IAQ Shorts
Today’s Storytellers: combining the text and visual chronicles of contemporary creators.
See Me After Class by Jamesie Fournier —
Growing up in the North, you learn about the many cultures who call it home. You have field trips, culture camps and, if you’re lucky, your family comes in when it’s time to learn about Inuit. It can be a little nerve-rack ing.
You never know how the class or the teacher is going to react.
One year my mother came in and taught us about Inuit customs, food and Inuktitut!
She’s a retired Inuktitut language interpreter and my classmates delighted in learning how to write their names in syllabics and how to pronounce a few words. My mother then brought out her ulu and showed us how to carve quaq and maktaaq. It was entertaining to watch my classmates try them for the first time. Their faces made me laugh. Even my younger brother, who was in a different class, stopped by to have some before running back with his cheeks full.
At the end of the unit, we had to complete a test that assessed our comprehension. I figured a test on Inuit would be a breeze and I finished it quickly with confidence. However, when it was returned to me there was no grade. I was shocked. Everyone else’s paper had a bold-red graded mark. I opened the first page of my test and it read, See me after class.
My heart sank. How could this be possible? I had written with such zeal and panache! As I looked through the exam, I saw that I had scored well on every question except one: “What did Inuit use their ulus for?” A simple question to which I had proudly replied, “To cut their pizzas with!” I thought I had smashed that question, yet a large red question mark punctuated my drawing of an ulu and a carved pizza pie.
When I approached my teacher, she asked about my confusing answer. Without missing a beat, I replied, “Well, I’m Inuk and that’s what we use our ulu for.” She studied me for a moment and then laughed. What my qallunaat teacher had really been asking was what did Inuit traditionally use their uluit for.
The idea of culture as fluid and dynamic had caught us both off guard. In the end,
I was sent on my way with full marks and now every time I hold an ulu, I can’t help but think back on that test and laugh.
Carrying in Groceries by Alberta Rose W./Ingniq —
My feet were crunching on mid-January snow, icy and compacted from being walked on by many feet. My small, sky-blue amauti protected me from the cold wind stinging my face and exposed hands. Nanuck and I had arrived home from the grocery store and were unloading Nanuck’s small but mighty red truck.
“Help me bring the groceries in, then I’ll make us some soup and doughnuts,” she instructed, smiling. Nanuck was usually in a good mood after shopping. As we started to walk towards the house, I saw a boy from my school passing by on the sidewalk and he gave me a dirty look. Nanuck didn’t notice as she was already walking through the yard to our house. He was one of the kids at school who would tease me, asking stupid questions at recess. “Do you live in an iglu?” “Do you take sled dogs to school?”
Sometimes they made fun of my amauti. Up until then, I loved my amauti, but since we moved here I wasn’t so sure about it anymore. The kids at school wore different coats. My friend Jenny bragged about the new Adidas coat that she got for Christmas, and it caused a sinking feeling in my tummy. Our family didn’t have coats like that. We were different.
“Mom, I’m cold!” I heard the boy whine down the street. Once again feeling the warmth of my coat, I smiled and walked towards home.
The Qamutiik by Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona —
My Ski-Doo engine’s rumbling fills my ears as I follow my hunting buddy, Alex, through the dark. All I see is snow and Ski-Doo tracks lit by our headlights in two small, jittering pools of light. My hoods are pulled up and cinched, creating a fur-lined tube, my peripheral vision non-existent. I am concentrating on revving up hills, leaning back while going downhill, staying upright while driving sideways on mountains and keeping warm. While climbing a mountain around the centre of the peninsula, my Ski-Doo climbs higher than it has before, and I catch a glimpse of the northern lights and thousands of stars. I think to myself with surprise, “Oh it’s nice out!” Then I am again pointed earthward by the slope’s end.
My jerry cans have developed a pesky habit of falling off the back of my qamutiik. The rope tying them down keeps bumping loose and one or two of them jump ship. When we stop for tea or a snack, Alex looks at me, exasperated, and asks, “Where are your jerry cans?”
Each time this happens I turn and head back into the night, cursing my knot tying and embarrassed of my hunting abilities. I have developed a habit of standing up on the Ski-Doo while driving, turning my whole body and yanking my hood sideways and down to check on my jerry cans.
I think everything is going well until we stop again. Alex looks me dead in the eye and asks, “Where is your qamutiik?” I burst out laughing from the warm interior of my two parkas, thinking he has to be joking, until I look backward. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Here I am pulling a Great. Big. Nothing.
Solo Mission by Curtis Mesher —
I left the South in late summer during the heart of the first wave of COVID-19 lockdowns to connect with my family and the nuna near Kuujjuaq. I flew up north as the oncevibrant Montreal was reduced to a ghost town. It was the best decision of my life.
I landed and was immediately thrown into the bed of a pickup truck alongside my luggage; hiding from the cold rain and wind that welcomed me, I sped off north of town to the cabin where I quarantined without electricity, internet and essentially no human contact for the next two weeks.
This was a period of genuine connection to the land and animals. Despite being “alone,” I felt the joy of what it means to be Inuk. I realized storytelling is found in our silent, endless starry skies and in the howls of the amaruit that accentuate it. This period taught me that isolation or physical distancing does not take us further away from storytelling—it can bring us closer.
From the qupanuapuit who greeted me every morning, to the berries found in the imarsuk, I was given the opportunity to recognize the sweet stories shared by Northern nuna and the shifting seasons. These are the foundations of Inuit culture and the foundation for our storytelling.
Stories are more than the written or spoken word, they are the experiences and knowledge which are shared all around us.