Lynn Lau
Northern News Services

Inuvik (Nov 11/02) - It's clear from the way he sets up house, that Victor Allen would rather be at camp.

The 74-year-old lives alone in an Inuvik split-level that smells of caribou stew and country food.

News/North: I hear you're working on your camp up the Mackenzie these days.

Victor Allen: I'm just about ready to move. I'm going to retire on the land. I go there every chance I get.

We're Inuit. We're not like educated people -- put you in a cubbyhole when you're old and forget about you. We're supposed to stay with family and have family all around.

N/N: Have you always lived on the land?

VA: I spent pretty well half my life on the land. I learned my 1-2-3s and A-B-Cs in one year at school. That's good enough for me. They expelled me because I spoke too much of my own language.

N/N: You learned how to read and write in one year?

VA: One year. I'm not highly educated, but I'm educated in my own way. I'm a bookworm, that's the way I learn. I spend lots of money on books. I read Northern books written by white men. They got a good imagination. Never lived like us, never ate like us, but they know ALL about us. Still it's educational. I wish I was good like that, I'd write about people in the South all the time!

N/N: It's probably good you got thrown out of school because you got to hang on to your language.

VA: I love my language. I love my culture. I almost cry because our way of life was so wonderful. We never thought it was going to change. When it changed, it really damaged our way of life.

There's a new generation coming up right now. It's brand new.

I say that because my generation, we grew up on the land. The new system, it's got no way to teach young people to be strong and use the land. Everything is in a hurry today. One big rush. Lots of times, nobody is satisfied in this new system.

My children went through it -- they lost their language. Some people say if you can't speak your language, you're not an Inuk. But I don't believe that. If they have life skills, they're going to be OK. My kids have life skills. They know where to go and when we're going beluga hunting. They learn some of the old ways.

You can't teach them just on the weekends. That's not long enough. It takes a lifetime to educate the lifestyle you grew up in. I spent my life on the land and I still don't know enough.

N/N: All your kids seem to be pretty successful in the new system. I can see from these postcards, they're all over the place.

VA: I'm glad my kids went through school. You can't fight the new system.

When education came along they said you have to get off the land to educate those kids. That how I ended up in Inuvik. I didn't want my kids to be in hostels. My kids loved to be at home. If they go to hostels, they cry and that's hard on their little brains.

N/N: So you came to Inuvik?

VA: I came to Inuvik in the summer of 1956 to get a job. Not only me, lots of others too. It was East Three at that time. I got a labour job. I never worked for anybody before that. I came off the land because fur prices were right down to nothing. There was lots of work here. It's a changing world. New to the kids. New to us native people.

N/N: What bothers you about the new system?

VA: Young educated people haven't got respect, lots of them. It's all over the papers -- break-ins, impaired driving, everything. That's embedded into their brains because of T.V. The more you punish them, the smarter they get. I go through it every day -- I fight my weaknesses of a lot of things -- we all got problems. If we didn't, this world wouldn't exist.

N/N: Why not?

VA: It's just what I know.

We cannot change the system. Our old ways are quite behind, but a lot of us want to keep some part of it. The white man system has more power over everything because there's millions of them. It's like anything else, if there's too many of them, you can't control it. Now they're talking about bombs and wars.

N/N: Like what they're talking about on TV.

VA: Lots of times we see all them guys shooting each other with guns. All them good shells, wasted. They should give them to us who shoot animals for food. We'd have enough shells to last a lifetime.

N/N: It's pretty crazy, this world.

VA: It was always crazy -- that's why they came up here to try to teach the new way of life. Lots of us elders, our life gets to be a story. Because we grew up in two kinds of worlds. We survived the two worlds.

It's a good thing they don't have the Third World up here.

When I see all that on TV, the children starving, I just want to send them a caribou carcass and tell them to eat that!

But, I'll be able to take care of myself when it all collapses. If we're not careful, the whole North will collapse. It's getting too warm and it will all collapse like a block of ice in a bucket of warm water. But not in my time. Not in David Suzuki's time.

N/N: You like David Suzuki?

VA: I like him. I wouldn't mind to sit down with David Suzuki or whatever his name is. I'd like to know what creates earthquakes, because you know the Inuit got a pretty good idea how the earthquakes work.

N/N: Are you going to tell me how?

VA: I couldn't tell you -- you could write a whole book. There's a lot of knowledge our Inuit ancestors used to know. I'd like to go back to my grandfather's father's time. I wouldn't mind to visit, just for a couple days anyway.

We'd be walking on fur socks! With long hair! When shamans had power, before someone came along and said there's something more powerful than shamans. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to step in and step out. I wouldn't mind that.