excerpt
Together with his adopted family they celebrated the end of a long and
involuntary fast when Ken and the hunters brought home a fat walrus killed
on the ice flows; in the spring he joined in the hunt for the dangerous polar
bear, the only meat he found he did not care for. He observed the wonder of
childbirth and the tragic suicide of a young man who, taken from his family
as a child, returned a stranger unable to fit in and unwilling to return to the
white man’s world. He visited a camp where people were dying of a fever
so high they rolled in the snow to cool their suffering bodies until the lining
of their brain swelled and killed them. And walked away from them feeling
bitterly angry and utterly helpless.
Ken developed a deep and abiding passion for these cheerful, resilient
survivors, who had little, yet unconditionally accepted the fact that even
that small amount could be lost in an instant. There seemed no need for the
Inuit to apportion blame if and when such a disaster occurred. It was the
way it was.
During the long transition between winter and summer, when the ice
grew too soft to be trusted and the people could not travel, there was a
period of patient waiting. Women sewed garments and told stories; men
shaped tools or made tiny, exquisite carvings to please the spirits.
Ken observed and absorbed their manners, their skills, their songs and
dances. He was told “teaching” stories, many as bleak and unforgiving as the
winter landscape surrounding them—stories of the unhappy consequence
of jealousy and greed and other undesirable traits. When the storyteller
finished, silence wrapped around them all like a fur blanket and time lost
all relevance. It was during one of these times when he had a magical
experience.
The Story of Nunavut began with a drum chant. In the crowded igloo
filled with the scent of bodies and warmed by the glow of kudliks (seal-oil
lamps), his pulse echoed the beat of the drum.
It was their creation story, which was later retold many times by the
Grandmother. It recounted the history of the land and, in the Inuit way, the
meaning of the land was explained as “all that it encompasses including the
stories from the beginning.” The story told of good and evil, of beneficial
things brought by the Kablunat such as tools and rifles, and of bad things
such as disease. One of the most significant amongst the tragedies was the
removal of children from their homes by the government.
Mayanaam
vequinox
Manolis 