On the land is where you understand how simple life is. It really brings you back down to earth. It’s so humbling and so peaceful. You go to Toronto or New York and everything is moving at a hundred miles an hour. You come up here and you put your phone away and nothing else matters. You are in the moment. You have to be.
When you’re out on the land and meet people out there, it doesn’t matter if our families are feuding back in town. Out there you help each other out. All of that other stuff is left behind. It’s like when I go to the rink and I leave everything at the door. I leave all of my personal issues outside when I walk into the arena. It’s the same as here—when you go out on the land, you leave everything behind, all of your fricking problems.
The land is my dad’s getaway. He’s my go-to guy because he knows how life is out there. That’s his comfort zone. When I go out with my buddies it’s awesome, but it’s not the same as being with my dad. You don’t have that same sense of peace. My dad always knows what’s going on.
We first went out on the land when my brother, Terence, and I were little kids. My mom used to go too, but now she’s not all that gung-ho about it. She likes going to our cabin, which is a fifteen- or twenty-minute quad ride from the house, where we net the char, but really going out on the land is my dad’s thing. His parents lived out on the land until probably halfway through their lives. They would follow the caribou herds. Then they moved into the community in Churchill, Manitoba.
These days, people don’t actually live out on the land full time, but in the spring they will go out for a month to camp when the weather is nice. In the winter it’s just too harsh. I couldn’t imagine what it was like fifty, sixty, or seventy years ago, when they were actually living out there all year round.
Being out here is part of our culture and lifestyle in the north. You go out with people who know the land and eventually, as time goes on, you learn the ropes—and you have to learn, or you’ll get into trouble. In summer, if you go off the trail, you won’t know where you’re going unless you remember landmarks. That’s what people do when they go out hunting. In the winter, it’s totally different. The landscape and the landmarks that you see in summer have disappeared under the snow. You lose your sense of direction. You can get lost just like that. People get lost all the time—people who don’t know the territory. They say they’re going out hunting for the day, the day turns into two, and then search-and-rescue has to get out there to find them. A storm can just turn around on you within hours.
I don’t really care to go hunting or fishing down south because it’s not like it is here.
When I say “hunting and fishing,” people envision going to a camp where dinner’s served and you have a guide and everything’s taken care of. They don’t understand how tough it is here, that you’re on your own. Like that caribou we saw. You may want to shoot a caribou, but then you have to deal with the fucking mosquitoes and cutting it up and hauling it out. Your regular hunter down south has people to do that for him.
When my buddy Scottie Upshall came up here, I told him we’re going to jump on the quad and go fishing. For him, jumping on the quad meant riding on a road, a paved road, for a couple of hours nice and easy, because that’s what they know down south. It’s not that you break your own trail and it’s hard. I think it came as a bit of a shock to him, getting knocked around like that.
When I was a kid, as much as I loved the fishing and hunting, the best part was all the other shit we had to do: packing up, making camp, unpacking, tying everything up. That’s really hard work, but for my dad it’s just second nature. You tie everything up and when you think it’s tied well enough, he tells you it’s not because he knows how rough it is out there. Knowing those little things, that’s what I really admire about my father—that he has all those skills and that survival mindset. I think that’s how I learned to go into survival mode when I’m out on the ice. That comes from all the trouble I’ve seen out on the land growing up, because even when things are going okay, something bad is going to happen eventually and you’ve always got to prepare for it. Out on the land, you never know.
MY PEOPLE, the Inuit people, are very humble. And they work together. When times are tough, they depend on each other. As an Inuk person, when I go home and look at our elders, I know that life is very simple for them. As long as they have their traditional foods and culture around them, life is good. All of this other materialistic stuff means nothing. I think that’s what’s great about being an Inuk. Whatever is put in front of you, you deal with it and go from there. For my family, everything has always been pretty simple. We don’t need a nice car and we don’t need the best Ski-Doo to be all flashy and be the cool guys. Up here, being a good hunter and a good family guy is all that matters.
I come from a mixed race family, but there’s not a lot of talk about that in Rankin Inlet. A lot of white people come up here for jobs. It’s the same in a lot of the remote communities. Race is less and less of an issue because there are white people who have lived here for generations. Here, you are really defined more by your surroundings. A lot of white people move up north, people who have grown up in well-off families and had everything given to them. They come here and it kind of brings them back to earth. They start to realize that what is most important is living a simple life and being able to provide for your family. That’s why knowing the land, going out hunting and fishing, and knowing the tradition of living the Inuit lifestyle are more important than race. At the end of the day, people who move up north from down south aren’t going to change how life is up north because that’s simply reality. Instead, they have to become Inuit in their own way. They’ve got to live the Inuit lifestyle or the community isn’t going to accept them.
