Uvajuq

by David F. Pelly

  Mid-day light at the winter solstice in modern Cambridge Bay, with the water truck making its delivery rounds.

  In this photo taken by Stephen Angulalik in the spring of 1952, Mabel Angulalik and Bessie Emingak have identified the people sharing a meal at Perry River: (1 to r) Ilulik (m), Hikhik (m), Kupluruq (m), Itirujuk (f), Ilittuaq (f), Ekvanna (Mabel Angulalik), Uqalitaarnahiq (Martha Kogvik), Quinangaq (f), unidentified baby, Kingmirugaaluk (Bessie Emingak).

  How the People Lived

  For centuries prior to the arrival of white man in the region, the area around the base of Uvajuq was an important place for Inuit to fish for char and hunt waterfowl during the spring and early summer. That explains how it came to be called Iqaluktuuttiaq, “a good place for fishing.” In those days, Inuit travelled as necessary to find the food needed for survival.

  When there were no guns yet, people didn’t just stay along the sea coast in the old days. People stayed by the lakes [in summer] back then because they didn’t have any rifles. They’d go anywhere inland to hunt for caribou and to fish. In the summertime . . . they’d stay at Qikiqtaqtuuq cause there’s fish there, and here at Iqaluktuuttiaq in the springtime, making dried fish just before the ice goes away. Then, in the summertime when the fish are returning to the lakes up the rivers, that’s where they’d go. People used to store their winter clothing similar to caching food. They only cache them for the summer and pick them back up in the fall when it starts to snow so they can use them again.

  They travel, too. When there’s no more snow, they’d backpack their things and travel. They pack just what is needed for overnighting and whatever they might need to wear. They had a few dogs long ago, maybe one or two sometimes—those dogs would pack a saddlebag-like harness and carry things, too.

  When falltime is closing in, Inuit move elsewhere. When they leave the river, they travel to Ikpikjuaq cause there’s blinds there and that’s where they hunt for caribou, too. They try to time it right. When they know there’ll be caribou there, that’s when they leave the river to get to Ikpikjuaq. They didn’t have guns long ago, used only bow and arrows for hunting the caribou.

  There’s no caribou in the wintertime—only part of October. That’s how they were. When there’s ice on the ocean and snow for making snowhouses, they head for the sea to hunt for seals. That’s how they’d spend most of the winter. Their only source of fuel was seal-blubber, for heat from the qulliq (oil lamp).

  Frank Analok, 1996

  Qalutaarjuk and her husband Nakimajaaq at Read Island, 1936.

  On the sea ice near Perry River, May 1952, hunters search for seals: (1 to r) George Oakoak, Stephen Angulalik (kneeling), Donald Kogvik, Patsy Topilikon, and David Ikpakuhak.

  Several family groups would gather together for the winter, to form a relatively large seal-hunting camp on the sea-ice. Every day, the men would go out seal hunting, each man to a different hole, where he would stand patiently, silently, holding a harpoon, waiting for a seal to rise for air. Dogs were used to help find the seals’ breathing holes. All the proceeds (on average, less than one seal per man) would be shared in the camp at day’s end. In that manner they survived the winter. In the spring, camp was moved onto the shore, but seal hunting continued among the ice pans during break-up, until it was time to once again head inland, for the spring fishery, when many families would return to Iqaluktuuttiaq, at the base of the hill known as Uvajuq.

  In the early days of outside services coming to the region in the 1930s, an airplane flew into Qikiqtanajuq (Read Island) so a doctor could check on some of the people: (1 to r) unidentified qaplunaaq, unidentified qaplunaaq, Kimaktuun (m), unidentified qaplunaaq, Ikey Bolt, Tunnuqahak (adopted daughter of Ikey & Edna Bolt), Tuuqlaq(m), Avaqqana(m), Nakimajaaq(m), Qalutaarjuk(f).

