279, they were the uncontested world superpower.

Ultimately, the Mongol Empire was checked by its own nomadic needs. Later generations of Khans became urbanized, over-content with their holdings. They shed nomadic culture. Eventually, their borders shrank, their Empire fragmented, then ceased to be. The stubbornly nomadic ones among them went back to their former, Mongolian lifestyle, where they could continue to roam at will.

By 1550 A.D., the Thule had reached the limit of their own expansion, and were developing a lifestyle easily recognizable today. They had become Inuit, and they had no idea that, over in the Old World, their distant cousins had arisen and faded into a memory from a few generations before.

They had no idea that theirs was the peculiar branch of humanity that had wandered out of the Ice Age, with a need to keep moving, not necessarily needing conquest, but simply the feeling of wind in their hair. And if the comparison of these "cousins" illustrates one truth, it is this: nomadic blood runs cold only when it is still. It is a fact that modern Inuit would do well to remember.

Pijariiqpunga.

I answered a letter a while ago, from someone at a museum in Alaska.

They wanted to know why Inuit dislike being called "Eskimos." After all, many Alaskans don't mind being called Eskimos, and even seem to dislike the term "Inuit" when southerners try to apply it to them, however well-intentioned.

I am not at all surprised at the confusion. The ascendancy of Inuit culture, through good reportage and the establishment of Nunavut, has conditioned southerners to say "Inuit" instead of "Eskimo." Southerners have complied beautifully, but at last they are running up against peoples, related to Inuit, who insist that they are Eskimos.

The confusion derives from this sticky fact: Inuit are not Eskimos, and Eskimos are not Inuit.

In simple terms: The Mongol-type peoples of North America begin in Alaska, about four and half thousand years ago. Their numbers grow. They separate into many cultures, generally reflecting different lifestyles and settlement areas. Years creak by, and a few waves of such peoples move east.

Inuit are direct descendants of that most recent eastern arrival, the Thule, those inventive souls who brought new technologies along with them - the culture we recognize as Inuit today.

I have read too many interpretations of "Inuit" as meaning "humans," probably under the (incorrect) assumption that every culture's name for itself must mean such a thing.

However, as a long-time translator, I can guarantee you that "Inuit" is a specific term. It means, "The Living Ones Who Are Here." It denotes a sense of place, of having arrived, a memory that Inuit knew they had kin somewhere else. Thus we see how language acts as a code to preserve heritage.

Conversely, the Alaskans are descended from peoples that stayed in the west. As such, they have their own preferred words for themselves, such as, "Yup'ik" and "Aleut" and "Nunamiut." Additionally, those westernmost peoples have had much more time to split into many different cultures. Add to this the fact that some First Nations ("American Indian" in the U.S.) peoples also reside in Alaska, so that the resultant west is populated by peoples of Mongol-type, American Indian, and mixed descent.

The far east of North America is much simpler. There was one culture, the "Tunit" (or "Dorset") here before Inuit. Unfortunately, they are now extinct.

Inuit, therefore, have the luxury of using "Inuit" in a wide context. But even this can get politically tricky, since there are a couple of peoples adjacent to them — "Inuvialuit," for example — who do not always approve of being called Inuit.

But, generally, one can get away with using "Inuit" as a kind of umbrella term for eastern Mongol-type peoples.

The umbrella term for the far west, Alaska, is "Eskimo." Alaskans do not seem to mind its use these days, simply because it provides a handy general term. There may be another reason not to mind it, as well.

The old thinking was that it came from Cree, derogatorily meaning, "Eaters of Raw Meat." It was thought that it was overheard by French missionaries, distorted to "Esquimaux" or "Esquimau," then Anglicized to "Eskimo."

It is amazing how widespread this belief has become, so that it is cited by all but the most informed sources. Yet, while remaining a bit of a mystery, the missionary origin of "Eskimo" is pretty much discounted today, since there is some compelling evidence that the word existed in pre-colonial times.

Some researchers have made a good case for it coming from Montagnais vocabulary, literally meaning, "snowshoe net-weaver," but culturally being a term that indicates any craftsman of great skill. It seems to me that this makes more sense and, if true, would mean that the word is not derogatory after all.

Inuit, however, will never be Eskimos. Existent in the west or not, preferred by Alaskans or not, it was simply never part of their vocabulary. Inuit, after all, have their own name for themselves: Inuit.

Today, "Eskimo" only reminds Inuit of the days when missionaries kidnapped them, dumped flea powder all over them, and assigned "Eskimo numbers" to them, instead of bothering to note the proper name for the culture or the individuals within it.

It all really boils down to choice, the right to accept or reject specific labels at will, the right to be known as one wishes to be. Is that not what freedom is all about?

Pijariiqpunga.

Scars are like stories written upon the flesh. We all bear them, each a reminder of a past event. Unfortunately, their nature is such that they never tell happy stories, which is why we keep our scars to ourselves, and we rarely ask about those of others.

If you look at the little finger on my right hand, for example, you will see a thin, somewhat curved scar. If you had seen it before it became scarified, you would be looking at a wound that nearly took off the fleshy pad of my finger. I got that at the hirluaq, in my early teens.

The hirluaq was next to our house. It was a storage shed that my parents used for extra equipment. My siblings and I dreaded setting foot in it, especially in the dead of winter, since it was lightless, airless, cold, like a kind of place where all the unwanted things of life came to rest.

While cramped, it was always large enough to fill with imagined terrors. It could, and did, hold anything, and it was a cold trip there to retrieve powdered milk, cereal, a needed tool, or an item of clothing. The only task I disliked more than retrieving things from the hirluaq was hauling bags of combustible items (wood, paper, etc.) down to the dilapidated shacks by the creek. So it was the hirluaq, the somewhat lesser of two evils, for me.

The storage shed was a dark world in miniature, having its own smells, those of rotting canvas, dried fish, gasoline. The outer porch I could handle, having personally carted over most of what lay there: several boxes of camping equipment; on the left, the tackle box filled with biscuits and left-over frozen meals; over in the corner, the camping tent; next to it, a harpoon and fishing spear; hanging above that area, the gas lamp; to the right, caribou skins; near them, my father's outdoor clothing; underneath that, pots and pans.

The lock to the hirluaq door was invariably frozen, which meant prying it open, flashlight under chin. The door opened to reveal a long, narrow area leading deeper into the place. No simple shed, the hirluaq had originally been meant as a small home. As a shed, it was absolutely tomb-like.

One evening, I was sent out to fetch some powdered milk from the hirluaq. I had learned to get in and out of that place as speedily as possible, but sometimes there was an inevitable searching around in order to find what one wanted. This was one such occasion.

Our year's supply of powdered milk was kept in a large barrel, and fetching milk entailed filling a pitcher-sized container that I held in hand. As I groped about in the dark, trying to find the barrel, I kept thinking: Why was I always sent out alone on these missions? Surely my sisters were smaller and better able to crawl around between the unidentifiable, shadowy masses herein.

Yet, after some fumbling about, I eventually found the barrel and managed to pry the freezing cold lid off. I was resolved to fill my container as fast a possible, but I was nervous, casting furtive glances around the place. That was when my eyes locked upon something bulky, roughly man-sized, thickly bundled and lined up along one wall, as though it had been deliberately shoved out of the way.

