I wasn’t going to accept the invitation to fly all the way up to the Arctic Circle to do an author reading tour. I'd seen more than enough ice and snow at home in Winnipeg but when I was told that I could stay with a traditional Inuit family who didn't even speak English, it seemed so unusual an experience, that I heard myself say, yes.

 I read a stack of books about the North found an expert to answer my questions, packed my warmest clothes and when I arrived I was completely unprepared. I had flown a thousand miles due north, far beyond the tree line into a frozen desert.  As I disembarked in Rankin Inlet, I thought the plane's propellers were still roaring until I realized it was howl of the Arctic wind; a wind that pushed snow into drifts so high they even buried the Mountie station. I could see only the station's tattered Canadian flag flapping on a pole with half its maple leaf worn away.  I transferred to a four seat Cessna 172 and headed even further north.

 Arriving at Baker Lake, I didn't notice Tookoome standing by the runway. He was so unassuming and calm despite the cold.   He easily recognized me.  I was the idiot in a city clothes, loaded down with a computer, an airport suitcase and four boxes of books.  He approached me with a wide smile and since he spoke only Inuktetuk, he silently motioned me into his dogsled.  He loaded me in with my luggage, covered me with blankets and off we went over the frozen drifts.  I was strange cargo.

 He was just as strange to me.  The entrance to his home looked like a burrow in the snow surrounded by his yelping Huskies.  Once inside, I saw it was a long, government-built mobile divided into rooms. It was clean, warm, with little furniture and its only "art" was a Hudson's Bay calendar. I knew that in a nomadic culture, people didn't accumulate needless things.  Transport all your possessions by sled every few weeks and see how soon you dump your nonessentials.  Yet amazingly, there was big screen TV playing HBO.

 Tookoome sat me in front of the TV.  He boiled black tea and fried bannock for bread.  Then he generously revealed the imported southern Canadian delicacy that he had bought for me as his guest so I'd feel more at home. It was a five kilo hunk of baloney.

     We ate while watching "Sheena", a movie about a blonde "jungle woman" who rode a zebra bareback through luscious greenery.  Tookoome, the actual hunter and nomad, was thoroughly enjoying this Hollywood tripe.  Yet after a while, I realized that he and I weren't even sharing that basic experience. I was watching Sheena.  He was watching the zebra.  Whenever an animal appeared, Tookoome studied it as carefully as he would a caribou or a polar bear on the tundra.
     The home had constant visitors. He and his wife had eleven grown children who'd drop by along with neighbours and friends.  Little English was spoken but everyone was friendly.  Some of them seemed impressed that I was an author, but they were all delighted by the baloney, which soon ran out.

   We then turned to traditional Inuit food, a freshly killed caribou lay raw, quartered and stripped on the kitchen floor. Tookoome indicated with a smile that I could eat all I wanted, I simply had to crouch down and cut off pieces with a crescent-shaped ulu knife.  Raw. That was the secret of Inuit survival.  Raw meat, germ free in the intense cold, contained the nutrients needed in a land without grain or milk products and almost no vegetation.  Cooking the meat lost those nutrients.  The caribou was surprisingly tender with a strong gamey taste. I learned to eat it but not to enjoy it.
 I began to feel like the wrong person in the wrong place. Baker Lake seemed more foreign than anywhere I'd been in Europe or the Middle East or beyond.  I was in Canada, my own country, yet experiencing culture shock.

 Eventually Nancy, Tookoome's eldest daughter, arrived to translate.  Tookoome and I introduced ourselves properly, explaining who we were and how we lived, the common courtesies.  He brought out his art, which he drew with coloured pencils.  Vivid images of Inuks, wolves, bears, fish and seals seemed to float and shift from shape to shape.  His work had the primal beauty of a cave painting, the imagination of a modern Miro or Chagall.  I was charmed but bewildered.
  These pictures have stories, he said through Nancy.  This is how we hunted.  Here is the wolf I adopted.  He became my friend and he helped me hunt.  This picture shows a shaman flying.  He travels over the land using his magic. Here am I, watching him fly over my tent. I am surprised.  In the next picture, the people are singing in the qaggiq, the great iglu. Each person has a special song. My mother was a keeper of songs for the people. Tookoome sang his mother's wolf song.

  I was delighted and I responded with my own stories and with tales from Jewish folklore.  I was no longer a stranger in a strange world, I was a storyteller sharing with another of my kind.
 Yet I was not the only one hearing his stories for the first time. Some were new to his daughter.  Tookoome explained. In the past, he said, everyone knew all the stories word for word. That has ended.
 I asked him what had changed. Was it TV?  Are the people too absorbed by stories from Hollywood and New York?   It is the walls, he said. In the iglu there were no walls to separate us.  Here we do not see or hear each other. We have become different.

 Stories are not passed on.  Nor are the skills. Few of the new generation are creating Inuit art. The generation born in the settlements grew up with machines, books, electricity.  They and their parents live together but in different worlds.
 The next day I watched Tookoome lying on his bed drawing another picture.  His granddaughter was crawling over him and even rolled onto his work yet he was patient and cheerful. Inuit are amazingly respectful of their children yet Tookoome was showing a special reverence for this child.  She is named after my mother, he told me. So I treat her as I would treat my mother.

 He gave the child some of his pencils to play with and we sat quietly watching her. It was then he asked if I would tell his stories in a book. I cannot find one of my people to do it, he said. I was one of the last to leave the land.  My stories will die and the young people will know how we once lived.
     I was the wrong one for the job, I told him. I didn't even know how to walk on the land.  The Inuit children laughed when they saw me trudging head down in straight line as if I was on a city sidewalk. Inuit follow the contours of the snow with their eyes searching the horizon for game. I was just some guy from North End Winnipeg, a children's author, a Jewish storyteller.
I was afraid I could not do it.

 Tookoome nodded and returned to his drawing. He said, my mother always told me, 'Do not be afraid. Be open like a child. There will always be people to help you.'
 He was drawing his uncle, a blind shaman.  As a child, Tookoome would lead him to the caribou, hand him the rifle and carefully describe what he was in front of them.  The old man was a perfect shot.  In Tookoome's picture the shaman was shape shifting through different creatures and people. It was called The World of Animals and the World of People Come Together in the Shaman.  Tookoome was supposed to become a shaman like his uncle but instead he became an artist, another sort of transformer.  He was almost finished the picture. He looked at and smiled. We both knew that I would write his book. It's all about changing, I thought. Maybe I could change enough to be able write it.  And then I understood why I had come.

 It took ten years of meeting whenever we could so Tookoome could tell me his wonderful stories and I could ask my questions. It took many translators to give me different understandings of his words. We chose the finest of his art to illustrate the stories and now the book, called The Shaman's Nephew has been published as a Tookoome's gift to his people and to the world.

     THE END

Go back to first page