Inuvialuit News + Culture
Tusaayaksat Volume 22 Number 4
Whitefish Station
Celebrate Life! GROWING UP
i n Pa u l a t u k
INUIT HEALTH SURVEY Tuktoyaktuk Graduates! Drum Dancing Gains
MOMENTUM
FALL 2008
$4.00
Words & photos by Zoe Ho
Special Feature Nuitaniqsaq Quliaq
Whitefish Statio n
Six-year-old Isabelle Hendrick looks Six-year-old serious, as sheIsabelle wields Hendrick her ulu and concentrates, as she wields her cuts off the head of a herring. She knife and cuts off the head of a has been watching her sister, Ashline herring. She has been watching her help with the fourty fish that were sister Ashline help with the forty harvested yesterday’s net, and is fishfrom that were harvested from excited to finallynet. take partIsabelle in helping yesterday’s Today out her nanaak (grandmother) with gets to help out her nanaak today’s harvest the first time (grandmother) forfor the first time.
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Brandon chops wood.
Behind the cabin is endless tundra, which the children love to play in. They took us on a hike to ‘Bum Lake’, where there was a split pingo that resembles its namesake. Up the river is their great-grandfather, Billy Day’s camp. Billy Day was celebrated for his love and protection of the environment and Inuvialuit rights. The children seemed to have inherited his ability to read nature’s signs.
Rose Day photo
A sunset and a rainbow makes Clara’s cabin glow. Rose Day photo
sabelle first washes the fish in a bucket, then sets it on the table, where she is just tall enough to reach the work surface. Her bug suit, which wards off the swarms of mosquitoes that plague Whitefish Station during summertime, is covered with fish scales and stains from her hard work; but her pride is evident each time she hangs up a fish that she has readied for drying.
Ashline and Brandon pointed out wildlife and sights that at first we could not see. “Look, there’s a heron! Are those caribou? Waayy over there, see, they’re moving! There’s lots around.”
Clara’s partner Stanford, and grandchildren Ashline and Brandon return triumphant after checking the fish net.
“I knew she could cut cut the head off, I didn’t know she could skin it, she did really good,” laughed nanaak Clara Day. “She even wanted to start making dryfish. I didn’t want her to try because she had a dull knife, I was scared.” The small beach of Clara’s fish and whaling camp is just the right size for a maktak/ fish drying stand, a smoke house, a bench and a little white tent. We climbed up a small hill to her cabin, which is neat and looks out to an inlet, where beluga whales sometimes swim.
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They were able to tell us how to differentiate a seagull from a swan (“Swans have long necks and seagulls have short necks”) as well as which berries will cause belly ache (crowberries, the red ones that look like small cherries). They also did a pretty good job imitating the calls of the cranes on the opposite shore. Brandon, who is thirteen, is already trusted to drive the fishing boat in the area. The adults have taught him how to observe the currents, and he can see a sandbar or currents that could pull a boat underwater. “My nanaak taught me so we can be safe when we go boating,” he said. Clara believes it is important to educate the children respect their culture and to not waste. She tries to speak in Inuvialuktun to the children, who learn by guessing what she said and answering. She laughs, “When they say let’s get that squirrel I say no. If you do, you’re going to skin it and you are going to eat it. We were taught that if you don’t need something, don’t kill it.” All the children agree that being on the land was better than living in town, where they mostly entertain themselves with computers, Bebo and electronic games. In contrast, they prefer their bush camp life where after a day’s work they can go find rocks, play baseball, go for hikes, as well fishing, visiting and swimming.
The heady aroma of cedar wood chips fill the dry fish smoke house as Rose stokes the fire.
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“Mmmn. Yummy!” said Ashline as she ate some cubes of maktak (beluga blubber).
Special Feature Nuitaniqsaq Quliaq
Ashline said, “It’s better here than running around in town, having fast food and junk food. There’s no gambling and no drinking, or being bad…or being worried about people and what we have to do.” Brandon added, “It’s boring to play Wii games once you have played it twenty times. It’s funner out here.”
head of the harpoon curves and stays in there. There is a long rope with a buoy tied to it, and that’s what we follow as the whale swims away. When it comes up for air, we shoot it. The whale sinks, but that’s why we have the buoy on it.” When the whale is pulled up on the shore, Dolly Sydney, the whale monitor for Whitefish station will be alerted to collect samples and to measure the whales. The one that Rose got this week was 13 feet 4 inches.
They even say that “helping nanaak do stuff”, helping to haul wood and water makes them “more tough”. They admit they do not help out as much in town. Brandon had his first chance to throw a harpoon this summer. “It was pretty awesome, and I like the part when I harpooned and it gets stuck into a whale. I was pretty scared of shooting a rifle because that’s my first time this year.” The walls of Clara’s cabin are covered with signatures from visitors as well as milestones that her children and grandchildren achieve. “Long ago women and children never went whaling – women only prepared the whales after they are caught – the reason why women did not go – is if something happened out there, at least you have a parent home. It was like a jinx if the kids went and they were too young,” said Clara.
Clara finds eggs in the fish.
She eats them on the spot., saying the best time to eat these eggs is fresh from the fish.
Today, Rose Day, Clara’s daughter is as capable as any hunter. Rose looks on the walls to find out when she had first harvested whale. “2004.” She said. Her father and Stanley, her boyfriend had taught her. “It was awesome. It was scary at first, following the waves behind the whale.” “First you see the current, but it’s far behind the whale, and you follow that. The whale will stay under but eventually it will have to come up for air, so when it comes up you try to harpoon it. I must have thrown the harpoon ten times the first time, until I finally got it. The harpoon jabs into the maktak and when it swims away, the pointy
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Clara has nicknamed Rose ‘Bush Woman’, because Rose prefers to be outdoors than in town. Rose finds that “time goes by fast” on the land. Rose said, “I’ll rather be outside, getting wood, burning garbage, getting water from the lakes.” She is animated as she tells stories of watching coneys jump out of the water at her mother’s other bush camp, where five creeks meet. Even in minus forty degree weather, she likes to skidoo out to the bushcamp with her boyfriend. “It was so still outside, so cold, stars, clear skies, and the moon was very bright. I’m going to stay out on the land as much as I can until I get a job in town, enjoying the land, helping my mum, being here for the kids, I am loving it.” Rose is also finding her social life changing. “A few years back I felt different,” said Rose, “but from the experiences of staying in town, going to school, going south and working…now I just try to stay away from them because my boyfriend doesn’t drink…when I see them I just go sit around and have a pop…they’re used to it now, they’ll say have a shot and I’ll say I’m fine, I’ll just have my pop.”
Whitefish station used to belong to Clara’s mother, Rebecca Chicksi, and coming back to it with her partner Stanford, her daughter and grandchildren is like coming home. Clara tries to continue the tradition of sharing when on the land, giving five out of seven pails of her maktak to her extended family. Many people who used to whale at Whitefish Station have moved to Kendall Island, to escape the mosquitoes, which take advantage of the coves, which protect them from winds in the area. It takes about four hours to travel by boat from Inuvik to Whitefish station, and so far, Clara has spent $1,300 on gas so her family could go whaling. “It’s not cheap, but it’s worth it,” she said. “I would spend a million dollars just to come down, for my grandchildren to have this experience.”
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