Current ads
Jobs
Tenders
Notices
General

Click below

Columns

SEX ED: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

May 24, 2002 - The ABCs of Hepatitis
May 31, 2002 - Trichomoniasis and the seven-year itch

Nunani

May 3, 2002 - The last great polar bear hunt: part two
May 10, 2002 - In my grandmother’s house
May 17, 2002 - Duck pancake: Part one
May 24, 2002 - Duck pancake: Part two

May 31, 2002 - In the bones of the world: Part one

SEX ED: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

May 24, 2002

The ABCs of Hepatitis

Hepatitis is a fancy medical word that means inflammation of the liver.

With this inflammation, or swelling, people with Hepatitis can get very sick. This column focuses on Hepatitis B, because it’s the virus that is most easily spread through sex. In northern Canada, we have higher rates of Hepatitis B than in the South. Other parts of the world such as Asia, South America, and Eastern Europe also have high rates.

How do you get it? Hepatitis B is extremely infectious — even more so than HIV — and it spreads in the same way. It can be passed from one person to the next in blood, semen, vaginal fluids and saliva. It can also pass from an infected woman to her baby during pregnancy or childbirth.

So there are lots of risky activities when it comes to Hepatitis: tattoos and piercing, sharing street drugs (straws for snorting and the more obvious risk of sharing needles for intravenous drugs or steroids) or sex with an infected person.

What happens if you get it? People infected with Hepatitis B may become jaundiced (turn yellow). This is most noticeable in the whites of the eyes, and skin may get yellow as well. The changes in the liver can affect output too — urine can turn dark like Coca-Cola, while poops start looking pale.

Appetite is often decreased, and there can be belly pain, barfing, fever, and fatigue. A very small number of people (less than one in a hundred) can get a severe initial infection and even die.

Unlike HIV, most people’s bodies manage to fight off the Hepatitis B virus when they are infected. They are still very infectious while their body fights the virus off. About one in 10 people with Hepatitis B won’t be able to get rid of it and will have it for life — they are called chronic carriers. Although they may live long lives, some will get liver cancer and cirrhosis (a shrivelled up, broken-down liver). Chronic carriers should see a doctor regularly.

Hepatitis C is another virus that affects the liver and is an enormous problem in Canada. Unlike Hepatitis B, there is no vaccine to decrease its spread. Although Hepatitis C can be spread through sex, it usually spreads from person to person through blood contact. Anyone infected with Hepatitis B or C should avoid Tylenol or alcohol. This is because both of these can do serious damage to a liver that is infected with a Hepatitis virus.

As with many STDs, a healthy-looking person can be infected and pass it on. So contact with blood, spit or sex secretions is always risky. Safer sex decisions make intimate relationships less risky — always use condoms and limit your number of partners. And do not share needles. Better yet, don’t use them at all!

The other prevention strategy is immunization. All children in Canada are immunized against Hepatitis B. In Nunavut, we do it soon after birth and this is the best time to do it.

The vaccine is given as a series of three shots and is 90 per cent effective in preventing infection. Many adults have not been immunized. If you are unsure if you have been immunized, or have questions about Hepatitis, check with your public health office or health center staff. Other sources of information include the Canadian Liver Foundation (1-800-563-5483, www.liver.ca) and www.hepnet.com.

Confidential questions or comments? Send an e-mail to nunatsiaqsexed@hotmail.com or drop a note by the news office.

Want to read past Sex Ed columns? Go to www.nunatsiaq.com and click on columns. Next week: Trichomoniasis.

Madeleine Cole is a physician at the Baffin Regional Hospital.

TOP

May 31, 2002

Trichomoniasis and the seven-year itch

Trich (pronounced "trick") and scabies are two non-dangerous infections that are usually transmitted during sexual activity. But just because something does not cause major damage doesn’t mean it cannot be uncomfortable and drive you completely bonkers!

Trichomoniasis (or trich for short) is an infection caused by a very tiny parasite. A parasite is a little critter that can actually be seen using a microscope.

