Canada and the Inuit people

Gloves

Mrs McKay talks to us

Lovely warm boots

Kirsty and her Gran

Today Mrs McKay came to speak to us about the 2 years she spent living in Canada as a nurse in the Arctic Circle.  She lived in the small village of Pangnirtung (meaning ‘place of the caribou’)  where there were about 800 people.  Pangnirtung is on Baffin Island, which is the 5^th largest island in the world.  She and another nurse helped to look after Inuit (Eskimo) people.  Inuit means eater of raw meat, which is what they eat.  This is because there are no trees to cut down to make fires for cooking.  No vegetables grow because the ground is too icy.  In the summer low blueberry bushes grow and produce big, juicy, purple blueberries.  These are a special food in their diet.   A special meat is seal liver.

There are no roads and the village is surrounded by high mountains.  Down the middle of the town is the airstrip, which is made on thick ice.  Some people use dog sleds to get around.

In the summer it is daylight for 24 hours and in the winter it is dark for 24 hours.  If you go outside in the winter and whistle, the northern lights appear in the sky – pretty green and white and blue colours.

The Inuit people are hunters.  They hunt seals, rabbits, foxes, wolves, reindeer, na whales, walrus and polar bears.  When they kill an animal they do not have to bring it inside and put it in the freezer.  They just leave it outside where it freezes.  Then when they are hungry they go outside with their ulu (small cutting knife) and cut a piece off.  The only meat they do not eat is polar bear as it is poisonous. 

Skins are softened by scraping the fat off them and by the women chewing on them.  They are used to make blankets and clothes.  The Inuit’s wear embroidered coats.  Winter coats are a double thickness with the outer one being made of wolverine.  Trims are made of this too because the water in the peoples breath does not ice up the fur.

Animals special to this area are polar bears, Canada geese, na whales and seals.

Folk lore is embroidered onto cloth in picture form to retell stories and events that are special.  One special time of year is Christmas.  There is a week of celebrations, lights and playing games and it is really looked forward to in the middle of the dark winter.  The sun starts to emerge again on Mrs McKay’s birthday – 12 February.  Singing and dancing to the accordion, and playing cards and board games are also things they do.  People carve from ivory (whale tusk and walrus tusks), soap stone (which is soft), reindeer antlers, and whale bone. 

Inuit people use a different kind of writing from us – it is syllabic (sounds).  Hello is CHIMO (chee mo) and How are you is KANAWIPI  (car-na-whip-ee).