The North Today

Kathleen Merritt and Nelson Tagoona on the mic in Rankin Inlet (2015)

So what are the most important issues in Arctic Canada today? What would it be like to visit there? (each year, more "southerners" find that out for themselves). What's the future of traditional Inuit culture, language, and economic development?

These are all complex questions, much as they would be anywhere else on earth, but made more so by the unique gifts and difficulties of the Arctic. Goods and services are expensive -- goods have to be flown or shipped up, and getting services provided -- from water delivery to health care -- is also more costly, simply in terms of either A) Training and education so that more Inuit and other residents can do the jobs needed; or B) Flying trained people up there. On my way back from my last summer's voyages, I met a young man who was one of Nunavut's fire inspectors; his job was to inspect all public buildings and accommodations -- schools, health centers, and so forth -- for fire safety. He had to be flown into and out from dozens of small hamlets, accommodated (doubtless at an Inns North, where a room can run $400 a night, and a single sandwich costs $40) and fed throughout the year, just to perform a service that, down south, would require nothing more than a pickup truck, gas, and maybe a night or two at a Motel 6.

And there's much that needs doing. Every social and ecological issue we have down here is present, and often more severe. Secondhand smoke from cigarettes, to take one example, is many times worse in northern houses that are pre-fabricated to be practically airtight. Suicide has touched nearly every family. The general lack of jobs -- unemployment in many communities hovers around 30% or higher -- fuels drug and alcohol abuse among the young. The sheer cost of getting from one place to another makes even a simple family holiday a costly challenge. Within Inuit culture, which emphasises the value of community, these problems resonate in a singular manner -- one way I've put it is simply to say that, among the Inuit, there simply are no bystanders. To be proximate to pain, or loss, is to feel it deeply, fundamentally -- and that pain can drive people to many hard passes. And, if a young Inuk does find his or her way to university or a career, this often comes at the cost of having to live many miles from family and friends.

So how can we learn more -- and possibly do more -- about some of these problems facing the North and its peoples? We can start by reading the Nunatsiaq News, as well as other sources (CBC North, the Alaska Dispatch News, Eye on the Arctic). We can also make virtual visits to many communities, to their schools and health centres, as well as gather information from the Government of Nunavut (GN) in Iqaluit. One of the issues worth special consideration is the impact of the great expansion in Arctic expedition cruises -- there are good articles on the subject here and here and here, and AECO -- the Association of Arctic Cruise Operators -- offers guidelines and information on their site. See also this video produced by VICE news, which features an interview with my friend Ena Maktar of Pond Inlet.

During the 20201 and 2021 seasons, there were no cruise ships due to COVID-19, but in the time since then they've crept back up to their old numbers, with 26 ships doing all or part of the Northwest Passage in 2023; bookings are now at record levels. And, while COVID is no longer a pressing issue, the larger question of the economic and cultural impact of this kind of tourism remains a source of concern, both in the Arctic and in other remote locations.

BONUS: Here's an advance look at the PowerPoint I'll be sharing with you in class tomorrow!

SECOND BONUS: I can't believe I forgot to mention Elisapie in my section about Inuit musicians. In addition to appearing on a brand new stamp from Canada Post, she's recently released an album of rock and pop standards, which she's translated into Inuktitut! Check out the first track, Taimangalimaaq -- I think you'll find it familiar!

Polar Sovereignty

In July of 2007, a Russian crew headed to the bottom of the ocean in a pair of Mir-I submarines, the same kind seen and used in James Cameron's Titanic.  This time, though, the goal was not so much to find something as to leave something -- a little titanium Russian flag -- on the floor of the Arctic Ocean directly atop the North Geographic Pole.  They succeeded in doing so, and the act was hailed in Russia -- while in Canada, where nerves over Arctic sovereignty are thin and often frayed, Foreign Minister Peter MacKay criticized the action as meaningless, declaring that "this isn't the fifteenth century."  Maybe not, and it's not really likely that this flag-planting will have anything beyond a symbolic effect, but all the same it's no less strange an exercise than the Canadian government's touting of the finding of the Franklin-era search ship HMS Investigator, which they decided was important enough to fly the Environment Minister up to the site at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars, just to film a few snippets for the news.  Military exercises in support of Canadian sovereignty have become an annual event, now known as Operation NOREX.

