In Fond Remembrance of Me Read Online Free PDF

inside out. He put them on deck—ravens and gulls flocked in—all the guts and insides were plucked up.
    The shaman went out and lay down next to a seal breathing-hole. He fell asleep.
    When the ice-break-up arrived, the shaman pried off a lot of planks. He gave a few to the village. He flew off carrying many ark planks. The ark sank away.
    Noah and his family were taken into the village. They lived there much of the summer, Noah, Noah’s wife, Noah’s daughter.
    One day, they wrapped themselves in the dried skins of some animals the shaman had turned inside out, and set out on foot in the southerly direction. There wasn’t an ark in Hudson Bay again.

DRIFTWOOD
    Local knowledge of Inuit births as it pertained to Mark Nuqac’s generation is largely hearsay, though there are some frequently reliable church and missionary records, too. As far as I could find out, Mark’s own parents were born near Baker Lake around 1890. Near the beginning of my time in Churchill Mark insisted that he was born in 1912, though near the end of my visit he mentioned that he was born in 1915.
    Four main groups of Mark’s extended community, or tribe, Caribou Eskimo (Inuit), were recognized by the Fifth Thule Expedition of 1921-24, led by the famous explorer-naturalist Knud Rasmussen, whose report was published in 1930. Mark claimed to have seen Rasmussen when he, Mark, was a boy. Neither Helen nor I believed him, but if one studies the demographics and calendar of Rasmussen’s travels, it could have been true. Anyway, the designated groups are Qairnirmiut, Hantiqtuurmiut, Harvaaqturrumiut, Paalirmiut . Later, a fifth group, Ahiarmiut, to the southwest on the upper Maguse and Kazan Rivers, was recognized. Mark of course made claims for “first contact” in biblical times, but written records place first contact with white people in the eighteenth century, with the founding of
Churchill. A famous summer trading center was Akiliniq on the northwest side of Beverly Lake, where driftwood had drawn Inuit people from great distances.
    Mark Nuqac remembered searching for driftwood there as a child. Here is part of the transcript of a conversation I had with Mark one evening in his kitchen. The subject was driftwood.
    HN:
You mentioned yesterday that you gathered driftwood at Akiliniq.
MN:
Yes, I said that. Yes.
HN:
With your family?
MN:
Children ran along. Older people walked. Looking for driftwood. One summer we found a lot of pieces on the same morning.
HN:
And it made for good fires?
MN:
Dried out. Yes.
HN:
Thank you for telling me. You look as if—. You look like you want to stop talking about this.
MN:
One time something from a (capsized?) ship washed up. That caused a problem, a quarrel.
HN:
About what had washed up? The quarrel.
MN:
“I found it!” “No, it was me, I found it!” “I found it!” “No, no, no!” We were children.
HN:
What was it—what had washed up?
MN:
There was a lot of driftwood, too. But this was ( looks to his wife for the right word in English )—a carved wooden face. From the—”
HN:
—bow. The bow of a ship. The very front, where all the wind and sea spray flies up.
MN:
Someone from a museum was up here. He heard us describe it. It was a woman’s face. He said it was very old, probably.
HN:
In what condition was it?
MN:
Condition?
HN:
You could see clearly that it was a woman’s face?
MN:
The schooner—the old ship—it went down. The woman’s face was let go. It traveled to Akiliniq. My brothers and me found it. We were running around shouting, “Look at that! Look at that! Look at the old face!” That was a wonderful thing.
HN:
Do you know where it is today?
MN:
That is what the person from the museum asked me.
HN:
Do you know where it is? I’d like very much to see it someday.
MN:
Nobody kept it. We didn’t keep it. But before we dried it and chopped it up—a lot was rotted out, but some