Oh my God, I thought, where did they store people waiting for burial? It was too cold, in mid-winter, to bury them properly. They would have to put them somewhere, wouldn't they? It was one of my father's duties, as a lay preacher, to perform the last rites for the deceased. Had he recently mentioned that someone had passed away?

My brain began to race, and it seemed as though the air thinned noticeably. Could the air even reach me in here? But I was still staring at that inert bundle, and thoughts were battering at my mind. If I stood with the dead, was there a soul also in here with me?

"Ataatavuut qilangmiittutit…" I recited the Lord's Prayer in Inuktitut to myself. Could the dead hear our thoughts?

Sorry, sorry I didn't mean to intrude on your place, I thought at it.

That was around the time my flashlight began to dim.

(Continued in Part Two.)

As the flashlight gradually died, I still could not rip my eyes from that mass - the possible body - against the wall.

Some instinct told me that if that thing was ever going to move, ever going to struggle up into a sitting position or roll toward me, this would be the time. Get the powdered milk, an inner voice screamed. Close the lid. Get out.

"Close the lid and get out," I said aloud.

With that, something brushed against my leg. My scream flew up, bounced off my palate, and was swallowed convulsively, never quite managing to escape. But my whole body jerked, as though electrified. The experience was so sudden and wracking that I barely noticed my hand, still halfway into the barrel, scraping against the lid's edge.

There was that feeling you get when you know that you have been sliced. Not injured or hurt. Just the brain's registration of "sliced."

The experience pulled my eyes from the could-be body. I had enough milk and stumbled out of there, jug in hand, bouncing off boxes and camping gear that filled the hirluaq, until I was on the porch. My eyes were drawn downward toward white and red in the jug - blood in the powdered milk. The lid had nailed my little finger, so the pad just hung by the remaining skin. It was difficult to care as I fled toward home.

"What did you see?" my father asked.

I told him what had happened, asked if my theory was correct: That, as a lay pastor, he had placed a dead person in the hirluaq to await burial after winter.

"Just some old caribou skins," he said.

I did not probe further, but the answer never sat well with me. It never helped me get a grip on why the hirluaq was such a horror, and that bothered me even more. Years went by. I tried to leave it be.

I only saw the hirluaq once as an adult. It was just a shed, not half as large as I remembered. It was hard to believe that it had ever contained such a world of darkness.

A truth: A wound is only best understood while it is healing, not when it is initially received. Similarly, the truth about adulthood is that we do not so much shed our fears, we simply become better at understanding why they are there.

My family almost lived in the hirluaq, you see. As mentioned earlier, the only childhood task I dreaded more than fetching things from the hirluaq was hauling combustibles, like paper, down to the shacks by the creek.

The stuff was for families who lived in those shacks. They burned it in barrels, for warmth. When Inuit were first cajoled into leaving their nomadic ways, there was nothing for them to live in. A tent or snow-house is comfortable, but impossible to maintain in a settled existence.

So those earliest families that settled used scrap wood, often cast-offs from construction, to build little shacks. They were poorly ventilated, breeding sickness and reeking of urine and vomit. Until the government recognized the crisis and instituted "matchbox" housing, that creek and the shacks along its sides were like the lands of the dead.

The hirluaq had been intended as our shack.

My family was blessed, and we never moved into that place, which we turned into our storage shed. But assisting poorer families with bags of things to burn was a constant reminder of what might have been.

I think the reason the hirluaq was such a place of horror for me was that, in a way, it was always still a shack by the creek, a place for Inuit to suffer and die in the dark. And it occurs to me that maybe my father had told me a kindly lie.

Perhaps the thing I had seen in the hirluaq really had been a body. After all, the pre-funereal dead have to be stored somewhere, don't they? But it doesn't matter now. I simply feel like a tragedy has been averted, and am thankful that Inuit are alive, walking about, with no shacks by the creek.

But, like the scar on my finger, my vision of an alternate future is indelible - the possibility of Inuit lying cold, tucked away, forgotten and dead, like that mass in the hirluaq.

Pijariiqpunga.

A great deal has been written about how Inuit love their children. In an exceptionally harsh world, any culture becomes especially preoccupied with its youngest generation, which only makes sense if you think about it.

After all, the more unkind the times, the more the survival of the culture itself comes into question. And there were times, among pre-colonial Inuit, when raising a child to healthy adulthood was quite an accomplishment.

The consequent appreciation of their children is probably the reason why Inuit have traditionally fussed over them, indulging the very young to a degree that disgusted the first visiting Europeans.

In old Inuit tradition, it was every community member's right to coddle and interact with the young. It was almost as though a child were communal property, raised by all. But, then, members of any particular camp were almost all related.

Out of necessity, this tradition has been modified over time. Inuit have taken up the southern, Occidental way of regarding a child as the property of its parents (or legal guardians) only. But let us not mourn the loss of tradition here.

In a settled, community existence, a child is surrounded by numerous strangers, many of whom are neither family nor friends. In this confusing, heterogeneous social environment, where all nearby families occupy the same area (instead of separate camps), people have to create artificial barriers.

Guardianship is one such barrier — invisible, but socially and legally concrete. Inuit can no longer afford to let their children mingle with all community members, at will, trusting that some close relative will be there to keep them safe.

Like any southern family, like any of those living within a state anywhere on Earth, Inuit parents need the legal right to dictate who their children are permitted or forbidden to keep company with. Tradition is great, but some traditions simply do not work within certain systems. Modern Inuit seem to have taken to this idea pretty readily; but they have always been an old culture ready to learn new tricks.

This is not to say, however, that traditional Inuit did not experience some anxiety over their children. Outwardly, traditional Inuit parents used to put on the public face of trusting everyone in the community, but they nevertheless watched what company their children were in.

This was part of the old Inuit way with personal feelings, the traditional ethic that one's feelings — especially negative ones — should be kept to oneself. Such Inuit stoicism pervaded traditional society. In order to preserve social harmony within often cramped confines, in order to survive psychologically in a world where death continually struck healthy and sick alike, Inuit had to be disciplined.

This was true of all cultures that once lived as pre-colonial Inuit did, but Inuit practised it up until recent times. The truth is that, psychologically, our ancestors were much tougher than we. Today, when we push ourselves to our limits, it is often out of personal choice. Our ancestors had no alternative.

Discipline begins with the emotions, and so it was among traditional Inuit. So even if a parent disliked or failed to completely trust someone associating with their child, they kept it to themselves. They just subtly tried to make sure that their child and the suspicious party were never left alone together.

It is important to remember that it is impossible to place bounds upon a child's socialization within a closely-knit group. If a parent refuses to let a child associate with a fellow member of a camp, the parent must be ready to confront that member about it. The ill feelings that invariably arise from such a confrontation are just the sort of thing that Inuit were trying to avoid. Camp members had to pretend to like one another, overlooking even the deepest enmity, since they had to co-operate in order to survive.

Nevertheless, as with most of the anxieties that Inuit had to repress, fears about the fate of children at the hands of aberrant individuals became expressed in traditional stories. Even while traditional Inuit praised and fussed over their little ones, they were telling each other stories of parents cannibalizing their children, babies accidentally having their heads ripped off, and mothers going insane or making children sick by feeding them incorrectly.

The fear above all, however, was that of kidnapping.

(Continued in Part two.)

There is nothing strange about worrying that one's child might be kidnapped. It is almost certainly a fear that is as old as parenting itself, evidenced even in troupes of lower primates, such as baboons or chimpanzees.

