Those who keep culture alive, everywhere in Quebec | Keeping the Inuit cultural flame alive

In this summer series, our journalists meet people and institutions that promote culture outside of major centers.

(Kangiqsujuaq, Nunavik) Mary Arngak Pilurtuut diligently tends to the row of flames on her qulliqa traditional Inuit lamp filled with moss and seal fat. With the tip of her branch, she strives to equalize the height of the strips of fire. Watching her engage in this ceremonial exercise, one cannot help but see in it the perfect illustration of her commitment to reviving and transmitting the culture of her ancestors, and thus chasing away the hovering shadow of a slow extinction.

The scene takes place at the Kangiqsujuaq Visitor and Interpretation Centre, a small museum in a northern village in Nunavik, on the shores of the Hudson Strait. This is where expeditions depart for Pingualuit National Park, about sixty kilometres to the southwest, known for its meteorite crater. That day, a handful of Quebec travellers are preparing to venture there. But before setting off into the tundra, another, little-known world is revealed to them: that of culture inuit.

Mary Pilurtuut, director since 2017 of the national park managed by Nunavik Parks, presents to guests various aspects of local practices and customs, including the maintenance of the qulliqa stone lamp that was once used to light and heat igloos. However, visitors are not the only spectators of the demonstration. On the sides of the fifty-year-old, teenage girls and young Inuit women, all dressed in traditional clothing, watch and participate in the activity. “Move the moss a little here, add some oil there,” recommends M.^me Pilurtuut to the apprentices, who must ensure that the flames remain at a similar height.

Because her role as director is not limited to the environmental and tourism management of the site. Her mandate has a dimension that is particularly close to her heart: education and the transmission of knowledge and know-how, the survival of which has been seriously faltering since the first contacts of the Inuit with Westerners, their subsequent sedentarization and the waves of evangelization, particularly from the 1950s. School groups and young people are also regularly invited to activities in the center’s pavilions.

You don’t have to look far to find signs of Mary Pilurtuut’s efforts: the orange flames of her qulliq illuminate them on his face, highlighting his traditional tattoos — a prime example of a custom that has gradually been abandoned over the past few decades.

As proof, the designs sketched on her forearm (a series of symbols representing her family, skills and passions) were done in New Zealand, by a Maori. “He first said that someone from my community should do it, but he finally agreed after realizing that it was not possible. But in recent years, Inuit across Canada are re-appropriating the art of tattooing and its meanings, we are relearning them from Alaska or Nunavut,” she explains, pointing to the dots sketched in the extension of her eyes.

“Before corrective glasses were introduced to the Inuit, the belief was that these marks improved vision. Today, they are considered to improve the vision of the heart and mind,” illustrates M^me Pilurtuut, who sports another triangular symbol on her forehead; the mark of a life accomplishment. In her case, it was her terms as mayor of the village, spread over seven years, from 2005 to 2012.

A bridge between generations

On the sidelines of the session of qulliqyoung Inuit engage in a demonstration of katajjaqthat is, throat singing, another practice threatened with extinction after its ban by missionaries.

Today, thanks in part to the impetus of the park’s director, the techniques of these playful musical duets are being transmitted more fluidly between generations.

The young participants prove that they have understood the rules of the art: holding each other by the forearms, they sing tunes imitating the sounds of nature, such as the wind or the flight of mosquitoes. The first one to laugh or get tangled up loses the game, which they play along with all their heart.

These revivals of traditions take place under the watchful eye of Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk, depicted on a large poster in the background of the interpretation centre. This author and artist, a native of Kangiqsujuaq, was the first to compose a novel in Inuktitut, Sanaaqa book featuring slices of local daily life. Mary Pilurtuut, who knew the writer who died in 2007, is now working in the same direction, encouraging elders to record and share their stories with Inuit youth and beyond. Thus, our Quebec explorers will have the opportunity, during their journey, to cross paths with Lukasi Ullatuarusiq Nappaaluk, one of Mitiarjuk’s children, a precious witness to a way of life on the path to oblivion.

Preserving stories goes hand in hand with preserving techniques and know-how, such as scraping seal skins to make boots and clothing, or the project of reconstructing a qayaka traditional boat also made from seal skins. With the collaboration of education technician Patrick Maltais and biologist Corentin Chaillon, the challenge is to stitch together the faded knowledge of the manufacturing method.

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Thus, in Kangiqsujuaq, we come across actors determined to rekindle the flame of arts and customs, with a view to passing on a stale torch. No doubt future generations will be able to tell them nakurmiik – THANKS.

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