IVALUK 1

Rankin Inlet, N.W.T.

April 3, 1970

Dear Thomasie:

You asked me to write with the news from home so you won’t get so homesick away at that hostel school in Churchill. So I am writing to you. Funny thing is here I find my self writing to you in English. You been away to school so long. I know you speak Inuktitut just fine but I think they never teach you how to write it in syllabics which is how I like to write out Inuktitut and prefer to sign my name. I don’t like to do it the other way with so many English letters to sound out when one little squiggle is better. So I will try writing to you using Qablunaatittut words. Tell you what—if you help correct my worse mistakes I will teach you the syllabic way to write Inuktitut when you come home for the summer. That way we both learn something and maybe then I can read faster too not take all the day to read one magazine article about boats or the news paper.

The whole month of March was cold. I guess you don’t need a weather report though since there is nothing to stop the wind between here and Churchill but a couple of musk ox. I bet you been dealing with the same wind down there just as sure as we see the same moon over our heads when we look up to the night sky. Too damn stormy off and on to go out seal hunting three straight weeks so we are making a big hole in our stash of frozen tuktu. Only one left stored up on the roof now so I will have to haul my rear end out onto the ice one of these days no matter. Even if the temperature still stuck past forty below zero and stalled there like a skidoo with no gas.

I don’t mind the cold so much as the wind when even a tall guy like me has to fight just to stand upright. Every thing takes more effort then. I don’t know how our ancestors did it in times like this. I guess if your belly is growling and the kids grow skinny you just have to get out there and stand over a breathing hole in the sea ice for hours. Hoping to catch a seal before your ass is frozen solid into a snowdrift.

I feel spoiled living in this government heated home with electric lights oil stove and even some cans of food from the Bay we can eat if we have to when all the tuktu and dried fish is gone. We have it pretty good. Even got a radio now to give us a break from Ataata’s singing.

You should see the flag flying over the hamlet office. It has lost one of its red bars again from being whipped lashed and pelted with flying ice crystals. Little kids here probably think the Canada flag has only two parts—a solid red bar on the left and a red maple leaf on a white square at the right. I don’t know why they bother to pull up that flag in winter. There is so little day time to see it flying anyway and it always takes this kind of abuse.

I don’t suppose you heard yet that our angajuk, our big brother Sakku, has changed his mind again about what to call himself. Remember how the government asked all the Inuit first to use disc numbers instead of names because they could not keep track of us or pronounce our Inuit names. Then a while ago they ask us to quit using those disc numbers and instead make up a name they can pronounce maybe. Our brother did not want to pick the family name Tunu like our parents and you and me did. He needs a more modern name so he want to be called Jimi Hendrix after his favourite singer he discovered by listening to his girlfriend Carol’s cassette tapes. You still haven’t met Carol. She is a nice looking girl maybe a bit too skinny and a painter who found out she can’t make a living from painting pictures down south so she took the CYA job to do community development work up here. I remember last summer Carol always walking around the settlement with her head in the clouds looking at our world through a little box she would make with her two thumbs and two fingers. When I ask her what is she doing she would say she is trying to put the tundra or sometimes the sky into a little frame because otherwise these are too big for her to take in all at one time. I guess she misses those Toronto skyscraper buildings slicing up her view into small bits though I find that hard to imagine.

After Carol and Jimi get together she went to work on community-developing him, try to build up his native pride like a bonfire. Maybe she does not want her own half-Inuit kids to get a family name like Hendrix. Anyway Jimi decide now he is going to have a traditional name after all so he plan to register himself as Sakkujuak Tunu when the Project Surname people come back to visit Rankin Inlet again. Also he and Carol say they plan to get hitch next time the Anglican minister comes through town so their brand new twin babies can share our family last name too. Those twins they are cute as little siksiks but it can sure get noisy when both of them are howling like they seem to do a lot.

Carol made up some names for the babies and Anaana had a fit. She picks artistic first names for them—Picasso and Mona Lisa. Then middle names she thinks are Inuit names but they are Inuktitut words for colours—aupaluktuq and quqsuqtuq, red and yellow. Yes she wants to register your niece and nephew as Picasso Aupaluktuq Tunu and Mona Lisa Quqsuqtuq Tunu. Anaana back at home asking “whose soul will reside in these babies? Who will they have to live up to”? She carry on until Ataata give the kids proper Inuit names—Uksukuluk and Palliq—even if that is not what their parents will call them every day. I try to keep out of the middle of these troubles and tease Sakku that if he and Carol have a few more kids they can get the whole rainbow done. When the twins are old enough to get a joke I plan to call them Orange when I see them together. See I learn something from art class in school.

Anaana and Ataata are proud of the little ones but also a little let down because it does not look like Jimi and Carol plan to follow our custom and let them adopt their first-born baby. Anaana and Ataata were hoping so especially since they have two babies so you think maybe they could spare one. But Carol is Qablunaaq so she does not think like that. She going to hang onto both kids and let Sakku deal with it. Pitsiark never sent her first-born home neither. But that’s because she married that Padlirmiut Simeonie and they move to Eskimo Point and end up giving their number one baby to his parents down there. I have a feeling our nayak Kublu is working to fix this thing. She has always been sensitive and caring too much. Lately I see her hanging out a lot with a guy who flies bush planes up here and so I think maybe something is up.

Well those are all the news from here. I miss you Nukaqtaaq and I look forward to see you when you come home again.