Watch any such primates long enough, and you will notice that baby-stealing is all too common. Male primates steal suckling young for use as living shields against the aggression of other troupe members. Female primates steal the young of other females out of jealousy, wanting the social attention and importance attached to having an infant. Sometimes, the goal is simply to deprive a new mother of the same. Thus, through such fundamental deprivation, does one female punish another.

Unfortunately, humans are not much different in their essential primate behaviour. If they were, well, they would probably be able to leave their babies safely unattended in a mall for an hour. But such is not the case. Today, more than ever, an unattended child is in danger of being snatched up by a pedophile, perhaps even someone with ransom in mind. And it is not at all uncommon for a child to be stolen by a woman who cannot have children of her own.

Since pedophiles rely upon secrecy for their aberrations, they were not a common issue among traditional Inuit, who lived in close-knit encampments, with all eyes upon each other. Noted pedophiles were quickly rooted out, and dealt with harshly.

Baby-snatching, especially by women, was much harder to deal with. As stated before, Inuit used to live in distinct camps, collections of interrelated families. Families that left a given camp would often stumble across other encampments in their travels, those of strangers or little-known relations.

Since the women were constantly mingling with each other and the children, there was the very real danger of a strange woman - perhaps an old mad-woman or one who could not have children of her own - simply stealing a baby or young child. The proper way to deal with such a situation, today, would be to notify the police. The situation is a criminal justice issue.

But in pre-colonial times, there were no such institutions to depend upon. If a strange woman simply fled the camp with your baby, you had to make your own justice, or there was none at all. Too often, there was none at all.

Over the centuries, the very real threat of baby-theft found its way into numerous Inuit stories, and the female baby-thief became epitomized in a singular type of folkloric monster.

The Netsilingmiut people, having especially detailed and vividly textured monsters, called this creature amajursuk, or "one who carries in an amouti." The amajursuk is a giant, ghastly hag, who snatches unattended children and steals them away in her exceptionally large amouti (a traditional female top, engineered for nursing, having an oversized hood for piggybacking infants).

Other Inuit peoples knew the creature as amoutalik, or "one with an amouti," and it was generally implied that it was a sort of malevolent spirit.

But whether giant or spirit, all Inuit peoples seem to have agreed that this creature is female, hag-like, dangerous, and a baby-thief. It is also implied, in some versions of the tales about these beings, that the creature does not actually have an amouti, but rather a hollow, fleshy hump that resembles an amouti hood - an imaginative touch that nicely amplifies the thing's horror factor.

As with most monsters of Inuit lore, it is unclear as to whether there is supposed to be one or many of the creatures. We have no way of knowing whether the tales refer to "The Amoutalik," or to a supernatural species.

But since the amajursuk and amoutalik (I shall use the latter term, hereafter, to denote both) are most likely folkloric representations of the mad, baby-snatching crone in her most severe form, the creatures were probably thought of as many.

A clue to the idea that the amoutalik is inspired by true madness is that amoutalik stories all depict the creature as being easily befuddled, prone to confusion. Her victims do not escape through extreme cunning, as in most Inuit tales, but simply by confusing the amoutalik - often with magic. And if we take a look at an archetypal amoutalik story, despite its wild shamanistic content, we can spot the probable reality that inspired it.

(Concluded in part three.)

Taitsumaniguuq:

On a dreaded winter's day, the sort that makes old injuries ache, the adults decided to lift their spirits by holding a drum-dance. One particular couple were off to the communal hall, leaving a grandmother to look after their boy. So it was that the old woman was alone and dozing, when she heard an odd noise near the entrance of the igluvigaq (snow-house).

There was no sign of her grandson. She crawled outside to spot a lone figure speeding away - something bent like an aged crone, smoky hair streaming out behind it as it loped with unnatural speed. It was gigantic, double a man's size, and upon its back was a vast amouti hood, heavy with something struggling therein. And the woman knew that her grandchild had been stolen by a creature known as the amoutalik.

She held only her ulu (crescent-knife) in hand. She could never catch up with the amoutalik. But she sang a little song she knew, sang it at her ulu, instilling in it her will that the amoutalik should become hindered hereafter. With this, she cast the blade at the creature, crying,

"Be confounded!"

The amoutalik ran until it disappeared from sight.

The old woman quickly stopped the drum-dance, informing the boy's parents of what had happened. She told them that, with her will upon the amoutalik, they might have a chance of tracking it down.

Indeed, the parents tracked the amoutalik with ease, and soon came to its igluvigaq.

Now, the captive boy had spent hours with the amoutalik, which was already referring to him as, "my son." Its face reminded him of nothing so much as an old raven, and its filthy igluvigaq was filled with lice the size of lemmings. He was already feeling weak, sore, covered in bites, certain that he would not survive for long.

He was longing for home, looking out the ice-window, when he spotted his parents standing outside. Emotion played across his face, and the amoutalik asked,

"What are you looking at, my son?"

"N-nothing," he said. "Just... two old ravens."

Then his grandmother's will began more of its work against the amoutalik. It became confused.

"I never noticed," it said, "there are too many lice here. Too many lice..."

The great hag began to systematically beat all of the skins in the igluvigaq, trying to shake the lice off. It beat at its own clothes. The boy was afraid that, at any moment, the amoutalik would beat him as well, so he carefully slipped out of the igluvigaq while the creature was preoccupied.

His parents met him outside, and the three fled together. They left the amoutalik beating at lice in the winter dark, and everyone closely guarded their children after that.

The End.

If we need evidence that baby-theft is not a singularly Inuit fear, we need only look toward world folklore. The faery lore of Europe is rife with the belief that faeries steal human children, replacing them with wizened substitutes called "changelings." Polish folklore has a similarly inclined race of wild women called "Dwiwozony." Finnish lore has a female night-demon called the "sukusendal."

Even more common is the belief in female monsters that simply wish to kill human children. In this way, the Inuit amoutalik becomes almost identical to the "black annis" of Scotland.

Similar creatures include the dancing "hotots" of Armenia; the cave-dwelling "kakamora" of Melanesia; the prowling "nocnitsa" of Eastern Europe. Judeo-Christian apocrypha includes "Lilith," the failed first wife of Adam, a consummate child-killer. And there is, of course, "Hansel and Gretel," featuring the archetypal, Occidental ogre-crone who devours children (but only once fattened - a finicky eater.)

So why is humanity anxiety-ridden that its children might be attacked by she-demons?

The answer is perhaps that the anxiety is deliberate. Folklore is important because it represents a pre-manufactured answer to a question that has yet to be asked. This particularly suits Inuit culture, where it is bad manners to lecture directly. Far better to help someone come to a conclusion on their own.

The hag, therefore, is offered as an inverse mother-figure. This baby-thief is offered as the gruesome alternative existence awaiting the child that is not properly attended by its parents.

The folkloric message is simple: Treasure your child. If you do not value it, there are others who may. For the entirely wrong reasons.

Pijariiqpunga.

I have never seen a people who so enjoy their own food as Inuit. If there is one thing that modern Inuit have completely in common with their ancient ancestors, it is the joy that overcomes them when they are presented with a feast of traditional foods, or "country food," as people are calling it now.

While Inuit have always had guidelines for what portions go to which family members (on a fish, for example, the choice lower-middle part is the so-called "woman's part"), there is no cap on the quantity that one can consume. When a particular catch is brought home for dinner, it is generally quite a lot of food at a given time - a load of arm-length fish, a seal, a caribou, etc.

