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SPECIAL REPORT 

The Arctic Suicides: It’s Not The Dark That Kills You

The first death was on the night of Jan. 9.

It was a Saturday. Pele Kristiansen spent the morning at home, drinking beers and hanging out with his older brother, which wasn’t so unusual. There wasn’t a lot of work in town. A lot of people drank. In the afternoon, they heard someone banging on their door, yelling.

“Polar bear! It’s a polar bear!”

On the frozen fiord a couple of miles away, they could see the bear. Hunting in the Arctic — bears and reindeer and seals and birds — is at the core of Inuit life, even today.

The polar bear was coming toward the town.

A little drunk and really excited, Pele and his buddies fired up the motor on their fishing boat and nosed through the slushy ice in the harbor of their East Greenland village, Tiniteqilaaq, until they were as close as they could get. They got out of the boat, stood on the ice and pointed their rifles at the enormous animal.

Among the Inuit, hunting a polar bear is a big deal. The bears have huge territories — to actually see one around Tiniteqilaaq was rare. And because of their size and ferocity, they’re not easy to kill. It’s usually a group effort, so according to tradition, the first four people to shoot it share the meat and the glory.

That day, Pele shot the polar bear.

And he was so happy.

That evening, Pele went out drinking to celebrate.

The next morning he was dead. He had killed himself. He was 22.

Read the full story here. 

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Inupiaq word of the week - Quviasruk

I chose the title of my blog from this video, as quviasruk means celebrate. I wanted to celebrate what I had learned about Inupiaq in a way that was meaningful not only to me, but hopefully to others.

So, katiluta quviasrukta. Let’s celebrate together.

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Stories about the Northern Lights from the Never Alone Insight Collection.

I think this is a good way to have people keep their hoods on when it’s cold outside! Would work much better than the threat of catching a cold. Ha!

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From my friend Tasha’s Facebook page.

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“Nesoluk and others stressed that for the Inupiat, food is directly tied to culture. And like all cultures, it’s constantly evolving and being influenced by outside sources. Hazel Kunakanna says that people certainly don’t just eat raw maktak, they incorporate food traditions from outside of Alaska.

“You know, like my grandma, she used to like it fried with onions and stuff. And then some people like fry it and fry their maktak like a stir-fry with rice.” 

“And you put soy sauce on it?” 

“Yeah, you could put soy sauce on it,” Kunakanna said.

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A story about the ice, from the Never Alone - Kisima Inŋitchuŋa Insight Collection, as told by Iñupiaq elder Leo Oktollik Kinneeveauk.

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Read the full remarks by the President in Kotzebue here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/09/03/remarks-president-kotzebue-high-school-kotzebue-ak

“And I want to thank everybody in Kotzebue for something else -- which is taking such good care of my team over the past week. (Applause.)  I know that when I come to town there are a lot of people who come first, and it's a big footprint.  But all of them have told me incredible stories of your kindness.  I heard that you stuffed them full of all kinds of meat at Cariboufest.  (Laughter.)  John Baker, who was the winner of the 2011 Iditarod, let them play with his Husky puppies.  (Applause.)  I heard about offers to go berry-picking on the tundra, last night’s cultural night.  And I heard that you’re even teaching them some Iñupiaq. I don't know how good they are.  (Laughter.)  They’re probably a little better than me.  But the teams that advance my trip, they spend a lot of time far away from home.  They do great work.  Most of them are really young people.  So I just want to say thank you to all of you for making them feel so at home even when they’re 4,000 miles away.  (Applause.)  “

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“ Three year old Elmo from Point Lay Inupiaq dances the reindeer song at Qatnut 2009 in Kotzebue, AK.”

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LOOK AT THIS PHRASE

angun aqpaqsruqtuq aquagun angugauram

that means, i gather from the pictures, something like ‘man running after boy’

WHY DOES EVERYTHING HAVE TO START WITH A???

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Map of the Eskimo-Aleut language family. 

The Inuit languages are spread throughout the Arctic.

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I had never seen the translation of Eskimo into “to net snowshoes” before!

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Aŋutitun sayuapaaqtuq aġnaq. Aŋutitun ilipłuni, sayuapaaqtuq aŋutitun. Suŋuaqtuanigliqaa piraqtut. – A woman would dance very hard like a man. Acting like a man, she would strut like a man. They pretended to be whatever we could conceive.

From “Mammaraq (Innuŋŋuuraq) / The Doll (A Pretend Person),” a poem by Joan Naviyuk Kane, written in Inupiaq and translated into English by the author. See the whole poem, with art by Lisa Sette, here. (via broadsidedpress)

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I found the best cookbook, written by students in Shishmaref, AK in 1952. It’s very cool to see documents like this being preserved! My favorite recipe is the Cooked Blubber on page 17 (27), where Pauline and Alma state that “old people always want to eat cooked blubber.”

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Generations of explorers, researchers and scholars coming to Alaska for study have depended upon their Native informants. For example, in the early days of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Lawrence Irving, who founded the Institute of Arctic Biology, had a close bond with Simon Paneak of Anaktuvuk Pass.

It hasn’t always been a mutually beneficial relationship between informants and researchers. A story I’ve heard many times is how scientists go into a community, conduct their study and leave, never to return. They go on to earn doctoral or master’s degrees, publish their findings in scholarly journals and build careers. The people left behind have no idea what’s been said about them, and their lives aren’t bettered by the visit.

Some scientists are trying to change that dynamic, in part by considering their Alaska Native informants as co-researchers. A group of scientists at UAF’s Geophysical Institute are building relationships with the people who live with the ice and snow they study.

“A satellite image doesn’t tell us details of what the ice is doing,” said Mette Kaufman, a UAF research technician for the SIZONet Local Sea Ice Observation Program. Indigenous people, particularly elders, have generations of knowledge about sea ice, she said. Their information adds to the larger picture of what’s happening in the Arctic.