Intestines, Anyone?

Now I know why I was told to bring a pair of rainboots. The temperatures have been rising lately, so the ice on the roads is starting to melt. There are puddles everywhere. A consequence of the melting is that ski-doos are now forced to drive on sidewalks and cut through yards...off-roading indeed!

Renee told me this morning that I could take the rest of the day off since there wasn't much going on, but I decided to stick around (did I mention how creepy my place of residence is?). Good thing I did, because in the afternoon we gave Renee a surprise birthday party! It was fun to watch Lena, one of the elders, play with the balloons we blew up. Lena lived in Bay Chimo, a small community near Cambridge Bay, until she moved to Cambridge Bay about four years ago. She grew up in a family which ignored gender boundaries; her parents taught her to hunt, fish and skin animals in addition to sewing and cooking. Bay Chimo was not exposed to modern society like Cambridge Bay, so there are stil some things Lena is getting used to. For example, last week, the mural artist made a photocopy of a painting of an ulu to use as a template. When the artist began to cut the ulu out of the photocopy, Lena began to cry! She thought the artist was cutting the actual painting! Today, at the birthday party, Lena played with the balloons like a little kid, throwing them at people and sticking them to herself. She is very cute. :)

Lena and her balloons

I left work early today to go caribou hunting with Randy and a family he knew. David, Helen and Brian took us ski-dooing out on the land to points I had never been to before. I was very glad that we had experienced guides with us, because it snowed yesterday and it became difficult to even tell the difference between the sky and the land at some points. David was a man of few words. Every twenty minutes or so, he would stop the ski-doo caravan, walk out a few yards, and just stare off into the distance. To a kublunuk (white person) like myself, it was awe-inspiring. After about an hour, we looked behind us and realized Brian was missing. After ski-dooing back to find him, we discovered that his ski-doo had broken down. We heaved it on top of the komatik and headed back to Cambridge Bay along the beach, and I was a little disappointed that we did not find success with a caribou.

However, on the way back, during a break, I looked over and saw a seagull swooping down on something on the beach about fifty yards away. When we went to go investigate, we discovered a cute baby seal! The pup had lost its hole in the ice which it had obviously been searching for it for a long time, because its fur was frozen all over. The poor thing was being attacked by the seagull because it was on the verge of death. Each of us looked for its hole for a few minutes, but never found it. And so...

It's so cute!

I also got to see my first seal skinning tonight (animal rights activists and weak-stomached people: read no further)! David did it in less than twenty minutes. I didn't get naseous, but had to look away when he was working on the face. He divvied up the edible parts, which included the ribs, liver and intestines. I was a little grossed out by the fact that David took a bite of liver in the middle of the skinning. I knew raw meat provides more nutrition than cooked meat and that frozen raw caribou is a local favorite, but I could not imagine having to eat the blood as well. Evidently, though, seal's blood causes a warming sensation and is therefore quite useful on the land.

I couldn't help but tear up a little when I realized we were going to kill the seal. True, it was probably the most humane way it could have died, compared to being eaten by the seagull or freezing to death. Seals of the Arctic are not endangered, and in this kind of environment, few things provide nutrition and warm fur like seals and caribou. While killing seals is highly controversial, it strikes me that there are significantly fewer people crying "save the newt!" though amphibian populations are in sharp decline. Why protect only the cute animals? : )

Anyway, the whole experience tonight exposed me firsthand to subsistence living and made me think deeply about the differences between this and modern food culture. Is it really better for us to eat pesticide-sprayed fruits instead of eating around the worms? Why do we ignore the piece of food dropped on the grass? What is so horrible about killing animals for food if we need the nutrients to survive? "Living off the land" is totally natural to an Inuk like David, who worked silently as I snapped pictures in amazement.

A little gross, but amazing