Losing Place: Diminishing Traditional Knowledge of the Arctic Coastal Landscape

Scholarly collection

978 1 87694 451 3

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Making Sense of Place explores place from myriad perspectives

and through evocative encounters. The great Barrier reef

is experienced through the sense of touch, lake mungo is

encountered through sound and ‘listening’, and light is shed

on the meaning of place for deaf people. case studies include

the maze prison in northern ireland, inuit hunting grounds

in northern canada, and the songlines of the anangu people

in central australia. iconic landscapes, lookouts, buildings,

gardens, suburbs, grieving places, the car as place — all

provide contexts for experiencing and understanding ‘place’

and our ‘sense of place’.

Edited by Frank Vanclay, Matthew Higgins and Adam Blackshaw

N A T I O N A L M U S E U M O F A U S T R A L I A

Making Sense of Placeexploring concepts and expressions of place through different senses and lenses

MSOP COVER AW.indd 1 15/4/08 12:35:16 PM

Contents Director’s foreword v

Editors’ preface vi

The editors viii

PART 1: NARRATIVES ON THE EXPERIENCE OF PLACE1. Place matters Frank Vanclay 3

2. Understanding place through narrative: Using stories to change the places we love and who we are Merrill Findlay 13

3. A personal account of place Ursula de Jong 23

4. Rural women reclaiming their place through symbols, stories and rituals Liza Dale-Hallett, Rhonda Diffey, Quentin O’Keefe and Kerry Wilson 37

5. River songs: A poetic response to Australia’s wounded rivers Brian Wattchow 47

6. Children’s understanding of place: Discursive constructions of the environment in children’s writing and artwork about the Murray–Darling Basin Phil Cormack, Bill Green and Jo-Anne Reid 57

7. Reaching for the Reef: Exploring place through touch Celmara Pocock 77

8. Places of silence Mike Gulliver 87

9. Place as acoustic space: Hearing Australian identity Ros Bandt 95

PART 2: UNDERSTANDING INDIGENOUS SENSES OF PLACE10. Two thousand generations of place-making Greg Lehman 105

11. An Anangu ontology of place Diana James 109

12. Slowly down the Georgina: Aboriginal cultural heritage and lineal place complexes Stephen Long 121

13. Losing place: Diminishing traditional knowledge of the Arctic coastal landscape Scott Heyes and Peter Jacobs 135

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission. Enquiries are to be made to the National Museum of Australia.

© in this volume National Museum of Australia Press 2008© in each chapter remains with its author

Every attempt has been made to contact artists and copyright holders for permission to reproduce their work in this book. Enquiries should be directed to the Copyright and Reproductions section of the National Museum of Australia.

First published 2008 byNational Museum of Australia PressGPO Box 1901Canberra ACT 2601Phone +61 2 6208 5340Fax +61 2 6208 5148www.nma.gov.au

National Library of Australia cataloguing-in-publication data

Making sense of place: exploring the concepts and expressions of place through different senses and lenseseditors, Frank Vanclay; Matthew Higgins; Adam BlackshawCanberra: National Museum of Australia Press, 2008ISBN: 9781876944513

Subjects: Human beings – Effect of environment on Environmental psychology Human geography Environmental health Environmental economics Forest landscape management Urban landscape architecture Land use – Planning. 304.2

Publisher’s editors: Julie Simpkin, Raylee Singh, Thérèse WeberDesign and typesetting: Po SungCopyright and image delivery: Denis FrenchPrint: Nexus Print Solutions

Cover image: courtesy Ursula de Jong

SenseofPlaceTEXT06.indd 2-3 15/4/08 12:07:00 PM

v

PART 3: MAKING PLACES14. Stop, revive, survive: The car-place Barbara Holloway 155

15. ‘Your spot’: Marking place with roadside memorials Jennifer Clark 165

16. Reconciling grief in suburban gardens Ruth McManus 175

17. Planting natives: Gardening and belonging to place in Perth, Western Australia Jane Mulcock 183

18. Experiencing ‘the Maze’: Official and unofficial interactions with place in post-conflict Northern Ireland Laura McAtackney 191

19. Pieces of place: Exploring the personal souvenir Jasmine Foxlee, Ursula Frederick and Nicholas Hall 199

20. Place-making — in theory and practice: The Stanley ‘Guided’ Development Plan model Linn Miller, Tony McCall and Karen Eyles 207

21. Local lookouts as places of belonging and escape Bec Tudor 221

22. Senses of urban character Kim Dovey, Stephen Wood and Ian Woodcock 229

23. Sydney Opera House: What’s the point? Natalie Smith 239

24. Affordable places Roger Fay and Undine Sellbach 247

PART 4: ANALYSING AND UTILISING THE SENSE OF PLACE25. A place for community: West Coast, New Zealand 257

Colin Goodrich and Kaylene Sampson

26. ‘I’m a rural person’: Sense of place for rural health care professionals Anna Spinaze 269

27. Museum outreach programs promoting a sense of place Frank Vanclay, Jo Wills and Ruth Lane 279

28. Touring the moral terrains of Uluru: Pathways of pride and shame Gordon Waitt and Robert Figueroa 289

29. Place, belonging and nativeness in Australia David Trigger 301

30. A pragmatic sense of place Edward Relph 311

31. Place and human being Jeff Malpas 325

Director’s foreword

The National Museum of Australia was delighted to be a partner in the Senses of Place conference held in Hobart during April 2006. The several days of discussion provoked lively interest in how and what Australians and others mean by ‘sense of place’ and how we relate to the places that are important to us. The broad range of backgrounds of both speakers and participants illustrated how important ‘place’ is to humankind, and how many perspectives there are on place.

