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. (more…)

THE LYUBOV ORLOVA—We are in Greenland, motoring through battalions of icebergs off the west coast. In the collision of light, rock, ice, water and sky, it is the most beautiful landscape I have ever seen. The small town of Ummannaq, for example, sits under what can only be described as a heart-shaped mountain, and when you first hear that description you think it must be nonsense—how can a mountain be heart-shaped—but it is true.  And that is what ummannaq means. A heart made of pink granite and beneath it, perched on its lower slopes, a Legotown, it seems, tall handsome wooden houses painted deep red and mustard and green and a rich blue, windows trimmed in white, perched on the rocks, many accessible only by sturdy wooden staircases.

The first thing you think when you see this bright, warm town in Greenland is how shameful it has been of the Canadian government, how thoughtless and oh, I don’t know, southern, in the 1950s and 60s and ever since, to have the ugliest, cheapest building materials and the greyest and brownest of paints possible sent north for the construction of indifferently designed, too strong a word, dwellings and public buildings. (more…)

The Walrus Arctic Dialogues: a series of conversations on board the Lyubov Orlova, crossing to Greenland

First Dialogue: John Huston, culturalist and filmmaker—son of Arctic curators the late James and Alma Houston, John was a child at Cape Dorset, Baffin Island. He has made numerous award-winning documentaries about Inuit culture and is fluent in Inuktitut.

MBF: What’s the best thing that has happened in the Arctic in the past twenty years? (more…)