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Fr. Mary’s message

Oblate missionary’s manuscript tells the story of Nunguvik, a settlement with a bad reputation

JANE GEORGE

Oral history tells how the unfortunate residents of the ancient settlement of Nunguvik died after an old woman put a curse on them.

"It seems this local belief that there was a curse stopped many generations of Inuit from settling at Nunguvik, because we don’t see any signs of recent occupation, nor any signs of contact with Qallunaat," Fr. Guy Mary-Rousselière wrote in a book on the settlement, about 100 kilometres west of Pond Inlet on Navy Board Inlet.

But the bad reputation of Nunguvik, whose name means "place at the end" or "where it all ends," didn’t deter Pond Inlet’s former resident priest and archeologist, better known as Fr. Mary, from exploring the site.

Fr. Mary spent 19 summers excavating Nunguvik and the nearby site of Saatut. There, he uncovered artifacts that tell much about the region’s 2,000 years of human occupation.

Born in France, Fr. Mary was an Oblate missionary who first arrived in Canada’s North in 1938. An artist, filmmaker and writer, he made a lifelong study of Inuit language and culture, past and present.

He served in Dene communities, and then in Igloolik, Baker Lake, Repulse Bay, Pelly Bay and Pond Inlet. Monica Ataguttaaluk’s stories about Tuniit ruins near his mission in Igloolik sparked Fr. Mary’s passion for archeology in 1946.

He first visited Nunguvik with Lazarusi Qajak in 1965.

"He was eager to show me, a little more than one kilometre north of the site, the footsteps of the Tuniit, who, according to tradition, preceded the ancestors of the Inuit.... If you can believe the legend, the imprints, which are clearly visible in the moss on each side of the narrow path, were left by a Tuniq who, while carrying a walrus on his back, was weighted down by his catch. These marks, probably originally left in the half-frozen spongy moss of autumn, seemed to have been maintained by the generations of those who had come by that way," Fr. Mary wrote in his study of the site.

The manuscript was recently published by the Canadian Museum of Civilization as a tribute to Fr. Mary’s work.

Nunguvik et Saatut: Sites paléoeskimaux de Navy Board Inlet, île de Baffin contains the original-French language manuscript by Fr. Mary, in which he meticulously outlines his excavations at Nunguvik and Saatut. The book includes new photos of the many objects he uncovered there.

In 1994, Fr. Mary died in a fire at the mission in Pond Inlet. The fire also destroyed many of his notes and photographs, as well as tapes and written records of oral and family histories.

Several thousand catalogued specimens that were stored at the Canadian Museum of Civilization did survive — including reports and the manuscript that form the basis of the book.

"There’s gaps because some data perished in the fire," says Patricia Sutherland, an archeologist at the Canadian Museum of Civilization who compiled the book.

While preparing for its publication in 1999, Sutherland restudied many of Fr. Mary’s finds, which were in storage at the museum.

She was instantly struck by the significance of the collection.

"Nunguvik is among the most important of the archeological sites so far discovered in the Eastern Arctic," Sutherland writes, in English, in Nunguvik and Saatut Revisited.

Among the finds tucked away for 20 years were two pieces of yarn, carved wooden pieces, bow parts, wooden blade sheaths and many carvings of human faces that appear to indicate contact between Dorset Inuit and visitors who may have been Vikings.

Fr. Mary noted the quantity of wooden artifacts made from wood not generally found in the Arctic. He identified a set of wooden specimens as model skis.

"Fr. Mary did consider the idea of a Norse connection at Nunguvik.... His hesitation to explore the idea further seems to have been based on the relatively early radiocarbon dates associated with much of this material...but possibly also because of fear of academic disapproval," Sutherland writes.

He also uncovered many Dorset and Thule Inuit artifacts, including stone spear points, harpoons, needles, and toy caribou, harpoons, kamotiit and spoons.

Fr. Mary worked closely with residents of Pond Inlet during his excavations to better understand the finds from Nunguvik and Saatut.

A contribution to the book by Cornelius Nutarak of Pond Inlet relates the following anecdote: "Father Mary and I wanted to experiment with a Dorset harpoon to see if it would work. So I made a harpoon head out of antler like the one from Saatut. From the boat, I harpooned a seal with it. I started to cut up the seal with the rope and harpoon still in it. I told Father Mary to come and see the harpoon in the seal. Father Mary exclaimed "Asuilak!" (It works!). We believe that the harpoon that we have found at Saatut was used for hunting seal. Inside the seal, the harpoon was sideways the way it ought to be. I believe all the things we found were used by our ancestors."

Nunguvik et Saatut: Sites paléoeskimaux de Navy Board Inlet, île de Baffin, Guy Mary-Rousselière; Mercury Collection, 2002, ISSN 0316-1854, no. 162; pp. 200. $29.95. Available by calling (800) 555-5621, by e-mail at publications@civilization.ca, by visiting http://www.cyberboutique.civilization.ca, or by writing Mail Order Services, the Canadian Museum of Civilization, 100 Laurier St., P.O. Box 3100, Sta. B, Hull, QC J8X 4H2.

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