So it is with great pleasure that the National Museum of Australia Press has produced this book, stemming as it does from the conference and representing a further development of a number of the presentations made in Hobart. The volume has been an excellent way to expand upon a number of key lines of argument and dissertation.

The accompanying DVD captures, with extraordinary sensitivity, a number of personal relationships with place, recorded in interviews with conference participants during the Hobart gathering. The interviewees’ spoken words complement the tone of the written words of this volume.

The National Museum, in exploring its three themes of land, nation and people, is keenly aware of how individuals, societies and cultures are shaped by their environment and by place, and how place is in turn shaped by them. This relationship between people and place — a relationship that exists at a range of levels, from the theoretical and remote to the deeply felt and daily lived — is a rich and worthwhile area of study and research. I am sure that this volume and DVD will make a major contribution to the way we think about and relate to place.

Craddock MortonDirectorNational Museum of Australia


135

13. Losing placeDiminishing traditional knowledge of the Arctic coastal landscape

scott heyes and Peter Jacobs

Scott Heyes is a lecturer in landscape architecture at the University of Melbourne with an interest in Indigenous perceptions of landscapes. He undertook PhD research, on which this chapter is based, at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, and is currently exploring the connections between Canadian Inuit and Torres Strait Islander perceptions of coastlines. He is an avid adventurer and outdoor enthusiast.

Peter Jacobs is professor of landscape architecture at the École d’architecture de paysage, Faculté de l’aménagement, Université de Montréal. He is also the chair of the Kativik Environment Quality Commission for Nunavik, Northern Quebec.

For over 4000 years, small bands of Inuit have lived on the eastern shores of Ungava Bay in Arctic Quebec, Canada. In the 1960s they were transferred by the Canadian Government from their traditional hunting camps into newly established villages. In so doing, an entirely new cultural setting was established for nomadic hunters and gatherers who had maintained a lifestyle centred on the cyclical patterns of the seasons and variable pathways of migratory animals. Thirteen such villages were established in Nunavik (Figure 13.2) including the village of Kangiqsualujjuaq, located some 25 kilometres inland on the estuarine shores of the mighty George River.

Figure 13.1. Shore ice near the mouth of the George River, Ungava Bay, May 2004. Photograph by Scott Heyes. The ice beside the coast is used as a passageway to travel towards prime hunting grounds when the ice on the inland lakes becomes too dangerous to cross with snowmobiles.


136 PART 2: UNDER STANDING INDIGENOUS SEN SE S OF PL ACE losiNg Pl ace 137

Figure 13.2. Location of Kangiqsualujjuaq. Source: Scott Heyes, 2006. Kangiqsualujjuaq is situated near the tree line on the George River in Nunavik, Northern Quebec.

Although they no longer live exclusively, or even predominantly, from the land and sea as their ancestors did, the Kangiqsualujjuamiut (the people of Kangiqsualujjuaq) have made a remarkable transition from a pre-industrial to a post-industrial society. In the face of this rapid transition, they have relinquished, perhaps reluctantly, a sizeable portion of their traditional knowledge base. The art of storytelling, for instance, is one of the richest and most compelling aspects of Inuit culture. It provides a medium for sustaining a link with the corporeal and spirit worlds, as well as for transmitting various forms of traditional knowledge, including navigational methods and survival techniques. Yet it has suffered tremendously as a result of acculturation and adaptation to Euro–Canadian ways of life. Surveys pertaining to the practice of storytelling and the awareness of traditional Inuit myths and legends, carried out by the authors among three generations of Kangiqsualujjuamiut from 2003 to 2005, indicate that young Inuit are no longer acquiring information about myths and legends of the coast in the same way as previous generations. Further, they fail to acquire and retain this information at the same age, with the same rigour and with the same enthusiasm as did their elders.1

Given that traditional narratives contain culturally specific information about the history, events and names of aquatic, terrestrial and celestial features — and in light of changes to how Inuit acquire and transmit such knowledge — how will future generations of Inuit perceive these environmental settings? How will they render them meaningful if the base of mythological knowledge is not sustained? A decline in the knowledge of Inuit mythology raises the question as to whether, and to what extent, young and future generations will become spiritually disengaged from the land and marine environments.

