If you want to get a head...

WARNING: Disturbing image alert!

There was a note in the staffroom today informing us that there was more caribou meat in the community freezer along with a number of geese; whether any of these geese were carrying memory sticks was not made clear, so I took it upon myself to find out.

After school I visited the freezer, and to my disappointment there were no geese to be seen - perhaps the information they had been carrying was of too sensitive a nature to be left out in public for any length of time. There was indeed plenty of fresh caribou though, and whilst I was surveying the carnage I noticed a second door in the freezer room; perhaps the geese were to be found in here?

No.....just heads.

Dozens of caribou heads.

At least that's my Halloween costume sorted out now.

Mussel man, part 2

Well, even if I say so myself (which is exactly what I'm doing), the mussels were a resounding success. Every single one of them opened, and I ended up making - and eating - two bowlfuls.

Some 24 hours later I'm feeling no ill effects, which is always a good sign, and tonight I'm being treated to caribou steak, courtesy of James and Sophie next door. What with Labour Day still to come tomorrow, it's turning out to be a good weekend!

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.

I can't feel it in my fingers, I can't feel it in my toes

It was our school fishing trip on Friday, and I think I'm only just about regaining the feeling in my extremities. It was a mild day by Northern standards, but after a trip out of town of about an hour that began on the back of a skidoo and ended in a qamutik, it felt mighty, mighty cold once we were out on the land. I say land, but in reality the ice on which we were standing separated us not from terra firma but from the depths of the Hudson Bay, and what a lot of ice there was.

There were about thirty people in our group, but when you took time out to look around, you couldn't help but feel isolated and somehow apart from the rest of humanity, if only for a moment. I guess that is a large part of the attraction for those hardy souls that enjoy ice fishing, that idea of convening with nature and temporarily taking oneself out of the drudgery of everyday life, but before I start setting off pretentiousness alarms everywhere, let me just say that I am most certainly not one of those hardy souls.

I was cold. Bloody cold.

And I didn't think that standing still dangling a line into an icy hole would really do anything to change that fact. I did have a go for a few minutes and yes, I did try using my strips of plastic bag as bait, but to no avail. The only bite I, or anyone else for that matter, got all day was of the frost variety. As they say in Hollywood, not one fish was harmed during the making of this motion picture. Well, they don't actually say that exactly, but maybe they would if they made a film about ice fishing.

But I digest.

We had more success in dredging for mussels though, and even brought a few starfish and urchins to the surface as an added bonus. Needless to say, these were all consumed, raw, on site, and whilst I didn't partake on this occasion, I did supplement my lunch of (semi-frozen) egg sandwiches with a modest lump of caribou meat. Raw of course.

Whilst I was glad to have made the trip, I have to be honest and say that I don't think it's an experience I will be in a rush to repeat. Convening with nature is all well and good, but next time I'd prefer it if nature came to me, maybe for afternoon tea. We could have biscuits, discuss the state of the economy, maybe watch a movie even. And we could do it in the warm.

Culture Club

WARNING
This is one of those posts that contains images of a highly graphic, animal-entrails-all-over-the-floor nature, so the squeamish amongst you might not want to read on!

It's been culture week at Innalik (the High School here) this week, and yesterday afternoon was 'show and tell' as Caroline, the centre director at my school, put it. Now, I've participated in a few 'show and tell' lessons in my time, both as student and teacher, and most of them ended up becoming a narrated display of the latest toys, with possibly the odd family pet or grandfather's old telescope thrown in for good measure. At Innalik, there were no toys or telescopes to be seen, and I hope to high Heaven that the animals on show were not family pets.

Innalik's show and tell afternoon provides an opportunity for village elders to teach the students the type of traditional skills, techniques and games that are sadly being eroded from memory as Southern culture becomes more and more influential; for a qallunaat like myself (qallunaat being the Inuit term for a white person), it is like being a part of the CSI team's annual outing to the abattoir.

My journey around the hall began innocently enough. I was able to observe a local craftsman demonstrate his carving technique, watch an elder teach the youngsters a traditional game and see a fine example of an oil-burning lamp, or qulliq:

However, most interest centred on the more, shall I say, 'graphic' demonstrations:

Caribou were gutted...

...foxes were skinned...

...and seals were...well, let's just say that this used to be a seal

All in all it was a fascinating afternoon; it was certainly not what I'm used to, but it hammered home the fact that what each culture perceives to be 'correct' or 'normal' is just that - a perception. The use of the land's resources is a way of life here, and the passing down of the skills on display in Innalik's hall forms a vital part of the continuation of a rich and proud heritage.

And it also makes for a unique show and tell.