Paul Landry and his wife, Matty McNair, circumnavigated Baffin Island by dogteam, including miles of walking through knee-deep ice water. When I interviewed Paul was teaching in the Inuit school in Iqaluit on Baffin Island. Now he and his wife run Northwinds, an adventure travel operation (819/979-0551).
What we call the wilderness, the Inuit call the land. I go with Shoo, a 63 year-old Inuit. We take the kids from school. Shoo is the school's janitor, but when he is out on the land he is the master. He travels with his rifle in his caribou-skin clothes. That really registers on the kids. He is their role model. I organize the trip, and work with equipment, the budget and the infrastructure. After we take off, I stay in the background other than to deal with behavior problems. Shoo doesn't like to interfere in other people's lives.
Shoo was born in an igloo and lived on the land until recently. He speaks no English, and since I speak no Inuktituk, a student translates. Shoo is my mentor. I have learned so much from him and have incredible respect for him. The land is his life. I am in awe of how he relates to the environment: the weather patterns, the movement of animals. His sixth instinct is so refined, so in tune with the natural world. He is amazing. I could stop working and live out there full-time and I would never approach his understanding of the land.
When it is light twenty-four hours a day, Shoo will travel for twenty-four hours or until the going isn't good anymore. Then he stops. He travels at forty miles an hour on a snow machine and gets exactly where he wants to be. It amazes me. Once you get out of Iqaluit, over the first hill, it all looks the same. There are some mountains you can look at to get your bearings, but when the snow starts to blow, you can see maybe fifty or sixty yards. I have no idea how he does it. He must somehow be able to use the bearings and landmarks. Even if I spoke Inuktituk, I am not sure he would be able to explain it to me. If I were his son, and we did things like that day after day, I would start to see some of the things that he sees. And feel what he feels.
I am slowly learning from Shoo to just accept things. If you get caught in a storm, you build an igloo and wait. You feel his spirituality when you are with him. He seems to have no ego just a deep sense of who he is as a person. That makes him easy to be with very easy to sit with in a tent waiting out a storm. The students we take out on the land feel that too. Maybe they wouldn't define it the same way, but they are inspired by who he is.
His place is on the land. He belongs in the same way that the seal belongs and the snow and the rocks. When the seal comes up, it belongs there. When there is contact, that is meant to happen. He brings the seal in, and feeds his family. That is what life is about. After he shoots an animal there is a five second pause. He is thankful. Then he cuts it open, and starts eating right there and then. Raw. You see feel the gratitude, even in the way he stands. It has nothing to do with conquering or one upmanship over the animals. When the hunting is good, he hunts. We will be at the flow edge, where the pack ice meets the open ocean. It is usually humid and uncomfortable there. Not the greatest place. But if we are heading back to camp after ten hours of hunting and a seal raises its head we will stop and wait for another hour or two. For a seal. Even if we have two on the sled. You sense that he has known hunger.
The younger generation are bombarded constantly by images from the southern media television, video. They are not sure who they are, and how they feel about white men like me living up there. They ask themselves: What does it mean to be an Inuit today? Do we want to be an Inuit, or do we want to copy the life we see on television? The white, materialistic approach to life. With the elders though, there seems to be acceptance. When we were planning our circumnavigation of Baffin Island, we went to all the little settlements and talked to the elders. They accepted us and what we were doing. People are important to them, just because they are people. That's the way they brought up their kids. Very little scolding or reprimanding. They want kids to explore the world on their own; to make mistakes. The kids grow up with little or no discipline by white standards. They have incredible freedom. That approach developed over thousands of years of living in a camp situation two or three families, maybe fifteen people. If the kid didn't bring in some ice, the family wouldn't have water that afternoon. The consequences were direct and the system worked beautifully. It doesn't work in an atmosphere of drugs, TV, video, arcades. We deal with incredible behavior problems in the high school and the residence. But out on the land they change. They enjoy it to the fullest. They are more at ease, more talkative.