The dynamic coastal setting

The coastal frontier is a realm that the Kangiqsualujjuamiut interact with more than any other geographic setting. It includes the shoreline and the land that extends a short distance behind the shore, and the beach, tidal flats and sea. When the sea freezes over, the land–water interface extends to the floe-edge — the juncture of land-fast ice and open water.

A multidimensional space, the land–water interface is a porous, elastic zone that expands and contracts horizontally and vertically in relation to the appearance and disappearance of ice and snow. It is a transitory and dynamic setting that continually changes its morphology and breadth. The major changes occur in spring when the ice melts, and in autumn when it forms again. For the rest of the year, the space is relatively dormant; it grows and erodes at a pace determined by the ebb and flow of tides and sea temperatures, and by the wind, rain and snow.

The Kangiqsualujjuamiut harvest seals, walrus, whales, fish, shellfish, seaweed and crustaceans from this realm for subsistence needs. The land–water interface is also used as refuge for hunters to moor their boats in the protected coves during inclement weather. When



the sea becomes frozen, it is used as a highway to travel to hunting grounds located north of the village (Figure 13.1). The town forms a ribbon along the shore. The coast and things related to it permeate their lives.

Maritime myths and traditional systems of belief

Before being exposed to Christianity at the turn of the twentieth century, the Nunavik Inuit believed in animism, shamanism and legendary creation beings. Acting as mediators between the Inuit and spirit worlds, Angakkuks, who were regarded as shamans, conjurers and sorcerers, exercised great power over the Inuit by way of invoking spirits to assist in performing prophetical, healing and sacred tasks.2 Inuit believed that all living organisms had a soul, including the animals they hunted. Friendly relations with these animals were fostered in a spiritual sense and ‘great care was taken to never invite unnecessary hardship by offending the soul of the animal [when] killed’.3 A Kangiqsualujjuamiut elder, Johnny Sam Annanack (born 1941), told the authors that when he was young, elders would instil among hunters that animals should be respected. Failure to respect even a small bird could bring about bad luck.

A parable (Box 1) told by another elder, Tivi Etok (born 1928), about a walrus that offered itself to hunters, suggests that underlying messages and ecological events were embodied within myths, and that the presence and abundance of game hinged on the way hunters responded to cues from animals. Perhaps this notion of reciprocity between animals and humans is an extension of the Inuit belief system that a spiritual counterpart, the Inua,4 ‘the genius or thinking spirit of the object or place’, inhabited animals and prominent geographical features such as rocks and mountains.5

Stories of animals transforming into other animals persisted until recently. One example was told by Sarah Etok (born 1897) in a 1985 interview about a personal encounter with the marauding Nanukulluk, a giant polar bear that the Kangiqsualujjuamiut believed roamed the Quebec–Labrador Peninsula:

My husband … was going trading to Kangirsujuaq when I went with him

one day. Before we reached the village in the evening, we saw what looked

very much like a bear. My husband untied the dogs from the sled and

made them run after it. The animal that looked like a bear slowly shrank

as we looked at it. By the time the dogs got to it, it whined. It apparently

turned into a dog. It was a bad spirit.6

Noah Angnatuk (born 1912), an Inuk hunter from Killiniq, a community north of Kangiqsualujjuaq, believed that Nanukulluk caused the break-up of ice and the formation of large waves along the Labrador coast when he moved his huge body around.7

Box 1. The parable of the walrus As told to the authors by Tivi Etok in May 2005

There were many walruses on an island near Allurulik, Abloviak

Fiord [North of Kangiqsualujjuaq] as well as ringed seals, bearded

seals and caribou. The caribou would cross the sea to an island

at this place. The sound of them entering the water was an

annoyance to hunters, for it kept them awake at night. A group

of hunters wanted to harvest walrus for the winter at Allurulik.

Even though walruses come in all sizes, one hunter wanted to

catch only a big walrus. When the caribou had finished crossing

to the island near Ulliq, the hunter began the search for a walrus

on his qajaq [kayak]. As he paddled toward a group of walruses, a

small walrus came up to his qajaq and said ‘Harpoon me’. It kept

on telling the hunter the same thing over and over. The man took

a good look at the small walrus and said: ‘I don’t want to harpoon

you, you have such small tusks’. So the small walrus headed back

to its group of walruses saying in Inuktitut: ‘He doesn’t want us,

he doesn’t want us’.

The man was not supposed to decline a walrus that was offering

himself. The little walrus informed the other walruses that were

resting on the beach that the man didn’t want the walrus. All

the walruses then started to roll into the water. They headed

for deeper water, which made the water wavy. Heading for the

Ikulliaq [calmer waters], the walruses were all saying ‘He doesn’t

want us, he doesn’t want us’. The caribou were leaving too, so

the man ended up with nothing to kill. So that’s what happened

to the man. He should’ve killed the little walrus when it offered

itself to him. Since the man did not take the offer of the little

walrus, all the animals — seals, walruses, whales and caribou —

disappeared. The hunter was left empty-handed. Hunters went

through hard times after this episode. The people that lived

in those days all died of starvation. It happens to everyone

sometimes, we don’t always catch animals.



