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Back to November, 2002 Archive Index
Columns Nunani November 1, 2002 - Feathered Friend, Feather Foe (Part Seven) Mamuq November 1, 2002 - So many ways to cook Arctic char Nunani
Feathered Friend, Feather Foe (Part Seven) RACHEL QITSUALIK I shall now conclude my series on the importance of the raven to Inuit culture. This has been an unusual series in that, from the beginning, it has been plagued with interruptions (the details of which I won’t plague you, the reader, with). But such discontinuity has been useful in one respect: it has allowed some time in which readers can approach me, on the street, at the grocery store, regarding the articles. In each instance when I’ve been approached, the question has been the same: What happened to the raven? Honestly, the question delights me, but isn’t surprising. The reason I’ve had ravens on the brain is that Inuit culture has always held such a special place for them. They are the great hecklers and pranksters of the Arctic’s windswept haunts. In the last few articles, I’ve been writing out a very, very ancient Alaskan creation myth — the story of how the raven finds himself existent, alone, the first being. His own existence is a mystery to him. All he knows is that he has the power to create other plants and animals. His first act is to create a plant, a beach-pea, which produces a man from its pod. The raven takes responsibility for this accidental creation by caring for the man and teaching him how to survive. Now everyone wants to know how the story ends. The truth? It doesn’t. The raven’s tale is not only one of the most widespread myths in Alaska, but also one of the longest. The raven is the great culture-hero and numen of Alaska, both creator and adventurer. The creation of the plant and the man were only the beginning. It was the raven who deliberately made woman, realizing that the man needed her. As he did so, that first plant still lay on the beach, hatching out three more men. And so the raven created mates for them as well. Together, they were the beginnings of the human race. They propagated while the raven himself flew all around the world, creating every kind of creature — even other ravens, images of himself. But he got into a lot of trouble as well; such as when he got himself stuck in a whale’s belly, for example; or like the time when he had to will himself to be born to a girl whose father held the glowing stone that would later be shaped into the sun and moon. The old man wouldn’t allow anyone but himself light enough to hunt by, you see, so the raven really had no choice but to steal it, providing light for all. This barely scratches the surface of the wealth of Alaskan raven stories and, yes, many such stories are versions of those existent in the eastern Arctic. A nice, meaty, detailed telling of the raven’s full adventures demands a more dedicated storyteller than I — as well as a text about the size of a novel. All I’m trying to illustrate over the course of these articles, by discussing first the eastern raven tales and then moving westward to the spectacular Alaskan ones, is that the raven is the Arctic’s special bird. Across the ocean, the bird’s image as a creature of darkness is just about set and final. There was a time when it was cherished in Europe. It was a symbol of the Celtic triple-faced goddess known as Badb, whose domains included fate and battle. To the Norsemen, it was the ultimate symbol of wisdom, so that Odin, greatest of the gods, had the twin ravens Hugin and Munin ("thought" and "memory") sitting on his shoulders, whispering to him of all the things that they had witnessed while daily flying over the earth. Tragically, it was this very non-Christian reverence that caused the church to later demonize the bird, associating it with devils and black magic. So I sigh a breathe of relief when I think of the Arctic, noting that it remains a place where this fantastic bird is relatively free of evil repute. West Nile virus, as we now know, is on its slow march northwards — a disease that kills corvids swiftly and rapaciously. May God spare the Arctic. I don’t want to lose one such heavy wing-beat, the flash of blue-rippling-black, that voice that often murmurs like a man. Our raven. Pijariiqpunga. The smoking man RACHEL QITSUALIK The smoking man sat on a bench, with little movement other than the occasional shift of his legs, crossed in an "S" in front of him. What was he thinking? I wondered. He hardly ever moved, except to look up and smile at me. He was deathly quiet, but his face was kind. As a child, I thought of his eyes as "smiley." Whatever haunted him was near to his thoughts, since a shadow would often seem to ripple over his brow. Maybe, I wondered, it was lost family. I knew that whatever he had experienced had been horrendous. From the little I knew of his family, life had been harsh to them. I knew, for example, that they had been rescued from death by starvation. I had heard that many in their camp had been lost. It was said that, in order to survive, the smoking man had once stalked a lone caribou for three days — no sleep, no food, no drink. Just imagine focussing your entire being, for 72 hours, upon a single target. Imagine forcing yourself to utter stillness, despite the cramps and hallucinations experienced from intense hunger and fatigue. Can any of us imagine life desicated down to such basic meaning, all extraneous aspects of it shed till only that dry, lonely, peach pit of instinct is left? The only meaning left in the world is survival — feeding yourself, your family. Doesn’t