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IT WAS “A BIG STEP” FOR INUVIALUIT, says Brian Elanik, when—over the course of a week in September 2023—he and his team butchered the first 50 reindeer harvested from the regional herd. “That’s our herd that will supply the Inuvialuit Settlement Region with traditional meats and hides,” says Elanik, an operator at the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation’s Inuvik‐based Inuvialuit Country Food Processing Plant. “We brought them into the plant, hung them up, let the blood drain overnight. We made roasts, diced meat, ground meat, sausages, ribs. We try to utilize everything from the animal to provide for our people.”

NELLIE AREY HAS LIVED IN AKLAVIK SINCE 1959 and has raised her family there, as well as continuing to make a subsistence living on the land. Nellie is here to tell some of what it was like growing up on the land, teaching her kids and grandkids the way her family taught her. This interview was special for me, as I am one of her grandkids, and I heard stories that were new even to me.

A LONG TIME AGO WHEN THE WORLD WAS OLD, but Inuit were new, there were lots of different Inuit around the Western Arctic. There were the Qiqiktarmiut from Herschel Island, the Kuupukmiut from the Mackenzie River, the Kittirgaryamiut from Kittigariut, and there were the Anderson River Inuit whose name we don’t remember. Or at least I don’t.