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INUVIK
When Paden Lennie heard that there would be a muskox harvest in Sachs Harbour this year, he made arrangements to get back home to Inuvik from Montreal.

Paden Lennie, left, gives the thumb's up as Christine Menno examines viscera at the muskox harvest in Sachs Harbour. - photo courtesy of Jiri Raska

The 20-year-old is currently enrolled in the social sciences program at Lasalle College in Montreal. He spent the past two months in his home town of Inuvik carrying out the muskox harvest and spending time with family and friends over the holidays.

Sachs Harbour's muskox harvest finished with 251 animals in just more than two weeks. This year, the Business Development and Investment Corporation of the NWT formed a subsidiary company to take over from the Muskox Product Company, and organized the fall harvest in partnership with the Inuvialuit Community Economic Development Organization.

The harvest ran from Nov. 18 to Dec. 4 and employed approximately 30 people from Sachs Harbour. In addition, six workers flew in from Inuvik.

Lennie has worked for the muskox harvest for two consecutive years. This past harvest, however, was the first in which he participated in the actual harvesting of the animals. In the previous year, Lennie said he took part in the overall preparation work, such as setting up the abattoir and corrals, cleaning the site and hauling the new equipment from the beach to the site. The preparation work took place in the summer, about two months prior to the harvest.

"Coming in with little to no experience, I knew it would be a challenging process. However, once I got onto the island and met the locals and harvest veterans who helped me every step of the way in the harvesting process, I walked away with a lot more knowledge and experience. Taking part in this event was a memorable experience for me and I would definitely do it again," he wrote in an e-mail.

He said this year, there were many highlights in his experience on Banks Island.

"Learning how the entire harvesting process took place, from watching the herders bringing in the muskox, to the culling, processing and packaging of the finished product. Everything was a new experience for me and I gained a lot of valuable knowledge from this experience," wrote Lennie.

"Seeing the close relationship that the people of Sachs Harbour share with the muskox was, for me, a very memorable highlight of my experience in the harvest."

Lennie lent his hand in many aspects of the harvest, from tagging and skinning to grinding and gutting.

He said, through working on the harvest over the two weeks, he learned the proper way to handle, prepare and process muskox.

"I have definitely come away from the season with a lot more experience and lasting friendships. Of course, I owe a lot of my new knowledge to both the local Sachs workers and the harvest veterans," he wrote.

Jiri Raska, Community Economic Development Organization project co-ordinator with the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, said once the harvest is underway, the days last about eight hours and workers fluidly move through the tasks in a sort of assembly line.

"You start the harvesting, the slaughter. An animal is dispatched one at a time, and it goes through a process ... from start to finish you're doing several animals an hour," said Raska.

He said the process is very specific, from shooting the animal, to stringing it up, bleeding it out then skinning and tagging it.

The hide is removed and sheared, with fibres collected in burlap sacks for transport and the animal's meat is packaged in boxes.

Raska said the harvest is a much-needed financial injection into the community during the months where the community is quiet.

"Only during the summertime do you get a lot of different government organizations coming in and hiring local residents to do this and that. Whereas in the winter, there are not many prospects. This is certainly a well-needed thing and we're hoping to sustain it to a point where there are many little off-shoots," said Raska, pointing to developing a cottage industry so harvesters can stay on the land for a longer period of time or looking at the possibility of a spring harvest five years down the line.

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