it make you want to laugh when people come home from a long day at work, talking of "stress?" It was also said that the smoking man had run out of ammunition in seasons past. He had crept up on the caribou and leapt upon its back, tackling it with his last shred of withered strength. Only the tiniest fraction of us can imagine such ordeals. But this does not alter the fact that the survivors of many such families still surround us today — families whose children and grandchildren are now our friends, our neighbours. Yet they live in silence on such past events, emotions locked in a kind of glacial mode, their suffering left unstated. Like the smoking man, they are living records of the harsh realities of yesteryear. Underneath their calm demeanour lies long-spanning tragedy, their very survival a punctuation of triumph within it. I knew this from the limited stories I had heard of unbelievable suffering. Here was a girl who had been forced to leave a sister while on a trek of starvation. Here was a mother who had to euthanise her own first-born child. Here was a couple who had to look away as an elder was cast adrift on a bleak pan of ice, one too many mouths to feed. And there were darker stories, rumours of murderous pacts between families, of cannibalism. Even my family has its horror stories, those I won’t address here. But as with the smoking man, they still pass over us, shadow-like, from time to time. As I have developed a modern perspective, casting an ever more critical and (I hope) objective eye upon Inuit culture, I have occasionally wondered if such elders as the smoking man would benefit from therapy. I quickly dismiss such notions. There is a reason why the smoking man sits in silence. It is the silence of the war veteran, of the refugee, the silence of one who has experienced more horror than another can know from words. Most of us make a life of protective covers for ourselves. Like clothes over clothes, we lay one layer after another upon our psyches — protecting us, making us secure over time. Each layer is made up of ideas, of sentiments, perspectives, things we would like to believe about ourselves, the world, our place within it. The smoking man — and those like him — had the world rip away those layers long ago. Every security, every paradigm, had been savagely rent, until only the most primal self, the human animal craving life at all costs, finally escaped death. A person takes long years to regain such lost layers, and usually doesn’t live to finish the job. Where would a therapist begin? How would one find a therapist who could even comprehend such trauma? For the smoking man, for others like him, the very act of living is his therapy. And so the smoking man now, as before, remains mute. Pijariiqpunga. A gentler pregnancy RACHEL QITSUALIK "Oh, it’ll be fun. Don’t worry," I told her. She smiled back, still looking unsure. Someone in the background wisecracked about painkillers, and I frowned inwardly. My friend was heavily pregnant — as in due any day now. She was a first-time mother, naturally nervous about it. I still remember my own terror of the experience. Sympathizing with her, I was trying to make her feel better, telling her that it wasn’t all that bad. It would be fun. A load of crap, of course. There is a reason they call it "labour." It’s only magical and beautiful when you’re the father; for the mother, it means being treated like a piece of meat under white lights, the high point of the performance a blur of surreal agony. The baby is magical — not the labour. The experience is worse for first-time mothers, the whole thing complicated by fear of the unknown. Inuit culture has always taken this into account, hence the tradition of making light of labour. In Inuktitut, other women traditionally try to put a prospective mother at ease, assuring her that labour is easy. My pregnant friend, however, was white, and I quickly noted that white people have a different way of handling it. I noticed that the tendency among Qallunaat is to make black humour of the situation. But while it did seem to help my friend a bit to hear jokes about how painful labour would be, it also seemed to make her more nervous. I couldn’t understand this southern way of doing things. Why make a new mother more edgy than she has to be? Inuktitut and Qallunaatitut have always differed greatly on approaches to childbirth. For example, Inuit women traditionally gave birth in a kneeling position, allowing gravity to assist in the delivery. This is virtually forbidden in the South, presumably under the assumption that it will harm the child. But I have never heard of the Inuit way resulting in infant death — neither in reading documented accounts of early Inuit, nor in remembrance of traditional culture from when I was growing up. So I remain puzzled. Every culture has its preferred way of doing things, so one culture has to forgive what seems eccentric in another. And there are few phenomena that human beings get so eccentric over as childbirth, which is extremely ironic, since it is such a common, inevitable, self-regulating process. Childbirth does, however, represent the fate of the future. Looking at the state of our progeny is a bit like taking the pulse of our culture. This explains some of the mingled awe and terror with which childbirth is regarded. It has always been viewed as a doubtful time for both mother and infant, spawning whole bodies of superstition. In Europe, for example, it used to be hoped that children would be born on a Sunday (a holy day), making the child immune to evil spirits. Many folklorists also think that this