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AKLAVIK - Ninety years later and with ease, Mary Kendi recollects life when she was the blossoming age of four.

"We were canoeing up Rat River to look for caribou, but we couldn’t find any," the 94-year-old Aklavik elder said. "We set up camp along the river because there were a lot of salmon. I remember my father and the other men climbing up the mountain, all the way to the top to see if they could find caribou."

Andrew Livingstone/NNSL photo Mary Kendi has been part Aklavik's history for 94 years. Kendi, like a history book, is full of detailed information about the culture, language and history of the Delta region.

Kendi was born March 4, 1915 in a tent on the edge of a lake in the Aklavik region. There was no room in her grandparent’s log cabin for her family so they built a camp on the riverside.

"They built a tent on this nice piece of land and waited for me to be born," she said, every word full of wisdom.

A well-respected elder in the community and region, the mother of nine watched the Delta grow and develop over the last 90 years. "There was nobody in the Delta, no Inuvik, it was just all bush," Kendi said of the early days when she was young.

"It was wonderful when Aklavik started," she said. "It started at the point along the channel. The Jones men built log houses there. That’s how it started."

It was at this time that the Hudson Bay Company built a store in Aklavik, the RCMP came to town and the Anglican Mission was built. Kendi remembers when they used to travel on the trail now known as the Dempster highway to trade their furs for tobacco, mattresses and clothing. One point that stands out is the time in the early 1950s when Inuvik was settled.

"We were all well and lively and happy at that time of our life," she said. "They told everyone we had to move (to Inuvik), that Aklavik would be a ghost town. I said no way am I moving there."

With her mother and father buried in the cemetery at Aklavik, along with siblings, she didn’t want to leave them. Plus, she said there were other reasons.

"I didn’t want to leave because there were plenty of fish here," she said, adding that September is when all the fish come out into the river.

Kendi got married in 1932 at the age of 17 to a man from Dawson City -- someone she had never met before the arranged marriage was set up by her family that summer.

"I didn’t like it. I had never talked to him or see him before," she said. "My grandmother told me I had to get married. I thought I was too young."

Her husband died in 1964 after 32 years of marriage and nine children, one of which was adopted from her sister, who was too young to take care of the child.

"I adopted the child the same night that he was born," she said, her mother furious that her 15-year-old daughter had the child. Kendi knows the way of the land but wishes she spent more time in school. After just three years of schooling and ripe with curiosity, learning English through childhood songs like Little Bo Peep and Little Boy Blue, Kendi’s uncle took her out of school and back to the traditional life.

"He brought me back without my parents' permission," she said. "He didn’t want me going to school. I always used to cry because I wanted to learn and I couldn’t. I always wish I’d learned lots, to learn how to write and do more for my people.

"They were going to put me into the Roman Catholic school but didn’t want me to become Catholic. My mother didn’t want me to leave."

While a young mother, she always told her children the importance of getting an education. Her sons and daughters all attended the residential school in Aklavik where they lived on the school grounds six days a week.

"They would come home on Saturdays to visit. I told them they had to go to bed early to be ready for school. All the while I was trying to get ready to go dancing," she laughed.

In 1935, Kendi could easily have lost her life to the raging waters of the Mackenzie River. Ice had jammed up around Horseshoe Bay that spring and the water had begun to rise. Backed up, water filled the region, overflowing streams, creeks, rivers and lakes. Kendi's family were out on the land, somewhere around Fort McPherson when things began to go wrong.

"My husband and the other men had run out of .22 shells from shooting so many muskrats," she said. The men travelled to Aklavik and said they would be back the next day.

When the men arrived in Aklavik, the ice broke and the water began to rush. Ice flow and water made it impossible for the men to make their way back. Kendi, her young baby, an older couple and her sister and her six children were stuck in a log cabin, filled with two feet of water, for almost two weeks.

"We had to stay on the beds we had for over two weeks," she said. "We turned the tub upside down and put the stove on top so we would have heat. Luckily the old man had a canoe and was able to cut dry willows for us to use for heat."

She said it was a scary time for her. The ice was moving fast and they were lucky for the strength of the tree line to keep the ice from bursting through the walls of the cabin.

"I’ve really seen life."