Stephanie McDonald
Northern News Services
Published Monday, January 28, 2008

RESOLUTE - Last week if you walked down the halls of Qarmartalik School towards the multipurpose room, the sounds of giggling and storytelling in Inuktitut would have been the first thing to reach you.

Resolute elder Zipporah Kalluk Aronsen speaks in Inuktitut to students in the Grade 1-2 class about skin preparation, telling them traditional stories and facts about the polar bear last Wednesday. Aronsen and Martha Enuaraq were teaching the senior female students how to prepare the skin. From left are Natasha Idlout, Justin McDonald, Sophie Idlout, Cynthia Kalluk, and Sky Nungaq. - photo courtesy of Tracey MacMillan

Inside the room there were two elders and five female students sitting around the skin of a polar bear, the women using ulus to scrape the hide, working from the outer reaches inward.

The week-long skin preparation class is the second part of a process that began last April as a partnership between Resolute's Qikiqtani Inuit Association (QIA), Qarmartalik school teachers and students and some of the community's elders.

In April 2007 approximately 10 male students from the school travelled onto the land with QIA representatives and elders. The students learned tracking and hunting skills and returned to town with two polar bears. The skins of the bears had been in the school's freezers until last week.

Elders Martha Enuaraq and Zipporah Kalluk Aronsen taught five senior female students the different types of ulus used for skinning and the group worked together, skinning the excess fat from the hide.

Both Enuaraq and Aronsen have been preparing skins since they were girls.

"They're losing it, some of them," the two women said of the skill of skinning animals. "We're just starting to remind them now. We're going to keep on teaching them."

Grade 12 student Sylvia Kalluk has watched her mother clean a polar bear hide a couple of times but last week was the first time she had tried her hand at the task. Her favourite part, but the most challenging, was working around the claws.

"It was a little bit hard at first, but with practice I know I'd probably be good," Kalluk said.

Something she hadn't known before was how to work around the bear's mouth.

"Under the lip you make a cut ... you take out the fat and then you scrape the rest off," she said.

The time with the two elders was a lesson not only in skin preparation, but a chance to interact in Inuktitut.

"Sometimes they tell stories about the past, about learning how to skin a bear, how they watched and learned right away from that," Kalluk said. "It's great working with the elders. It's a treat."

The male students had a chance to watch as the females scraped the skins. The elders felt it was important that both sexes be familiar with the procedure.

Once both skins are scraped, the males plan to bring them to the ocean to be cleaned. They plan to build the racks and hang the skins for drying.

In all, from the time of the hunt to when the skins are complete, it will have been a 10-month process for the students, teachers, elders and QIA members.

Earlier this month the relationship between the groups was renewed and another hunt and skin preparation class will take place again this year.