Kevin Ataguttaalukutuk sat in nervous anticipation at the Iqaluit airport last week before boarding a plane to Greenland. He was heading to the Knud Rasmussen school through a scholarship program. The same program Natasha St. John just finished. Four hours after he left, she returned.
Dawn Ostrem
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Mar 05/01) - Last Tuesday marked the beginning of a life-time experience for one young man and the end for one young woman.
Kevin Ataguttaalukutuk from Iglulik boarded a flight in Iqaluit heading to Greenland the afternoon of Feb. 28. That evening, Natasha St. John left Greenland to return home to Arivat.
They are the only two Nunavut scholarship recipients of a five-month Inuit Circumpolar Conference program to study at cultural schools in Greenland.
St. John, 20, attended the Knud Rasmussen School in Sisimuit, while Ataguttaalukutuk is adjusting to life in the dormitory of Sulisartut School in Qaqortoq.
St. John's experience in Sisimuit changed her life forever.
"I have so many stories, there will never be an end to my stories," she said. "It's like a novel to me."
Crossing paths
Ataguttaalukutuk, 18, arrived from Iglulik the night before he left and settled in a room at the Discovery Hotel.
He had a grin stretching across his face almost constantly that evening, even though he admitted he was scared. He never flew in airplanes much before and never stayed in a hotel like the one he was in.
"I still have no idea where I am going to stay," he said while sitting in the hotel lobby. "I'll miss home lots."
The day after St. John walked on the tarmac and into the biting Iqaluit wind, she ached to be back in Sisimuit.
"I'm homesick for Greenland," she said, sitting at her cousin's apartment before getting on another flight to go home to Arviat.
"It felt like home to me."
She arrived in the town of colourful houses towered over by jagged mountains last October. As she sat with a bag of Greenlandic cookies -- klaenlar -- she described the adventure.
She told of parties with friends, graveyards Catholic Greenlanders light with numerous candles on any given day, and a town filled with huskies and puppies trotting proudly down the streets.
She said the town of 6,000 meshed into a mob of excited celebrants on New Year's Eve as bursting blossoms of fireworks decorated the night sky. One celebration was held at midnight in the Denmark time zone, one in Greenland's and one in Nunavut's. The last was an effort to show the Canadian girl how much she was liked.
She described the best friend she made there while fighting back tears.
"I could just cry right now," she said. "She gave me a letter the day I left saying she will never forget when we met and became best friends."
In five months...
Ataguttaalukutuk is an Inuktitut-speaking hunter whose most proud moment came about a year-and-half ago when he shot his first polar bear.
"My dad saw a seal hole," he started, proud to outline every detail. "We stopped a minute there and then I saw a big polar bear and it was kind of excited. I got my bow and arrow out of my qamutiq.
He shot the bear twice in the neck with a bow and arrow and eventually with a rifle.
"Everybody was happy," he said about the residents of Iglulik. "Most of Iglulik is (also) proud of me for going to Greenland."
He plans on re-telling this story in Greenland.
In five months, Ataguttaalukutuk will return with his own stories from Greenland.
In five months, St. John said she may be working in Arviat, studying in Ottawa or perhaps travelling.
She said one thing is certain -- she will be going back to Greenland again.
"They told me when I left that I would always be welcome."
