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Sharon's Northern Supplies/Culture
Alas, my dear DH Tom would be able to give you more Inuit/Eskimo info than I; as he worked with many Eskimos/Inuit in Ungava Bay area in the 50's, working near many different villages. I still have my Parka with a very tall point of pride (Tip of the hood) which he brought home for me as a present way back when. Much too hot to wear even here where our coldest is only -25 to 30 or so. I contemplate putting it in a glass shadowbox case to be hung on the wall. We have quite a few early Inuit carvings and Stone prints from that time. When the children were younger, they all hung up Inuit-made duffle socks for their Christmas stockings. We still a few pair in the trunk. I still use an Ulu for chopping my vegetables which was originally used to skin hides. I wouldn't part with it.
Today they have been "southernized" with our food/language/ and equipment.. snowmobiles and atv's; blue jeans and base ball hats/ you get my drift. There are some families still teaching their youngsters the old ways.. but things need to be turned around soon before too much is lost. I spoke with a gentleman from Nain who had just been to a circum-polar indigenous peoples conference. Most of them are facing the same heritage-loss problems.
My best unique lifestyle encounter was a two week period spent on a cleaned up freight trawler out of Nain doing some exploration work on 10 or so islands several hundred miles off shore. Our Captain and his mate were both Inuit from Nain. We worked all day on land and always came back to the boat to a wonderful meal, often a mix of things like seal/caribou stew or wonderful fresh arctic char and even ptarmigan (bird like a grouse). They picked wild eggs for breakfast from the seabird rookeries, hunted and gathered constantly when the boat was waiting for us to get done with work. Quite interesting. I got to chew on dried caribou ribs and smoked char (fish similar to salmon). It was delicious. The two week supply of meat was kept frozen in a large fibreglass 4'x4' container on the deck, filled with iceberg ice. When it ran low, we would pull up to a small growler iceberg with the run-about boat and bring more ice back to the big boat's cooler. I had my first "iceberg ice" drinks .. took longer to melt. Lots of huge icebergs also and I saw my first whale :-)
Alas, most of the things we used other than the game was from the local supply store. I know they do still glean a good deal of wild berries. Plus there are quite a few "green" low-growing edible plants/grasses. We were working almost at the tree line so there were few trees of any sort. Those there were ; were only 2-3 ft. tall ground birch and tamarack.
We came home from that boat trip festooned with hundreds of sun/salt air drying arctic char on all the boat ropes; two fresh seals in the freezer. Nain still runs a large community freezer . All the hunters communally put their "catches" into this common freezer for all to use.
When we were further up even north of Nain at OKAK Bay, I had the unique opportunity to be in the centre of activity when about 15,000 of the James Bay herd of Caribou came through our camp. Not the least bit afraid of us, all the group was mainly females with their young and yearlings. There were very few large males. The photos I took are like from Nation Geographic. WOW what a wonderful experience.
The best word I learned that I still remember but can't spell so this is phonetically spelled: was Iglusuataliksuat which was a lake we camped on; which translated into something like "a cabin at the end of the lake".
Believe it our not we came across rhubarb still growing from the 1940's at the remnants of a village on the south side of Okak Bay.
Just a tad further north at Hebron there is the remnants of a Moravian church/school/living quarters dating to the mid-1800's (if my memory is right). They brought all the wood to build their huge building from Europe as there were no trees. Amazing history to learn about.
I learned most of the plants I was seeing from a marvellous text book : Porsild's guide to the plants of the arctic and sub arctic archipelago; quite often he would give the Eskimo food use for a plant.
Perhaps Jim cam tell you more about his corner on the west side of the north. Are you mainly still Inu where you are Jim or do the Inuit come down to your area? I know one of the tribes at Fort Smith is the Northern Swampy Cree. My granddaughter's name is Miteh which stands for "heart" in their language. Her Mom was a museum technician at the small Native Museum at Ft. Smith for a bit.