protective intention is the origin of the ritual of sprinkling holy water on a newborn. In ancient Mexico, a mother would wear a snail-shell amulet, in the hope that the baby would emerge as smoothly as the snail from its shell. Among Netsilingmiut, mothers in labour sometimes recited numerous names. If the labour relented while uttering a particular name, it became the child’s first and most important one. I’m not sure if other Inuit peoples used this practice, but it is possible. Inuit have always been very tricky with their names for infants, traditionally heaping names upon newborns in order to confuse shamans or spirits that might try to attack the child. Yet all such customs have one driving emotion behind them: anxiety. Birth, like death, is an x-factor. Human beings thrive upon prediction, and thereby control, of their environment. It is maddening to know that something so inevitable at once remains so mysterious. Yet while we might chafe under what seems like nature’s tyranny, we can take comfort in the fact that we are also under its care. My friend’s labour went perfectly well, of course. As it turned out, there was no need for the anxiety. So why don’t we take a lesson from Inuit tradition? At a time that is so difficult for new mothers, the rest of us might choose to alleviate — rather than aggravate — their stress. Pijariiqpunga. Deity (Part one of two) RACHEL QITSUALIK "It is the decree
of heaven." "What will you
do once you know?" Flip through an encyclopedia of world mythology. You may notice an oddity if you do, the fact that there is little said about Inuit mythology — especially in regard to deities. For other cultures, there are long descriptions of every kind of god or goddess imaginable: deities of the harvest, death, animals, wisdom, rivers, childbirth, the hearth, crossroads, love, drinking, or just about any other concept humanity can hold (even gods of writing, but I’m not relying on any as I put this down). As the lens turns toward Inuit culture, one may note an awkward lack of Inuit gods. It used to be thought by scholars that this god-deficit was easily explained, Inuit seemingly having a primitive, simplistic culture. The thinking was that Inuit were not sophisticated enough to invent the concepts necessary for belief in deities or religions based around them. Today, this view just doesn’t wash. Even scholars, who can be cloistered and difficult to persuade of new ideas, have had to admit that Inuktitut ranks among the top four most complex languages existent — therefore conveying complex concepts. One of the benefits of being so heavily studied is that the world is coming to realize the sophistication of Inuit culture. A culture has to develop more than a few tricks if it is going to survive in the Arctic. So with the eye of the world upon Inuit, one naturally asks: Where are the Inuit religions? Where are the Inuit gods? The Oxford Dictionary defines a god as "a superhuman being worshipped as having power over nature and human fortunes." Superficially, this might seem to qualify several figures in Inuit lore as deities, but it has always been hard to make the label stick; mythologists usually default to classifying such well-known figures as Nuliajuk (or Sedna), for example, as supernatural beings. The trick lies in the concept of worship. You only know a deity by whether he or she is worshipped. This is not an unwarranted question, either. All over the world, throughout the ages, gods have increased or diminished in their respective roles based solely on the degree to which they are worshipped. A figure who was once a full-blown god in a given area can diminish to the status of a mere spirit or bogeyman as a result of tribal invasion or the gradual shift in a people’s lifestyle (usually the latter). For example, many of the figures existent today in European faerie lore were once gods in their own right — their former status now forgotten, their religions long since trampled in the march of time. It is because of the worship qualifier that figures such as Nuliajuk, or the incestuous brother and sister Moon and Sun figures, are hard to regard as Inuit deities. Worship, after all, denotes both honour and respect for a figure. Excepting certain obscure shamanistic rites, Inuit held nothing resembling honour or respect for the Sun and Moon, who have always been referred to more in the context of a story, for the sake of aetiology or amusement. Nuliajuk was simply feared, and her propitiation was always considered a last resort — when hunts had failed and the spectre of starvation loomed. And no one could be said to have a personal relationship with Nuliajuk. She was no one’s source of revelation. As a neurotic woman dwelling beneath the sea, her one power was the ability to hold captive the sea mammals (which she herself had spawned), making it impossible to hunt them. This was always the result of one of her too-frequent tantrums. Only an angakoq (shaman) could visit Nuliajuk and cajole her into cheering up, releasing the sea mammals. Typically, the angakoq’s demand upon the people was their public confession of taboo-violations, which sped the process along. This may seem suspiciously like a religious ceremony, except that it is important to remember that shamans demanded such confession for almost any ceremony they conducted — regardless of whether Nuliajuk was involved. Besides, the intercession of the angakoq in Nuliajuk’s case lacked the key element of worship on the part of the people. So where, then, are the Inuit religions? The answer lies in that concept which so defines the Inuit world-view: necessity.
