Iqaluit (July 19/04) - Aksatungua Pitseolak Ashoona of Cape Dorset was reading a book a couple of years ago about global warming, when suddenly she put the book down, looked up from the pages and thought to herself: "Oh my God."

Aksatungua Pitseolak Ashoona suddenly remembered the stories she heard as a child while reading a book about global warming. - photo courtesy of Const. Joe Baines

Stories she heard as a child came flooding back.

"It had a big impact on me," Ashoona recalled last week from her home in Cape Dorset. "I thought 'This is my great-grandmother's stories and they are coming alive."

Inuit storytelling traditionally consisted of cautionary tales from elders based on Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ).

"What they didn't see they always foretold, like global warming," Ashoona said.

The old stories also predicted the growth of Cape Dorset and other places in the North, Ashoona said, long before the traders came.

"The communities will start to grow because southerners will come and teach. There will be labourers building homes," Ashoona recalled of some of the old stories.

Stories in the North could be funny or scary ghost stories pulled from the imagination for entertainment in the camps.

"My grandmother would tell ghost stories a lot," Ashoona said. "And her grandchildren would start to cry because she would terrorize them with her stories," she said with a laugh. "They had great imaginations and humour."

Storytelling also contained Inuit legends.

"The imagination never stops," Ashoona said. "In Inuit it never did. Imagination was always there, every day."

In the old days, small children were not allowed to listen in.

Ashoona was one of those kids who wanted to hear the stories, so she would sneak in to hear them.

"It was thought that your childhood would be altered by hearing big things you shouldn't be hearing," she recalled.

Now Ashoona, who comes from a long line of storytellers and is quite a good storyteller herself, says the art of storytelling is dying.

She doesn't blame television and news media for this. She isn't sure why storytelling is dying, but like every aspect of Inuit culture, storytelling is undeniably under siege from modern life.

"It was so alive in my family," said Ashoona, who is keeping the tradition alive with her kids.

"If I came across something my grandfather already told me in his stories I would go 'OK, this is what my grandfather prepared me for.'"

What makes a great storyteller?

Peter Pitseolak, the outstanding community leader for whom the Cape Dorset high school is named after, was Ashoona's grandfather.

Ashoona's mother, Okpik Pitseolak, an artist, is a storyteller, too.

"She does storytelling through her art, what she heard and what she has seen. She keeps them alive through carving, which is great," said Ashoona of her mom.

For Ashoona, the answer to what makes a good storyteller is simple: "A good listener. Because if my mother was storytelling and I wasn't listening, then I wouldn't remember."

A view from Gjoa Haven

Far away from the West Coast of Baffin Island in Gjoa Haven, the art of Inuit storytelling is also losing its lustre.

"I think it's dying," said Louie Kamookak, a storyteller, father, historian, and hamlet worker. "Because now people don't listen to each other. They don't visit as much."

Kamookak thinks a great storyteller uses their entire body in an expressive way while telling a story.

"Their hands, their face, everything," he said.

Kamookak is inspired by a storyteller named Judas Aqiriaq, who visits in Gjoa Haven and tells stories about the first white men and explorers in the region.

But Aqiriaq, now 80, is hard of hearing, and Kamookak fears that once people like Aqiriaq start to pass away, so will the stories.

Community radio plays a role

One bright light in both Cape Dorset and Gjoa Haven is the community radio, where recordings of elders' stories are played at least once a week.

Kamookak thinks the radio shows help preserve and promote the storytelling tradition.

"In smaller communities like Gjoa Haven, in the wintertime they would have a radio show. Some days it's just storytelling," he said.

For Kamookak, who happens to share Ashoona's interest in mapping and preserving place names in his community as well, storytelling should be encouraged more. For him, the best stories involve the history of the region and the first European explorers who were searching for the Northwest Passage.

"They are like little movies. The good stories, they are just like movies."

Can the schools save storytelling?

There is a movement ongoing in Nunavut to introduce more Inuit culture into the education curriculum.

The department of education has announced that the Educational Leadership Program will support teachers who develop course work based on Inuit values and culture.

Storytelling is a huge part of Inuit culture, but Ashoona doesn't think it can be taught.

"It has to have been running a long time in the family," she said. "It doesn't just happen. It cannot be taught. You have to have been around it in your life."Aksatungua Pitseolak Ashoona suddenly

remembered the stories she heard as a child

while reading a book about global warming.

photo courtesy of Const. Joe Baines