Nine
Octave Sivaniqtoq, 1924–98 Repulse Bay
Just when I was just born, that’s when they started using rifles. Before that, they were using bow and arrows only.
I was born near Igloolik, Amittuq, in 1924. I do not know exactly which month or day. My birth certificate says January first, but that is completely off from what I heard in stories about me. I suspect I was born either [at the] end of July or beginning of August. I heard from Igloolik people that there were a lot of mosquitoes around and the caribou had just finished shedding their hairs and starting to grow new ones, so I suspect around the beginning of August.
My father was Manilaq and my mother was Navak. Both my father and mother are from Nattilik. I heard from on old lady called Kinikuluk that my dad was born in a place called Sinik and my mother in Iluiyuk, around Nattilik area. If it was not an island, in the old days, it was called iluiyuk because it looks more solid than an island, [but it is] not an island, it is a complete land, the mainland.
The original set of people used to call the Kivalliq people Iluiliqmiut because they are on the mainland. We are losing some of our own language.
My parents stayed in Igloolik for about two years, then they moved to Repulse Bay for a while. We did not stay there very long and then, from Repulse, they moved down to Ukkusiksalik. At that time, I could start crawling around and could probably start walking. I was the oldest. I was the only child at that time. My grandparents, my father’s mother and my stepgrandfather, were with us when we moved from Igloolik down to this area. My father was just going with his parents when they were moving around.
I never really heard who was there in Ukkusiksalik already when we first went there, but as I was growing up I knew some people there, not all that many. When I start to remember later on in life, I think they were staying there with us because we went out together all the time. We were always in the same area. Whenever we went caribou hunting in summer, we got together again, to go caribou hunting inland. In winter and fall I know that we got together again for seal hunting. I was growing up with another boy, Taparti; he lives in Rankin Inlet. Taparti’s father was Siksaaq, and his mother was Amalutitaq. He had some older brothers, too. The oldest brother was Kreelak, then Kapik, and Okpik. That is all I know from the oldest to Taparti. He also had a younger brother and two sisters. Siksaaq’s family mostly stayed around the main part of Ukkusiksalik.
All these people were from Nattilik area, and they all moved down to Ukkusiksalik. Siksaaq and my parents and my grandparents are from Nattilik.
Another family I recall is Soroniq. Soroniq is also from Nattilik. He moved from Igloolik with us. When we moved to Ukkusiksalik, he followed us. He stayed out in the main body of Ukkusiksalik. His son is Victor Tungilik, here in Repulse Bay. (There is no connection to Marc Tungilik. It is just coincidence that Victor is named Tungilik. Marc Tungilik is from Nattilik area and he came down here when he was a grown man, at a later year, so they are not related to each other.) We are almost the same age. Victor is just a little bit younger. His [Victor Tungilik’s] wife was Irkirouk. Her real name is Irkirouk, but they used to pronounce it Irkiroukinjuq because she was so small.
There was another family that was there from the Repulse Bay area, Iqungajuq and his brothers. He had an older son and two daughters. His brothers Ipkarnaq, Talituq (a.k.a. Tommy Taqaugaq), and Siulluk were there — I don’t know how many children Taqaugaq or Siulluk had.
All four of them were brothers, but Siulluk was the stepbrother of the other three. They all moved to Tasiujaq once they heard about the trading post there. They were within the bay, but as soon as they heard there was going to be a trading post, they all moved to Tasiujaq.
Taqaugaq was the captain of the group. He was the person that was bringing supplies in there and taking out these traders to wherever they wanted to go. I remember one time, Taqaugaq was bringing the supplies by sailboat, when they did not have any motors, and he was close to Qakiaq in Ukkusiksalik. He was caught in a very bad gale-force wind, so he anchored to wait for the wind to die down. The anchor rope broke and his boat went onto the shore, where it was destroyed. All the supplies were destroyed by the water. We used to walk from Ak&ungirtarvik along the shore, and we could see the anchor and the rope in the water.