When I was growing up, I can remember meeting my dad’s co-workers and buddies who had moved here from places like Newfoundland. Every time we’d go out hunting or fishing, they were always welcome. I remember waking up on Saturdays and Dad’s white co-workers would be waiting outside our house at seven in the morning to go out on the land. My dad wouldn’t go run after them. He’d say, “We’re leaving at 7:30 tomorrow morning. If you’re there, you’re there. If not, come out and find me on the land.” The white guys didn’t know the land, so they were always there waiting. But after a few years of being guided, they would be comfortable enough to go out on the land by themselves, hunting and fishing and doing all that traditional stuff.
Some people also use the land as an escape from their lives, from their husbands or wives and whatever troubles they have at home. When families are feuding—husbands and uncles and aunties—they say, Fuck, I’m going out on the land. You know that when people get angry and go out on the land, if they don’t look after themselves you may never see them again. Once you get out of town you’re in the wilderness and you never know what could happen, especially if you’re distracted by anger.
Sometimes, when things are getting tense at home, my dad will take off and be missing for a day, or two days. I can’t imagine what it’s like for my mom when my dad goes out on the land and says he’s coming back in a couple of days and a storm brews up. She must be sitting at home wondering if he’s coming back at all. And sometimes my dad being away is a good thing. It’s a relief. She needs him to come back and take care of the family, but at the same time at least when he’s out on the land, there’s peace at home. That’s when my mother is most peaceful—when my dad is gone. I think that’s the way it is with a lot of families around here.
MY DAD WAS BORN out on the land in a little shack near Pistol Bay. His mother, Jenny Tootoo—her Inuk name was Pinwatha—was alone when he was born. There wasn’t even a midwife. She tied off the umbilical cord with a piece of string and cut it with a razor blade. He was the fourth of her eleven children.
Jenny’s husbands were away trapping when my dad was born. Yes, husbands—two of them. It was a different kind of family, though up here it wasn’t so unusual. There’s a book called When the Foxes Ran that was written by Gerry Dunning; you can buy it at the Eskimo Museum in Churchill. One of the chapters is about my grandmother and her husbands, Bob Hickes and Pierre Tootoo. Hicks was white. Tootoo—my father’s father— was an Inuk, and so was Jenny. Her marriage with Pierre Tootoo was arranged when she was a baby. She met Bob Hickes, who was much older, after she was already married to Pierre, when the two men became hunting and trapping partners. The funny thing is, it was Hickes, the white man, who really taught Pierre to trap. In their home, they didn’t speak English—only Inuktitut.
Here’s what it says in the book:
Jenny was in love with Bob Hickes and to a lesser degree with Pierre Tootoo. The two men never fought with one another, never argued, and looked after each other as well as Jenny. All provided security to each other and the children. “It never mattered to me what father the children had, nor did it bother each father. All of our children have been equally important to us.” She states, “All of them have given us happiness inna my heart and inna their hearts. What is inna your heart is what is important. I’ve had the love for two men.
We three worked together to keep each other happy, at times even alive. Our family has never been rich, but our family has always been happy!”
My dad’s family moved to Churchill, Manitoba, in 1950, not long after he was born. They lived in an area called The Flats, along the Churchill River. The men went to work at an army base there, and for the first time the children went to school. When they first moved there, they were the only Inuit family living in town. That’s where my father grew up.
MY MOTHER, ROSE, is Ukrainian. She grew up on a farm just outside of Dauphin, Manitoba. So I guess that makes me a Ukimo. I know that’s not the politically correct way to say it, but I like it.
Mom was an only child. From what I know, her family isn’t very close, so she didn’t grow up with a lot of people around her. We were never really exposed to her side of the family. They were down south, mainly in Winnipeg and Ontario. We made a few trips down to meet them, but growing up I don’t ever recall us being close to her side of the family. I can remember one time when our Baba—my mother’s grandmother—passed away and the funeral was in Winnipeg. Obviously, all of the kids and family went down for that. It turned into a bit of a gong show. Everything started to come out from all of the old family feuds. I was a young teenager then and I remember walking out of the ceremony at the church because it got out of control. People were arguing about all kinds of things—I’m not sure if it was the will, who did or didn’t deserve what, but it was a mess—so me and my brother and my dad actually walked out of the funeral.