Consequently, there is enough food for everyone to eat until sated. The culture around eating reflects this expectation, so there is often no delicacy or restraint involved when Inuit eat traditional food. Old, young, male, female, it doesn't matter - all descend upon the food with equal passion.

Southerners who are invited to such meals generally eat very differently from Inuit. Even if they enjoy Inuit food, they often have powerful cultural inhibitions against freely digging in and eating as much as they please - quite understandable, since most Occidental cultures have long been used to carefully portioning out their meals. Of old, consideration for others meant eating with restraint.

It is important to remember that, while technology can be a boon to a culture, it can also be a curse, setting new standards that the culture must meet in order to survive. One such standard was set in the Europe of the late 900s (near the end of Europe's "Dark Ages").

Around the time Eric the Red was unknowingly on his way to a place he would dub "Greenland," Europe experienced one of its most important technological revolutions. In the West Frankish realm (soon to become France), horseshoes, horse collars, and mouldboard plows suddenly came into use. Until this time, a primitive plow was arduously pulled through rough ground by an unshod horse with a strap across its windpipe.

With the sudden innovation of horseshoes, a horse could work longer hours over rough ground. A proper collar allowed it to pull a more efficient plough with its shoulders, rather than its throat. This new technology caused an agricultural explosion, allowing Europeans to farm expansively in areas that had hitherto been too rough to tackle. The result was a corresponding population explosion, so that new states were founded in even the farthest reaches of Europe.

The problem with this is that it set a new precedent. As centuries rolled by, ever expanding populations caused deforestation and the extinction of the larger animals. After a while, hunting was forbidden to all but the nobility, who, by the way, were eventually the only ones eating meat. All but these elite were subsisting on grains, and even then, off of the cheapest grains. The rich ate wheat - everyone else ate millet.

It was actually the colonial effort of later centuries that greatly improved the diet of the average southerner. Such colonists, wherever they went, found vast tracts of land that were perfect for cultivating herds. Being from highly competitive, overpopulated lands, they simply could not see how aboriginal peoples were putting their lands to any "use."

So they set to using the colonized lands in the same way that they would have back home - for agriculture. This time, however, there was a lot of room and a lot of grass, perfect for sheep and cattle. As more time went by, the average southerner got used to a diet of meat again.

The times of plenty and scarcity in the South have nevertheless continued to fluctuate, of course, and southern culture is now entering another one of those times when the average person has to worry about protein.

The South has run out of room for its herds again, becoming increasingly dependent upon the pasta and bread products provided by grain harvests. Southern meat is increasingly expensive, and truly good meat (by Inuit standards) is increasingly unavailable. Not coincidentally, we are seeing an upswing in the popularity of sauces and spice-mixes that are meant to improve, or at least conceal, the taste of less-than-choice meat.

More and more, eating until sated is identified with gluttony.

(Continued in Part two.)

While overeating has become a mark of gluttony among most southern cultures, there was really no such thing as overeating among traditional Inuit.

In old culture, it was a good and healthy thing to eat as much as one wanted. Inuit did have the concept of gluttony, but an Inuit glutton was instead marked by the tendency to withhold food from others. One of the most monstrous acts one could commit, in traditional culture, was to deprive others of food by keeping the best or largest portions for oneself.

This ties into the Inuit concept of reciprocity, a practice that is fading today as the culture changes. When Inuit were nomads, it necessarily developed that food generally did not "belong" to anyone. Or, perhaps more accurately, it belonged to everyone.

Even today, Inuit do not customarily give thanks for food (except in prayer), since it was always considered every person's right to eat whatever food was available. As recent as only a couple of decades ago, this was the most practical way of doing things.

For example: Let's say family X has a store of caribou, while family Y does not. Family Y, then, has the right to eat some of family X's caribou - no need to ask permission or offer thanks for it (in fact, family X will urge the others to come over and eat). Much later, however, family Y is catching caribou and X is having no luck at all. Suddenly, it becomes more understandable why X allowed Y to eat their food. Now it is X's turn to come over and eat Y's food.

This seems like a very pragmatic and even heartwarming system, but it all hinges on one delicate feature: reciprocity. If reciprocity breaks down, even a little, the whole system suddenly becomes impractical and impracticable.

Even today, the tradition still exists across the Arctic, but it is more scattered and selective than it used to be, since it cannot persist where reciprocity wanes. Since Inuit have adopted southern living methods, participating in a market economy, they have necessarily adopted a cautionary approach to their resources and property.

If Y approaches X for money, sensing that X has a surplus, X now takes a risk by being "traditional" and giving Y money. Often, X will never see any reciprocity in return. If Y can always get money from X, why should Y bother working at all?

Far easier to wait till X earns some money, then come around for a share of it. This system cannot last for long, since X and Y are of no mutual benefit to each other.

Like a parasite that stupidly kills itself by killing its host, X and Y are both losing through Y's lack of reciprocity. In this way, a traditional system, born of practicality, is made to become singularly unworkable and un-traditional.

The potential breakdown of this system worried pre-colonial Inuit, as well. Being fully aware that the system depended upon reciprocity, they were quick to shame anyone who exhibited gluttony by the Inuit standard.

Several popular stories and monsters exemplified the glutton figure, and served as a caution against such deviancy. The best such example is the story of the blind son deliberately starved by his own blood.

Taitsumaniguuq:

Three people sat starving. One was an old woman, the other her daughter, and the other her son, who was utterly blind. No one is sure why they sat starving in their slowly melting igluvigaq (snow-house); perhaps it was that the old woman's husband had died out on the Land, taking the dogs with him. Yet, regardless of the reason, the three of them sat waiting for the thaw, or death, whichever came first. And all were going increasingly mad with hunger.

There was an ice-window in the igluvigaq, and it was one day obscured by something moving around outside. The women looked up to see the face of a bear, looking in on them. They began to scream. Once the blind son understood what was happening, he cried,

"Mother! I'll try to drive it off with the spear! Someone hand me the spear and guide me as I stab!"

He felt the spear being placed in his hands, just in time for his sister to scream that the bear was wriggling its way into the igluvigaq.

(Concluded in Part Three.)

The blind son thrust the spear outward with all his strength, his mother's hands guiding him. In this way, again and again, he thrust at the bear, until he heard his mother cry,

"It's driven away!"

Not a word from his sister.

What the blind son could not know was that he had in fact killed the bear. The old woman raced over to her daughter and began to whisper harshly that her brother must not know.

"Think of all the food there will be!" the crone hissed. "He's of no use! He would want us to have it."

The girl simply stared at her mother in stunned horror, but when she finally opened her mouth, the old woman shook her violently, repeating what she had said.

So, cowed into silence, the daughter acquiesced to her mother's wishes. They dragged the bear outside, and kept the blind son from knowing that it was there at all.

Days went by, and the women had plenty of meat, but the old woman always told her son that there was none. Secretly, however, the girl kept her brother alive by smuggling him some of her portions. Whenever this made the old woman suspicious, the girl would simply say that she was particularly hungry from having gone so long without.

The blind son was saddened, of course, when he finally learned of this, but he was blind, so the deception went on and on. Finally, however, he got sick of it all, and began to whisper to his sister that he wanted her to bring him to an isolated place, a peninsula or island. Waves of horror ran through her whenever he asked such things - she didn't want him to kill himself.

