So it does not go on forever, what one passenger called “Matthew Swan’s floating circus.” There are grand finale events planned, of course—the final recap, the captain’s dinner, Aaju’s fur fashion show, the variety show. But the last day also had serendipitous moments…

Walrus public square, part one

Earlier in the trip, Franklyn Griffiths had given a talk on “Camels in the Arctic?” (The Walrus, November, 2007). He talked about his findings during a journey from east to west in the Arctic when he canvassed Inuit leaders and hunters about climate change. He concluded that there were significant regional differences (more awareness in the west) and three levels of understanding and concern: those concerned about climate change and committed to alerting the world about the loss of animals and a way of life; those more concerned about culture; and a majority who considered themselves “marvelous adapters” to the changes they identified, such as changes in the intensity of light and the taste of caribou, but who focused on the here and now in a very practical way, confident of their ability to adapt.

Several northerners, including David Pelly and Aaju Peter, did not entirely agree with Franklyn’s analysis of the Inuit response to climate change: if an Inuk remains silent when you ask a question or make an observation, he is saying I do not agree; you do not speak badly of the weather or the animals; we look at the glass as half-full. So on the last morning, David presented a critique of Franklyn’s position, and Franklyn responded.

David’s main points (summarized):

• Since the 1990s, Inuit have reported and commented on climate change, through documentaries, a southern Hudson’s Bay report with the Cree, elders’ conferences and petitions; once the elders have spoken, they expect not to have to do so again.
• There is no significant regional difference in awareness, but differences in the manner of expression and in individual lenses; one elder may have culture as his lens, but he still address climate change through that lens. A concern for culture is a concern for the environment.
• Confidence is not denial, but a fundamental belief.

Franklyn agreed that he was not as “marinated” in northern ways, but he still believed there were notable regional differences. And that while “changes in climate” are acutely observed, there is less being said about “climate change.” The “immensely practical” Inuit had an unwillingness to think ahead. But he considers the discussion still very open… John Houston had made the excellent suggestion that he come back and talk to the shamans..

Walrus Arctic Dialogue #5

The passenger who called the expedition “Matthew Swan’s floating circus was Peter Powning, the New Brunswick sculptor traveling with his wife, writer Beth Powning. Peter, a tall, lean streak of energy and focus, got in and out of the zodiacs with what appeared to be an entire camera shop around his neck. As a sculptor, he works in stone and glass, so I was curious about how he saw and read the Arctic:

Marian Botsford Fraser: As an artist, what has struck you about this extraordinary landscape—the ice, water, snow, rock, the light…

Peter Powning: The fantastic stone formations, and the ice—that’s art. The fragile edge, where the ice moves in and out, the whole relationship…This is an amazing landscape to survive in. And there is so much open space, generally a lack of human impingement on the raw majesty of the natural world, which probably looked much like this 5000 years ago.

But I also knew I would be made very aware of the [climate change issue]; I expected that. Beth and I did the trip with some misgivings and we bought carbon offsets. But this experience will give our arguments the force of example. Global warning is another body blow to the Arctic; European culture forced enormous changes, and now this. The land itself is changing, so the thing that [the Inuit] should most be able to count on is compromised.

MBF: I noticed you took a great interest in the work being done at Pangnirtung, especially the printmaking.

PP: Art is about making connections, between the cultural, the natural and the historical. Humans need to be able to say, this is me; in mass culture, it is essential to have a way to identify the self, and art is made in a particular time and place and it’s not anonymous. The artists here are deeply immersed in tradition and in the world around them. There is a tension between the traditional and contemporary, and I was looking for more of that, but there might be peer pressure towards the traditional…

Walrus public square, part two: In the late afternoon, in Davis Strait we drop anchor near Monumental Island, a stark, tall rock known as a polar bear habitat. About two miles away there is a group of rounded rocks, where a colony of real walrus gathered, meaning they were lying all over each other in lumpy brown piles, all the way up to the top of the little island, where the Top Dog occasionally reared up to check us out, a small heard of zodiacs. They rolled and flopped and sometimes uttered a gruff bark; mothers nudged their little ones into the water; a few of the bulls were scrapping, one had a large bleeding gash on his side.

There are fewer than 20,000 walrus in the eastern Arctic, and we felt very privileged to see at least one hundred of them. The polar bear on Monumental Island clocked our arrival and departure in the zodiacs, pacing the ridge.

A note from the Captain’s Dinner: I sat beside Andrei, the boyish, Tintin-looking captain with a brush cut who has not seen his family in Russia for four months. In short—he hates the sameness of the routine on ship (he’s been captain for six years); he likes best exploring fiords that might not have seen a ship for decades. He said that when they go into waters that are apparently uncharted or have not been visited for perhaps fifty years, they keep detailed records, and he is always very willing to share these with the Canadian Hydrographic Service. But the Canadian Hydrographic Service has never even responded to his offer for documentation of these Arctic coasts.

* * *

Final re-cap from the Walrus team:

MBF: Being on a ship gave me a sense of the vastness of the Arctic, as it sits in both time and space. Watching an elder carefully tend a seal-oil lamp identical to that of her ancestors, knowing it takes two years for a towering iceberg to travel from Greenland to Newfoundland, seeing ancient lichens making paintings of the rocks, entering the site where lovingly wrapped bodies sat undisturbed on a cliff for five hundred years—these are the things I am grateful to have experienced.

Franklyn: My response to our extraordinary experience is also one of gratitude, of thanks. We encountered fantastic mammals – think only of those many dozens of walrus we came so close to yesterday. The same for birds, and for the amazingly beautiful micro-plant life. And then the icebergs at Ilulissat.

But what got to me most is the rocks – the low rounded domes of cracked skin on which the walrus basked, the astonishing heart shape at the foot of which little Uummannaq lay, and the towering hillsides and behind them the rampant mountains that surrounded us on the grassy knoll just inland from Pang.

Given the jagged and fractured lives we lead down south, the experience of these often jagged and always fractured rocks is capable of restoring a fleeting sense of the immense and steady wholeness that surrounds and grounds human existence.

Anyway, that’s what I felt most on this trip.

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