The sun has been up for a long time, though the truth is it barely sets in high summer. The others are still sound asleep in a ten foot–by–ten foot cabin, a bare-bones wooden box on the shores of a northern lake in the middle of a landscape I am struggling to absorb. The sky and the water are deep blue. The brownish tundra unfolds endlessly in all directions, broken only by huge boulders. It is silent, absolutely silent, save for the whistling wind, which never seems to die completely, a blessing when it keeps the clouds of mosquitoes at bay, and for the occasional squawks of the huge storks that spend their summers here. Beyond that, there are no real signs of life, except for the Great Horned Owl we saw perched on a rock during the long, rough ride in on quads. Somewhere not so far away a grizzly bear has been spotted heading in our general direction, and so even on a short stroll a rifle is necessary, though the truth is, with me packing, the bear has absolutely nothing to fear.

We are here—my son Nathaniel and me; Jordin Tootoo; his father, Barney; and his young nephew Terence, named after a brother and son lost—to fish for giant lake trout. The water is so clear you can watch the fish chase the lure back to the boat, though it’s not so easy to convince them to bite. We cast for hours and hours. We pause occasionally to eat from the mixed bag of goodies packed in the grub box: kielbasa sausage, peanut butter cookies, all manner of snacks, plus traditional Inuit country food—air-dried char that Jordin’s mother, Rose, caught and prepared and that is a delicate orange-pink and retains the subtle taste of the sea, and muktuk, the layer of blubber found just beneath the skin of a beluga whale and the kind of thing you serve to southerners just to see how they’ll react. It’s extraordinarily chewy and doesn’t taste like much of anything, which may explain why the preferred method of preparation, after methodically cutting each tiny strip, is to smother it in China Lily soy sauce.

“We are going out on the land,” Jordin told me shortly after we first met. “So you can understand.” You miss it the first few times, the article in that sentence, but eventually you come to understand its profound significance. Not “our” land, because here that is selfevident, but “the” land. It has no borders, other than the arbitrary political lines drawn around the territory of Nunavut, which was carved out of the larger Northwest Territories in 1999. The vast tracts above the treeline, not just here but in northern Quebec, Alaska, the tip of Labrador, and Greenland, are the domain of the Inuit people, and for them, possession and sovereignty have never been a matter of debate.

Neither is being “on the land” the same thing as camping, or fishing, or hunting, though it involves sleeping rough, catching fish, and being prepared at all times to kill whatever useful beast or bird might come along. It’s not a recreation. It’s holistic. It’s living. And although back in the town of Rankin Inlet there are all the conveniences of modern life—the internet and satellite television and grocery stores selling all manner of food at inflated northern prices, not to mention a Tim Hortons—it’s out here, on the land, where life is lived as it has been for centuries.

After the rest of the group wakes—the southerners have slept wrapped in their outdoor clothes, shivering, while the Inuit have slept stripped down to their underwear, sweating—Barney Tootoo surveys the horizon as we motor down the lake in our boat. He points to stone markers on a hillside. “That’s where the caribou herds come down to cross,” he says. Later, he spots a lone caribou in profile, standing on a distant rise. A rifle is readied and the caribou is put in the crosshairs, but it’s too far away to take a shot.

We cruise farther along the lake and Barney points to a stone inukshuk, which may have been assembled there five days ago, or five years ago, or five hundred years ago. Its meaning, though, is clear to him. In this bay, which to my eyes looks identical to myriad other bays we have sailed right by, somewhere in time someone experienced good fishing. We drop anchor and within five minutes a twenty-pound laker is flopping around on the floor of the boat.

As the air begins to cool in late afternoon, though the sun is still high and bright in the sky, Terence finds a warm place to nap tucked inside the boat’s bow. Jordin stays outside, scanning the water, casting for fish over and over again, following his father’s lead, every moment one of learning, of reading the landscape, of greater understanding. How often has this scene been repeated with other fathers and other sons, stretching back to when men first arrived here?

Jordin was right. This is where the story begins. On the land. This is where it has to start.

Stephen Brunt