A clash of cultures?

Warning: this post may contain images that might cause distress amongst animal lovers and devotees of Fox's Glacier Mints

It is not without a sense of irony that as I write a post about the school's culture day, Jacob and I are currently watching 'Family Jewels with Gene Simmons' on TV, having earlier sat through 'Sober House with Dr Drew.' There's more culture on the mouldy piece of cheese in my fridge than in either of those programmes. They're not shows that either of us would normally watch, but neither of us could be bothered to reach for the remote so, consequently, we were sucked into the sad , lonely and sometimes grotesque lives of others for the best part of two hours. Come to think of it, that pretty much sums up your experience when reading this blog...

But I digest.

As I was saying before I interrupted myself, it was culture day at the school today, the one day in the year that's set aside to celebrate the traditional ways of life in a Northern town. I always enjoy days like this, but I'm not sure how I view the fact that just one day is devoted to celebrating and promoting a culture that is being swamped and overrun by southern mores...I'll leave you to decide your own opinion on that one. I think that's a debate for another time.

Culture day here was very different to the one I experienced in Inukjuak. Here, all the action took place outside, and after two or three hours of milling around everyone had gone their separate ways. In that time though we were able to examine an igloo that had been built by Mark Tertiluk, the centre director at the school, and a second igloo was constructed during the course of the morning. Many of the children - and some of the staff - went sliding, either on plastic sleds, their bottoms or even on sealskins (or any combination of the three), there was some impromptu throat singing and, of course, there was the requisite smörgåsbord of country food, Arctic Char and walrus on this occasion.

If indeed these are to be my final couple of weeks in the North then I guess this will be the last time I get to experience Inuit culture in such a way, and I feel privileged to have the chance to be involved in such an intimate way. I only hope that the incessant march of western 'culture', Gene Simmons, Dr Drew and all, doesn't mean that future generations, both Inuit and quallunaat alike, are denied that chance.

Meat market

WARNING - This is one of those posts that contain potentially disturbing images, both of myself and of dismembered wildlife; you have been warned!

After a beautiful first week weather-wise, the weekend was pretty grey, and as I write on Monday afternoon it's simply pouring down with rain. I spent most of the weekend at school going through the thirty boxes of classroom books and supplies that were flown up from Inukjuak for me, half of which were sent in error (unless I want to run a course in Business Accounting, in French). These boxes now have to be repackaged and sent back down, a laborious and costly task, but as with the Light Brigade, mine is not to reason why.

On a more interesting note, I was taken to the community freezer on Saturday (I guess this would replace 'community chest' on an Inuit Monopoly board), which is not something that the Quallunaat (white people) are normally allowed to do. When any hunters return to the village, their excess catch is placed in the freezer to be shared amongst the population at large, and at the moment there is an excess of caribou in storage, hence us being allowed some. As you can see though, the meat does not come neatly packaged in Styrofoam trays and plastic wrap:

It's very much a case of work out which piece of the animal you're looking at then take what you need, or vice-versa perhaps, depending on how fussy you are. I now have a couple of hefty slabs of caribou meat in my freezer at home, although quite what part of the animal they came from I'm not sure. They don't have any hooves or antlers attached though; I wouldn't have liked that.

I don't think the caribou would have cared too much though.