John Thompson
Northern News Services

Sanikiluaq (June 27/05) - Johnny Meeko looks forward to navigating a boat between the Belcher Islands this summer with an eye open for eider ducks.

Down from the birds makes perfect stuffing for wind pants and parkas. Driftwood is also worth collecting, he says, to help make fires to smoke sealmeat with.

Johnny Meeko from Sanikiluaq passes the land skills his grandfather once taught him down to today's young Rangers. He's proud of how much Inuit culture Sanikiluaq has managed to retain today. - photo courtesy of Nick Newbery

The Sanikiluaq resident was born on May 9, 1954, and when he was only two years old he contracted tuberculosis. He had to fly south for treatment, where patients and doctors spoke a puzzling language he had trouble understanding.

Two years later, after English began to make more sense than Inuktitut, he was sent home, only to realize he had trouble communicating with his family.

"By the time I came back to my home town, I couldn't speak my mother tongue."

So he began to relearn his language. His father suffered a back injury, so his grandfather taught him how to hunt, carve and fish.

Childhood memories recall much time spent peeling seaweed from gillnets.

"He used to say, 'if you want to eat fish, you need to help me clean the gillnets,'" he said.

His attachment to the ocean remains, and during winters he enjoys venturing out to harvest mussels, sea cucumbers and urchins.

In 1989 he became a Ranger, which allows him to practise land skills his grandfather taught him, like how to build an iglu and qomatiq, and pass them down to the next generation.

He's fathered five children and adopted one as well. His eldest, Jobie, is a master corporal in the Rangers, just one rank below Meeko, who's a sergeant.

He's also been a teacher for more than three decades.

"I love kids. You have to like kids to become a teacher."

During his time teaching Meeko has seen many changes happen in his community. Substance abuse is a bigger problem than he remembers when he was young, but he's proud of how much Inuit culture Sanikiluaq has managed to retain today.