My parents met back in the day; Dad went down south to work and brought Mom back up north. All of these white guys were coming up north and stealing all the Inuit women, so my dad said, Fuck you, guys, I’m going south and grabbing myself a white girl, and he picked up this blondie. That’s his story and he says he’s sticking to it. I think, for Mom, it was a way to get out of her own situation. She left and basically never went back. She jumped on a plane with a fricking stranger, this little Eskimo guy trawling around. They moved to Churchill first, where Dad was from, and then later made their way north to Rankin Inlet.
What must have attracted her was my dad’s personality, and I guess the way he carried himself. He’s a very quiet guy when he’s sober, keeps very much to himself. He goes about his own business. And then obviously he is also a cool guy and a party guy. Maybe that part of him helped take my mom’s friendship with him to the next level. He’s fun, he’s popular, and he’s a good hunter—which, back then, was how you survived and how you fed the family, so it really mattered.
But Mom was coming to a completely different universe and a different culture. I’ve never really asked her what kept her here, but Mom and Dad hit it off right away and had my sister, Corinne, at a young age and then went on and had my brother, Terence, and me.
Eventually, my mother’s parents moved to Churchill to be closer to us. That’s where my grandfather died. My grandmother worked as a baker for one of the hotels there. Later, after my grandfather passed away, she moved to Baker Lake, which is close to Rankin Inlet, and cooked in a hotel there. She was the best grandma. She sent us goodie packages of her cinnamon rolls, cookies, and doughnuts. It was always a great occasion for our family when we would get these packages. I definitely remember that.
My grandma also provided an escape for us. When there were bad fights between my mother and my father happening in our house, we kids and my mother would jump on a plane and fly to my grandma’s place in Churchill or Baker Lake and stay with her for the weekend.
AS I SAID, my dad is a great guy, and on the land is where I love him the most. On the land is where I see my dad at his finest. He’s fucking unbelievable. He’s like a guru, the guy who understands everything in this part of the world. And when he comes down south, people just love him. He’s a charming guy. He’s a great, great community guy—everything you could imagine and want in a guy living up north. He has all these good qualities.
But there is another side to my dad, a flip side, a dark side that most people never see because it only comes out behind closed doors. It’s like he’s bipolar. When you’re in Rankin Inlet, booze is around and it’s just like he’s a totally different man. My dad never brings booze out on the land. Out there, shit can turn on you just like that and if you’re not thinking straight, your life could be in danger. But when we’re home it’s like a switch turns off. In a perfect world he’d just stay out there, sober, and not have to worry about a fucking thing. But the truth is, even when we were kids, he’d get out there for a couple of days and then he’d start to get the itch. He couldn’t wait to get back to the house. It would be Sunday, four o’clock in the afternoon, and he would want to get home and have some cocktails because he hadn’t had any in a couple of days.
Alcohol is the drug of choice in Rankin Inlet, but if you’re visiting from the outside you would never know it. Technically, it’s a dry town. There aren’t any bars, other than the Legion, where you have to be a member, and there isn’t a liquor store. So drinking isn’t a social activity, with people going out together, the way it is in the south. To get booze you have to order it in, and that takes time and it’s expensive. Or you can bring it in— or have somebody bring it in for you—on the plane, which is kind of under the table. So the drinking takes place in homes, with the doors closed. You’re partying, but you’re isolated. And it is binge drinking, drinking whatever booze is available when it’s available.
My mother drinks with my father. And back when I was drinking, Terence and I would be right there with them. In those days, I didn’t see the problem. Now I understand. But my parents don’t understand what I see because they’re stuck in this cloud. I’m not here to change people’s ways because of what I went through. It’s up to them to do it. When I come home now, my parents wonder why I’m not around the house half the time I’m here. It’s because they’re fricking boozing and I’m not going to sit around and watch that. They just don’t get it. They’re set in their own ways. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Sometimes they try to hide the drinking from me, but, of course, I know what’s going on.
I love my dad when we’re away from this whole commotion. But sitting in the house, it’s like he’s just counting down the hours until I leave so he can have a few drinks. That’s when I feel sorry for my mom, but at the same time, they’re in it together and they’re both stuck in that trap.
I know that the moment I walk out of the house, it all starts up again.