  The People Meet the Newcomers

  Kiilliniq (Victoria Island) was one of the last parts of the Canadian Arctic to be visited by white men. This is how Frank Analok described the arrival of the qaplunaat:

  Maybe when I was seven years old, there were white men here. A big ship was seen here. People that were here, when the ship went by here, must have been the first time they saw that ship. When Inuit heard that there were going to be traders, that’s when Inuit everywhere started to trap for furs, when this place had resident white men. When white men came here, when Inuit started purchasing hunting gear, that’s when they were able to do many things, I guess.

  Moses Koihok reflected on an even earlier time:

  Those that were sent to bring the message of the white man, they were the first, long ago. Long before we were born, they started to travel, sent by their bosses, and now Inuit today have heard their message.

  Very quickly, the white men began to apply their own names to the landscape, and to the topographic features they encountered. Old Inuit story merged with European mapping. The woman, Amaaqtuq, who fell first, became a hill which now bears the name Mount Lady Pelly on the maps. The man, Uvajuq, who made it the farthest south, is officially known today as Mount Pelly. The smaller hill between the two larger ones, Uvajuruhiq, locally called Baby Pelly, indicates where the legendary son fell. The name Mount Pelly was initially assigned in 1839 by a British explorer, Hudson’s Bay Company employee Thomas Simpson. He named the “enormous perpendicular mass of rock”† after John Henry Pelly who, during his 30 years as Governor of the HBC, was an ardent supporter of arctic exploration. Long before his time, however, the hill that bears his name today was known as Uvajuq.

  Historical references pick up the story of travels by white men through the area of Victoria Island in the middle of the 19th century.

  JOHN RICHARDSON and EDWARD KENDALL, members of John Franklin’s 1825-27 expedition, left the main party at the mouth of the Mackenzie River on 4 July 1826, and travelled eastward in two boats, the Dolphin and the Union, as far as the Coppermine River, which they ascended. In passing, they were the first white men to visit the shores of Victoria Island, which they called Wollaston Land.

  THOMAS SIMPSON and PETER WARREN DEASE, two of the most successful British travellers ever to visit the Arctic, descended the Coppermine River from Great Bear Lake in 1839, and travelled eastward by small boat, eventually reaching the mouth of the Back River, thus completing the map of the Arctic coast. Along the way, they named Victoria Island, Wellington Bay, Cambridge Bay and Mount Pelly. They were the first white men to travel along the entire south shore of Victoria Island.

  JOHN RAE, a prodigious arctic traveller, departed from Great Bear Lake, descended the Coppermine River and crossed over to Victoria Island during 1850-51. He searched 1,000 km of the south coast of the island—some of it by boat, much of it by foot—for clues to the fate of the lost Franklin expedition (1845-46). He actually stood atop Mount Pelly during that trip. It is said that Inuit at the time admired and respected him; certainly he was noteworthy for the extent to which he adopted Inuit methods of travel and survival.

  ROBERT MCCLURE, captain of HMS Investigator during the search for clues to the fate of the lost Franklin expedition (1845-46), made contact with Victoria Island Inuit in the early 1850s.

  RICHARD COLLINSON, captain of HMS Enterprise with the McClure expedition, sailed farther east than McClure, to spend the winter of 1852-53 at Cambridge Bay. His was the first ship to penetrate that far into the archipelago from the west.

  ROALD AMUNDSEN passed south of Victoria Island during the summer of 1905, part of his three-year transit by ship of the Northwest Passage, the first such accomplishment.

  VILHJALMUR STEFANSSON travelled to the Victoria Island region in 1910, recording his ethnological observations of the people.

  DIAMOND JENNESS, an anthropologist, worked among the people of southern Victoria Island during the years 1914-16.

  KNUD RASMUSSEN passed through the region by dog-sled, in 1923-24, on his traverse of the Arctic; that expedition is the earliest contact referred to by anyone alive today in Cambridge Bay.

  H.M.S. Enterprise

  A group of men—traders, M
ounties, and Inuit—outside the Cambridge Bay trading post in 1932.

  THE HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY established a trading post in 1921 at Cambridge Bay, actually east of the present townsite. In 1927, a new post was built on the west side of the bay. For ten years, 1929-39, the HBC had competition from the Canalaska Trading Company, but eventually the Bay prevailed, here as elsewhere.