Trich is usually sexually transmitted from one body to the next but it can also survive for 24 hours on wet surfaces such as saunas, towels and bathing suits.

How do you know if you have it? In women, there is often a greenish, sometimes frothy, unpleasant smelling discharge from the vagina. There can be intense vaginal itch, pain when peeing or with intercourse and swelling or redness in the area.

In men, there can be discharge from the penis, irritation at the tip and pain when peeing.

Treatment involves a medication called metronidazole and can be taken as pills, or women can also use it as a vaginal cream. Both partners need to be treated at the same time to prevent reinfecting each other. Once you’ve both finished all the pills, and the symptoms have disappeared, you can have sex again.

Sarcoptes scabiei (scabies) are tiny mites. They are larger critters than trichomonas at about 0.3 mm with four wee pairs of legs. Scabies usually spread by skin-to-skin contact although the mites can live for two days on clothing or bedding. For this reason it is not always sexually transmitted, and in communities faced with crowding and poverty there are higher rates of scabies.

How do you know if you’ve got this one? Scabies cause intense itching — most often in the groin, armpits and hands and feet. For some reason, the itch is often worse at night. The rashes caused by scratching can get infected and cause even more problems.

Because they are tiny and hard to see, scabies should be considered in anyone with a generalized itch that doesn’t go away. In the past, it was colloquially called the "seven-year itch" (if it wasn’t diagnosed properly).

How do you get rid of it? A special medicated shampoo is applied from the neck down and left on for about 10 hours before rinsing. A medication to help with the itch can be prescribed as well. But the work is not done yet — clothing and bedding needs to be thoroughly washed. All family members and close friends, even if they aren’t itchy, need to be treated too.

Although condoms will not prevent scabies, they do decrease the risk of getting trich along with all the other dangerous STDs like HIV and chlamydia. Limiting the number of sexual partners is the other tried and true advice when it comes to preventing any sexually transmitted infections. Trich and scabies can be more than an inconvenience, and the itch is something you can do without — play safe!

Confidential questions or comments? Send an e-mail to nunatsiaqsexed@hotmail.com or drop a note by the news office.

Want to read past Sex Ed columns? Go to www.nunatsiaq.com and click on columns. Next week: STD wrap up.

Madeleine Cole is a physician at Baffin Regional Hospital.

TOP

Nunani

May 3, 2002

The last great polar bear hunt: part two

RACHEL ATTITUQ QITSUALIK

As an adult, I was glued to that old Inummarik’s bear story. But hearing his tale, seeing those scars, re-asserted all my childhood fears.

And something else.

As a pre-adolescent girl, I clutched at the qamutik, muscles taught. Why, I cursed under my breath, did my father favour hunting these animals? They tasted terrible (at least to me). Their skin was not worth the danger to life and limb — especially my life, my limbs. Didn’t my father realize it might maim him, leaving me to try shooting it with a .303 that, frankly, I didn’t feel confident with? How would I get back to camp with his body and whatever dogs had been injured? Would the dogs even obey me? Kusik would, maybe. She was the mother of them all — the best of them, at that. I started counting dogs I thought might obey me, ultimately depressed with the results. Fine, I would take Kusik, leaving the rest on the sea ice. I felt bad at the thought of them starving, but worse at the thought of doing the same myself.

And every time I looked down at those dread prints, those dinner-plates with toes, panic gripped me.

What if my dad missed and hit one of the dogs instead? What if the bear got away? What was to keep it from turning and hunting us? What if bears actually liked to eat people?

Would it kill us like a seal — ripping our faces off?

My mind was jolted back to reality as the sled hit jagged ice. I had never heard of a bear chasing a dog-team, but I still noted where to find the extra shells for the .222 rifle, which I was confident with. If there was trouble, I could at least help out.

An electric current passed through the entire dog-team, even though my father had not signalled to begin any chase. They quivered with some primal instinct, focussed, sniffing the air.