There are many ways a claim of sovereignty can be made; prominent among them are discovery (I was here first), cession (you can have it, I don't want it), subjugation (I conquered it by force), and contiguity (it's in the midst of lands I already claim). One might think, given all the flag-plantings, that discovery was the strongest claim, but it practice is can be the weakest; land discovered but not occupied, or without the effective exercise of control, may be deemed "inchoate" -- undeveloped or temporary -- and thus liable to the claims of others who may, in fact, arrive much later.  All these issues, as one may imagine, become trickier in Canada's north, whose vast landmass is larger than India but has a population not much greater than West Warwick RI.

The Russian sub stunt has to do with the sub-category of sovereignty pertaining to coasts.  While the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea defines territorial waters as extending only 12 nautical miles from shore, some countries regard all waters situated above the continental shelf supporting the country's landmass as theirs.  The Russians, of course, take the latter view, and since their shelf extends from the northern coastline to a few miles of the geographic pole, planting a flag on the seabed there is only a modest extension of what they already claim.  A good summary of the issues, and why a recent survey of the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean attracted such attention, is available here.

Russia, already busily selling oil leasing rights along its northern coast, is willing to bet there are more such resources under the polar sea -- and if the icecap were to melt in summer -- something once unthinkable but now only a decade or less away in some projections -- the logistical difficulties of extracting and transporting mineral resources would be greatly reduced.  It's a time of tremendous anxiety -- and, for some, opportunity -- and the only (nearly) sure thing is that native northern peoples are unlikely to get their fair share.

In 2015, Russia submitted a new claim to vast swathes of the Arctic, up to and including the pole itself. See this article in the New York Times, and this in the National Post.  The United States has just recently started reconsidering its Arctic policy to "project" sovereignty in the region, and Canada submitted its own Arctic claim in 2019.

Split Tooth

To introduce Split Tooth, I thought I'd begin by quoting a review that Paddy Eason wrote for my journal The Arctic Book Review:

"It's my impression that many readers of the Arctic Book Review are seeking stirring tales of exploration from long ago. On that basis, this book - which contains enthusiastic teenage solvent abuse, erotic encounters with wild animals and gleeful retribution against human bullies and predators - may not be everyone's cup of tea. For me, though, it's one of the most impressive books I have read in years.

Author Tanya Tagaq’s Wikipedia page describes her as a “Canadian Inuk throat singer from Cambridge Bay (Iqaluktuutiaq), Nunavut, Canada.” Tagaq has released five solo albums of increasing artistic range and ferocity, has collaborated with Bjork and the Kronos Quartet, tours worldwide, is an accomplished painter and an outspoken advocate for indigenous rights and climate activism. It would be no exaggeration to say that she's an Inuit superstar. This is her first book.

Split Tooth is a novel, with frequent nods to memoir, poetry, and traditional tales. At times, to this reader from a temperate clime, the book reads like science fiction or horror: encounters with the Northern Lights, journeys by snowmobile over frozen seas, battles with malignant spirits and musings on quantum physics. But at its icy, fiery heart, this is a book about female puberty.

The unnamed protagonist, when we first meet her, is an eleven-year-old girl living in a small village by Cambridge Bay in the High Arctic. Awkward, smart, and not particularly popular, she spends the long days and long nights in her home town negotiating the universally recognizable childhood assault course of friends, bullies, teachers, neighbors and relatives, while at the same time wishing she had ‘actual breasts’. Alongside this familiar-yet-unfamiliar narrative, there runs a strand of poetry, blocks of text in Inuktitut syllabics, and excellent pop culture illustrations (by Jaime Hernandez.)

Some of the events described or alluded to are shocking. Tagaq certainly pulls no punches. This is not the Arctic wonderland of noble natives that some readers may expect. The first sentence of the book is “Sometimes we would hide in the closet when the drunks came home from the bar.” Alcohol seems mostly for the adults and their tedious rowdy house parties - to be avoided. Our hero and her pals start with cigarette ends and pilfered joints, moving up to butane, rubber cement and gasoline huffed out of snowmobiles. What else is there to do when night and day have no meaning, nothing seems worth learning and the adults are either passed out from booze or away hunting? We learn, as our young hero does, that loud country music blasting from a house is a warning sign - and this is the kind of shorthand at which Tagaq excels, sketching the line from colonial corruption to child abuse.

Predatory adult males are a daily challenge - the teacher who habitually gropes his pupils under their desks, the relatives who sneak into children’s bedrooms at night. One of the first poems in the book is called "Sternum," and begins as a meditation on the human breastbone and ribcage. The last few lines come with the kind of kick that marks her writing throughout  -

The Human Sternum is used for so many things
Clavicles like handlebars
Ribs like stairs
The sternum is the shield
Even when impaired
Even when it smothers a little girl's face
As the bedsprings squeak

However - and I cannot emphasize this enough - Split Tooth is not a grim, dour book. It is a tragedy and a triumph.