Yet he was insistent. One day, he finally convinced her to bring him to a little island close to shore. She left him lying there, alone, upon the ground. And it was there, or so it is said, that something miraculous occurred:

The blind son heard the call of loons. Abruptly, two loons landed on his chest. They walked up and down the length of him, then seemed to circle, taking turns landing at either side. Somehow, he understood that something special was going on, so he took great pains to remain very still while the loons went about their business.

Eventually, they began to lick at his eyes. He could barely stand the feel of their rough little tongues upon him, but he refused to move, for with every lick, it seemed that light was coming to his eyes, growing brighter and brighter, until he at last could see the blurry sky above.

By the time the loons had finished their work and departed, his sight was restored.

Overjoyed, he made his way back to his mother and sister. As soon as he approached, he could see the great bear skin lying outside, but he resolved not to make an issue of it.

The women greeted him enthusiastically upon his arrival, the sister, out of relief; the mother, more out of guilt and fear that he knew what she had done. But he spoke little about the bear, and the old woman was pleased. It was not long before she was pressuring him to hunt. The bear meat had run out, and she was desperate for more.

So it was that the son announced that he would take a walk along the shore. And another miracle occurred! A walrus suddenly presented itself, and he quickly harpooned it. But the rocks were slippery and he was not strong enough to fight the animal, so he called for help. The women raced over and grabbed the line, but the rocks were still too slippery, and the son realized that they would all end up in the water if they did not let go. So he cried to the women to release it.

"No!" the old woman screeched. "We can get it!"

"Let go!" the son hollered. He and his sister let go.

"No! Mine!" the crone shrieked.

In her eagerness, she had wrapped herself up in the line, and now she could not disengage herself. And so it was that, with a wail of despair, the walrus pulled her into the water, and then beneath it forever.

Thus, in Inuit tradition, goes the glutton's end.

Pijariiqpunga.

He who knows others is wise;
Yet he who knows himself is enlightened.
He who conquers others is strong;
Yet he who conquers himself is mighty.
He who is sated is rich;
Yet he who directs himself has power.
- Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

There;
How shall I go to compose this important song?
How shall I invent it to help me?
I am wholly ignorant.
There;
Those who dance with elegance,
I will get inspiration from them.
- Ogpingalik, a Netsilingmiut songstress, 1960

Inuit have always believed that physicality is a sort of intelligence unto itself - and a vital one at that. Southerners who have travelled with Inuit have remarked that Inuit show an amazing ability to fix nearly anything, constantly finding new uses for old parts and tools. An Inuk can take one object, made for a single purpose, and find a dozen new uses for it.

Similarly, explorers have expressed a great deal of amazement at Inuit endurance and pain tolerance: a hunter's ability to run full-tilt for several hours; the ability to stand utterly immobile over an aglu (seal breathing-hole) for an interminable amount of time; the ability to haul a heavy kill, perhaps more than the hunter's own body weight, over vast distances. These are all good examples of the kind of physical prowess Inuit have needed simply to exist at all.

And it doesn't end there. When a tool or toggle or part of a qamotik (sled) breaks on a hunt, a substitute must be made fast. Lashings and traces must be fixed, detached, or untangled with utter urgency. Shelters must be erected or taken down as quickly as possible, depending on sudden shifts in the weather.

Human existence itself can hinge upon improvisation. Improvisation with speed. With these kinds of needs, it is no wonder, then, that Inuit have come to depend not only upon the intelligence characteristic of the conscious mind, but that of the unconsciousness as well. Their survival has come to depend upon a physical intelligence, that which exhibits itself when there is no time for thought.

While this kind of physical intelligence is to some degree genetic, a result of Inuit having been engineered by the extreme environmental conditions, it is also a result of culture. Inuit culture has almost obsessively emphasized the importance of spatial coordination and athleticism. Whether the ajajaaq (string games) taught to children as soon as they were able to learn them, or the amazing traditional athletics still exhibited at the Arctic Winter Games, these were all training methods of one kind or another.

As a girl, I was privileged, in that my father allowed me to assist in his hunting. I became used to running for lengthy periods of time alongside a qamotik, and I became able to untangle multiple dog-traces in record time.

But it did not come easily. I had to be conditioned first. So, one day, near Prince of Wales Island, my father decided to train me. His demeanor suddenly changed from gentle, indulgent parent, to barking hellion. Nothing I did was quick enough, good enough. Lift this, toss that, coil that rope, set this up, make this, go here, faster, faster, not fast enough. I wept. I was sore day after day. Comfort became a stranger.

Yet I cannot dispute the fact that it improved me. I learned to act from reflex rather than thought, and I loved it. I was proud like never before.

I later learned that this was one traditional way of introducing Inuit youth to the adult world. But since Inuit don't practice this kind of thing anymore, it has left us with a sticky problem: How can future generations still gain the personal benefits of traditional conditioning? How can the natural physical intelligence be used to improve modern existence?

Sports are a good way. Whether through southern sports, or the more traditional nature of the Arctic Winter Games, such athleticism is indisputably valuable. Nevertheless, the one flaw of a sport is its competitive nature, a nature that tends to repel those with no interest in testing themselves against others. Conversely, the traditional Inuktitut way of developing physical intellect is characterized more by its tendency to test the self.

Yet there is one activity that accomplishes such self-testing quite adequately, a physical intelligence with roots in Asia.

(Concluded in part two.)

China, being very old, enjoys as much mythic past as verifiable history. One of its myths tells of an Indian monk, known as Bodhidharma, who visited China's Shaolin Temple.

There, he supposedly found the Chinese monks in poor health, and consequently taught them various breathing techniques and physical exercises. It is said that the Shaolin monks eventually used such techniques as the basis for hand-to-hand fighting styles. Over the centuries, such styles gained renown and were eventually taught to non-monks, spreading over China, then all of Asia. Thus do the Asian martial arts exist today.

The truth of the matter is similar, but much more complex, and I'll only write of it briefly. As with the rest of the world, Asia has been pumping out martial arts systems, in various areas, at various times, since the advent of bronze weaponry (in China) around 1500 BC.

Even the Mongol wrestling style called "cilnum" (interestingly utilizing the same edge-of-the-fist blows Inuit traditionally used in unarmed fighting) is incredibly ancient.

Yet none of these fighting systems has persisted like the sort of martial arts that began to trickle out of China since 500 AD - roughly two thousand years later. Why?

The most likely reason is that, while Bodhidharma's visit is largely mythical, the Shaolin tradition nevertheless did influence many of the martial arts in Asia, however indirectly. And its influence left such martial arts with a semi-religious, ascetic flavour. In this way, the people who today practice the descendant systems of such martial arts might not be monks or Buddhists or even Asian, but they are still peppered by such ethics as:

1. Violence is a last recourse.

2. Respect family and culture.

3. Master the self.

4. Exercise restraint and discipline.

5. Struggle to improve society.

The example above is not a military code, but a civilian, even semi-monastic, one. It is the difference between the martial art studied for war and that studied for the sake of self-discipline. In this way, such martial arts merely offer, as a bonus, the fact that they are useful for self-defence, while their real goal is perfection of the self.

In part one of this column, I described my experience of undergoing a form of traditional Inuit training under my father. He was harsh - even what people today might call cruel - but once I overcame my self-pity, I came out of it with new skills, a new sense of pride in what I could endure.

