The foundation of my Nunavik project

I expect all my blog readers including my french readers to be as curious as I am about the Inuit and their culture. Please share this interest with as many people as you can.

A few years ago, I travelled to Nunavik. It was an event that had a profound impact on my life.

Elders are perceived as role models

When I first met the Inuit, I was able to communicate with them almost immediately even if I did not speak Inuktitut. They came to me easily, maybe because they considered me an elder. In the Inuit culture, being an elder counts. “Elders” are considered culture-bearers. Respect is not only a matter of one’s chronological age: elders are perceived as role models who serve as advisors, philosophers and professors. I learned to respect their ways and to understand that they knew what their problems were. I met with their Justice committee and found that they were really trying to help their community. Quinuitaq is a value the Inuit have developed and it is an indicator of their resilience.

A lifetime of observations

Due to health reasons, I wasn't there as long as I thought I would be and it was a hard decision not to go back when I felt better. As I was later writing a yet unpublished book about my experience, it seemed like I packed a lifetime of observations. When I finished writing this very serious book, I decided to write a children's book. The girl in my book asks a lot of questions about what is happening to her community. For example, how come, when her little friend is abused, she has to go to court and the charge is rejected. From what Luisa understands, her friend is not smart (a psychiatric evaluation) enough to be trusted to say the truth. My book heroine cannot understand this logic provided the defense lawyer. This 12-year old has a privileged knowledge of her community, but it is mostly questions concerning her friends that bother her. What she does know is that everyone lives one on top of the other in small spaces and things do happen.

My project is around the problems she points to. Hopefully, Luisa’s generation will have taken the situation into their own hands so that their children will have another destiny. Overcrowding has an incidence on the issues of safety and protection.

My personal experience in Nunavik

I expect all my blog readers including my french readers to be as curious as I am about the Inuit and their culture. Please share this interest with as many people as you can.

Earlier on in the year, as I was speaking to a friend about my project, I was asked why I deemed it so important to do this project. My answer was that I felt that I had not accomplished what I wanted when I was there in 2009 and so, I have a task, unfinished, with and for the Inuit. At this point, I cannot predict my results but I am acting in such a way that things happen to give my project its own life.

Meeting the Inuit

When I first met the Inuit back in 2009, I was able to communicate with them almost immediately even if I did not speak Inuktitut. They came to me easily. Maybe it was because they considered me an elder. Being an elder counts in the Inuit culture. “Elders” are considered culture-bearers. Respect is not only a matter of one’s chronological age: elders are perceived as role models who serve as advisors, philosophers and professors.

It would be a lie to say I’m in charge of this project. My perception is that I will need to meet with as many Inuit elders as possible to guide me in this work. They know their people; I have less than basic knowledge of the Inuit. It would help me to participate in all kinds of activities that are organized by various Inuit organizations and community groups. I need to participate in forums and happenings that concern them. I would like to learn the language to understand their way of thinking better. Although I am very lucky to have an Inuit friend, my project is for them that need it.

The Inuit mothers’ competences

Let me tell you what I know about them.  You will need to read this very interesting report to make your own mind concerning them.

The Inuit history promotes pride in the Inuit identity

The Inuit history promotes pride in the Inuit identity and that is good. The Inuit are part of their land: they know how to use the resources of their land. Solidarity is an Inuit value. They have a community freezer in each community and are quite generous with their community and family members.  The meat left in the freezer by the hunters and the fishermen is free and easily accessible for anyone needing it.

The relationship between the generations is evident amongst women

Belonging is important to the Inuit. So the young women learn from their elders how to sew, how to make traditional clothing, and while the work is being done, they discuss. The relationship between the generations is evident amongst women.

Collaboration is habitual

When I visited and participated with the women at the women’s workshop, I noticed a high degree of collaboration among them as they went about scraping the skins, preparing a pattern for kamik and pualuk. Some women were natural leaders and the others rallied as a cohesive group to work on such projects such as sewing or knitting hats with a special pattern.

They have competences that can be used by each community to ensure that the community is alive and well. From my point of view, they simply are not invited to develop skills to help their children to become stronger people. I know there are efforts in that sense, but there are many obstacles.

The attachment factor

In fact, Inuit mothers do a lot of things right. Starting with their coats, called amauti . The amauti, also amaut or amautik, plural amautiit is the parka worn by Inuit women of the eastern Canadian arctic. Up until about two years of age, the child nestles against the mother's back in the amaut, the built-in baby pouch just below the hood. The pouch is large and comfortable for the baby ((Wikipedia). I have seen 3 year-old tots being carried still. The mothers habitually show a lot of caring for their children.

Terms of  Endearment

Because time does not mean the same thing for the Inuit as in my culture, there is time for the children, time to watch them play cards, time to nap with them, time to sing, time to let them be who they are. They illustrate quinuituq.

Children are shown by example

Responding to a human need for emotional and physical comfort from others, they often huddle together to share a cigarette or a meal. One can sense that they are comfortable with one another.

Children are shown by example. They eventually imitate their parents. It was with wonder that I would observe the children on Sundays in church services. They wormed their way over and under the seats while parents watched on serenely.  Inuit children learn by example.

Those are the strengths I was able to observe while I spent time in different communities. Surely it is surely the basis of any community-based project.

Resourcefulness is a kind of thinking

Their ability to be resourceful, to seek solutions and use resources creatively demonstrates adaptability and flexibility in response to their rapidly changing world. Their skilled perseverance contributes to a collective level of wisdom which is nurtured from infancy.

Quinuituq means deep patience

I expect all my blog readers including my french readers to be as curious as I am about the Inuit and their culture. Please share this interest with as many people as you can.

My plan for the near future is to share myself in conferences about the Inuit culture. I also want to hold pictures shows to give people a fair idea of where and what the Inuit go through and do readings of Inuit legends in parks and events along my 8000 kilometers walk.

This blog “quinuituq.org” is an Inuit address meaning “deep patience”. From my own viewpoint, deep patience means to envision something that is meant to happen as a long-term project, such as when one plans a trip around the world. It is something that will happen in time.

Closer to me are all the thoughts that have gone through this coming project. I came back down from the North in late 2010 and I have been planning this project since, but because I wasn't sure of the form the project would take, there was a need to think it through. Deep patience was a necessary asset in this case.

This project for which I have had to develop deep patience concerns the welfare of the Inuit mothers and their children. There are many things about the Inuit situation I would like you to know a lot more of.

Many factors contribute to the social problems of the north: the housing situation, the employment picture, the birth rate. The statistics are enlightening: 65.9% of the population is under 30; the cost of household items is 97% higher than anywhere else in Quebec; housing overcrowding has reached an alarming rate of 68%. What and how would we live if we had to contend with 11 to 15 other persons living with us in a two-bedroom apartment?

Therefore, I will refer you to articles written by journalists about those situations. This 269 page report is particularly enlightening.  Since it concerns the people of the north, my project has to be of use to the Inuit.