UQSUQTUUQ/GJOA HAVEN
Living in a tent with his great-grandparents, listening to his great-grandmother's stories, were Louie Kamookak's first experiences as a listener.
Louie Kamookak takes time to eat in his iglu during a 2002 winter trip exploring the north end of King William Island, an area his great-grandmother told stories about when he was a child and which he would later hear about in school, verifying that the oral history was real. - photo courtesy Louie Kamookak |
"I was very young, maybe about nine, I used to be out in the camp with her. I'd give them a hand, because they were pretty old now, and each night she would tell stories. There was one story that she told of what they saw on the north part of King William Island."
That story dated back to when his great-grandmother was herself a young child.
However, the defining moment for the self-made historian who would play an integral role in the discovery of Sir John Franklin's lost ship, HMS Erebus, was when he attended school at the age of 12 and heard the Franklin story.
"My mind clicked back to my great-grandmother's stories of what they saw down there. I started getting the picture that these two stories were matching," said Kamookak, who will be 56 this August.
Though it was in the 1970s that Kamookak really "started getting into listening to the stories from elders," he started working on collecting them in earnest in the early 1980s.
"I became more interested in gathering stories of the first white men that came, because it was hard to say to an elder, 'Tell me about the Franklin expedition.' They didn't have any names for them (the explorers). So I was collecting all the stories related to any white men that came."
He also started travelling specifically to locations explorers might have visited, based on what information he had available at the time.
"To see how the landscape was in these areas the elders were talking about."
His methods of collection included recording, writing and, sometimes, simply listening.
"And it's not all the time that I would go to the elders. The elders started realizing I was interested in listening. I remember one elder that would come to our house and sit down for tea, and he would start talking."
Kamookak's interest was not solely in white adventurers.
"I was asking questions about Inuit groups way back in the 19th century, before the Europeans came. In this region there were four main groups, and each group was within about 100 to 150 square miles. In the springtime they would be hunting and then they would move to a certain area where they would have good weir fishing. In the fall they would go caribou hunting. The groups had their own territory in a certain area.
"So I was getting stories - not only on the white men - I was trying to get the stories about the Inuit groups way back."
In 1996, Kamookak and his wife then started a place-name project, with a bit of funding from Parks Canada. The two collected place names from elders.
"And at that time, GPS (global positioning system) was introduced to a lot of the younger people. People were starting to use GPS when they went out and we'd talk to them on the radio."
Kamookak combined place names with the locations supplied by GPS readings, which use satellites to determine longitude and latitude.
"Our thought was that the place names were going to be forgotten."
For approximately 200 square miles around Gjoa Haven, Kamookak collected more than 400 names.
"All the islands had names, all the landmarks, the ocean, channels and lakes."
And place names related to "way back legends, and the stories behind the place names, some related to hunting." There were also more modern names related to Europeans.
Another high point in Kamookak's historical work came when he randomly came into contact with a Calgary bookstore owner, who then sent him history books related to expeditions and people who went searching for them, including first editions.
"That's when I really started working on tying the stories I was getting from the elders with the books and new resources that I had."
Kamookak explains that it is all this research put together and cross-referenced that led to his information regarding the locations of Franklin's lost ships.
Quite a bit of the material was lost when the shack in which it was stored was damaged, but he managed to save some - which he hopes will go towards putting together his own book.
"I've mostly been telling people about what I did in the past, but hopefully I'll be able to put all this stuff together and see if I can come out with an idea for putting a book out."
A lot of his focus has been on his health in recent years, undergoing a second surgery this past December.
"I'm feeling good. I'm back at work."
Meanwhile, people's anticipation can grow about all the stories Kamookak has stockpiled to share.
