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A BIT OF SILVER PAPER

Pingwartuk was the first Inuit elder I met in Cape Dorset and the first to take me out on the land, which often meant going out to sea. Compact and deceptively strong, Ping, as we called him, had hands that were as gnarled as ancient Arctic willows yet as dexterous as those of any artist. His face looked like well-tanned leather, for he was out on his boat as often as weather permitted. At the end of the season, his skin was the same hue as a Portugee, the term Cape Dorset Inuit used to refer to black-skinned people.

Lukta, son of Qiatsuk, brother of my beloved Issuhungituk.

Ping’s name means a gentle and friendly plaything and in fact he was well known for his jovial manner and delightful countenance — he was like a smile on two feet — qualities that obscured the fact he was a serious and competent hunter and trapper. His laughter, especially following some antic that caused him injury, was infectious. “Laughter,” he once said, “is very good when things are bad.”

But his laughter was not reserved for hard times. As I wrote in Silent Messengers, Ping was completely at ease with the qallunaat, the white men, who often sought him out for help, guidance, and the use of his boat. One day we were out hunting seal with a well-known writer from New York City. Unfortunately for the writer, no seals were to be had. As the day wore on, one finally surfaced near the boat, dove back into the water, and then returned to the surface where it was met by our hail of bullets. The seal seemed to elude us for quite some time until it finally swam away. I don’t believe our guest from New York City ever realized that our elusive prey was, in fact, a stone-cold seal animated by a mischievous Ping. He had rigged the animal with fishing lines and was playing it like a puppet.

Of all our trips together, one stands out. The August day began with the two of us lying on a hilltop watching a great flock of sea pigeons. Their singing caused us to abandon hunting. We lay down on the rocks, inhaled the sweet scent of Arctic heather, and gazed out into the icy blue of the Hudson Strait. We watched icebergs sail in the distance and made out the pale mirages of ghostly islands looming on the horizon. The Earth shimmered. After a long while, I turned to my old mentor and asked him: “If we were never to see each other again, Angak [Uncle], what words would you choose to leave with me to remember you?”

“I would tell you,” he replied, “always place yourself in a position to take advantage of that which is about to happen.”

This formula for staying alive meant doing those things required to improve one’s chances of success and those things required to lessen one’s chances of disaster. Nothing was more directly related to staying alive out on the land than the chanciest thing of all — sila, the weather. Sila’s unpredictable behaviour affected all living things. Neither astute observation nor magical incantation could remove all risk.

The power and influence of weather is reflected in the vast number of words and expressions describing it in the Inuit language. Words enabled the intelligent person to carry out a multitude of observations, classify them, and assess the nature of the prevailing conditions. The particular colour of the landscape, the structure of snow and ice, the pattern and formation of clouds, the direction of the tide and wind, ice crystals, the behaviour of the sun, aurora, mirages, sound, and most important, the relationships among all these required a highly specialized vocabulary. If you could choose an example where science and magic came together, it would have to be in the language of weather. Sila also means intelligent thought and wisdom.

On one memorable occasion, I was travelling with Lukta, the son of the angakok (shaman) Qiatsuq, who was taking me to his father’s old camp. I wanted to visit Qiatsuq’s now abandoned camp because I was curious to learn why some people were afraid to go there. Heading off by boat with neither map nor compass, Lukta and I navigated safely through a dangerous narrows and across the yawning bay to reach the camp. After I had finished documenting the area, we got back into our boat and began crossing the bay.

We were not far into our return trip when I noticed a white line quickly approaching us. I thought it was ice, but it turned out to be a very dense fog that overtook us within half an hour. The fog was so thick that I could barely make out the other end of the motorized canoe seven metres away. Sharing my concern, Lukta shut down the motor and listened carefully. It was what he could not hear — the sounds of waves lapping on the shore — that troubled him. He thought back to the time we had set off, when the sun was shoulder high, and estimated we had been travelling roughly an hour.

He took out a package of cigarettes, removed the silver foil, and folded it into a tiny boat with a sail. He placed it on the water, where it quickly drifted off. From its direction, and taking into account the time of day and season, Lukta knew that the tide was going out into Hudson Strait, which was definitely not where we wanted to be.

Lukta restarted the motor and continued in the direction opposite to the drifting silver paper. We would go along slowly, stop, listen, then continue. Listening was the most important thing. Then, suddenly, we bumped into an outcrop, something not indicated on the map I had. In the middle of the still dense fog, we quickly got out of the canoe, and Lukta looked around. He could tell by the presence of lichens that the outcrop was not covered at high tide. Aware that it would be all too easy to slip off the rock and fall into the icy water, we carefully sat down facing where we thought the land would be and waited.

It took a few hours and then, sure enough, the fog dissipated and we could see the land facing us. The first thing Lukta did was to pick up some loose rocks and build an inuksuk that pointed toward the land. In his mind, he recorded the image of precisely what the outcrop looked like.

When we finally returned safely to Cape Dorset, Lukta told his fellow hunters all that had happened; that if ever they came upon the outcrop out in the bay and saw an inuksuk in the shape of a pointer, it indicated the direction toward the land.

And so a new image was added to the cognitive maps carried in the minds of the hunters of Sikusiilaq.

Simeonie Quppapik my mentor for over 40 years.