Bear.

No! Now what? It was bad for the dogs to bolt too soon. They needed to save their energy for surrounding the bear, containing it for the hunter’s shot.

One or two of the experienced dogs were accelerating, a sure sign that their instincts were kicking in. Kusik, as usual, kept a steady, mature gait, attentive but not foolishly overeager. She knew the score. My father was the hunt leader, and it wasn’t a hunt until he signalled.

He glanced over at me, ordered me to take the .303 out of its case. I passed it to him butt-first, keeping the muzzle well away from both of us, as per firearms protocol. I was prepared to jump at his signal. My job was to carry the extra shells, keeping well behind him and the dogs.

I could already see a distant, yellowed form, contrasted against grey clouds and glare. He was walking in his pigeon-toed, bear way, seemingly oblivious to our presence — or perhaps only to our importance.

"Qu-qu-qu-quq!"

My father’s shrill call had only one meaning. The dogs shot forward as one, domestication set aside, exulting in their wolfish ancestry. Aside from pulling, this was their purpose: to aid their ally, man, against another predator. The hair along their backs stood straight like spines, teeth flashing ivory in the crisp air. But their attack was disciplined, sustained, heedless of individual concern.

A burst of fire, and it was over almost before it had registered with me. Fears dispelled, I simply stared at the body of that majestic creature. It was a moment before I realized that I had been admiring it the entire time — its irreplaceable beauty, its power and grace.

This time, we had been the predators, stacking the deck in our favour. Next time, who knew? It was impossible to keep the deck stacked, and this playing field tended to level itself.

My father thanked the bear’s spirit for allowing us to capture it that day, saying that we hoped we would be as brave if, one day, we stood in its stead. Speak for yourself, I thought, looking upon that great frame, speaking toward it in my mind.

It will take a lifetime of summoning up my courage to face you. And perhaps I will never be as brave as you have been today, defending your life. I can only hope to try.

Pijariiqpunga.

TOP

May 10, 2002

In my grandmother’s house

RACHEL ATTITUQ QITSUALIK

If you could see a picture of my grandmother, you would know that she was a true Northern Beauty — raven hair, strong features, toned arms.

You would be able to see that she was not only sure and beautiful, but solid, emotionally and spiritually. She had to be, in order to raise a family of half a dozen (or so) boys, fulfill the role of a hunter’s wife, and co-lead a camp of 30 extended family members. Not only did she have to provide enough direction and stability to survive in her unforgiving environment, but she had to see that her family actually thrived within it.

In photographs of her, she seems just under 40 years old, always running a busy Inuit household, a model of her time. She oversaw the making of an endless stream of hand-designed clothing, able to withstand the needs of the seasons, the wear and tear of a hunting lifestyle.

That would mean, among other things, successions of duffel socks, outer socks, sealskin boots, mitts, pants, parkas, woven belts, boys’ wear — often specialized for alternating wet or dry environments. She also possessed the often-times secret Inuit sewing skills to construct men’s hunting wear for different seasons and weather conditions. To top it off, everything had to be made according to her own region’s idea of style.

To run a household of her size, and deal with the many game animals my grandfather provided for the camp, she would have had to process several hundred sealskins and countless char. She would have had to scrape and dry caribou-skin bedding for three households (her own, my great-grandmother’s, and those of various aunts and uncles in the camps). She was also responsible for the gifts to myriad cousins, nieces, nephews, and us grandchildren (on both sides, of course).

As the wife of the camp leader, there were celebrations and meetings to organize and oversee. These would include Sunday services, requiring of each person a clean face and new set of clothing. I’m not even sure how she managed all of this along with the everyday stuff, like cooking, cleaning, and maintaining the home.

There was no electricity or running water, and therefore no dishwasher or vacuum cleaner to speed things along. And, of course, there was no TV to keep all the kids occupied — which was probably healthier for them, anyway.

