An unreal week

Okay, so it has been a few weeks since I last wrote a blog... and soooo much has happened. After I saw my first Beluga hunt I figured I would wait a bit before I wrote my next blog. As I very wise man told me, “let everything soak in before you permanently put it into words.” I struggled with the beluga hunt... something I guarantee I will not be able to describe in words, but I will try.

Anyways, in the last 2 weeks I have had a complete breakthrough in my classroom, I witnessed the most amazing community-based event(beluga hunt), I had a great caribou/goose hunting weekend with Morteza and Shon and most importantly, I finally got my 21 piece shipment of all my stuff from Ontario!

I'm going to break this blog up into topics...

The breakthrough in my classroom.

In the first few weeks, I was definitely having a blast here, fishing, hunting, camping and getting to know the town and people was amazing... but the teaching part was really hard. I was struggling to understand the students, our school really lacks the support staffing that is needed to get things done, and the resources that I needed in the classroom were seriously lacking. We could definitely benefit from about 2 more teachers (1 or both being spec ed specialists), about 4 more EA's (ea's here are called SSA's). But anyways, we were given what we were given and instead of dwelling on the negatives, we as an entire staff have looked for the positives, and there are many! The students are great kids. And the staff is seriously a very well rounded group of professionals that has begun to quickly lean on eachother to help where it's needed and get this school turned around! It is only a month in, but I think we are on a pretty good path.

I made a few connections with my class recently, that has changed their opinion of me. I read this blog to them as my journal (they write in their journal everyday, and I figured what better of a way to get them interested than to read my “journal” to them). This was a game changer! They took to it instantly, they started teaching me things that I had brought up in my blog... and clarifying things that I misjudged or stated incorrectly. They became interested in my classroom not because they wanted to learn, but because they genuinely wanted to teach! So now, Everyday I open the class up for a lesson that they do. They teach me something about the area, the people, the wildlife, the hunting or a story that one of them wants to share. It has been an awesome change in my class. I also, have had an unbelievable amount of support from my principal! He has been there to help make the necessary changes in my class to reach every kid. The guy deserves a medal. Hopefully he reads this. I've never met an administrator that is as involved and interested in his school and staff. He genuinely cares.

So, yea... My life as a teacher is much more comfortable now than it was a few weeks ago ;)

The first beluga hunt

I said earlier that I had trouble with this, and that might be an understatement. I first need to explain that I have a huge respect for the people here, for their culture and most importantly, for their way of life. Maybe it was troublesome because I've only seen beluga whales in “free willy”, and marine land, and maybe it is that I have never seen an animal of that size be prey before... but I wasn't ready for what I saw.

It was on Monday morning last week, I was sitting in my classroom with my students, and we were getting started on a social studies lesson when, the principal came to my door and told me, “get your kids ready, there are belugas in the cove and we are going to go watch them do the hunt.” I was so excited, I think my class was the first class lined up and walking down to the cove, I had my camera around my neck and was so pumped to go see. We got down there and within minutes the students were showing me where they were. There was anywhere from 35-45 belugas swimming in the cove, some were as close as 5 feet from shore. I was told later by a student that the reason the whales come that close is because they are being chased by killer whales, and to get away from the killer whales they go to the rocky shoreline. They are safe there... (not so much).  So until lunch we watched the belugas swim in the cove and every once in a while a hunter from the shoreline would take a shot. They got two I think from shore, and another 4 from the boats. The men in the boats use a harpoon to hunt them, once they have harpooned them they then shoot them with a rifle to kill them and get them to the shore. This was an amazing experience, I took it all in and videotaped most of it. Lunchtime came quick that day, and I wanted to stay and keep filming, I skipped most of lunch and caught a few of the boats on tape harpooning the whales which was more than impressive. Then I ran home and quickly whipped something up and rushed back to the school.

When I got to the school, my students were not interested in anything other than going back to the whale hunt. By this time, the hunters were on the shoreline with their belugas and were about to begin cleaning them. The entire community was there, men, women and children, young and old. Everyone had a role to do, they skinned, cleaned and bagged the belugas, handed out the meat and ate the freshest sushi possible in less then 2 hours. All in all it was one of the most impressive things I've seen, especially how everything and everyone worked so well together to get it all done.

As I said, it was difficult for me, I at times really struggled (not emotionally, but maybe psychologically) with the experience. I have never seen that much blood. I can't explain how I felt, because I wasn't sad, or disgusted or even upset, I was just "lost" at times. At one moment, I was watching the hunters skin the whale...I turned and started watching the students eat the meat that was raw and being handed out by the hunters... then I turned again and saw on the shoreline the carcass of the first whale (the one being eaten now)... then I looked to the ocean and saw all the blood in the ocean... and then...I snapped out of my little daydream and felt that my feet were wet... I looked down and I was standing in what was now a river of beluga blood. Many of you that know me... could probably imagine... I (soft Andy) had trouble with this.