So many ways to cook Arctic char A few weeks before moving to Iqaluit I hopped on board a fishing charter with friends from Resolute and we headed to Creswell Bay on Somerset Island. Most of the people were keen to get to the lake. Other than stopping to jig a few times along the way. they were quickly out of sight, leaving my friends and I to meander leisurely up the frozen river. It was a magnificent sunny day in June, and we were easily distracted by the flowers, crystallized ice, tea and muskox, so that by the time we got to the lake it was soon time to head back. I don’t think we actually caught any char on that trip but many people did and they shared! There are so many ways to make a delicious meal with char. Broiled steaks served with lemon butter are usually a favourite. Sweet potato crust pie is a winning side-dish. Broiled Char Steaks with Lemon Butter Ingredients — Lemon Butter: 1/2 cup softened butter 1 tsp dried parsley or
3 tblsp fresh — finely chopped Directions: Beat the butter in a small bowl until smooth. Gradually blend in lemon juice, zest and parsley. Season with salt and pepper. This butter is also great by replacing the parsley with dill. Broiled Char Steaks If the char you have is frozen, do not thaw it first as it is generally juicier when cooked from the frozen state. Spread a thin layer of lemon butter on both sides of as many of the 3/4 to 1 inch thick char steaks that you will need and place them on a lightly greased broiler pan. Place the pan in a preheated oven so that the fish is between 2 to 4 inches from the heat source. If your steaks are frozen, lower the oven rack to prevent overcooking the top layer. Broil the steaks on both sides, turning them once. If they are 3/4 to 1 inch thick and not frozen they generally cook in less than 10 minutes; if frozen, up to 20 minutes. Leave the oven door slightly open so you can check on them. The char is cooked when it flakes easily with a fork Immediately after taking them out of the oven, add a dollop of the lemon butter onto each steak to melt and serve while hot and tender. Sweet Potato Crust Veggie Pie Ingredients: 1 medium-sized sweet potato
(yam) 1 small onion 1 1/2 cups grated cheddar Directions: Peel and grate the sweet potato. Scrub and grate the regular potatoes with peel on. Finely chop the small onion and combine all this in a bowl. Add the eggs, flour, salt, pepper and mix until all ingredients are well combined. For one big crust, lightly grease a 9x9 inch pie plate and spread the mixture evenly working it up the sides of the plate. For individual crusts, use regular or large sized non-stick muffin tins and spread the mix evenly on the bottom and up the sides. It’s enough for 12-15 individual crusts using regular tins and 8-10 using large ones. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and bake for 30-35 minutes for the individual crusts and 45-50 minutes for one big crust. Remove from oven and brush lightly with oil. Return and cook for another few minutes at 450š until slightly golden. Remove and sprinkle some cheese on the bottom, place the broccoli and cauliflower stems next and top with the rest of the cheese. Sprinkle with paprika and broil until the cheese is bubbling. Serve right away. If sweet potatoes are not available this can be made with regular potatoes. The crusts can also be made ahead of time and frozen for a few weeks in an airtight container. Bon Appetit! Light supper for a magic day Nunavut is a great place to live and today was full of some of the reasons why. It started off with clear blue skies, sunshine and a couple of hours spent with a friend as she shows me the ropes of running a dog team. It’s a magical mode of travel; hearing the dogs rhythmic panting, watching the pads on their feet flip up as they run, listening to the chatter of ravens as they fly overhead and observing the daily change in the river as it freezes up. Really, I thought — could it get better than this? Later in the afternoon I headed down to the beach with my dog and we were greeted with a rocky shoreline covered with a glossy smooth coating of ice, the tide line marking the rocks with skirts of ice. Other rocks looked almost reptilian as they cracked and shed one layer of ice only to reveal another one underneath. As if this show wasn’t enough, the sun was setting and bathing the scene with a soft glow which made the water beyond look incredibly turquoise. Somewhat in awe, we headed back home and later as I was preparing the recipes below for a light supper and undoubtedly tomorrow’s lunch, a friend called to let me know the northern lights were especially beautiful at the moment. Out we went and with head thrown back and mouth wide open I watched as the lights swirled and danced changing colours and spreading out quickly among the stars. Nunavut is a great place to live. Make-It-While-It’s-Available Cream Of Squash Soup Ingredients: 2 tblsp vegetable oil 2 garlic cloves finely
