TUKTOYAKTUK
Students from Tuktoyaktuk and Inuvik will be showing off their Pingo Pride this week.

Students from East Three Secondary School in Inuvik and Mangilaluk School in Tuktoyaktuk travelled to Pingo National Landmark last March for the annual Pingo Pride trip. The event, now in its seventh year, is scheduled to take place March 11 and 12. - photo courtesy of Neil Ingroville

Teacher Holly Carpenter said the annual event brings students from Mangilaluk School together with students from East Three Secondary School in Inuvik for a day trip to pingos near Tuktoyaktuk on March 11 and 12.

Pingos are huge hills filled with ice that form over decades or centuries, according to Parks Canada.

Found about five kilometres west of Tuk and about 137 kilometres north of Inuvik, Pingo Canadian Landmark is home to eight of the region's pingos.

Carpenter, who has helped chaperone the trip for the past three years, said both staff and students look forward to the trip each spring.

After students arrive from Inuvik, the group will head out to tents set up near the pingos, she said.

"We all get into a school bus and go down the ice road," Carpenter said. "We'll probably have two Ski-Doos with two sleds and we haul all the children to a camp site just below the pingos. It's beautiful."

The group will spend part of the day hearing stories from elders and listening to presentations by Parks Canada staff.

Rachel Hansen, the interpretation officer at Parks Canada's Inuvik office, said the program has now been running for seven years in partnership with the Beaufort Delta Education Council.

She said the goal is to encourage students to appreciate the area's significance.

"We do have the largest concentration of pingos in the North and the second largest in the world," she said. "We do have something special."

Carpenter said the formations are an important part of Inuvialuit culture and helped guide travellers.

"They were landmarks for hunters," she said. "You could gauge where you were."

She said unlike in other parts of the Arctic, people in the Tuktoyaktuk area didn't use inuksuit. Instead, the pingos were used as markers.

"They're pretty much our big inukshuks. We don't have inukshuks like the eastern Arctic," Carpenter said. "They're important."

Hansen said elders have also told stories about travellers climbing pingos to enable them to see from a high vantage point.

Carpenter said she hopes the trips have inspired students to value the land and want to protect it.

"Hopefully these children are learning the importance of these landmarks and preserving them," she said.

On the trip, students will also get a chance to go sliding on one of the smaller pingos before sharing hot chocolate and heading back to the school; two activities Jewel Keevik said she expects will be her favourite parts of the day. Keevik attended last year's event as well.

"We go sliding on the pingos and we have hot chocolate in the tent," she said.

Keevik said she considers herself and other students fortunate to be able to see pingos first-hand.

"I think it's important because not many people have the chance to see them," she said.

In addition to educating students, the trip is also a great way to bring youth from Tuk and Inuvik together, Carpenter said.

"They're meeting children from the Inuvik school and I'm meeting new teachers," she said. "It's like a mini-gathering."

Inuvik students will spend the night in the Mangilaluk School gym before heading home on March 12.

Keevik said she's looking forward to it.

"It was fun last year and I hope it's fun this year," she said.

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