But the most important thing to understand from this, is that I was the only one there that had any trouble with it. This is how people here get by, how they eat through the winter, how they feed their families and to be honest... I wish that the animals we eat throughout North America (chicken, cattle, pigs, fish etc.) would be treated with the amount of respect that the hunters here show their belugas during the hunt. At one point when we were watching the whales, I asked, “why don't they shoot these ones! They are so close to us!?” And pointed to two belugas, one obviously smaller than the other. One of my students quickly answered, “that's a mother and her baby! They don't shoot those ones.” Something to be said about that.  Anyway, I ate both the Maktaaq (beluga skin) and also the beluga meat (which was obviously raw.) I don't think that I was ready for that.  The blood was overwhelming.  Maktaaq was good though!

 

My long weekend

One thing to always look forward to here is the weekend. And all week I was looking forward to this one. Morteza and myself planned a camping trip to a local “anybody-can-use” cabin. It is called Kitinuaq (or something that sounds like that). This cabin is about 40-50 kms northwest of Whale Cove. It is a cabin that is open year round and anyone can use it. Amazingly perched about 100 meters from the river which has a gateway made of caribou antlers from years of hunting. This trip was supposed to start off right after school on Friday. Our plan was for Morteza to rent a quad and for us to go out, camp overnight, and then Shon was going to meet up with us early Saturday morning and we were going to go follow Shon around and hopefully “help” him get some caribou. Haha we can't help him though, only slow him down... he's so good. But before we even got out the door on Friday the plans changed! My shipment came in (gets flown in). I had all my stuff from Longlac sent here (t.v., clothes, hunting and fishing stuff and a million other things)... problem was, this slowed us down at least an hour. We didn't get out until about 6:30, and were unable to find the cabin. It stared to get dark and we needed to turn back to Akuq, which is a little community of cabins located right by the main river here. We were going to pitch our tents and just sweat out the polar bear threat, but decided to quietly use one of the local cabins that wasn't locked up. We made sure that we left it in better shape than we found it in, and were out of there really early in the morning (don't worry Dad.)   We had a tiny campfire (no trees here to burn so we have to use moss, scrap wood and roots from bushes). We had a quiet drink by the fire and watched the most unbelievable northern lights I have ever witnessed! The sky at times was literally dancing. It's hard to explain, but at one point it looked like there was an electric dome over top of us.

The next morning, we were up with the sun, and by 6:30 we were back on the trail and looking for the cabin, around 8:00 Shon showed up behind us. I was really happy to see him, because I was worried he had gone past us and found the cabin at Kitinuaq empty. Thankfully we beat him to the turn off.

Anyway, we were on the right path to the cabin but I'm not sure if we would have found it without Shon. We dropped off all our camping stuff and were off for a day of hunting. The caribou we so much more difficult to find this time. We drove around looking at every corner and didn't see anything for hours! Finally, after many breaks, crossing the river at least 20 times, a few snacks and a bunch of  bonding we finally spotted a caribou. Shon (with ease) shot the young buck, and then asked if me and Morteza would want to learn how to clean it. Of course we wanted to, and without question, both us jumped on the opportunity. Shon was awesome with us. What normally took him 15 minutes tops took us over an hour to do, but he sat with us, helped us, taught us and showed us exactly how to cut, clean, prepare and pack the caribou. It was an experience people would pay thousands for. I honestly have been very lucky with the people I have been able to make friends with here. This is an example of that. Purely awesome.  After that, we couldn't find any caribou, so we decided to try and get some geese instead.  I was amazed when we got to the peak of an esker, Shon waved us down, told us that there was a flock on the other side of the hill (still have no idea how he knew)... then he snuck up to the top of the esker, sighted in on a goose and shot.  Got one!  We went to the goose and picked it up... from at least 200 meters away, he shot it right through the neck.  Unreal!  

Later that night we went back to the cabin, Shon had a bit of coffee and was off back to Whale cove. Morteza and I stayed there for the night. We bbq'd a bunch of the caribou on the shoreline of the river. I couldn't believe the amount of flies that were there. There was no wind that night and when there is no wind here the black flies come out by the millions. We fished through the flies for a few minutes caught a grayling each, but the flies were unbearable. We went to bed and I don't think I've slept better in my time here. We were exhausted.

The next day, we were welcomed in the morning by a family of four fox that had a den about 50 meters from the cabin. They were so cute and playful. They were playing/hunting the siksik (ground squirrels) and jumping all over. Quite the amusing sight. We tried to have some coffee, but the flies were seriously unreal. We rushed a coffee, had a snack, packed everything up and got on the road. On the way home we stopped at one of the fishing lakes here to clean the caribou and goose meat that we had been carrying with us for the past day (it got pretty messed up when we cleaned it and was full of moss and dirt from the ground). We took about an hour, cleaned off the meat really well, and bagged it up in our ziplocks. We were deciding whether we were going to fish or not when Steve, the local Conservation Officer came by. He talked us into staying to fish for a bit. We got to talking with him and he said that he was pretty impressed with how we took to the land so quickly, how we truly looked like we were enjoying everything. He was really nice and after we caught 4 lake trout, he offered to smoke them and bring them over for us. He also told us that he is looking at doing some camping of his own soon, and invited us to tag along. I am pumped for that! He seems like another guy that would be awesome to get to go hunting with.

All in all, things are coming around in the classroom, and the Nunavut experience is seriously opening my eyes to so many new, different and exciting things! I hope you all are having a great summer... oh wait... summer is over. Haha... well, have a great first day back to school for those of you that are teachers or students. ;)

Talk soon.