She had a tremendous store of traditional knowledge to pass on to her children: how to light and maintain a qulliq, both summer and winter; how to make specialty Inuit "treats" like aluk, igunaq and ujjaq.

There were a lot of details about that lifestyle that I hadn’t noticed until adulthood, until it was all gone. When I study old photographs, for example, I note that everyone wore woven belts. And then there was the complex beadwork, and the inlaid designs on their clothing — all time-consuming and intricate work; not at all for the faint of heart. It is a curse of adulthood that it is only by the time we are grown that we can understand the things we should have appreciated as children.

It is somehow tragic and unfair that her image exists now only in photographs, images that fill me with wonder and amazement at this incredible woman. Mostly, I wonder: Where did she find the time?

All of this work, and yet — unlike modern people — her face doesn’t show a trace of stress or regret. She radiates life, fulfillment. Her children look healthy, lacking for nothing. The camp looks well cared for. It thrives.

Several of my aunts and uncles, in those photos, proudly display pets. Pets! Think about the resources required for such a luxury — but there they are, whether geese, seagulls, jaegers, ducks, or even a seal pup.

Where would my formidable grandmother, Qillaq, have acquired the sort of education necessary to run such an environment? What core of strength and discipline did she access in order to do so?

Perhaps simply from her own heritage, from my equally amazing great-grandmother, Arnoujaq. Her very name means, "Like a Woman," as though it were a tribute to the strength of women and mothers everywhere.

With this in mind, and as Mother’s Day approaches, do I entreat each of us to regard the special power of the feminine, to regard our matrons, whose nature produces and preserves.

Pijariiqpunga.

TOP

May 17, 2002

Duck pancake: Part one

RACHEL ATTITUQ QITSUALIK

It was my first year back from residential school — the first year that I actually got to live with my family after being away for so long. There were new experiences, such as learning how to deal with siblings who had sprung up in my absence, creating new family dynamics. It was all very exciting, but often-times confusing.

In residential school, I had lived with a couple of hundred children roughly my age. At home, I got to have a little sister. She was two years younger than me and cute as a button. While I often thought she didn’t "get it" regarding a lot of things, you could tell she was working hard at it. Every year, she grew taller and smarter.

My father was a terrific hunter, but he was also a minister at that time. We lived in a little wooden house that he had built as an Anglican mission house, and all three of us sisters slept on a bed-platform. We were close to the coal-burning stove, so it was quite warm and cozy. My pet lemming had his nest behind the cooking stove, and would come out to greet me every morning. It was a very civil lemming.

As children, we were always bringing home animals. When we weren’t, my father was bringing them to us, as in the case of my pet snowy owl (which wasn’t as much fun as you might think — it just stared, rotated its neck, and demanded food). There were always boxes for various living creatures tucked away in odd corners.

And there was my sister’s pet duckling. It was a loveable ball of fluffy down, which "peep-peep"-ed day and night. It would only eat bread soaked in milk, and never grew very big. I think it was missing something in its diet, something we were not providing. But it seemed happy enough, following us around everywhere we went.

One autumn day, we brought in some much more robust, well-grown ducklings that we had found near a lake. Being wild, they pooped all over the house, quickly becoming unpopular — especially when they peeped louder than the still-tiny original duckling.

My little sister was greatly alarmed, concerned that the bigger ducklings would conspire to eat her duckling in the middle of the night. We tried explaining to her that they wouldn’t, even if they could. But she would not be swayed in her opinion, and one night insisted on taking her little duckling to bed with her, to keep it safe.

I’m not quite sure how to best describe what happened, so I’ll state it plainly: The duckling was as flat as a pancake the next morning. She had rolled over her pet in the night, sleeping on top of it.

Now, I know it’s evil, but I have to admit that, between the expression of horror on my sister’s face, and the look of that utterly flattened duck, the comedy of it all just got to me. I forced myself to turn away, to pretend to be coughing or sneezing.