A snapshot of the Kangiqsualujjuamiut’s current knowledge of myths and traditional stories was obtained by conducting in-depth interviews with three generations of Inuit from six family units. The interviews were complemented by a set of 90 illustrations of the coast, which were drawn by each of the participants upon a template. This template (Figure 13.3) included three panels that were designed to assess their comprehension of what lay beneath and above the ice-covered sea (top left) and the ice-free sea (top right), as well as how they perceived the land–water interface from above in summer (below). The intent was to analyse the subjects depicted, and the extent to which the participants perceived the land–water interface as a functional or mythological space. Participants were given the templates up to two weeks in advance and were asked to draw what came to mind over that time when they thought about each of the zones of the land–water interface. The stories that related to the illustrations were explained to the researchers on receipt of the drawings. Participants drew a range of features, animals and phenomena in a variety of styles.

Box 2 contains a story about the Mitilik sea creatures. Like other spectres, the Mitilik could metamorphose into animals at will. This story was recounted using a template (Figure 13.4) and underscores the rich mythical connection that the elderly generation of Kangiqsualujjuamiut continue to maintain with the land–water interface.

Other creatures called Inugagullit,8 or small people, are also said to have frequented the coast. Growing less than half-a-metre in height, Inugagullit were malevolent creatures that hunted sea mammals with the use of kayaks, harpoons and lances (see Figure 13.5).

The most feared spectres along the Quebec–Labrador Peninsula were the Tuurngait (plural of Tuurngaq), spirits that supposedly dwelled in the cliffs and caves near the entrance of Abloviak Fiord. Tivi Etok, who has visited their dwellings, described in a 2003 interview that the Tuurngait once sheltered in a cave that tunnelled into a steep cliff. Apparently they fled the dwelling as a result of Inuit defeating them in a great battle. A graphic story about the Tuurngait recounted by Benjamin Jararuse (born 1924) in 2003 indicates why his ancestors were frightened of them:

Tuurngait used to kill people like they were like any animal, and even

cut them up like a seal … And when they cut up the human body, they

would save the intestines and even freeze them for a later meal … The

Tuurngait would take out the liver like it was a seal’s liver and freeze it for

later, and/or the buttocks would even be frozen. There was one particular

Tuurngaq who would cook the flesh. They’d say, when they started cooking

the hands, they would curve the other way. When he had eaten a human,

he would scratch his stomach to show he was not hungry anymore. The

one Tuurngaq would be hunting humans and he’d finish the whole body

Figure 13.3. Constructed example of the template used to illustrate a range of responses. Drawings by Tivi Etok, Johnny Mike Morgan and George Don Annanack, May 2005



Figure 13.4. ‘Mitilik’. Drawing by Tivi Etok, May 2005. The down-covered Mitilik creatures inhabit the sea-ice and prey on unsuspecting Inuit hunters.

Box 2. MitilikAs told to the authors by Tivi Etok in May 2005

I once saw a Mitilik. It looked like a seal, although it had an arm.

If you wish for a Mitilik to be an animal such as a seal, then just

before spearing it, allow your mind to transform it into it and it will

do so. Three men went hunting seals. They walked the sea-ice looking

for breathing holes. Since they were spending much time on the

sea-ice, they decided to make themselves an igloo to sleep in. They

camped beside the breathing hole, hoping that a seal would appear.

The men were spread out near the campsite looking for breathing

holes. At night they all came together and talked about their hunting

experiences of the day. One man said that when he was walking

alongside the edge of the land-fast ice, a Mitilik came up from the sea

and started attacking him. The Mitilik stabbed the man with a knife,

but fortunately the hunter was quick enough to kill the Mitilik first.

Just before the Mitilik died, it said to the hunter: ‘All my relatives are

going to hunt you down.’ The hunter was aware that the Mitilik would

be vicious. The hunter told the others in the igloo that, as a result

of killing a Mitilik, the relatives of the Mitilik might consequently

seek them.

The men knew that if a Mitilik was killed, the relatives of the Mitilik

would appear on the sea-ice and start to kill any hunters they

encountered. Once the men had taken in the news that a Mitilik had

been killed, they left the igloo and started running towards the land

even though they had not yet sighted any Mitilik. The Mitilik saw the

men fleeing so they started running after them. The men were very

tired of running. The Mitilik gained ground quickly and got very close

to the hunters. Luckily, the hunters stepped on to land just in time

before the Mitilik caught up to them. The hunters were now safe,

because the Mitilik do not venture on to land. Mitilik were covered

in goose-down. They live only on the sea, but sometimes they lay on

the sea-ice. In the old days I knew of creatures like the Mitilik, but

nowadays I do not hear much about these types of creatures.