There was only one other thing that made me feel the same way: karate, a discipline that has its roots in civilian - not military - tradition. In the late 1400s, the Okinawan king Sho Shin banned all weapons. Okinawa, at that time, was an international Asian trade centre.

The response to the weapons ban was that the Okinawans borrowed Chinese martial arts, fusing them with local "te" ("hand") boxing traditions for self-defence. By the early 1900s, the art was generally known as "karate-do," or, "empty hand way." Like my experience with my father, I initially thought it would kill me. As with my father, it was instead an awakening, the sense of being reconditioned into someone better. Like my father, martial arts was a call to my natural physical intelligence.

I wasn't able to continue with karate because of relocation, but I have sampled other martial arts, and I've talked to other Inuit who have done so. Inuit seem to take to martial arts like birds to air, and I've decided that this only makes sense.

For there is something strangely Inuktitut about the martial arts. Their philosophies share the same kind of holistic, or "circular," thinking intrinsic to Inuit culture. Their movements are suited to the Inuit Mongol body-type. But, most importantly, they are about harmonizing conscious mind with unconscious potential, what Bruce Lee called "neuromuscular conditioning."

In other words, they are about awakening that physical intelligence ancient Inuit used to find so valuable - the ability to act toward survival instinctively, leaving the conscious mind free.

Often, I think about the needs of the younger generations - the need for pride, for focus, for something to do - and I wonder: How would Inuit react if there were more martial arts schools in the North?

Pijariiqpunga.

I live in glory,
I drink from an eternal spring
And I eat manna;
I live in Beulah Land…

That is some kind of hymn my father always sang aloud when tending to mundane chores.

I would tag along, listening, a small shadow absorbing a vision of a much better land beyond. "Beulah," in Inuktitut, sounds a lot like "piulaaq," which means "the best."

Where did my father think he was headed? A vision of a far-off place, a much better land, danced in my head. I suppose singing of his personal paradise swept his mind away from the dull repetition of knotting and unknotting countless little squares of fish net.

My paradise, then, was a living one, with endless summer days under a stunning blue sky. The world was a kaleidoscope of vast wild flower patches, bird nests containing tiny, perfect, pale colored eggs, tundra as far as the eye could see.

Only children can actually make work out of intense play. There were the constant trips to a friend's tent for games, where I would watch kids cook homemade candy over a camp stove, getting the caramel consistency just right by adding powdered milk.

I was not allowed to play with food. Both sugar and milk were in scarce supply. To my parents, a couple of cups of sugar seemed a scandalous amount to waste on such an uncertain experiment. Was that what it was like to live on manna, I sometimes wondered, as in my father's song? Was it being able to use as much of an ingredient for your cooking as you wished? Was that the manna, falling like snow?

I tried asking my father such questions, the answers never satisfactory. The limited answers only encouraged more questions.

For example, if my dad died and went to heaven, where would I be? Would I find him up there? What if I got lost or taken somewhere else, like one of my friends who got sent to the wrong community upon returning from a prolonged stay at a southern hospital. Would "they" (whomever regulates the afterlife) know where to take me?

Most importantly, what if my father didn't go to Beulah Land? What if he went somewhere else? Where would that place be, and did spirits have to "live" someplace? What if we died as children, never growing into adulthood. If my sister died first and I got to see her much later, as an adult, would she know it was me?

I got the usual: Don't ask so many questions. To this day, I don't remember ever being given a satisfactory answer as to what happened to children when they died, except some stock thing about angels bringing children up to God. I remember thinking, in frustration: Who wants to go to Heaven? You would just have to listen to angels sing all day.

And I was haunted by that song of my father's, for he wasn't singing about Heaven. He was singing about Beulah Land, where everything is piulaaq ... the best.

Sometimes, when I've thought back upon my father's answers concerning angels and Heaven in the afterlife, I've wondered: At what point did all that, his conversion, take place? My father was brought up in a most traditional society. There shouldn't have been anything in his background to make his ideas so Judeo-Christian. To this day, his conversion still nags at me. Not the fact, just the "when" and "how" of it. What is it like to be ... converted?

Yet I suppose Inuit have always modified Christianity to suit themselves, a traditional cosmology with the formal overlay of religion. And behind it all are hidden personal beliefs - the isuma - reflecting the individual's secret cosmology. That was why I wanted a glimpse at this Beulah Land, my father's secret paradise, so perfect to him that he had to express it in song. But the fact that it was my father's own vision precluded my ever seeing it.

The strangest thing happened last week. I called my father to wish him a happy 83rd birthday. I ended up chatting with my youngest brother, mentioning that there was this hymn our father always sang during chores. My brother told me that he still hums that very tune.

For half a century, singing of Beulah Land.

Pijariiqpunga.

“My name is Rachel and I'm an alcoholic.”

I have used that line many times in jest, to break the ice during presentations. It always gets a laugh, as well as a few “Hello Rachels.” There was a time, though, when it was no laughing matter.

My battle with alcohol is not unlike that of many in my generation, with roots in residential schools, the uprooting of Inuit culture, dysfunctional family, a low sense of overall worth. From the inside, looking out, I somehow felt alone and different in my problems.

I was leaden with Monday mornings of sleep deprivation and hangovers, hidden under cosmetics, streamlined by cigarettes and caffeine.

People in recovery often talk about “hitting the bottom,” or words to that effect. It just never happened to me. Mine was a no-man's-land of lukewarm life. Nothing great ever happened, nor were there any disasters. Just day-in day-out of the same old grey: go to work, pick up kid, pay bill, get food, go drink with work friend. A nice little self-perpetuating cycle. In between bouts of depression, throw in a few pills to go up, down, whatever — the exact direction didn't matter.

There were a few rage moments in there, taxi drivers, waitresses, and telephone operators getting the brunt of it. And it all eventually spiralled up into one exceptionally bad night, which finally led me to someone who pointed out the path I was treading.

I was visited by a pastor (Lutheran, I think, but it was the man who mattered, not the religion). He kindly visited my apartment, holding up a mirror, showing me a not-so-flattering image of myself.

I tried to be as offensive and harsh as possible, throwing in a few “F” words, chain-smoking, lying on the floor. I think I was even still a little drunk from the night before. I tried to impress him with how unfair life had been to me.

(But, inside, I was glad he had come over, that someone was listening.)

I had a disease, he claimed, no less a disease than diabetes or cancer. “But the curse is the gift, and the gift is the curse,” he said. “Someday, you'll understand that.”

What a flake, I thought. What a waste of time….

The encounter nevertheless drove me to seek help. Now, there were two things I was aware of about myself. First, I knew that a “typical” approach to healing would not work, since I did not trust non-native institutions. Second, I instinctively knew that a non-spiritual path would fail — the problem was so deeply rooted that only a healer could touch it.

To make a long (and, I hope, not predictable) story short, I ended up going for alcohol treatment at Poundmaker's, a native treatment center in St. Albert, Alberta. And, next to having my children, next to my current marriage of nine years (which came afterward), it was the best thing I've ever done in my life.

The spiritual aspect of it was mind-boggling — the ultimate self-confrontation, sitting on the grass, literally relearning how to pray. One of the treatment steps went, “Come to believe in a power greater than yourself.”

At the time, I had no higher power. My power was false success, false egotism, false self. There, I became resigned to letting the creator be the maker, myself be the made. There, I learned of the cunning, baffling, powerful nature of addiction.

