Karen Mackenzie
Northern News Services
Published Monday, January 28, 2008
IQALUIT - David Veevee was born in Pangnirtung, but attended school and completed an apprenticeship as a mechanic in Iqaluit.
He regularly combines his technical knowledge and his familiarity of the land in his current job as IQ co-ordinator for Qulliq Energy's proposed hydro project.
In conversations with elders and hunters, Veevee is forming a history of the region and its smattering of camps around the Iqaluit region, to determine what the effects of a hydro site would be on the area.
"I tried to find out who lived there before and when, which camps are still active in that area," he said.
The name of his great-grandfather, who travelled throughout the region around the turn of the century, sometimes surfaces in his interviews of local elders.
Veevee believes his ancestor likely worked as a guide, and travelled by dog team to camps from as far as the tip of Baffin Island to just south of Iqaluit.
Gesturing at a map behind him, Veevee marvelled at the distances he must have travelled.
"He used to come all around here to visit family," he said.
While Veevee hasn't quite reached all the areas his great-grandfather did, he does spend a lot of time around the abandoned outpost camps on Frobisher Bay, easily identified by the tall green grass which tends to grow around them.
Many of the camps easily within travelling distance from Iqaluit are not that old, perhaps only used in the early 1900s to 1930s, according to Veevee.
It's important to remember that Inuit did not stay in one place all year round, but moved throughout the seasons, he said. He said he often thinks about how life was in the past at those camps.
"With limited tools, limited guns, how they handled it, it's amazing, really. When we go hunting, if we go out and don't catch anything we just go back, but them, they needed it for food, for themselves and for their dogs," he said. "They moved, they were constantly moving, but to specific areas that provided food and clothing."