himself by saving some to eat for later. Although the village wasn’t that

small, he’d be the one eating humans. He’d hunt them like they were

animals, and no one could ever fight him back.9

Another Kangiqsualujjuamiut elder, Johnny George Annanack (born 1926), tells stories of the Tuurngait today. These are based on stories his grandmother told him during childhood, as well as his own experiences while hunting at sea:

We saw Tuurngait out by the open waters hunting for some sea mammals

near Ikirasakittuq [Abloviak Fiord]. I saw three of them. We left them

alone, so the Tuurngait did not harm us. They look very normal when

you are close to them, but they become scary if bothered. It was getting

late and you could not see too much because it was getting dark. We

expected them to come to our camp when they were done, but they never

came. They were just like any human from afar. They were holding their

harpoons like us; they had left their camp too and had moved somewhere

else. You could see bones of seals or bearded seals where they used to

live. The hunter I was with that time told me that if we don’t do anything

to them, they wouldn’t do anything to us. We could even see their faces

because they were not that far. If a person needs help they can call upon

the Tuurngait for their aid, but they would expect to be repaid in return.

When I first saw the Tuurngait. I was very scared. My father told me not

to follow these people.10

Inuk hunter Peter Morgan recounted in a 2003 interview that the Tuurngait still maintain a spiritual presence along the northern coast of Kangiqsualujjuaq:

The Tuurngait is the spirit that disturbs the people. I learned this from my

father and grandfather. You can see the Tuurngait when you are out there

walking; it can fool you as if it’s a caribou, seal or even a person. While you

are looking at them, if you were to break the stare and then look back again

they would be gone. There’s no way of knowing where they went. That’s

what they used to call Tuurngait. I’m sure they’re still there. They don’t

leave traces or footprints. I have heard the story that not far from here,

down the coast, Inuit used to see them. We know there’s something going

on down there but we don’t know what it is exactly. We notice something

when we go down to the camp, but not every time.11

The Tuurngait legend and other mythologies have been retold by the Kangiqsualujjuamiut for countless generations, partly to record significant phases and struggles throughout Inuit existence, and partly to provide a format for the memory of events to be perpetuated and rationalised. Creation myths for the Inuit provide a keyhole to knowing and perceiving the land in the same way that the Australian Aboriginal notion of the Dreaming,12 and the James Bay Cree notion of reciprocity with animals,13 provides a way of articulating and apprehending landscape. However, the embodiment of a sense of place through traditional mythology and spirituality is not as potent to the younger generations of Kangiqsualujjuamiut as it is to the elderly generation. This is partly because such traditional knowledge bases have been transmitted less frequently to younger generations within the last 50 years. In the wake of contact with outside communities, ancestral methods of learning have not been interwoven into newer, Euro–Canadian styles of learning.

Pedagogical disparities across three generations of inuit

Although the honing of personal observation, survival and hunting skills also contributes to the development and enrichment of knowledge, Inuit knowledge of the land and sea was transmitted, prior to the introduction of Euro–Canadian schooling and religious practices in

Figure 13.5. ‘The stolen seal’. Drawing by Johnny George Annanack, May 2005. The Inugagullit (small people) had their seal stolen by an Inuk hunter, who was camping in an igloo at Abloviak Fiord. The hunter, who was lacking food, spat on the seal, which caused it to adhere to the snow. The Inugagullit tried to pull the seal, but they did not possess the strength to free it from the snow.



the North, predominantly through apprenticeship and tutelage learning in a mentor–pupil relationship. This method of learning, known in sociology and education as ‘scaffolding instruction’,14 is based on the process where people who are capable and knowledgeable in performing select tasks support new learners until their knowledge is sufficient for them to accomplish tasks on their own. As the learner’s knowledge and skills develop, support is progressively withdrawn to enable them to undertake tasks independently. The learner proceeds from one learning stage to the next on the basis of whether the mentor is confident the learner has acquired the necessary skills to advance.

In Inuit society, the scaffold method was a form of education that was integrated and embedded within the art of hunting and fishing, as well as other cultural practices and customs such as carving and navigating. The practical transmission of traditional knowledge through hunting — an ongoing process of instruction and learning — allowed young Inuit to acquire knowledge about the land while on the land. In such a system, the main dispensers of this culturally specific knowledge were the older generations.

Now, the mostly Euro–Canadian teachers in Kangiqsualujjuaq present knowledge and information in classroom settings within the framework of modules that are topic specific. This mode differs from the fluid, non-linear and broad approach to learning that the Inuit once practised. If education is left entirely to the school, young Inuit may not acquire rich and meaningful traditional knowledge. Willie Etok, a Kangiqsualujjuamiut elder, believes that Inuit should reclaim their traditional ways of transmitting knowledge to younger generations, and work in partnership with schoolteachers to develop complementary curricula: ‘The school is helping but … young ones cannot learn everything that the Qallunaat [Euro–Canadian] teaches them and they cannot learn everything that a real Inuk has to be’.