  The RCMP built their first post in 1926, and the Anglican Church established a mission the next year. From that point through to the 1950s, Cambridge Bay was a focal point for Inuit living on Victoria Island and along the mainland coast opposite, in a manner similar to other places across the Arctic where the Company, the Mounties, and the Church established early outposts.

  A long range navigation (LORAN) beacon was built at Cambridge Bay, on the east side of the bay, in 1947. This project employed several local Inuit, and resulted in the construction of small houses in “Old Town” using scrap lumber. A community of about 100 was established. In 1951, the LORAN beacon project was abandoned, and the buildings were converted to a weather station and an arctic survival school for the Air Force.

  In 1955, construction of the Disant Early Warning Line began, and Cambridge Bay was selected as the central co-ordinating site for all the smaller stations spread along this stretch of the Arctic coast. The population of Cambridge Bay grew during the 1950s and 1960s as the DEW-Line was built, and the HBC shut down its trading posts at Read Island, Bathurst Inlet and Perry River. In the same period, “Old Town” was abandoned and families moved over to new housing on the west side of the bay, where town is located today. By 1971, the population of Cambridge Bay was 743. Today, in 1999, it is 1,350 and growing.

  Ukyuk Street in 1966

  Looking west up Omingmak Street in 1966, where some of the first houses in Cambridge Bay were built.

  Ukyuk Street in 1966

  Mackie Kaosoni, Frank Analok, Annie Kaosoni, and Mabel Angulalik sitting at a recently uncovered archaeological feature that moved them to speak of agliqtaqtuq, “the observance of taboos and the respect for sacred things.”

  † Simpson, Thomas, 1843. Narrative of the Discoveries on the North Coast of America; Effected by the Officers of the Hudson’s Bay Company During the Years 1836-39, London: R. Bentley.

  Myth and Reality

  For the elders in Cambridge Bay, the legend of Uvajuq is a connection to their own youth and to the heritage of their ancestors. After a 1996 archaeological survey of the area around Mount Pelly, the elders offered a wealth of advice and opinion on the significance and meaning of the 122 archaeological features identified.

  During a visit to the site, the elders were able to tell which pirujaq (storage cache) was used for what purpose: storage of fresh meat, storage of dried meat, storage of dried fish, storage of winter clothing during summer months, storage of hunting implements, and so on. They confirmed the one grave site that was identified during the survey. They interpreted a campsite near the southern tip of the hill, where Uvajuq’s head slopes down toward the lake Qiluguq. The elders’ insight was even able to determine where a family that once lived there had tethered its dog.

  The analysis of the archaeological finds was certainly enriched by the elders’ opinions and stories. The connection, however, was even more powerful than anyone anticipated. Of the 122 archaeological features found on the hillside overlooking Iqaluktuuttiaq, the most unusual was a small cache of disarticulated loon bones. Careful lifting of a flat rock exposed an incredible sight: a neatly aligned stack of very old loon bones, which had clearly been “cut at every joint,” just like the bones of the loon that saved the lives of the family in the legend at Iqaluktuuttiaq.

  Years ago, many Inuit were very particular about how they disposed of bones once the meat had all been eaten. Analok said that bones were “placed in a spot by themselves, not just anywhere.” Analok, along with other Cambridge Bay elders, did remember the previous generation gathering bones together for disposal, and they spoke of agliqtaqtuq, the observance of taboos and the respect for sacred things. However, looking down at the small pile of loon bones, they said they had never seen anything like this before. Sitting around the small cache of loon bones, the elders were visibly moved and fascinated. This, they said, is the result of traditional beliefs and rituals from long ago, from “before the time of our parents or grandparents.”

  Among the Umingmaktuurmiut living on the island of Malirihiurvik, south of the Kent Peninsula, when they were visited by Knud Rasmussen in 1923, caribou bones were placed under rocks when the person who killed the caribou was under a taboo. During mourning taboos, bones of animals were similarly protected from gnawing by dogs. These proscriptions usually applied only to large animals such as caribou and seals. Parts of loons, among many other objects, were used as amulets or charms worn on a person’s clothing. For example, a woman carrying a son in her amaut might tie the beak of a loon to her belt as protection for him.

