Goodbye, Mountains

I promised myself that I would post this rather silly moment of realization before I left, and so here I am, sharing another story about garbage. Do you recall, diligent reader, when I found that syllabic graffiti? Here is a photo to remind you.

Wow, I said. Cool! But it's probably something not very nice, because, often, graffiti isn't very nice!

Well, in the perfect crow-eating remember-not-to-assume-the-worst moment, when I was on a little walk the other day, I rounded the side of that curious little graffiti-ed structure and found this written on the other side:

Sometimes, people just want to write what a thing is and, because they live in a place where Inuktitut is spoken widely and syllabics are broadly understood, they figure, heck, this should be written in both Inuktitut and English. Sometimes, garbage-collectors need to indicate where garbage can be deposited so that it can be taken up to the dump.

A box for garbage, readers. That's what I was snapping photos of. It was something plain and innocuous and practical, but I missed the forest for the trees. Well, the garbage bin for the syllabics.

That interesting self-reflective moment is one of the things I will miss most about being in Pond Inlet, but it's something I will certainly be seeking wherever I end up next. Seeing all of the invisible things I often take for granted, with English as my first language and because I'm white and able-bodied and cisgender and all of those other privileges I try to think about but still sometimes miss, is incredible. Trying to see and dismantle privilege is at the heart of what I hope to do in the classroom and in my life.

As the light fades today, I know that this is my last evening here in Pond Inlet as part of this trip. Tomorrow, we need to be at the airport for 7am, so we're all packed and ready to head out.

It's hard to believe that I won't get to wake up and look at this vista again.

Goodbye, mountains. Goodbye, Bylot.

Goodbye, dogs singing in the distance. Goodbye, clouds across the mountains. Goodbye, sea ice. Goodbye, snowmobiles and qamutiks. Goodbye, glaciers. Goodbye, iceberg.

Goodbye, Pond Inlet, and thank you. 

Qujannamiik. ᖁᔭᓐᓇᒦᒃ.

Sunset over the iceberg on April 2nd.

Junior Inuktitut

After school yesterday, Brooke, Dave, and I trundled down to the local library -- the Rebecca Idlout Library, which shares a building with the interpretative centre. On our arrival, we discovered that there has also been an artist in residence, of sorts -- a woman who specializes in a particular form of print-making, who was flown up for a few weeks to teach local folks how to create prints in this manner. The prints are beautiful -- depicting scenes from or animals relating to traditional Inuit life, either in black and white or stunning combinations of colour -- and show such incredible artistry. The instructor commented, astonished, on how quickly her students picked up the art form and how intuitively they used it.

The narwhal features prominently here: on the sign outside of the library, the model suspended in the lobby of the building, on the t-shirt of the man who let us into the interpretative centre. Entering the building, one is greeted by the expanse of glass at the interior space, the suspended narwhal model, the sound of children laughing in the library to the right. Boots are strewn across the floor just inside of the interior door: no one wears their boots inside; sock feet prevail, here and at school.

The interpretative centre reflects traditional Inuit life and how that existence underpins contemporary Inuit existence.

Boots to protect the dog's feet during spring, when ice melted and refroze and could cut paws.

A child's clothing, made from caribou that would have been harvested in the fall. Each woman would make two sets of these clothes for every family member.

An avataq, a float made of seal skin. If a hunter harpooned a whale, this would help keep the whale from diving down and would allow the hunter to track its movements until its death.

Similar small touches of the connection between Inuit culture and the land are evident in all buildings, from the high school to the co-op to the library and interpretative centre.

The library is a lovely space, warm and full of the sunshine that seems omnipresent in Pond. The selection of titles is better than I'd expected, and I was pleased to see plenty of books in Inuktitut, for both children and adults. The majority of video titles available have a very Northern focus.

A reading corner. Surrounded by the Arctic and bathed in light.

Inuktitut titles for adults.

An excellent selection for children.

Inuktitut is thriving here in Pond Inlet: it is the first language of all of my students and, from our very informal surveys, the children all say that they primarily use Inuktitut at home. English only sees use in the school environment (of course, it's also present in the TV shows and movies the kids watch). Other communities, especially those in the Western Arctic, have nearly lost their Inuktitut -- but here it lives on, and that is a wonderful thing to see. Of course, that means that English Language Arts is very much an EAL/ESL course, which means that my focus as an educator needs to shift.

Plus learning another language -- working in another language -- is exhausting. We received a brief lesson in Inuktitut from Pat last night, who has a phenomenal accent. Pat and Dave have three children, all of whom still live in Nunavut, and all three of whom are fluent in Inuktitut, having grown up in Pond. I'm pleased to say that, after a lot of work and frustration over some Inuktitut sounds that the English-speaking tongue seems very reluctant to make, I've managed to get a handle on a new sound: ng -- for ngi, ngu, and nga. My own junior Inuktitut, but it's coming. At least now I know my name in Inuktitut for the Pond Inlet dialect: ᕇᐱᑲ  (Riipika).

Finally, a little goodbye from a stuffed seal from the interpretative centre (I'll have to go snap some pictures of the white seal skins drying at a house just above the school -- and the full-on frozen seals waiting to be eating/skinned/something else... Seals are tricky to get this time of year, but very possible!), and an obligatory picture of the landscape.

The mountain on the right is shaped like the syllabic for 'i' and is named relating to that symbol -- although I haven't yet mastered that one.