NAUJAAT/RANKIN INLET
Author David Pelly made a pair of stops in the Kivalliq as part of a tour to promote his new book, Ukkusiksalik: A People's Story, in Rankin Inlet and Naujaat this past week.

A cranky Mother Nature aside, Pelly said both his stops in Rankin Inlet and Naujaat went great.

He said the two Kivalliq stops were the climax of his trip, which also included visits to Iqaluit and Yellowknife.

"The events in Iqaluit and Yellowknife were nice, but, on my emotional side, I was building toward the two Kivalliq communities because this is where the people are that the book is about and for," said Pelly.

"It's their stories and their families stories. It was quite emotional in both communities. It was really quite wonderful to experience."

Pelly also paid a visit to Tusarvik School while he was in Naujaat.

An expected visit to a Rankin school didn't materialize as he had hoped.

Pelly said he was more than open to the prospect of visiting a school in Rankin, but it just didn't happen.

He said he doesn't really know what went wrong with the school visit, which he had been eagerly anticipating.

"I think it was probably just the function of being a larger community with more background noise.

"But it was great in Naujaat.

"During one morning at the school, I had three classes in succession.

"All three groups of kids were engaged, interested and enthusiastic.

"I think they really got something out of it and they were quite fascinated by the fact that it's either their grandparents or, in some cases, their great-grandparents featured in the book."

Pelly said there were some students at Tusarvik who were quite chatty and wanted to sit beside him and talk away.

He said that was a very nice feeling, as was being able to give them a glimpse of their family members at that point in time.

"They were quite forthcoming and they definitely had questions about their grandparents and great-grandparents.

"And they were fascinated to see the pictures of everybody in the 1990s, which was well before their time.

"None of these kids had been born when I did the interviews and travelled out on the land with all those people back to Wager Bay.

"That was really of interest to these kids and it felt like a really, really long time ago to them."

Pelly said the students were attracted mostly to the family ties they had to people in the book.

But, he said, he's also fairly confident he got through to them with the message he was trying to deliver.

"What I was really talking about is how powerful the oral history is, and I gave them illustrations to that affect with some of the stories that are in the book.

"The stories may not have been necessarily from their particular grandfather or grandmother, but they were stories from the book and they really wanted to know more about them.

"So it was broader than just their own family, and I think they understood that because these were stories they had never heard before, that means the oral history has stopped transmitting.

"So all these kids got the message that the oral history had passed down through many generations, but it essentially stopped at the generation of their grandparents or great-grandparents."

Pelly said it was a quite special moment every time a person receiving a book had a strong family connection contained within its pages.

He said that was especially true when he presented a book to elder Francis Kaput in Rankin Inlet.

"He is the only elder still living from the group of elders we interviewed back in the '90s.

"Annie Tatty, who is still living, was interviewed somewhat later.

"With the two of them, you could just see the pride on their faces.

"It was the same for people slightly younger who were getting the book on behalf of their late father or mother, in that their heartfelt emotion was quite evident.

"That meant a lot to me and it was the moment of my greatest satisfaction."

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