Saqiyuq: stories from the lives of three Inuit women; Nancy Wachowich with Apphia Agalakti Awa, Rhoda Kaukjak Katsak and Sandra Pikujak Katsak McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal; 1999 304 pp $34.95 (cloth) ISBN 0-7735-1887-8
FIGURE 1 In Saqiyuq Nancy Wachowich recounts the intriguing life stories of three Inuit women from successive generations on Baffin Island. In a critical half century their society has not only compressed three generations, but has moved from foot travel and dogsleds to snowmobiles and planes, from caribou and seal meat to packaged food, from igloos to prefabricated homes, from living alone on the land with their families to living in small, interrelated communities. Harsh independence and reliance on the land have given way to dependence and reliance on the south.
Saqiyuq is the Inuit word for a strong wind that suddenly changes direction. Clearly, the lives of these strong Inuit women have totally and irrevocably changed. Theirs is a simple story of survival and strength, the essence of their lives. Storytelling is an integral part of Inuit life and the means by which life skills and values are shared. Wachowich went to the North first to observe the Inuit. These women became her friends, and she later returned to record their stories on tape with the help of interpreters. Respectful of oral tradition, she has attempted to faithfully translate these women's oral histories into written narrative. If we listen closely we can learn much.
This triple biography helps us to understand that the vastness, harshness and beauty of the Arctic is the land and life the Inuit know and part of their souls. Aware of the dangers of their environment - injury, starvation, early childbirth, exposure to cold - it is the ways of white people - the Qallunaat - that they fear. White diseases - measles, tuberculosis, substance abuse - can destroy and kill. Welcomed to the North, the Qallunaat demanded dominance and changed the Inuit's reality forever. The Qallunaat they have contact with are typically in positions of power or authority, and the Inuit cannot forget the abuses of the all-too-recent past.
Most of the book is about Apphia, born in 1931 to the Inuit way. Raised by the extended family, she had an early, arranged marriage and became a frightened mother at age 15. She delivered her 11 children as her ancestors did, in an igloo with her husband and family present. The centre of her life was caring for her children and securing the necessities of food, clothing and shelter. What is related but not defined in Apphia's account is the slow pace of her life: that of a walk, occupied by the basics of eating, sleeping, feeding the children, looking after the dogs, preparing skins and making clothes. The Inuit cover thousands of miles of northland by foot and dogsled, without map or compass, with only the land and stories to guide them. The north can support only a small number of people scattered over large areas and travelling from camp to camp. The harsh laws of this environment gave Apphia a special joy in living and seeing other people, and a happiness in being together at church or in the community hall. She recalls how the ban on hunting and travelling on the Sabbath was strictly observed. Laws of nature must be respected or the spirits would not be with you, and white ways and religion were also accepted as strong and dangerous. Looking back on her life, Apphia considers that, as little as she had, it was sufficient; her family never felt poor until they moved into the settlement and had to use money. The last to come into the settlement, they made this change only because their children were taken into school. At age 43, she found the adjustment to settlement life difficult. But at least she could draw on her experience and her status as an elder to instil in her grand-children and others a love of the land and skills in survival in the North. FIGURE 2
The adjustment to Qallunaaq ways proved to be even harder for her daughter Rhoda, who at age 8 was sent to a residential school. How could she be reconciled to the loneliness of separation from all she knew, or to schedules and clocks, a strange and different people and a new language? But from her parents, who came for her each summer, she learned respect for the land and for the old ways. She married early and became a young mother. Her approach is not to be an individualist but to identify with the group, and she questions whether it is a good thing to be immersed in Qallunaaq culture.
Issues of identity are even more pressing for Rhoda's daughter Sandra, who was not born into the traditional culture and obviously thirsts for it. She is attached to her grandparents and values their approval, and it is truly the village - her extended family - that has raised her. She gives us insight into the struggle of Inuit youth with drugs, despair and suicide. Although fearful herself, Sandra empathizes with the anguish of others. The eczema she suffers from adds to her shyness and emotional pain, until in grade 12 she is immobilized by depression. Eventually she finds a traditional solution: to work through her problems by helping others. She considers becoming a doctor, but leaving the North and her family are too much to contemplate. This leaves the reader wondering by what contructive and creative means the Inuit can acquire health care workers and teachers who are of the North rather than transient nonintegrated professionals from the South.
Saqiyuq gives an intimate view of these women's lives and of their essential ability to adapt and survive. It is important to gather such life stories before all memory of traditional lifestyles is lost. This book offers a different perspective for readers of women's biographies and of "Canadiana," one that reveals the reality of the northern life and landscape and of a people who have the courage to find a future for themselves in a challenging and ever-changing landscape.