I unwove the web of crap I had spun around my being, examining the things that I felt were ugly about my life — and beautiful. And I wish I could say that light illuminated me from within, that I was cured! But that wasn't the case. Instead, it began the long, rewarding, painful repatching of my life. My new path.

One day, I opened my eyes, looked around, saw some tiny brown birds flying about me. It seemed that I had dreamt of those birds upon that hill, overlooking the fields of Poundmaker.

Now, after a dozen years or so, I've begun to understand the gift side of the curse.

I try not to judge those I see staggering about. I even buy drinks for those not afflicted by the disease. I have no problem with those who like a bit of alcohol. Yet I can never again mistake its nature — cunning, baffling, powerful.

Pijariiqpunga.

I think I am safe in stating this as fact: Anyone who is unaware that Inuit are the consummate hunting culture has never heard of Inuit.

And since everyone knows that Inuit are a hunting culture, and since everyone knows that Inuit dwell in some of the coldest places on Earth, Inuit don't get a lot of questions about their traditional herbal knowledge. Most folks, in fact, assume that herbalism would be an alien concept to Inuit, that the Arctic doesn't hold enough variety, in its flora, to base a body of herbal knowledge upon.

Well, the truth is that the assumption is a bit true; but it is also a bit false. I'll explain.

It is true that pre-colonial Inuit, in general, were not especially engrossed in the pursuit of herbal lore. Plants were often not plentiful enough to command the attention of Inuit. This makes sense, since the Arctic can be maddeningly cold, and the time when plants are able to flourish represents a short window of opportunity - the all-to-brief summer months.

Arctic plants are evolved to lie in wait for that seasonal warmth, then explode into action. Three-quarters of the Arctic year is white, grey, black, and blue - until summer warmth elicits a sudden burst of orange, scarlet, violet and green from the patient, low-lying plants that carpet the landscape.

Those who are foreign to the North often have a difficult time understanding just how much plant life there is, all quite low to the ground, but thick and spongy underfoot. Such plant life seems to appear out of nowhere when the snow and ice recede.

Sometimes, it seems as though, in one moment, the world is all crisp, white, crunching angles. In the next, it is endless, moist, yielding colour, a thousand different floral shapes in which fat black spiders, dancing flies and numerous other creatures make innumerable homes.

And, believe it or not, the stuff is useful, too.

The truth is that Inuit have always known that the plants around them are medicinal. They have always known, just as southern aboriginal peoples have, that they are medicines waiting to be used.

Now, southern aboriginal peoples have always made a great deal out of their traditional herbal knowledge - and justifiably so.

Some of the stuff that I have learned from reading and from talking to Indian elders, can make a modern pharmacy look like a cheap candy-store by comparison.

And no human culture, if we look at its ancestry, is different from any other in this respect. We are all human, and therefore all heirs to the same genius, the ability to observe and learn whatever edge our environment might offer us in order to survive.

Ancient Celts, for example, once used the leafy branches of their sacred mistletoe (not the poisonous berries) to soothe nervous disorders. Zulu warriors rushed into battle after ingesting a complex concoction of roots and fungus that dulled pain and amplified aggression. The ancient Greeks and Romans both used lavender for its sedative effect - and in order to make a nice bath.

While many cultures have abandoned their traditional herbal knowledge in favour of modern pharmaceuticals (which I am not criticizing, by the way), the aboriginal peoples of North America were overrun with European colonists only recently, and so many of their elders still retain some useful herbal knowledge. Luckily, a lot of it has found its way into book form. This is due, in part, to the great importance southern aboriginal peoples (i.e., Indians) ascribe to their plant lore.

So why don't Inuit ascribe the same importance to their own herbal knowledge? Well, there are really two factors that combine to make up the answer to this question. One is that Inuit were nomadic over almost incomprehensible distances.

This is one of the reasons why different "Eskimoan" cultures can pretty much understand each other's languages and customs from one end of the continent to the other. The other is that the Arctic landscape varies greatly, causing the available plant life to do likewise.

In other words, unlike in the South, there was little consistency in the types of plants Inuit were able to access. And consistency - predictability - is what survival is based upon.

(Continued in part two.)

In last week's column, I described how the lack of consistency and predictability in the availability of plants made it difficult for Inuit to rely on them entirely as a source of medicines, as people in warmer climates did. Instead, Inuit medicine was typically based upon the most common Inuit resource: animals.

Numerous traditional treatments utilized specially prepared skins, fats, sinews and oils from a wide range of creatures. Seal fat, for example, was essential for treating snow blindness and burns. The neck skin from a ptarmigan was prized as a light dressing. Lemming skin was used to drain boils. The bile from a seal's gall bladder was good for skin problems.

Despite their tendency to rely upon animal-based materials, however, Inuit did possess reasonably extensive herbal knowledge. The exact knowledge varied from area to area, just as the plants did. Inuit near the treeline, for example, could access pine, the inner bark of which is rich in acetylsalicylic acid (natural Aspirin).

More importantly, treeline Inuit could gather juniper berries, known the world over for their antiseptic properties, as well as their utility in treating kidney and bladder problems, gas and mild infections.

Yet even Inuit without access to the treeline still had many uses for the plants available to them. One of the most important plants, at once medicine and utensil, was Arctic cotton grass. The oil from the stem was used to remove warts. Additionally, as one might imagine, the cottony head of the plant made an excellent all-purpose swab. A mixture of cotton grass and charcoal made a good temporary wound cover.

There were numerous other plant medicines, as well. Freshwater algae, boiled first, was used for just about anything relating to the skin, from boils to impetigo. Moss not only made a good lamp wick, but was used for extreme snow-blindness, skin problems, frostbite, and wound dressing.

Fireweed leaves, when chewed, supposedly stopped nose-bleeds. The roots of dwarf willow were peeled and held against a sore tooth (I still do this myself if I get a toothache while hiking). Some sorts of mushroom were used externally for cuts and frostbite. Mountain sandwort was good for diarrhea.

More often than not, Inuit used plants as tea, and various tea recipes have existed across the Arctic since time immemorial. Tea-drinking was both recreational and medicinal, but the former at least explains the modern Inuit fondness for store-bought (i.e., Asian) tea.

Fireweed has always been one of the most popular teas for universal intestinal complaints (everything except the root is boiled), although Inuit and other cultures found it useful for myriad things, including muscle spasms, nervous irritation, irritation of the mucous membranes, regulating menstruation, and healing sores and blisters (as an external balm). I have heard that the Blackfoot Indians rubbed on fireweed powder for cold protection, but I have never heard of this usage among Inuit.

Cloudberry leaves, bearberry leaves, and alpine smartweed were used for general stomach-aches and kidney problems. Bearberry tea, in particular, has strong diuretic and astringent properties, and is said to be good for bladder troubles. Some Inuit believed that rock tripe tea was good for tuberculosis, although I don't think this belief was widespread.

The most widely ingested tea, however, was Labrador tea. The entire plant (especially the leaves) is rich in a pungent, volatile oil called ledol. The more it is steeped or boiled, the more ledol is released, so that overdoing it can quickly turn an otherwise pleasant tea into a smelly mess. A strong solution of it can even remove lice or other skin parasites.

It has a reasonably strong sedative effect, being quite relaxing, although it shouldn't be used by people prone to heart problems and seizures. If one is unused to it, it can cause giddiness and lightheadedness the first time it is imbibed, but the body quickly adjusts to it. Medicinally, Inuit most often took it to relieve stomach problems, mild constipation, and fever.

