Glen Korstrom
Northern News Services

PAULATUK (Jan 22/99) - Virtually the entire community and a plane load of visitors remembered elder Nelson Green at a funeral in Paulatuk Jan. 14.

Nelson froze to death on the land after a cabin fire that burned all his winter gear and left him exposed to the elements as he snowmobiled back to Paulatuk Jan. 10.

"He was a kind, generous guy who always had a joke to make you smile," says Paulatuk Mayor Keith Dodge.

"He was very thoughtful, especially toward elders and he really believed in the community of Paulatuk."

Green was born Oct. 8, 1948, at Tasseriuk and was the sixth of 16 children born to Samuel and Marion Green.

From 1957 to 1959, Nelson attended the R.C. Mission school in Aklavik. From 1960 through 1965 he attended Grollier Hall in Inuvik before going on to Fort Smith to attend Grandin College from 1966 to 1970 where he completed Grade 11.

He met Mary Simpson at college and the two had one daughter, Cynthia, who was at the funeral. He also had three grandchildren.

Inuvik's Norm Snow, who knew Nelson stretching back to the 1970s and did much travelling with him, says Green was a pleasure to be around.

"A lot of stories about Nelson probably couldn't be printed," he said before a chuckle.

"The Inuvialuit people were at the core of just about everything Nelson did."

Then Snow recounted one memory of Nelson prior to him ever getting a Canadian passport.

In the 1970s or early 1980s, Nelson went with Snow and others to a conference in Alaska on a chartered plane where no one was checking official papers.

The group then went on for meetings in Seattle via a commercial flight. When the group boarded an international flight home, immigration stopped Nelson and asked for papers.

He rummaged through his luggage and found a photoless hunting card with his name on it but nothing with a photo.

"When the woman there said she needed a photo, (Nelson) asked me for some wedding pictures I had, which he was in. And he started showing her wedding pictures."

Repeated calls to Delta RCMP to vouch for him finally cleared up the mess and he soon applied for a passport.

What was important to Nelson was achieving goals for the Inuvialuit and not the need for a passport, Snow says.

Along with Peter Green, his brother and former Committee of Original Peoples Entitlement president, Nelson was a co-signer from Paulatuk on the Inuvialuit Final Agreement.

Nelson was a director for the Inuvialuit Game Council and was appointed in September to the Wildlife Management Advisory Council.

He was a member of numerous commissions, councils and boards throughout his life.