As much as I hated myself, I couldn’t stop laughing. And I know I wasn’t alone, because even my older sister was turning away — you could see her shoulders shuddering with her giggles. My little sister only stood there, emitting a plaintive, "Wahhhh!"

We gave it a burial in a shoe box lined with facial tissue, and a few flowers. To this day, I don’t know the fate of the other ducks. I heard that my pet owl was caught by a hunter shortly after I released it to the wild, so it probably ended up as dog food.

In many ways, having a lot of animals as pets is a good learning experience. Pets teach us, and continually remind us, of the differences and similarities between other species and ourselves. Such an experience helps us to understand our own nature. Witnessing their various needs, various lives, various deaths, we learn to contemplate our own.

Ironically, while surrounded by dogs, Inuit have not traditionally regarded dogs as pets, since dogs have been reserved for work. It seems Inuit have always loved having pets, but these are generally "non-useful" animals, stumbled upon out while on the land.

(Continued next week.)

TOP

May 24, 2002

Duck pancake: Part two

RACHEL ATTITUQ QITSUALIK

One could easily argue that keeping wild pets is a tradition among Inuit. A few years back, when I acquired several photographs of my grandparents, I noted an odd photo in the collection.

My grandparents were both concentrating on something in a bucket lashed to a qamutik. I examined it more closely, and realized that they were feeding a seal pup they were carrying with them.

This, I concluded, was probably the pet seal my father had been known to keep. It would come when he called it. He raised it to adulthood, but was later pressured into killing it so that a photographer could get a shot of "traditional" Inuit hunting.

Regrettably, this seems to be the all-too-common fate of wild pets. Those taken in — like my sister’s squashed duck — never seem to last long. At best, they are raised until the age of release, but are later handicapped in the wild. They have no survival skills and no natural fear of humans, so they are easily bagged by a hunter — as was the fate of my owl. Inuit seem to have always recognized this problem, since folklore abounds with cautionary tales of pets that get out of control or leave forever after being taken for granted.

In Inuktitut, the word for pet is "tiguaq" — the taken one. The word is similar in flavour to "adopted." Not all animals make good pets, of course, but Inuit have never failed to experiment, raising anything they find. Wolves and foxes are known as the worst pet material, since they consistently resist domestication.

Loons, and some species of tern, are just too fragile to survive among humans, generally requiring some specialized diet. On the other hand, seagulls, jaegers, ravens, seals and polar bears by all accounts make excellent, highly intelligent pets. I’ve often heard stories of camps that raised polar bear cubs to adulthood — sort of "communal" pets. And I have several black-and-whites of people with their pet bear cub running around on a long tether.

It is hard to know what kind of balance to strike when wanting pets. We have a responsibility to other species to see that we don’t screw them up by taking them out of their natural environment. But then again, we are part of their natural environment. And we have a responsibility to ourselves — as a human animal in the keeping of our own psyche — to maintain our psychological health through contact with the other creatures we evolved alongside of.

Felines used to commonly be accused of cruelty, of toying with their prey, but now we know that this is how they learn to hunt. Killer whales have been observed playing with live seals, tossing them back and forth for a while before eating them. A predator must understand its prey before it can catch it, and interaction with a prey animal in a "safe" environment is vital to such understanding.

We, too, are predators, but we have developed the ability to channel our tendencies into alternate behaviours. To some degree, our own interest in animals derives from this predatorial heritage. We use pets to practice our socialization instead of our killing. We learn to empathize with them, and therefore each other.

Yet as the potential destroyers of our environment, we have now become the stewards of it, bringing into question whether or not it is a good idea to keep wild pets anymore. Ironically, we can ill-afford our old learning tools.

Some overpopulated cultures have legislated against having pets at all. But it seems to me that the lack of them somehow makes humans more icy, stiff and neurotic. I don’t want to see this happen to Inuit. Similarly, I don’t want traditional skills to suffer for lack of interaction with the land and its inhabitants.