While these herbs outlined above might at first seem like an impressive array of traditional medicine, bear in mind that most can be described in only a single article, such as this one. Southern herbal traditions, conversely, can fill volumes. So if Inuit elders do not talk a lot about their herbal lore, it isn't because they are without such. It is just that such lore is so undependable that it is not in the forefront of their minds.

Personally, I like my Labrador tea, but I have to tell you: If my finger is bleeding, I want a Band Aid.

Pijariiqpunga.

"Hey Rachel, what is a harlot?"

"Shut up, I'm trying to study," I replied with my usual teenage sensitivity. It was study time at Stringer Hall, our residential school, and that also meant it was officially quiet time.

My classmate had such a gift for asking jarring questions out of the blue. Questions like, "Where do you suppose that guy got his clothes?"

As though I knew the answers to everything. Mostly, I think she was just using her rhetorical inquiries to lead into something else she had on her mind. She had to do it now, of all times, when I had an urgent assignment due the next day.

But I was curious now, so I had to know:

"Why do you ask?"

"It's just that Mrs. Aech was razzing Ethel earlier about doing her makeup the way she does. She said she looked like a 'harlot.' Okay, so what's a harlot?"

"It's some kind of a whore from the Bible, okay?" I answered peevishly. "Anything else you want to ask me now that I can't concentrate?"

"Doing her makeup the way she does," meant too much blue eye-shadow, pasted on mascara, and any number of other garish colours collected from wherever it was that Ethel found her makeup.

Privately, the girls often joked that she had a secret supply of "ugliness" she would dip into from time to time. Cruel, but quite ordinary. It is one of life's mysteries that, while we are in our teens, our sense of cruelty for some reason becomes honed to a fine edge.

And then there are those who carry that cruelty into adulthood. Mrs. Aech (not her real name) was one of those, and she took every opportunity to humiliate Ethel (also not her real name) and the rest of us girls.

It seemed a trivial matter then, part of day-to-day existence, but looking back upon it all through adult eyes makes me shake my head at Mrs. Aech's complete tactlessness.

Back then, it seemed, we had no identity of our own. It was bad enough to be herded into a dining room like cattle for study period, but to have your appearance made the subject of comment for all to hear was bordering on abuse.

It was a given, though, that Mrs. Aech seemed to have it in for the older girls - especially in the looks department. A day didn't go by where an unfortunate wouldn't be sent back from sitting down to lunch or dinner, made to change a "too revealing" blouse or skirt. Sometimes, it was to re-style the hair.

The boys, oddly, didn't seem to become the objects of Mrs. Aech's wrath. The boys, it seemed, could get away with anything from ripped jeans to long hair. The girls could not.

This was not the only double standard. There was also the fact that Mrs. Aech herself was a livid mess of powders, bloody red lipstick and rouge. Her hair was a perpetual nest of thickly dyed purple.

It seemed strange to me that the least bit of makeup on us girls made us "The Whore of Babylon!" as Mrs. Aech liked to call us. All this from a woman armoured in cosmetics, whose every gesture was accompanied by the sparkle of numerous jewels.

Not only was this double standard damaging to a developing girl's self-esteem, but, in a way, it betrayed exactly what Mrs. Aech thought of Inuit girls.

Or wished to think of us? Were we, in her mind, really little Whores of Babylon? According to this overly made-up woman, the least bit of makeup on us (as well as giving us cancer, in her opinion) made us harlots.

Most of us Stringer Halls kids came from small Inuit communities, and almost all of us had no money to spend on clothing. We wore the school uniform of white, long-sleeved shirt, navy slacks, and boarding-school-issue mukluks. And, of course, when we needed glasses, we got the nice, big, black, standard, welfare issue things.

I have always felt that the residential school system was somewhat schizophrenic in its approach to raising kids. True, it was cruel as well, but this is a well-known fact. But what exactly did they think they wanted us to be?

Next week: Lessons in adversity

Last week, I wrote about my years at a residential school, and about being asked by a classmate what our teacher meant when she referred to "a harlot."

Obviously, it was us. To the abusive Mrs. Aech, it was all of us girls. There was never anything wrong with the boys; but to this strange, bejewelled teacher from the South, Inuit girls were all harlots.

The word became a trigger for my plan to get out of this hell. I wanted to be anywhere else, anywhere myself and the girls around me were not constantly dubbed harlots and the Whores of Babylon.

A desperate desire to never again be targeted by Mrs. Aech grew into an inner resolve. I would beat her at her own game. The way out, I reasoned, was to excel, to give her no ammunition for criticism. From that day on, I wore nondescript clothes. Everything I owned was navy or brown. I wore almost no makeup. Chapstick was all that touched my lips. I would comply, outwardly. Inside, I had promised myself a year of nothing but straight As (okay, B+). But it was a plan. Three more years, then freedom.

I more or less stuck to it. Involvement in sports characterized my "I'll show them" attitude toward the males. If they were going to be Mrs. Aech's favourites, I would simply play that much harder, that much better. They were not superior to this girl. Soccer, basketball, track-and-field, I was never a good athlete, but I did it all and it seemed the way to go.

A friend and I once jogged all the way out to the airport, 16 kilometres, just to see if we could do it (although we had to hitch a ride back). When I wasn't in the gym, I was studying. I went far beyond what was expected of me - more frighteningly, of what I expected of myself.

The harder I worked to dig myself out of the pit of self-pity, the more I got involved in activities that took me outside of myself. The harder I worked, the more there was to do.

Today, when I come across fellow residential school students (I hate that victim-word "survivor"), especially from Stringer Hall, I often see evidence of them having adopted the same game plan. Many became involved in politics, business, leadership, etc.

Ironic, since we were without positive role-models in "school." I also recognize what lurks behind their successes: the loneliness, the bitterness, the battles with self-esteem. The fatigue.

Nowadays, I have realized something about it all: The drive for success was a game strategy that worked then. I had intelligence, and the strategy helped me get through residential school. But there is a difference between intelligence and wisdom, and I have a bit of wisdom now.

These days, I work to live. No living to work. I live for the things that matter: immediate family, those I love best, living and dead. Maybe, in a way, Mrs. Aech was right. We were the Whores of Babylon anyway, but not in the way she meant. Are we not whoring out ourselves when we are passive, invisible, acquiescent in order to succeed in a system not of our making? Are we not whores, of a sort, when we sell ourselves out to get a little back?

Girls that I grew up with no longer joke about Mrs. Aech, the "Dragon Lady." It's not respectful to speak badly of the dead - a respect we pay her, in death, that she could never afford us in life.

If I could say one thing to Eva: Thanks for asking that question. It made me search for answers I would never have invented on my own. None of us ever thought to look up "harlot" or "whore" in the Bible. It's somewhere in Revelations, I guess. Like residential school itself, it is one of those things I could never figure out, and am probably better off not dwelling upon.

Some people say abuse builds character. Perhaps it does. Some say that the abused are survivors, victims needing therapy, sympathetic ears. This, too, may be true. Nevertheless, I say that it is also a game - like chess for your life. And you must play it with strategy. Just learn to recognize when it is finished, and time to turn your back on the board.

Pijariiqpunga.

Editor's note: If you've been sent here from the table of contents, it is because I was unable to recover this part of the given column in the Nunatsiaq News archives, unfortunately.