Kananginak Pootoogook’s Nunannguaq
Shortly before Kananginak died in November 2010, we spent a quiet afternoon reminiscing about the old days. I had been to Ikirisaq, the famous and now abandoned Pootoogook camp on the east side of Kangisurituq (Andrew Gordon Bay). I expressed the regret that we had never travelled to all the favoured locations around Ikirisaq together. In my heart I knew we would never make that journey because Kananginak had only a short time to live. On the last day we would see each other alive, he handed me a a small sheet of paper, it was his nunannguaq (above) depicting all the favoured locations around Ikirisaq that we had hoped someday to visit together. Perhaps we will.
Simeonie Quppapik’s Nunannguaq
Simeonie drew two maps for me. The first shown here (opposite) drawn in 1990 depicts the coast of southwest Baffin Island, from Cape Dorset (far left) to Simeonie’s birthplace near Qarmaarjuak (Amadjuak), some 300 kilometers distant. He identifies the location of whales, square-flipper seals, walrus, small seals, fish, birds, etc. He shows the migration path of geese and the reindeer herd once tended by the Sami Laplanders, (see the chapter on The People With the Pointed Shoes) at Qarmaarjuak (HBC Amadjuak Trading Post).
The inuksuit he illustrates across the top of the drawing are those he describes as the “important ones” that relate to major sites of ancient ceremonial centres, fish weirs, where Tuniit once lived as well as other significant places. He is careful not to relate an inuksuk to a specific place thus revealing the location of what we would interpret as a “sacred site.”
Interestingly, he hints of such a place by including a figure which is not an inuksuk. The sixth figure from the left is in fact a tupqujak, a shaman’s doorway located at Kangia (Kungia). This wonderful map has been exhibited in numerous exhibitions and publications in Canada and abroad.
Ruth Qaulluaryak’s Nunannguaq
Many years ago a delightful young lady gave me a little tapestry (see page 80) which has hung in my bedroom all these years. I was told that Ruth Qaulluaryak who lived in Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake) in Nunavut, made the tapestry. Though I had been in Baker Lake for short visits on three occasions, I had never met Ruth. I learned a little bit about her early life through a friend who lived in Baker Lake. Ruth was born and grew up in Haningayok the back river area of Kivalliq, the Keewatin region in Nunavut. She was born the same year (1932) as I though our childhood experience could not be further apart.
Tapistry, 17 ”x21”, by Ruth Qaulluaryak,
Baker Lake (Qamanittuaq), 1969.
A depiction of her universe.
Her family and her people lived a life governed by the movement of caribou. Periods of starvation were not uncommon in the region. I was informed by elders in Arviat that they knew of families starving to death in the interior as late as 1958. It was only in 1970’s that the Qaulluaryak family reluctantly left the land they knew, and moved to Baker Lake.
The landscape familiar to Ruth was a somber one unlike the often spectacular vistas found in the eastern Arctic. It is a landscape which is relatively flat, covered by snow for much of the year only to emerge for a very short time draped in somber shades of grey and brown. For a few weeks there is a patchwork of various shades of green with pockets of Arctic wild flowers whose beauty lasts for a number of days rather than weeks.
It should come as no surprise that a child growing up in a land that often provided such hardship would behold it, as a painful memory of a forsaken place. With this brief narrative as our backdrop, let’s look at Ruth’s tapestry. At first we see a small polar bear amongst a field of various coloured flowers. Her tapestry appears to be a charming little decorative wall hanging. However, look more closely.
The landscape, the sea and the sky are defined by a myriad of flowers. They vary in shape and colour denoting those that live on the land or grow by the seashore including the plants that live in the sea. The only two figures not defined by flowers are the polar bear that moves about the land and in the sea and the thin yellow ocher line that defines the sea from the land. Just above the polar bear’s head, we see a white patch of early spring snow on the ground. Some “flowers” appear monochromatic suggesting shrubs, lichens and grasses while others are brightly coloured illustrating the great variety of flowering plants that carpet the tundra each brief summer. If you look at the top left side of the tapestry, you notice flowers placed on a midnight blue background. The background represents the night sky and the flowers represent the stars. Notice the flower in the top left corner of the sky. It is larger than all others. It represents Nikkisuitok, the pole star we call Polaris. Ruth’s nunannguaq of the earth, sea and sky is portrayed by flowers symbolizing a great living thing, of beauty and renewal.
Satellite image of the entire Foxe Peninsula (Seekuseelak or Sikusiiliq).
Ivory and bone carving of a whale hunt, artist unknown.
HOW WE TOOK A GREAT WHALE
You had to stoop to enter old Jimmy Killabuck’s house. It was a replica of a Hudson’s Bay Company house, but scaled down to one little room with small sleeping quarters that were reached by climbing a ladder.
The place was filled with pieces of this, bits of that, and parts of things, all lodged in their proper places. There was the sweet smell of woodsmoke from the stove and the sound of the kettle as the water for our tea came to a boil. The skins of Canada geese covered the chairs. We drank tea, ate biscuits, and felt very good in each other’s company.
For a moment, the old man was lost in thought as he gazed out the window toward the sea. Then he looked toward me, lit a cigarette, and said,
I will tell you how we hunted great whales in the old days. I am an old man, I think I am 85 years old, and what I am about to tell you was told to me by my father when I was a very young boy.
In the old days we hunted not only belugas and narwhals but the big whales as well. Some Inuit may have hunted whales from umian [large skin boats] but we hunted them from qajait [kayaks]. A man in a qajaq in the water is no threat to a whale. She thinks that the qajaq is nothing more than a peaceful little animal seeking her company. The qajaq is silent, moves quickly, and is much better to handle than any umiak. Umian are for women, children, and dogs, not for hunting.
When the hunters saw the spout from a whale, they came together. They took their panar [bone knife] and lashed it to their qajaq paddle, so as to make a spear. In the old days it took a long time to make our weapons and tools because we had no saws or metal tools. We cut bone and ivory with pieces of “glass.” We found that special glass that looked like icicles growing from certain rocks. We would take a sliver of that glass and set it into a piece of caribou bone so as to give it a handle. That was our saw. We would then scratch a line over and over again on both sides of the bone or ivory until we could break the piece exactly in the right way. We could do other
