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Kerry McCluskey
Northern News Services
 Natasha Thorpe received hunting lessons from Umingmaktuuk elder Lena Kamoayak during an elder-youth camp in 1998. The lessons took place when Thorpe and her colleagues collected traditional knowledge about the Bathurst Caribou herd. - photo courtesy of Natasha Thorpe |
The final report is a colorful and educational book called Thunder on the Tundra.
You must be so proud to have the final report done and look as good as it does.
We're all really happy with the final product. It's been a real team effort and has required a lot of patience by a lot of people. Everybody from the elders to the advisory board to my co-authors Naikak Hakongak and Sandra Eyegetok, and our designer Lynn O'Rourke. It's been a long few years, but we're all very proud of what the final result is.
It's been five years in the making?
We started in 1996. It took several years to conduct the interviews and translate it and transcribe it. It took an extra year because we actually went back to each and every elder and read aloud the transcript to them to make sure every single word was correct. We compiled those into the book and tried to weave the tale in a way that they found worked.
We had the elders from the Tuktu Nogak Board decide the structure of the book, including details down to the highlight colours, what the chapters would be called and how the book would be structured. All of the illustrations were done by elders and youth during drawing workshops.
We got everybody together and elders talked with the youth about the old days and caribou. It was a real teaching environment and ultimately produced these fabulous drawings.
What was your reaction when you opened your first box of books and saw the finished product?
I was shocked. It was amazing to see it finally in print and together. It had been a long time coming and I was thrilled with how it turned out.
It must have been quite a rush of emotion.
NT: It was. It filled my eyes with tears. I was quite light-headed.
You must feel privileged to have been part of one of the first Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit projects.
Definitely. It has been a privilege to participate and have the elders and researchers be so patient with a Qallunnaq. This is the time when the government of Nunavut is defining their IQ policy. With the land claims coming to be halfway through our project, people encouraged and were committed to IQ projects. It was a timely era for our project.
What is the biggest lesson you learned from the elders?
Patience. Patience in the sense of listening to one another tell stories and talk, and having the patience to really hear what a person is saying. Patience waiting for the caribou to come and waiting for the migrations and the hunting time and the caribou crossings. Hearing some of the elder women talk about making caribou skins and caribou-skin clothing, and during starvation time having to scrape off parts of the caribou skins. The patience it takes and the peace of mind and peace of heart it takes to endure that waiting.
Have you incorporated patience into your own life?
It's a lesson I try to apply, but it certainly isn't always well-received in the South. People don't always have the patience.
What is the biggest lesson you learned about the Bathurst Herd?
That's a difficult question. That's like asking elders to talk about caribou without talking about grizzly bears, wolf and everything related to it. One thing that had an impact on me was the relationship between climate change and caribou -- changes in temperatures and ice conditions and body condition, behaviour, migration routes of the Bathurst Herd as a result of changes in temperature.
It's a way Inuit can contribute to a global understanding of climate change. It's what people have observed directly in the last 50 years, or heard from their grandparents ranging back hundreds of years.
Do you think the scientific world is taking this information seriously and paying attention to what elders and Inuit are saying?
Absolutely. The work done by the climate change project out of Sachs Harbour as well as this project and the bowhead study and the IQ projects of the last few years have been fabulous. They've certainly received international attention. The Tuktu Nogak Project has been invited to several conferences around the world. People were interested to hear what Inuit elders had to say.
Lena Kamoayak of Bay Chimo joined us in Norway. We had people coming up to us after the conference thanking her and saying this was one of the most informative and interesting presentations given.
We've been impressed with the Bathurst Caribou Management Planning Committee's commitment to looking at traditional knowledge as well as science. There are a lot of scientists on that group, but they're very interested in meaningfully finding out how they can incorporate IQ so it's at the very beginning of the planning. Their next meeting is Jan. 24. We've been invited to put together a discussion paper on how they might incorporate IQ into the plan.
How do you even begin to incorporate IQ into policy development?
The first thing that has to happen is that there has to be a willingness. We're at that stage. Once people are willing, we proceed by shaking some of the foundations or by having the opportunity to create some of the foundations. That way, the spiritual relationships between people and caribou, and the traditions and customs associated with caribou, are incorporated. If it is a belief that you treat caribou with respect on a spiritual level. That may translate into the thought that are there certain hunting technologies we do or do not support because they either support or are counter to treating caribou with respect.
With climate change stuff, it's easy to incorporate IQ because you have detailed, specific observations over a period of time. Observations about caribou are discussed whether it's at tea or at the hunters and trappers organizations. The stuff that makes it into the mainstream has gone through a filtration process.
Did you experience some sort of surreal moment where you realized this project was actually happening? Was there some moment where it was almost too good to be true?
If I look back on the five years, it's been an up and down wave. There were magical moments. It's not a 9-5 job that leaves you. You're forever changed. The highs for me were the quality time spent with elders on the land. I feel an enormous sense of gratitude and commitment.
The down part was when I think about how long it took to do the project in the right way. There were times when Sandra, Naikak and I were putting so much blood, sweat and tears into this and wondered if it was worth it.
The words that kept us going were that we had looked in the eyes of all those elders and promised we would take their words and have them be shared.
Do you miss Nunavut and living here?
I really do. I'm still doing contract work in Victoria that brings me up North every two months or so. There's a certain emptiness to not being able to share my day in the North with Inuit who have contributed so much richness to my life. I do really long and miss most people in Nunavut.
Are you excited about the book launch?
I'm absolutely giddy. It's been almost a year since I've seen a lot of the elders. There have been a few elders who've passed away.
One of the reasons we didn't go through a publishing house was because we were told it would take two extra years. We said forget it, we don't want to wait two years if it means one more elder won't see the fruits of their work.
