inua, the soul of the fused human-animal being. Now the Earth is thick—that is, noisy, congested, and secular. There seem to be plenty of boundaries, but no trans-species passages.
When Ray leaves, Joe wanders around the rooms of the community center like a caged lion. “We’re like sitting ducks,” he says. The whiteout intensifies. He puts his nose against glass: “Even if we could see, there’s probably not much to see. The old ways are gone.”
Joe stirs water into a packet of freeze-dried soup. Later, he starts remembering. He remembers his father’s skin boat, his umiaq, made of two and a half split walrus hides. The skins lasted two years, he tells me, three at the most, and the old ones were recycled and used to patch the holes.
He remembers knives made of carved ivory being thrust into a ringed seal’s heart. He remembers eating fresh walrus breast: part meat, part milk. He remembers dances that lasted a week or a month, before the idea of schedules was imposed from the outside. He remembers a ghost in the family’s shed down five snow steps from the house where the skins and hunting gear were kept. The ghost was a neighbor lady who sat in the corner chewing tobacco and sewing.
He remembers the Wales man who fell in love with a woman up the coast from Wales at Cape Espenberg, who drove his dogsled out onto the moving ice in the spring—he knew which way it would drift—and used it as a way to visit his girlfriend.
He remembers a person on Little Diomede Island who became a walrus. When that walrus-person returned to live among humans, he found he could no longer stand their smell, so he lived alone at the edge of the village. “Maybe I feel a little bit like him now,” Joe says. “Not repulsed, but apart from everyone here.”
Early stories of life along the Bering Strait shaped the mind, as much as humans shaped the story. A man named Apakak from Nunatak River said: “ Tulungersaq, Raven, formed all life in the world. He began in the shape of a man and groped around in blindness. He was squatting in darkness when he discovered himself. Where he was he did not know, nor did he know how he had come to be there. But he breathed and had life. Darkness was all around him and he could see nothing. He felt with his hands. The world was clay, everything around him was dead clay. He passed his fingers over himself, and felt his face, nose, eyes, mouth. He was alive.”
The multi is empty and the lights are out. Snow light flickers, a kind of polar cinema. Joe says Apakak’s origin story is also a description of an artist at work. “We all live in darkness; we all made things here in Wales, we are all blind most of the time. Some things we made were for survival and some for sheer delight. One was not deemed better than the other.”
It comes like a flood, Joe’s remembering. He remembers the bowhead whale and bearded-seal hunts in the spring and fall, hunts that were central to life from Wales to Point Hope. As soon as breakup occurred in April or May, a “road” was cut though pressure ridges and the umiat were dragged out to the open leads beyond the ice edge. Bearded seal, ugruk, were especially abundant. The women processed the blubber and meat and preserved them in seal-intestine bags for the winter.
To be hunted and to hunt, to eat, share food, to thrive and be abundant, to shake the mind with mask dances and animal stories represented a continual, trans-species cycle of necessity, generosity, and gratitude. Once broken, the essential bonds of every Inuit nation fell apart. Kirk Oviok from Point Hope said: “The whales have ears and are more like people. The first batch of whales seen would show up to check which ones in the whaling crew would be more hospitable to be caught. Then the whales would come back to their pack and tell them about the situation, stating, ‘We have someone available for us,’” as if to say they were looking for a hunter to take them, willing to give themselves
When Ray leaves, Joe wanders around the rooms of the community center like a caged lion. “We’re like sitting ducks,” he says. The whiteout intensifies. He puts his nose against glass: “Even if we could see, there’s probably not much to see. The old ways are gone.”
Joe stirs water into a packet of freeze-dried soup. Later, he starts remembering. He remembers his father’s skin boat, his umiaq, made of two and a half split walrus hides. The skins lasted two years, he tells me, three at the most, and the old ones were recycled and used to patch the holes.
He remembers knives made of carved ivory being thrust into a ringed seal’s heart. He remembers eating fresh walrus breast: part meat, part milk. He remembers dances that lasted a week or a month, before the idea of schedules was imposed from the outside. He remembers a ghost in the family’s shed down five snow steps from the house where the skins and hunting gear were kept. The ghost was a neighbor lady who sat in the corner chewing tobacco and sewing.
He remembers the Wales man who fell in love with a woman up the coast from Wales at Cape Espenberg, who drove his dogsled out onto the moving ice in the spring—he knew which way it would drift—and used it as a way to visit his girlfriend.
He remembers a person on Little Diomede Island who became a walrus. When that walrus-person returned to live among humans, he found he could no longer stand their smell, so he lived alone at the edge of the village. “Maybe I feel a little bit like him now,” Joe says. “Not repulsed, but apart from everyone here.”
Early stories of life along the Bering Strait shaped the mind, as much as humans shaped the story. A man named Apakak from Nunatak River said: “ Tulungersaq, Raven, formed all life in the world. He began in the shape of a man and groped around in blindness. He was squatting in darkness when he discovered himself. Where he was he did not know, nor did he know how he had come to be there. But he breathed and had life. Darkness was all around him and he could see nothing. He felt with his hands. The world was clay, everything around him was dead clay. He passed his fingers over himself, and felt his face, nose, eyes, mouth. He was alive.”
The multi is empty and the lights are out. Snow light flickers, a kind of polar cinema. Joe says Apakak’s origin story is also a description of an artist at work. “We all live in darkness; we all made things here in Wales, we are all blind most of the time. Some things we made were for survival and some for sheer delight. One was not deemed better than the other.”
It comes like a flood, Joe’s remembering. He remembers the bowhead whale and bearded-seal hunts in the spring and fall, hunts that were central to life from Wales to Point Hope. As soon as breakup occurred in April or May, a “road” was cut though pressure ridges and the umiat were dragged out to the open leads beyond the ice edge. Bearded seal, ugruk, were especially abundant. The women processed the blubber and meat and preserved them in seal-intestine bags for the winter.
To be hunted and to hunt, to eat, share food, to thrive and be abundant, to shake the mind with mask dances and animal stories represented a continual, trans-species cycle of necessity, generosity, and gratitude. Once broken, the essential bonds of every Inuit nation fell apart. Kirk Oviok from Point Hope said: “The whales have ears and are more like people. The first batch of whales seen would show up to check which ones in the whaling crew would be more hospitable to be caught. Then the whales would come back to their pack and tell them about the situation, stating, ‘We have someone available for us,’” as if to say they were looking for a hunter to take them, willing to give themselves
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