Rev. 07/20/01
Alaska & beyond - continued 7/20
Tuktoyaktuk
Inuvik is the end of the road in the summer. However,
in the winter they build an ice road a hundred miles further north to the
village of Tuktoyaktuk, on the Beaufort Sea, the Arctic Ocean. To get
there in the summer, you must fly. It is about a half-hour flight in
a DeHavlin Twin Otter, a nice flight.
There
are about a thousand people, almost all natives, living there year round.
The natives still live, to some extent, off of the land like their
ancestors did. They still hunt beluga whales and are allowed to
harvest two for each family. Most of the men were way at an island,
whaling.
We climbed a pingo to view the village, and I was surprised
to see how many pingos there were along the coast.
A stop at the beach to wade in the Arctic Ocean, was some thing
Bill and Shirley were looking forward to. I'm chicken, I like my sea
water warm, like at home.
At the turn of the century, both the Anglican and the Catholic churches ran ships up here, vying for converts along the native people. The Catholic ship, "Our Lady of Lourdes" has been preserved up on the shore, next to the church.
The three large land animals they hunt are the moose, the caribou,
and the musk ox. The horns of the moose and caribou are shed and regrow
each year. The musk ox, like buffalo never shed their horns, which
continue to grow.
Morine invited us into her home. In a matter of a couple of hours we all found out a great deal about the values, food and living conditions of the native people. And how it all related together to form their culture and their economic base.
She explaining the food, clothing and living conditions in the
village and in the outer camps, both winter and summer. And told the
use of the tools they use -- the ulu, different sizes. Morine told
us her big ulu had been made from a saw blade. The small ulu is a women's
knife, they all have one and use it for all cutting tasks, such as sewing,
cooking, cleaning and skinning animals..
And
as girls, they are given a needle case. It is made of a four
or five inch length of the hollow leg bone of a snow goose. A strip
of caribou hide, about three-fourths of an inch wide and maybe eight - ten
inches long is run through the hollow bone. Each end of the strip is
fastened to a piece of antler, so it won't pull through. Needles are
stuck in the hide and then secured by pulling the strip back into the hollow
bone, allowing the hide strip to naturally fold around the needles, protecting
them. The other end is then secured by wrapping it around the outside
of the bone. Every woman carries one. They are indispensable
for making parkis, and other garments.
To set the stage for the food, Morine served pupus like at home -- only she called it finger food. But here the pupus were dried white fish, dried beluga meat, which is something like jerky, and muktuk, which is the white layer of the beluga, just under the outer skin. Of course the taste and texture is somewhat different than food at home, but good. Then she brought out caribou soup -- ono, real ono.
As Morine went along, she explained the nutritional value of each food -- where each of the necessary vitamins come from, and which food provides the necessary energy needed for living and working in the extreme cold of the high latitudes.
She
spent a lot of time going over the trapping they do, and showed us the skins
of the animals they trap. And the clothes they make from many of them.
The martin, or sable, is their real "cash" crop. Martin fur grows
very dark in the cold and long dark winters of the MacKenzie delta country.
She put a totally new "spin" on what a trapper does, what their life
is like, and how it all fits together as an integrated economy.
We got a chance to try on the clothes she had made, from the caribou parki for the men, and the women's dancing parki. Alnoor really looks the man in his, and Gular was a very pretty model. And, boy, is it ever warm.
There is a lot to the women's parki -- the tassels in the front
are to ward off evil spirits, in the back are for each of their grandchildren,
and the "wings" on the shoulders are for a young, unattached girl. That
is the real significance. Now, all of it is used just for decorations.
Even the "sun burst" around the women's face is utilitarian -- her hands need to be free. So when frost from her breath builds around her face, turning her head to catch the wind brushes it off. And we were told much more then I learned, and so much more than I can write.
The flight back gave me a chance to take some pictures of the lake country of the MacKenzie Delta. I'd like to visit here in the winter and to drive the ice road.
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