The transmission of knowledge between generations of Kangiqsualujjuamiut has been adversely affected by language hybridisation, by the challenges of communicating in three languages (English, French and Inuktitut), and by hunting less frequently. Hunting excursions were once the forum through which the elders passed on knowledge to each other and to younger generations. However, elders have now reached the age in which their capacity to travel on the land is restricted to occasions when younger family members can accompany them. Since most hunts are now of short duration, the elders can no longer effectively transmit knowledge, as they once did on hunting excursions that spanned weeks and even months. While outdoor excursions occur less frequently, some elders pass on knowledge through other forums such as speaking about traditional life on the community radio and by acting as guides on school excursions and for community workshops. By participating on school boards, as well as on local and regional government committees, the elders of Kangiqsualujjuaq have a chance to be heard about the programs they believe should be implemented or developed to sustain the traditional knowledge in the community.

The current status of maritime mythology

The young Inuit who spend considerable time hunting with their contemporaries or elders tend to be better informed about the land than their non-hunting peers. It is likely that much spare time is available on hunts to exchange and transmit stories related to the past. However, despite close associations with grandparents and knowledgeable hunters, our survey of 13 Kangiqsualujjuamiut youth revealed that none of them possessed detailed knowledge of Inuit mythology, and most of them were not familiar with the name or story of even the Tuurngait legend, which supposedly originates from Kangiqsualujjuaq. This compares with six out of 12 middle-aged Inuit who were capable of reciting Inuit mythologies in some detail, and eight out of nine elders who were able to recite narratives of Inuit legends and mythology. However, only five of these eight elders were able to elaborate in great detail. Knowledge among the middle-generation was confined primarily to the pragmatics of hunting rather than the mysticism of the land and sea.

When asked to expand on their knowledge of myths and legends, many elders, and to a lesser extent middle-aged hunters, were hesitant to do so. They felt that certain stories ‘belonged’ to certain elders. A common response was: ‘Yes, I’ve heard of that story, but you should visit this or that person, because they can tell that story better than I. I would tell you, but you are better off interviewing him or her because I might not tell the story properly’. Understandably, some are better storytellers than others, and in some societies, stories are only told among gender or kin lines. Yet the Inuit of Kangiqsualujjuaq do not have age- and kin-related restrictions on the oral transmission of stories. If the pool of storytellers of Inuit mythology has been reduced to only five individuals in a population of 750 Kangiqsualujjuamiut, there is reason to be concerned that the richness and subtle messages conveyed through certain narratives may be lost. Ultimately, the reluctance of certain elders to tell stories they deem the property of another elder may passively discourage the transmission of knowledge about the mythological and cosmological aspects of the coast. With so few storytellers in the population, this reluctance may have the unintended consequence of reducing the number of elders to whom youth can turn in order to hear myths and legends about the land and sea.

Interest in learning about mythologies among the young and even middle-aged generations may have evaporated in recent years as a consequence of time spent playing computer games or watching television, in lieu of discussing the past with their elders and knowledgeable contemporaries in their spare time. The lack of mythological knowledge among youth might also be attributed to what Edward Bruner describes as the ‘principle of utility’, which posits that cultures will ‘retain the old and accept the new depending on which has greater usefulness’.15 Bruner proposes that culturally specific knowledge that is essential for people to go about their everyday lives will remain relatively unchanged in the face of acculturation. In the case of Inuit,



Bruner’s hypothesis would suggest that caribou hunting and communicating in Inuktitut are skills that would remain robust. By contrast, Bruner suggests that non-essential information relating to a population’s mode of existence tends to be prone to change and loss. Soapstone carving, throat singing and storytelling are forms of knowledge which are perhaps more susceptible to change because they lack ‘concreteness’. In other words, forms of knowledge that lack direct applicability are unlikely to be fully transmitted when integrated into new or abridged cultural systems. By contrast, functional knowledge is more likely to withstand change. The fact that only a few stories that were collected in this study bore any resemblance to the Inuit myths and legends that were documented by Lucien Turner and Ernest Hawkes16 for the same region some 100 years ago is strong evidence to support the notion that storytelling does not belong to the category of ‘utility’. One story that has somewhat persisted among the Kangiqsualujjuamiut until now is the story of Kaquit, an orphaned boy. Attempts to have the elders in this study explain the Kaquit story in detail proved futile, as it seems this story has become fragmented over time.17 A number of previously undocumented stories, however, were described.

Other coastal-related legends told to us by these elders (with the aid of the illustration template), include the story of a boy who overcame the dreaded Ikuutaauuq. Wielding bow-drills as spears, the Ikuutaauuq (Figure 13.6) killed unsuspecting hunters on kayaks by appearing from beneath the dark depths of the ocean. The Ikuutaauuq fled the eastern Ungava Bay region after being defeated in a battle at sea by an Inuk boy, who was avenging the killing of his father. The drawing shows how the boy killed the Ikuutaauuq by crafting a surprise attack.

