One thing that not many people realize (and prior to living here I could be counted among them) is just how recently people here lived a traditional lifestyle, living on the land. Living much as people had lived up here for thousands of years.
One spring day in 2000, a little while after Leah and I had first started seeing each other, we were out hunting for the weekend with her parents. On the way back home we stopped for lunch and tea at a place called Qikitarkat, just a little south of Adam’s Sound on Admiralty Inlet. We stopped in between the small islands and the shore and while we were waiting for the kettle to boil, Leah pointed to a small raised beach on the shore. "That’s where Tina used to live" she said. What? What do you mean she used to live there? "Her qarmaq is just up there."
We walked up the beach and sure enough there were a couple of qarmaq (sod houses) and the debris of lives lived, a doll, the odd broken dish etc. I was simply amazed, and when I told Leah that that was incredible she replied. "Mom and Dad’s is just over that hill". You could have knocked me over with a feather.
Houses were not built for Inuit in Arctic Bay until the late 60’s – early 70’s, at that time the Government began to try and encourage people to move off the land and into settlements. School was started, a nurse was hired to show people how to live in a "modern" house etc. Over the course of several years most people living in the area moved to town. Leah’s parents moved here in 1969. To bring it home to people who know me I explain that had I been born up here I would have lived the first eleven or so years of my life living in a sod hut, tent or iglu.
I got thinking about this last night when we were down at Leah’s folk’s place. Leah was showing her mom a short video of Hilary, taken on her digital camera the day before, on Leah’s 12 inch Powerbook. I could not help but think that not that long ago this very woman lived very well, the same as her mother’s mother’s mother lived. Not a laptop in sight.