Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

Inuvik (Oct 25/02) - A book detailing the history of the Inuvialuit people will soon be released.

Inuvialuit: History of an Arctic People is co-written by Inuvialuit writers Eddie Kolausok and Ishmael Alunik, and David Morrison of the Canadian Museum of Civilization.

The book contains 200 photographs and will cover the known history of the Inuvialuit from earliest times to modern day.

Ishmael Alunik has lived the past 80 years of that history and tells and re-tells the story of his people.

Born and raised in a traditional life on the land, when Alunik could no longer earn a living from the land he took a job as a school custodian and later worked at the CBC as the Inuvialuit language announcer.

He retired in 1988 and 10 years later wrote his first book, Call me Ishmael: Memories of an Inuvialuit Elder. The book told his stories of the Inuvialuit culture and growing up on the land.

Alunik said he wrote the first book with a pencil, but with the second, he's used some new technology.

"I started out with just a pencil and some lined paper, now I have a computer -- it's much easier," he laughs.

The new book draws from some of the earliest stories he recalls from the Inupiat and Inuvialuit people he's met from Alaska to Paulatuk.

"I've been collecting stories since 1937," Alunik said. "Every night I would listen ... somehow, I was interested."

"They would tell stories about the way the ancestors lived and how they made hunting tools, like bows and arrows, spears and kayaks," he said.

Some of the inspiration for the book came from an elder he knew named Kenneth Pelolook.

"It was in the 1980s when I got the idea, I could almost hear him say, 'Write it -- it's good for your great-grandchildren," he recalled. "From then on, I started collecting the stories."

Alunik said the elders told him stories about the way things were during "stone-age living," when people lived in sod houses and sometimes endured very hard times.

"When all the food would run out, they would boil the skins and they would live on it," he said.

azOne of the stories came from his great-grandfather, who lived in Alaska before the Americans bought it from Russia.

"He couldn't speak English, but he could understand Russian," Alunik said.

When the whalers came to the North, they also brought disease and indigenous populations were decimated. He tells a story from Felix Nuyaviak, who was the first to settle in Tuktoyaktuk.

"He knew of the place that's now Tuktoyaktuk and there was a good harbour, good hunting and lots of herring," Alanik said. "He was the first to build a log home there."

He tells a story Muyaviak told how 80 kayaks once herded the beluga into a shallow bay. The whales were killed with long spears and they would inflate the animals with enough air to float them home behind their kayaks.

While Alunik was growing up, he saw great change in the whaling industry.

"I remember back when I was in school, I remember seeing a whale boat with a sail on the water and later on, in the '40's, I saw them use a schooner with engines," he said. "Now they use big boats and catch a whale in no time."

The book also has some folklore and legends and tales of shamen.

Inuvialuit: History of an Arctic People will be published by the Canadian Museum of Civilization.