  On this occasion, it is impossible to really know the significance of the loon bones in the cache on the hillside of Uvajuq. There can be no question that, today, they possess a spiritual dimension. Why they were placed there, and by whom, is a mystery and shall remain a mystery.

  What we do know is that, in the ancient tradition of the people, there was a time when humans and animals lived even more closely than they did in living memory, notwithstanding the respect that Inuit have continued to show for the animals around them. Something happened a long time ago which fundamentally changed the way people lived, something so significant that Inuit sought to understand and explain it to subsequent generations.

  There is indeed a mysterious coincidence here: an old cache of carefully concealed loon bones found in 1996; an ancient story about a starving family who survived because a hunter caught a loon. In both instances, the remarkable feature of the loons is that they are disarticulated, “cut at every joint.” One can go no further in conclusion than to observe the powerful confluence of myth and reality, of the spiritual with the physical. As surely as the wind continues to sweep sand atop the giant Uvajuq, there will always be a mystical spirituality and a hint of timeless reality hanging over the legendary form.

  The cache of loon bones “cut at every joint,” beside the hill named Uvajuq, overlooking Iqaluktuuttiaq.

  Elsie has adapted hog bristle Elephant brushes to apply oil-based etching ink when she creates her stencil prints.

  Elsie Anaginak Klengenberg

  A personal essay by Elisabeth Hadlari

  I cannot imagine our jewellery studio here in Cambridge Bay without Elsie. She has been the steady heartbeat behind the group of students in the program for two years now. Her consistent, hard-working nature teaches the younger students in a more powerful way than I ever could. Elsie is a mature artist acquiring new techniques and learning new concepts. When she struggles with an assignment that challenges her, the sweat beads on her forehead, but still she perseveres.

  Elsie was born on Read Island in 1946, and grew up on the land, living in tents and iglus. Her education came from parents and elders, who taught her the traditional skills and the importance of working hard. When other children her age were sent away to residential school in Inuvik, her parents resisted. About 30 years ago, her family moved into the community of Holman, on the west coast of Victoria Island. Elsie’s father, Victor Ekootak, was one of the founders of the Holman co-op and print shop. When Elsie was looking for a way to raise her own family, she turned to the art industry. She began to draw the way she remembered her late father drawing. From there she learned to do stencil printing with a few other artists in the co-op art studio, and they developed a style for the Holman prints that is now distinctive. Elsie says that her traditional land-based themes help to keep her connected to the memories of life on the land.

  I remember especially a beautiful little knife handle which she designed in the jewellery program. One night she dreamed the story in the design and then shared it with the class. Every time I see that handle, I smile, recallin
g the humorous details Elsie described going on behind the scene. Not only are the elements of her story evident on the handle, but also the clean, pleasing lines so characteristic of Elsie’s inherent sense of good design.

  Last summer, during a break from the jewellery program, Elsie took on the task of illustrating the legend of Uvajuq in a series of prints. I travelled to Holman, where she was spending the summer with her family, to help her work on the initial development of the storyline. I was a guest in her home, sharing it with her almost 100-year-old mother, her husband Joseph, her youngest daughter Delma and her granddaughter Rhea. We set up a workroom in one of the bedrooms and worked steadily for the week. I was kept happily fed by a consistent supply of dried and cooked wild meats dipped in Elsie’s homemade duck uqhuq. From time to time, some of her grown children and their families dropped by for a nourishing visit of story or food. One evening we went duck hunting out on the sea ice. There, as always, I could sense Elsie’s great attachment to the land. Elsie brought to the task of illustrating the legend of Uvajuq both her own ties to the strong story-telling traditions of the past, and her intimate knowledge of the land in Kiilliniq.

  Many detailed stencils, cut from frosted mylar with a small sharp blade, are placed on the paper to produce each element of the image in succession.