Tuesday September 9
This was a day of two parts. We spent the morning at Grise Fiord, the hometown of one of our Inuit cultural guides. Arma teaches the K-2 class in the 28 student K-12 school. The hamlet of Grise Fiord has 160 residents. They receive 2-3 cargo ships of supplies each summer ( one for personal goods, one for commercial goods for the shops, and one for construction materials when a project is in progress). They have an airstrip with two flights a week to the southern parts of Nunavut.
The settlement at Grise Fiord is one of the furthest north in all of Canada. It was established in 1953 by the forced migration of seven Inuit families from the shores of Hudson Bay. The stated goal was to rehabilitate them back to some ideal “Eskimo” existence and to reduce the government support provided to their earlier community. The second purpose was to prove, by having a settlement in the High Arctic, that this was Canadian land. Remember that this was in the midst of the Cold War. The Inuit were told that their new home would have much richer hunting and that the government would take care of them.
Arna’s father (Larry) his father, mother, and siblings were one of those that migrated to Grise Fiord in 1953. He was three years old. The families experienced great hardship as the High Arctic was unlike their traditional home in terms of climate, hunting methods and remoteness. Nor did the government support them in the ways they were led to believe or needed. As an example, the early families lived in crude shacks by the water until they could afford to buy the lumber to build proper houses. Arna’s father has published a book on his experiences. However they are proud of the community that they have built, and are proud to be Canadian. In 2010 the Canadian government officially apologized for their treatment.
We had a tour of the community with the canon of the local Anglican Church, including a walk past the major buildings, the school, and a hike up the hill to the monument honoring the exiles. We enjoyed exhibitions of Inuit sports and music, and particularly a drumming exhibition by some of the school children. One of the two local RCMP officers even dressed up in his formal red uniform for our visit (a sight the locals said they’d never seen).
The afternoon was intended to be a short cruise to Fram Fiord and activities there. However, en route we encountered many families of narwhals moving through the broken sea ice. The narwhals, when in motion at the surface, create a dark undulating line; sometimes the line bulges upwards as one or more of them surfaces. Although these were further away than our first encounter, having the higher vantage point of the ship (and better weather conditions) made them easier to see, including seeing their tusks. As we prepared to leave that area, one of the naturalists spotted a polar bear with a freshly killed harp seal on another of the sea ice floes. This appeared to be a young bear, smaller than others we have seen and nervous about protecting its kill. It even took the time to chase away gulls and a raven.
Moving east in James Sound, we saw many harp seals on pieces of ice. The landscapes of cliffs, valleys, glaciers and ice were stunning. As we turned into Fram Fiord, we saw another polar bear with the remains of a kill. Normally we have to be really quiet around a bear to not prompt them to flee, but this one seemed to be in such a food coma that it wasn’t going to move.
Further into the fiord we saw a small herd of musk oxen in the distance, as well as some Arctic hares. Musk ox are about half the size of bison and are not ox at all, they are related to goats and sheep. While we didn’t do the original plan for the day, we all agreed that what we did so was spectacular.
Pictured: monument to the exiles, Larry, one of the original shacks, modern houses in Grise Fiord, narwhal parade, first polar bear on its ice, second (sleeping) Polar bear with carcass, distant musk oxen
No comments:
Post a Comment