Today was a day here to gather morels. We had a wonderful feed and I have a batch dehydrating for winter. They are calling for rain tomorrow. We still had frost last night. Starting to plant some hardier transplants to the garden. We have a plethora of used 5 gallon clear blue water jugs with their bottoms cut off which make wonderful cloches/mini greenhouses. The companies which sell bottled water can only use bottles X# of times then they have to get rid of them . My brother managed to get me about hundred. Some we use to store maple sap buried in a snow bank; before it is boiled. We took the bottom out of about 50 to use as cloches.. some are just being saved cause you never know what other use may turn up ;-) Came across several trilliums with the white flower variegated with green again. Still forgot my camera grrrrrr. Guess I am having a senior moments..
Happy harvesting..
Sharon - Apsley Acers - Ontario
I haven't had time to respond until now and I know the thread has already died, but.... I sometimes feel like I'm not in the true north at all. It's all relative. I do live within the tree line after all and when I look at a map of the NWT I'm right there at the very bottom. <G> And when I listen to the regional weather they always start in the south with Fort Smith and Hay River, then Yellowknife and then points further north. It's always a shock to hear, "Yellowknife -1C and light flurries, Resolute -30C but the blizzard should moderate by tomorrow." I hesitate to bitch about snow in May when everyone else on the list is gardening and foraging after I hear about what Resolute is getting.
> LOL people in Toronto insist > where we live is North.. they need to do some geography.
When I was with the CIBC in Edmonton and lobbying to go back to Yellowknife for a second time an amazed co-worker, who relished working at the main branch in the heart of downtown and living in an apartment just a block away, stated he couldn't handle a northern posting..... anything above 111 Ave! In other words, 11 blocks from the financial centres and high rises on 100 Ave. He didn't want to go to the suburbs, let alone outside city limits to a farming community or the north.
> We worked from June to September in the Nain area and up further to > the are around Okak Bay and into the Tournegat Mountains (fjord - > like Findland)... Spectacular country! Best paid "holiday" I ever > had.
That's an awesome part of the world. Beautiful, but so rough and forbidding in places that someone once said it was the country God set aside for Cain. I was there in '72.
> Hubby is a geologist
My parents were both assayers. We lived in Ottawa, Haley's Station, and Kirkland Lake. Later on I lived in Atikokan for a while. We had clients in, and visited Bancroft, Blind River, Timmins and Noranda. And then there were the prospectors and geologists from elsewhere: Coin Lake, Rabbit Lake, Uranium City, Port Radium and all over the north who came to us. Even though I haven't been to all of those places, as a kid I felt I knew them and could find them all on maps. I guess it was pre- ordained that I'd end up in a place like Yellowknife.
>> Ferry's running today! I also saw my first pussy willow buds this >> morning. OTOH it snowed again!
> I hope it is all unpacked and waiting in the store...
The shelves are packed and we had a huge Caesar salad for supper that night with a side of crisp English cucumbers, tomatoes and scallions and a dessert of fresh pears.
> What type of tomatoes do you usually grow that far north?
To be honest I don't know. I buy bedding plants the first week of June that come up from a nursery in northern Alberta and I buy whatever they sell. Some kind of early yielding hybrid. They mature fast but the flavour isn't as good as the tomatoes I grew up on in Ontario.
> Do you use a greenhouse to mature them?
No. With all the sunlight we get they ripen fast enough.
> How many frost free days do you get?
In a good summer 85-90. Some years just 60-75.
> From: Melana Hiatt>
> I remember growing up in Kansas. Sorry, not as remote as you! LOL
> But point being so very much came off our farm that shopping was an
> issue of picking up flour, sugar, toilet paper and the likes and
> seldom about meat or veggies. What we didn't have...say dairy, a
> neighbor would and eggs where often traded from our place to secure
> items from other farms. Mom and Grandma canned and preserved
> everything you can imagine and summer was filled with the hiss and
> jiggle of the pressure canner stocking away the summer bounty for
> winter use.
I grew up the same way. We bought our beef and pork by the side from next door, raised chickens and rabbits and had a large garden. We only went to town for milk, butter, orange juice and bacon.
Roslind grew up even more "off the grid" than I did. Her family made sausages with gut casings, smoked their own pork, made butter and cheese, raised sheep for wool, kept their own bees for honey, cut lake ice for the ice-house and even made their own soap. We preserved and canned a bit for fun and flavour (most of the garden went into a freezer) but her family put up a whole year's supply and were virtually self-sufficient. They didn't get power where she lived until she was a teenager.