Another story told by Tivi Etok was of ghouls that stole seals from hunters. Perplexed as to why they were not catching seals, hunters suspected that thieves were taking them from the nets before they had an opportunity to inspect them. To catch the culprits, the hunters waited secretly behind a rock on the shore. In the evening, the hunters watched skeletons appear from the mist. These skeletons paddled their kayaks towards the nets. Believing that these ghouls were responsible for stealing the catch, the hunters shot towards them to scare them away and to deter them from returning. The story concludes by explaining that the hunters were rewarded the next day because their nets contained many seals; they had defeated the bad spirits. As well as containing a message of wrong-doing, the story provided a rationale for ancestral Inuit as to why seals were often absent from known hunting grounds. As a postscript to this story, Tivi Etok explained to the authors that if one expects to hunt animals in a certain place but discovers that the animals are just not there, it is most likely because the bad spirits have already hunted in that place. Far from being simply a place of icebergs, seaweed and weathered rock, the land–water interface, Tivi Evok explains, is also the hunting ground of bad spirits, although hunters rarely see them.

Figure 13.6. ‘Boy killing the Ikuutaauuq’. Drawing by Tivi Etok, May 2005. The sea creatures called Ikuutaauuq once preyed on hunters at sea. They fled after being defeated in a sea battle.



regaining mythical place

With only a few elders left in the village who possess knowledge of traditional stories — compounded by little documentation of these stories and the advancing age of the elders — the community cannot wait for Inuit to come of age to learn these stories. The Kangiqsualujjuamiut must fast-track the learning curve of Inuit mythology by transmitting them in a range of formats. If the community believes that the tradition of conferring informal rights to tell mythological stories should be maintained, it must extend these rights to other individuals, especially the middle-aged generation, in order to ensure greater longevity.

While the situation remains critical, there is still time to revive and enrich the knowledge base of mythology about the land–water interface in the community if its leaders, together with Euro–Canadian educators, develop programs of learning that Inuit are comfortable with. There is potential to facilitate learning by interfacing facets of traditional culture with new technologies. One possibility might be to expand the current GPS course offered by the local Ulluriaq School to include sports such as orienteering or geo-caching, where GPS is used to find the location of ‘treasures’ that have been deliberately hidden. The location of treasure boxes are posted on geo-caching websites. Once the cache has been found, the discoverer signs the logbook in the box, takes the trinkets and replaces them with others. Such games may help young Inuit to learn about the names and nuances of the land and sea, and perhaps through greater interaction with these spaces, a better appreciation of its history and mythology. Many Kangiqsualujjuamiut, particularly the elderly, may initially have difficulty with the idea that traditional knowledge can be successfully transmitted in forms other that oral formats, such as GPS. The pressing issue is not necessarily about training every young Inuit to be effective and engaging storytellers, but rather that the focus should be on examining how new forms of knowledge transmission can complement and bolster existing knowledge banks.

Hunting outings and excursions, with the involvement of elders, schoolteachers and experienced hunters of all generations, should be further developed because they expose the youth to components of traditional Inuit knowledge that are difficult to conceptualise and retain if taught only in classroom settings. These outings provide an opportunity for hunting guides to engage and discuss with less-informed hunters about features and phenomena of the tundra and the sea in situ, whether it be about functional or spiritual notions of place.

If the Kangiqsualujjuamiut continue to learn from hunter–mentors under the scaffold method, as well as through schoolteachers and electronic media, then it is likely that traditional knowledge will remain relevant to younger generations. The establishment of forums to bring elders and young Inuit together, whether in the form of outdoor hunting excursions or indoor storytelling activities associated with art classes or sculpture-making, may help to sustain the knowledge base as well as rekindle an interest in a spiritual attachment to the land–water

interface. The stronger the intergenerational bonds among the Inuit, the more likely that knowledge will flow between individuals and across generations.

A decrease in mythological knowledge among young and middle-aged Inuit is worrying in that other forms of Inuit knowledge may also be in jeopardy. Cumulative wisdom — the knowledge and information that has been assembled, retained and enlarged upon by generations of Inuit who have long depended on Arctic resources — may soon become fragmented and dismembered if the Kangiqsualujjuamiut do not develop formats or media to share this wisdom with future generations. The art of embellishing the land and sea with stories — of giving meaning to place — is an activity that soon few will be able to perform if the young Inuit are not taught these place-specific stories. Without knowledge being passed on about the names of places where myths originate, deeply rooted connections to the land–water interface based on spiritual and mythological ties will gradually disappear. If future generations of Kangiqsualujjuamiut perceive the landscape solely through a functional lens, they will become progressively disengaged from the land–water interface that has, for thousands of years, provided functional, cosmological and mythological relevance to the Inuit of Kangiqsualujjuaq.