It is a dilemma, and one that I am not wise enough to solve at the moment. How do we nourish our love of animals without harming them? Too far to one side, and we end up lonely and neurotic. Too far to the other, and we end up with a duck pancake.

Although I often lie awake at night, thinking about the time my father offered to get me a gyrfalcon. It would have been beautiful, and I would have fed it lemmings, and taught it to hunt, and…

Pijariiqpunga.

TOP

May 31, 2002

In the bones of the world: Part one

If you hear enough Inuit stories, something may strike you as odd, perhaps even a bit eerie. Strangely, it is not the magical, imaginative occurrences — such as animal transformations and shamanic feats — that are so peculiar. Instead, it is that you may recognize things that existed in the ancient past, things that have somehow wormed their way into myth and legend.

Taitsumaniguuq:

A hunter was having the poorest sort of luck. He was paddling along in his kayak, despondent. He hadn’t sighted any prey, and had pretty much given up. He was half-heartedly swishing his paddle through the water, watching the ripples trail away from it, when he thought he heard a grunt.

He looked up to see a distant figure standing on an ice-cake, and wondered why he hadn’t spotted him earlier. It was obviously someone who had become stranded.

He paddled over. As he approached, he could see that it was a very short, heavy-set man. The stranded man looked quite dour, but even from this distance the hunter could see that his clothes were very finely made — perhaps the finest he had ever seen.

Saying nothing, the hunter brought his kayak up to the ice-cake, stepped out of it, and secured it firmly. While he did this, he periodically looked over his shoulder at the stranded man, and noted that the man seemed fascinated at the way the hunter secured his kayak. It was as though the stranded figure had never seen anyone secure a kayak along the ice edge before.

The hunter then stepped closer to the stranded man, hands up in greeting. The man simply glared sullenly, stepping back a pace. At this, the hunter stopped and asked:

"How come you’re out here with no kayak?"

The man squinted distrustfully, before answering,

"My kayak drifted away. That’s the third time this season, and it’s beginning to upset me."

The hunter was more than a bit taken aback by this confession, and unsure of what to say, when the stranded man asked,

"I noticed you had a way of keeping your kayak from drifting off. Do you mind showing me how you did that?"

The hunter agreed, and walked the stranded man over to his kayak, showing him how to secure it. While he did so, his eyes kept glancing over to the stranger’s bow, slung over his shoulder. The bow was so long (or perhaps it was simply that the man was so short) that its lower end trailed along the ground as he walked.

But that wasn’t what the hunter found so remarkable. Instead, it was the workmanship of the weapon. Unlike the bows the hunter was used to, the stranded man’s bow was constructed almost entirely from a single piece, perhaps whalebone. The cordage was perfectly lashed and wound, such that the whole bow seemed as much a work of art as a tool. The hunter had never seen its like.

He drew out his explanation of how to secure the kayak, giving himself time to think. Now, he was more puzzled than ever. He couldn’t figure out how it was that this stranger possessed such fantastic clothes and tools, and at once was so incompetent that he could not secure a kayak, as a child might be able to do.

For a brief instant, the hunter entertained the idea that perhaps the short man simply had a very competent wife. But he quickly dismissed this notion, since it could not explain the bow — which the man himself would have had to make.

Somewhat disturbed, he smiled nervously at the stranded man, who smiled back.

"Thanks," he said, "I’ll try to remember that trick. Now, can you give me a lift back home?"

The hunter’s smile faded.

"I can’t," he said. "This is just a one-person kayak. You’ll be too heavy."

The stranded man began to laugh at this. For a moment, he was doubled up with laughter, and the hunter stepped away from him, wondering if he was crazy.

At the sight of the hunter’s alarm, the stranded man curbed his laughter a bit, but still couldn’t entirely quit chuckling. He beamed at the hunter and said,

"You Inuit… hilarious! I can make myself light or heavy at will!"

(Continued next week.)

TOP

Advertising
Specs, rates,
& maps
Multi-paper
buying services
About the market
E-mail ad dept

More Information