> From: Christa Maria <cmaria@triton.net>
> since I was a very small child in Germany, I wanted to know how the
> Eskimo's REALLY lived.
In the western arctic where I live the Native peoples are Dene (Indian) except in the extreme north. Most of the Inuit live in the eastern arctic (and northern Quebec and Labrador).
> Like, how did you get enough greens in your diet?
The Inuit (Eskimos) ate a lot of fat, innards and raw meat and fish. The fat and innards contain vitamins. Raw meat contains a modest amount of vitamin C which is lost in cooking. Summer berries are available briefly.
> Are there any fruit trees that far north?
No, just berries. We don't have nut trees either just conifers, birch, willow and aspen.
> Is much done to preserve the Inuit culture?
Yes. The Northwest Territories split into two territories not too long ago. The eastern part, now called Nunavut ("Our Land" in Inuktituk), is 90% Innuit, has its own parliament, is officially trilingual (Inuktituk, English and French), runs it own school boards etc. Inuktituk is taught in the schools as a second language.
From: Apsley Acers
> I still use an Ulu for chopping my vegetables which was originally
> used to skin hides. I wouldn't part with it.
I cook with one too.
For the others: it's a large metal semi-circle with the half circle being the sharp cutting edge. There is a "T" shaped handle on the top and it can cut with a rocking motion. Just as handy as a Chinese cleaver once you get the hang of it.
> Alas today they have been "southernized" with our food/language/ and > equipment.. snowmobiles and atv's.
I think the snowmobile was good thing, but not the diet changes that caused diabetes, liquor or the social changes that caused so many to loose their way. Getting off topic here though.
> Are you mainly still Inu where you are Jim or do the Inuit come down > to your area.
As I mentioned above I live in Dene territory. Athapaskan Indian. But since Yellowknife is the capital city and has a community college we have a couple of hundred Inuit living here at any given time. They are mostly politicians, bureaucrats and students. No seal hunters among them.
> I know one of the tribes at Fort Smith is the Northern Swampy Cree.
My wife Roslind is a small part Cree and some my inlaws are Cree, Slavey or Chipewyan. There are some Blackfoot cousins too.
> My granddaughter's name is Miteh which stands for "heart" in their > language.
And mine's is Neekha which is a Russian (other side of the family) nickname based on Nicola. (It also turns out to mean something derogatory in Inuktituk but we didn't know that when she was Christened.
From: Christa Maria
> Wish I could see one of those Parkas, a real old one, for I wonder how
> they were stitched together, what was used for needles ( bones from
> animals I assume and sinew)
Yep.
> was the leather really chewed?
Yes indeed. It changes hard leather into the softest imaginable swede-like material. I have a pair of sealskin Kamiks (boots) with chewed caribou soles that are so soft I feel comfy in them without socks.
> What was used for decorations before white people came, was it > moosehair?.
Yes further south at least, where the moose live. It's more of an Indian art than an Eskimo one. Moosehair tufts are cut short, tied tight and shaved into little 'buttons" which can be dyed with fruit and vegetable dyes. Moosehair tufting is quite an art in the Mackenzie valley and further south. Porcupine quills can be dyed too and sewn onto leather in patterns.
> Did they make a Pemmican like the natives here?
The Inuit hunted all year round and also preserved foods by freezing and drying. One traditional recipe calls for gutting a walrus, stuffing the cavity with plucked birds and burying it in a rocky pit. It is covered in enough boulders to discourage wolves and left for two years. As it thaws but briefly and never gets warm it ages without spoiling. At the end of the second year it has both the texture and taste of blue cheese. Or so I'm told; I have never partaken of that delicacy.
> native Americans had hardly any diabetes before white people came from > their way of living, only when white foods and alcohol was introduced > did it become obvious that their genetic make-up could not handle it. > I do not know any native family that has been spared from diabetes.
Sad but true. Diabetes has gone from non-existent to 8 times the national average in the north in the last fifty years. It is the scourge of Native peoples everywhere.
Jim Weller