Do You See Ice? by Karen Routledge

Author:Karen Routledge [Routledge, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Canada, Science, Earth Sciences, Geography, Social Science, Ethnic Studies, American, Native American Studies, Environmental Science
ISBN: 9780226580272
Google: iwV2DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2018-12-10T22:31:40+00:00

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Inuit in Cumberland Sound

In 1994, the Inuk Elder Aksayuk Etooangat sat down with the young woman Margaret Nakashuk in the hamlet of Pangnirtung in Cumberland Sound to record some of his stories and legends.1 Etooangat began with a story his father Angutiqjuaq had told him about his first encounter with Qallunaat, probably Scottish whalers. These events occurred near Qatiggait fjord, which Etooangat had later been able to find and visit because his father had shared the place name with him. In Qallunaat terms, the meeting took place in the mid-1800s, on Padloping Island off the Cumberland Peninsula, 125 miles north of Cumberland Sound. Etooangat explained: “When [my father] was a boy he never saw any white people. . . . He was only living the traditional Inuit way of life with absolutely no contact with Qallunaat. Finally a ship arrived. But nothing bad happened and nothing bad was done to them. And Inuit started going visiting to the ship, and the ship people welcomed them.” The Qallunaat gave the Inuit a small barrel, a box of matches, and a clock. The barrel contained tobacco; it stank and tasted horrible. Etooangat’s father kept the barrel and the matchbox, which were useful containers. He dumped their contents overboard before he even reached the shore. All that fall, tobacco washed up along the shoreline. Later in life, Etooangat recalled, his father would yearn for tobacco and think back to when he had thrown a whole barrel of it away. The Inuit eventually threw the clock into a nearby pond, because it disturbed them by making a sound like a heartbeat when it was not a living thing. Etooangat asked, on the tape, if Inuit who were traveling in the Paallavvik area could try to find the pond. He summed up his father’s story by saying, “That was the very first time they saw Qallunaat, and the very first time they received gifts. They basically threw them all away.”

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