acknowledgements

We thank the hunters, elders, students and teachers of Kangiqsualujjuaq who participated. The following individuals and organisations provided support: Professor Wayne Pollard (Geography, McGill University); Professor Ellen Jacobs (Education, Concordia University); Faculté de l’aménagement, Université de Montréal; Christine LaBond (Anthropology, Michigan State University); the Avataq Cultural Institute; the Kativik Regional Government; the Ulluriaq School; and the Municipality of Kangiqsualujjuaq. Funding was provided by the John Crampton Travelling Scholarship of Australia, ArcticNet, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and a McGill University Alma Mater Travel Grant. Translations and transcriptions were provided by Nancy Etok, Jessie Baron, Siasi Longuépée, Mary Sam Annanack, Molly Emudluk, Tuumasi Annanack, Sheena Annanack, Cherie Heyes and Elise Heyes. Isabelle Guay, Mary Sam Annanack and Daniel Annanack kindly provided accommodation during our stays in Kangiqsualujjuaq.


152 PART 2: UNDER STANDING INDIGENOUS SEN SE S OF PL ACE

Notes1 Inuit perceptions are further explored in Scott Heyes,

‘Inuit knowledge and perceptions of the land–water interface’, PhD thesis (2 vols), Department of Geography, McGill University, Canada, 2007. The Inuit stories and drawings in this chapter were obtained for the doctoral project.

2 Ernest Hawkes, The Labrador Eskimo, Government Printing Bureau, Ottawa, 1916, p. 128; Anon., The Moravians in Labrador, J Ritchie, Edinburgh, 1833, para. 12, intro.

3 William Kemp, ‘The flow of energy in a hunting society’, Scientific American, vol. 225, 1971, p. 114.

4 Inua is used as a prefix in the morphemes Inuagulik and Inuagulliq, which both mean ‘legendary dwarfs’ in Inuktitut (Lucien Schneider, Ulirnaisigutiit: An Inuktitut–English Dictionary of Northern Quebec, Labrador and Eastern Arctic Dialects, Les Presses de l’Univerisité Laval, Quebec, 1985, p. 84). Hawkes, The Labrador Eskimo, p. 127, explains that Inua is the third possessive form of Inuk, man, and literally means ‘its man’.

5 Hawkes, The Labrador Eskimo.6 Avataq Cultural Institute (ACI), George River Interview

Transcripts, Montreal, Canada, 1986, ref # OH ACI 13 — 1985 R01.

7 ACI, Transcripts, ref # OH A&V 13 — 1986 MS 04.8 Another interpretation of this story appears in Paulusi

Sivuak, Inuit Stories and Legends, Nunavik School Board, Montreal, vols I & II, 1973, pp. 18–32, 44–53.

9 Heyes, ‘Inuit knowledge’, vol. IIA, pp. 61–2.10 ibid., pp. 45, 452.11 Peter Morgan in Heyes, Tuumasi Annanack

& Christine LaBond, The Social History of Kangiqsualujjuaq, Avataq Cultural Institute, Montreal, 2003, Tape # SHTA17.

12 Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines, Vintage, London, 1998; Deborah Bird Rose, ‘Exploring an Aboriginal land ethic’, Meanjin, vol. 47, no. 3, 1988, pp. 378–8; James Cowan, Myths of the Dreaming: Interpreting Aboriginal Legends, Prism Press, UK, 1994.

13 Particularly with Canadian geese. See Harvey Feit, ‘The ethno-ecology of the Waswanipi Cree: Or how hunters can manage their resources’, in Bruce Cox (ed.), Cultural Ecology: Readings on Canadian Indians and Eskimos, McClelland and Stewart, Ottawa, 1973; Colin Scott, ‘Science for the West, myth for the rest? The case of James Bay Cree knowledge construction’, in Laura Nader (ed.), Naked Science: Anthropological Inquiry into Boundaries, Power and Knowledge, Routledge, London, 1996, pp. 69–86.

14 Developed by Lev Vygotsky. See Michael Shayer, ‘Not just Piaget; not just Vygotsky, and certainly not Vygotsky as alternative to Piaget’, Learning and Instruction, vol. 13, 2003, pp. 465–85.

15 Edward Bruner, ‘Cultural transmission and cultural change’, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, vol. 12, 1956, pp. 191–9.

16 Lucien Turner, Ethnology of the Ungava District: Hudson Bay Territory, McGill–Queen’s University Press, Montreal, 2001 (1894). Hawkes, The Labrador Eskimo.

17 A story about Kaquit, albeit from Nunavut Inuit, features in an educational book on Inuit legends. See Brian Lewis, Eskimo Legends: Arctic Reading Series 14, Curriculum Section, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Ottawa, 1968, pp. 22–4. The Kaquit story is annotated and illustrated in Sivuak, Inuit Stories and Legends, vol. II, pp. 102–9. An 1884 Ungava Inuit version of the Kaquit story appears in Turner, Ethnology of the Ungava District, p. 265.

Part 3MAKING PLACES


Losing Place: Diminishing Traditional Knowledge of the Arctic Coastal Landscape

Documents

Transcript of Losing Place: Diminishing Traditional Knowledge of the Arctic Coastal Landscape