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.
THINK OF THE MOUNTAINS WHEN YOU TELL THIS STORY. A voice over the phone instructs me to remember my first time visiting the hamlet of Ausuittuq. I see immense mountain ranges all around, cloaked in a permanent blanket of snow and the Arctic Ocean at the hems of its shores. At the base of the mountains
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami President Natan Obed, federal Cabinet ministers and elected leadership from the four Inuit Treaty Organizations gathered for a meeting of the ICPC in Ottawa
LIKE MOST OF MY UPBRINGING, it was a challenge for me to place myself in spaces I was not invited. Speaking from when I was not particularly aware of my own presence, I would feel that sometimes my mere existence was welcomed. It was the way someone would look at me with frowned eyebrows, glances or the movement in their lips. The unspoken awkward silence, the idea that perhaps not saying anything is the only way of saying something. There are often no words required to know if you are welcomed or not.
Nunatsiavut group wins $1M to build cultural centre, with ambitions for ‘something potentially huge’
“We are now living in an era where there are tremendous opportunities to be had for qualifying as a First Nations, Inuit and Métis business,” ITK President Natan Obed told The Globe and Mail. “There are many actors in this country who want to take advantage of that.”
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.
TENT RINGS, ARTIFACTS AND REMNANTS of rusted barrels can be seen as you travel the islands and shores along the Coronation Gulf of Western Nunavut. Copper Inuit hunters and gatherers have crossed these shores since time immemorial, travelling by seasons, following migrations paths, and charting the land and rivers for food and skins.
IN THE SUMMER OF 2019, I flew with my three daughters to my hometown of Tuktoyaktuk, from Yellowknife, to practice the sustainable, age‐old tradition of beluga harvesting. Watching my girls, aged 10, 8, and 1, participate in a harvest at the mouth of the Mackenzie River, where generations of our family have survived for centuries, was a highlight for me as a mother. The beluga harvest is one of many Inuvialuit traditions passed down from our Inuvialuit forefathers, and it continues to teach lessons and build connections to our heritage.
I’VE HOPPED ON AND OFF over 50 airplanes in the past two years. Northern travel always leads to adventures — and, often,misadventures. Last year, for example, I flew to Hopedale, Nunatsiavut, where I was swallowed whole by snow.
JEANNIE ARREAK-KULLUALIK knows the pain of not knowing. Her grandmother and grandfather boarded the C.D. Howe medical ship in 1950s in Pond Inlet, and travelled south for tuber culosis treatment. They never came back.
I LOVE SEAL MEAT when it’s still warm. Red so deep, my eyes feel it. Delicious. Last fall, I shot a seal near Arctic Bay, Nunavut, and my first reaction was “wow! — I got it.” My second thought was the seal’s liver, and how it makes my mouth water. And then a little disappointment comes over me when I realize that I shot the seal through one of its eyes. I wanted to eat it.
