She was born in a northern Greenland community and lived up and down the west coast, because her father was a teacher and preacher. In 1981 Aaju moved to Iqaluit, where she now resides. She reads and speaks many languages, is a graduate of Akitsiraq Law School, and designs stunning sealskin garments. She is a performer, translator, volunteer, and she collects traditional law from elders for the Department of Justice. And she has five children.

MBF: The Thule mummies that were discovered at Qilakitso—the women had tattoos; when did you first see these, and what were your thoughts?

AP: I first saw them in 1979, when I was working at the museum in Nuuk. I remember especially the young woman who was pregnant when she died and she looked as if she had been frozen in that state, as if she was in pain. Her tattoo was a single line on her forehead, with a dip in it.

MBF: Like a line drawing of a bird?

AP: Exactly that. I was too young to understand the significance. It was only when I visited the site several years later that I realized that these were real women, not museum objects. I could see their home, where they had lived, and I had a sense of their souls being present.

MBF: How were the tattoos made? And do you know why the women had tattoos; as I understand it, they were done on young women.

AP: They were done with animal sinew, covered in soot. The needle passed under the skin and left the soot behind. I don’t know their purpose for Thule women; a friend and I are doing the research now. I do know that when Christianity came, many traditions were forbidden, because the missionaries branded them as evil. But I want to be totally open to what might have been the reasons. I cannot say yet.

MBF: You are going to get a tattoo. Why?

AP: For me, it is taking ownership of something that was our heritage, that was part of our identity. And I will have it done in the traditional way. When I was growing up in Greenland, I never saw any women with tattoos, ever. The last Canadian Inuit woman, Niviuvak Marquiq, who had tattoos [on her forehead and also on her hands and wrists] passed away last year. She lived in Taloyoak and she was about 105 when she died. We didn’t get a chance to talk to her.

MBF: When you came into Aasiat, you hadn’t been home for more than thirty years; what were your thoughts?

AP: I still felt I was coming home, even though I didn’t know anyone. But people came up to me, and said they were related to me or that they knew my family. The ship could have left without me and that would have been fine.

I envy that ninety percent of the people are employed in their own livelihood and in their own language. I saw young men going fishing and hunting and it seems perfectly normal. And why not? Greenland communities have harbours; we don’t. Just a freaking harbour, how difficult is that?

So in some ways we have 200 years to catch up. But in another sense, I feel so fortunate living in Nunavut. We have lots of official bodies and offices and titles. But there is a whole other social structure that carries on the tradition of caring and counseling—groups of women offer a 24-hour support system to families in trouble. Hunters and families share their catch alongside a contemporary setting. This is not known to the bureaucracy. And you have to have that to enable you to survive, when you are attacked on both the environmental and the cultural fronts.

But the culture never disappears. The southern world sees the Inuit as frozen in time and that’s too bad.

* * *

The ship moved up the coast to Ilulisat on Disko Bay, another bright and bustling town, with a harbour chock full of small red fishing boats, paved streets, social housing with colourful balconies, young women pushing prams on the streets. The first snowfall came as we were there. It is a town with a population of 4000 people and 6000 sled dogs. We came to view the breathtaking icebergs that pile up at the mouth of the glacier, right beside the town; to do that from the land, we walked past large open fields where dogs were curled up or pacing or barking, chained, in front of rickety wooden dog houses.

That path also leads to the cemetery, where hundreds of white wooden crosses are placed in rough mounds on top of the rocky hillside. Most of the mounds are surrounded with stones, many with only the lovely little birch trees growing on them but some are decorated with artificial flowers and mementoes. On the older graves, the words on the crosses have faded, so in some cases a granite plaque, showing birthdates from the late 1800s, now lean against the crosses. On one hill, the mounds are much smaller and the crosses very close together, so possibly these are sites for cremated remains.

The glacier releases an average of twenty million tonnes of ice every day into Disko Bay. On the zodiacs, in sleet and snow, we troll slowly amongst icebergs, some of which show forty-five to fifty metres above the surface, in enormous frosted crags or velvety pale blue slopes, some with deep cracks and caves and hollows. Another seven-eighths of the iceberg remains underwater. Fishermen in very small boats are pulling out what they call Greenland halibut. Or is it turbot?

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Posted on Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 at 9:55 am. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.