chopped 3 medium potatoes 1 tsp. brown sugar Directions: Warm up the oil in a large pan and add the chopped onions and celery, letting them fry on medium heat for about 5 minutes until they are tender. Add the garlic and ginger and fry for a few more minutes, stirring occasionally. Peel and cut the potatoes, butternut squash and carrot into chunks, add them to the pot with some salt and pepper and continue cooking for about 5-10 minutes. Cover the vegetables with water, bring to a boil and then simmer for 40 minutes on low heat. Stir in the pumpkin and the sugar. (After picking out the candle wax at the bottom of my Halloween pumpkin, I cut it into four pieces and baked old Jack in the oven at 375 degrees for 1 hour, scooped out what I needed and froze the rest for later use.) Cover and let simmer for another 30-40 minutes. Using a blender, puree the soup; adding a little carnation milk to each batch for a smooth, creamy golden soup. Serve with a little sprinkle of nutmeg in each bowl and some cheesy garlic and cumin tomato toasts. This is a great soup for a light supper or lunch or as a first course in a bigger meal. If you are warming up the soup, use low heat, stirring occasionally until it’s hot — avoid bringing it to a full boil. Cheesy Garlic And Cumin Tomato Toasts Ingredients: 2-3 garlic cloves finely
chopped olive oil Toast the bread very lightly and brush with olive oil. Place on an oven tray and rub the chopped garlic onto the oiled toast. Spread the tomatoes, sprinkle on the cheese and cumin and broil until cheese melts and browns to your liking. Send your favourite Christmas cookie recipes to mamuqcolumn@yahoo.ca , fax to 979-4763, or write to Nunatsiaq News, Mamuq Column, Box 8, Iqaluit, NU, X0A 0H0. Fill your home with the aroma of fresh bread There is nothing more exquisite than the smell of freshly baked bread. Bernard Clayton’s New Complete Book of Breads is an excellent collection of recipes from around the world. The great variety makes it a superb book for beginners and more experienced bread-makers alike. One of the unusual things about most of the recipes is that the yeast is not proofed beforehand and the water temperatures are quite high. If you’ve always wanted to try making bread by hand here’s a recipe from the book for a basic white bread. The first loaf Ingredients: 5 to 6 cups bread flour
or all-purpose flour 1 package dry yeast 3 tbsp shortening, room
temperature 2 medium (8-inch by 4-inch) or 3 small (7-inch by 3-inch) loaf pans, greased or Teflon. Directions: In a large mixing bowl measure 2 cups of flour, sugar, salt, yeast and powdered milk. Pour the hot water into the dry ingredients and beat by hand to blend thoroughly. Add the shortening and continue beating. Add 1 cup flour and with a wooden spoon beat 100 vigorous strokes. Continue adding flour, 1/4 cup at a time, and stirring with a wooden spoon until it becomes a shaggy mass. Work more flour into the dough with your hands if it is sticky. Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and begin to knead with a strong push-turn-fold motion. Occasionally bring the dough down hard against the work surface with a sharp whack. Do this several times during the process. If the dough continues to be sticky, add light sprinkles of flour. When properly kneaded, the dough will be soft and elastic. It can be pulled into a thin sheet. Adding too much flour will make a hard ball that will behave poorly. If this happens, work 1 or 2 tsps of water into the dough. If the dough is wet, slack and difficult to handle, add 1 or 2 tbsp of flour. Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl, cover tightly with plastic wrap to retain moisture, and leave at room temperature until the dough has doubled in bulk, about 1 hour. (If prepared with fast-rising yeast and at the recommended higher temperatures, reduce rising times by about half.) Turn back the plastic wrap and punch down the dough. Turn it onto a floured surface and knead for a moment or so to force out any bubbles. Divide the dough into 2 or 3 pieces with a sharp knife. Shape each piece into a ball and let it rest on the work surface for 2 or 3 minutes. Form a loaf by pressing the ball of dough into a flat oval roughly the length of the baking pan. Fold the oval in half, pinch the seam tightly to seal, tuck under the ends and place seam down in the pan. (Sprinkling poppy or other seeds in the loaf pans before placing loaves in makes for a tasty and attractive bottom.) Cover the pans with wax or parchment paper and leave until the dough has doubled in volume, about 45 minutes at room temperature in a draft-free area. Preheat oven to 400 ° F about 20 minutes before baking. Place the loaves in the hot oven for 10 minutes, then lower the heat to 350 ° F for an additional 25 to 30 minutes. Midway through baking, turn the pans around so the loaves are uniformly exposed to the heat. Turn out onto wire racks to cool. If you want a soft, tender crust, brush the hot loaves with melted butter or margarine. Finally, if this is your first loaf, stand back and admire your creation. Send your favourite Christmas recipes to mamuqcolumn@yahoo.ca, fax to (867) 979-4763 or write to Nunatsiaq News, Mamuq Column, Box 8, Iqaluit, NU, X0A 0H0.
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