Bountiful beloved

Oliver have never caught a polar bear, besides Bonnie. So I thought, “If we see a bear today, Bonnie will have to catch it.”

If I see a polar bear on this trip, I will say, “Run for your life and save yourself!" I don’t know how to start a rifle. Besides, where do you even shoot? What body parts?

In outpost camp we all had a job. Bonnie’s job was to clean out the walrus liver. Whereas when we moved to Igloolik, the men do it all and we women are expected to back off. Otherwise you get a funny feeling, from people staring, and you think: “Am I doing something wrong?”

I loved cleaning the walrus liver. One time, my uncle came with his family to our camp. We caught a walrus, and my mother and I tried to be like the other women, just sitting and waiting for the men. But I got an ugly feeling, not doing anything. So I grabbed a knife: “I’m helping the way I’m used to helping.”

If it was just our family, we helped with everything and we were comfortable. Even today, we still all do the polar bear skin. I do the feet, Samueli does the head and legs and Bonnie does the body part. I don’t like doing the body part, you just scrape, scrape, scrape. To me, it’s as if no results, just work, work, work. Whereas doing the paws, you see the results. The knuckles go up while you do it.

I watch my parents and worry about when they cannot do it anymore. If our hunters catch a bear, what am I going to do?

We never know if Samueli will be here next summer to hunt. If not, it’s just going to be the boys, and they have jobs and their own young ones. As Inuit we want to use everything of what we catch, but if Todd and Isa catch a bear and the skin goes bad because there’s no one to prepare it, they’d have to throw it away. And so even if they’d use the meat, they’d stop hunting because the skins are just getting spoiled. That’s my fear.

It’s important that the young ones go out with Samueli really early, to learn. That’s how Inuit are. Learn by doing.

Going out on the land for the igunaq with my family, I pretend that we’re going home.