The book's second strand, of poems, dreams and folk tales, initially a kind of counterpoint to the coming-of-age dramas of village life, gradually takes over the life of the book. The day-to-day narrative starts to incorporate brushes with malevolent spirits. Wild animals, such as the fox she encounters beneath her parents’ house while hiding from the school bully, walk into her dreams and begin to demand their due or bestow favor. In a key chapter on which the book’s plot turns, she walks out onto the sea ice one night and has an encounter with the Northern Lights that changes her life. What started out as a funny, harrowing tale of village life for an awkward teenager turns into a psychedelic spiritual ordeal ending up with some extraordinary choices for Tagaq’s young hero. I am being circumspect - this book is a page turner, and I’d really hate to spoil it with any further clues. If you choose to read this book, you will be hanging on by your fingertips by the end.

What makes all this work so splendidly, is that Tagaq - and her protagonist - are such perceptive, funny, rational company. The book is sharp and bright as a knife, informed not only by Inuit folktales, but also by 21st century climate politics. Every violent act or thought is balanced with kindness and empathy. The suggestive, elliptical poetry is spiced with a lot of very specific cuss words.

For anyone who has seen Tagaq as a live musical performer, this may come as no surprise. Having read the physical edition of the book, I went in again to listen to the audio book, read by the author with brief throat-singing interludes between chapters. If I had to choose a format to recommend, it would be the audiobook. The hardback is a lovely object (and there is also a vinyl album of the poems), but the five-hour audio book is another level. It is a performance.

The journey from recording studio to written page hides pitfalls that have tripped many an artist. But this book's icy white covers and red-tipped pages contain wonders. Tagaq writes with clarity, rage, humor and authority. In this book she has created what might be a defining artistic statement of the North. It is an Arctic masterpiece."

For those interested in the audiobook version, you can get it here.

You can hear Tanya talk about her book (the link I mentioned in class) here.

Now check out Tanya's music -- and that of other Inuit performers -- here!

Alootook Ipellie

The image at left is a drawing by Inuit artist and writer Alootook Ipellie (1951-2007), and is entitled "Self-Portrait: Inverse Ten Commandments." In the story accompanying the drawing, Ipellie dreams of himself as Satanasee (Inuktitut for Satan), and in his dreams each of his fingers becomes an "inverse commandment," coming to life with a face a a mouth filled with sharp little teeth that tear at his flesh. It's an apt if somewhat grotesque metaphor for the current spiritual condition of people of Ipellie's generation; they must live in two worlds -- the old shamanistic one with its built-in fear and fatalism, or the new Christian one that circumscribes and limits their spiritual development with rules and ideas that are foreign to traditional Inuit culture. Ipellie, who struggled with both the rejection of his work by supposed "connoisseurs" of Inuit art and the modern northern blight of alcoholism, only made it to the age of 56 before he died of a heart attack.

The division of modern Inuit between those who, like Ipellie, can recall the onset of western culture and forced settlements, and the generations after, is further complicated by religious divisions. Inuit filmmaker Zacharaias Kunuk has spoken about the hatred between Protestants and Catholics in Igloolik; one missionary from each faith converted half the town, and Kunuk compared the hostile border through the middle of the settlement to the Green Line in Beruit, which separated Muslims from Christians; he recalled children throwing stones at one another across this sectarian border. Evangelical denominations have had particular growth in the past few decades, and when Inuit politician Tagak Curley adopted the campaign slogan "Jesus is Lord over Nunavut," he counted on evangelicals for their support (he lost, narrowly).

Unfortunately, Ipellie's most brilliant and lasting work, the collection, Arctic Dreams and Nightmares, is out of print and getting harder and harder to find. Fortunately, there's an article about him, Kimberly McMahon-Coleman's "Dreaming an Identity Across Two Cultures: The Works of Alootook Ipellie," which discusses his work at length, and includes many of the drawings -- you can read and download it here for free. The story that's based on the drawing above, "Self Portrait: Inverse Ten Commandments" is included in "Alootook Ipellie: Artist Writer Dreamer!" I've also made one additional story, "When God Sings the Blues," available here via the blog. You can also read his stories "A Frobisher Bay Childhood" and "Damn Those Invaders" here.