C U LT U R E
The Ancestors Are Happy A New Book by David F. Pelly Four decades ago, in Qamani’tuaq, an older woman told me an amazing tale. Fascinated as I was at the time, I had almost no understanding of the cultural backdrop to her story. Nor did I know then that I’d be spending much of my life recording oral-histories from Inuit elders. Fortunately, I wrote her story down in detail later that evening, back in my tent. All I could do, as Iquginnaq actually spoke, was listen with rapt attention, while sitting at the kitchen table of a new friend who translated for me. I remember the scene well, including the strong sweet tea and Joan’s homemade pineapple upside-down cake. Those words are from the introduction to the “People” section of the recently published The Ancestors Are Happy, but they could as easily be an introduction to my own life story (which will never be published). A long journey began for me that evening. This book is a reflection back on some of the stories gathered up along the way in more than 40 years in the North. What an honour and a privilege it’s been. The book includes 15 individual profiles, Iquginnaq’s first among them, as well as tales larger than any one person that arose from experiences involving multiple people and places. One of those led to me digging more deeply into traditional Inuit navigation. Before the storm began, I did not really know Tulurialik at all well. It was my first winter trip “out on the land.” Tulurialik planned to check his trap line one last time before the season ended, and invited me to join him. Travelling by snowmobile over the trackless tundra, an area I was familiar with only in summer when its lines are much softer, I marvelled at Tulurialik’s intuition. Time after time, he pulled up beside an insignificant hump in the snow and thrust his snow knife beneath the crust to exhume a steel foxtrap. For the first time, I was witnessing two amazing processes: an Inuk’s ability to navigate great distances of seemingly featureless terrain and the acute visual perception that enabled him to recognize a precise spot on the snow. These observations were still whirling around in my head four days later, as we sat in our iglu, patiently waiting out the blizzard that had begun late on that first day. Iquginnaq. © David F. Pelly
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A B O V E & B E Y O N D — C A N A D A’ S A R C T I C J O U R N A L
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