When they started using the boats that have a single hand-cranked engine, he broke his arm starting one of them. When that happened, he stopped being a captain and stopped working at the post. Taqaugaq told me the story when I was young. After he broke his arm, he was called Talituq, which means he had no more arm. It never really healed the normal way. One of the traders had to sew up the muscles back to the bone, and it just kept working. It seems like he had two elbows after he broke his arm. Every time, when his arm started moving, it could make a complete circle. But he still kept going hunting; he was considered one of the best hunters there. He used to make an iglu with his broken arm. It acted like a normal arm except it has two elbows instead of one, and was more flexible than his other arm.
I do not remember how many people moved from the other Utkuhiksalik [near Back River] to this Ukkusiksalik [Wager Bay].* People from that other Utkuhiksalik were always going back and forth, and some of them moved down to this Ukkusiksalik. People did not stay in this Ukkusiksalik all their lives. They were always on the move. So people here were considered “Ukkusiksalingmiut.” But people from the other Utkuhiksalik, near Back River, they spent all their lives there and they are called Utkuhiksalingmiut. I believe that was because there was no trading post at the other Utkuhiksalik, and they used to come down here to trade. When we lived in Ukkusiksalik here, we were not as hungry as the other people.
My parents moved down to this Ukkusiksalik, and there was a group that went down before them. When we were still living up there, near Igloolik, the others moved down to Ukkusiksalik because there wasn’t enough game to support them.
Three people — Qamukkaaq, Kimaliarjuk, and Iglunaliq — all moved down to Ukkusiksalik after they were adults and then moved on. Kimaliarjuk went down to the Rankin Inlet area, and the other two moved back to the other Utkuhiksalik area, near Spence Bay. Qamukkaaq stayed in Ukkusiksalik almost all his life. He went there in his early adulthood and stayed there until he was very old, then he moved back to the other Utkuhiksalik. Shortly after that, he passed away.
In winter in Ukkusiksalik, my parents were around the middle of the bay. That’s where we were based in winter. But in summer, we were always on the move — around the bay, or inland for caribou hunting, but constantly on the move. In spring, my grandparents used to go down to Masivak to go fishing and Piqsimaniq later on in the spring, and later still they would go to Qaurnak.
Others, too, were always on the go. They were not stationary in one place all the time. They were always on the move trying to find game, so they would go after Arctic char when the fish were going up the rivers. In winter, they would seal hunt near Tikirajuaq, where they did most of their seal hunting in the winter, and also right beside Nuvuk&it [Savage Islands]. They would go down to the floe edge, too.
There is no current at all within that area, so they always hunted seals there. The narrow place is where the currents are strongest, not the mouth, but right where Piqsimaniq river comes in. That is where they would do their fishing.
The four places I just mentioned — Piqsimaniq, Masivak, Qaurnak, and Kuugarjuk — those were the major fishing areas at that time. Kuugarjuk was the only place that didn’t have as many fish as the others. In summer, when the fish are going upriver, Qaurnak is the place where a lot of fish used to be. Also Qamanaaluk and Tasiujaq River [the reversing falls, where the water flows in opposite directions, depending on the tide, between the main body of Wager Bay and Tasiujaq], but they couldn’t put a fish weir there because the river is too strong. That is the only place I know for sure that there is a lot of fish, where I was told that they didn’t fish too much because they couldn’t put in a fish weir. I think that that river [Tasiujaq] is always open all through the winter because of the flow.
The fishing was all done at the weir using a kakivak [fish spear]. They were not using nets at that time. What we did was make a weir first, so that the fish won’t escape, and then use the kakivak. We used fishing hooks. Not these modern types, but the ones we made out of bone. When I was still living down there, we used to use metal hooks, a hook that we happened to get from the trading post. There is a small hip bone that looks almost like a hook, and we would just take it out without breaking it and that is what we were using before. I also experienced that we were not using these twines, not the rope type, not the nylon twines; we used the caribou sinew and we braided them together to make a line. Once the caribou sinew is braided together, it is not going to snap, no matter how hard you try, compared to what we have now. It will stretch, stretch, stretch but it won’t snap.
There were fish weirs way, way inland at one time. The sea was that much inland; that is where they had to put the fish weirs before. Near Masivak there was another one, too, that was a little bit closer to the shore but still at a good distance inland. I know for sure that there were fish weirs which they had used before.
The whole winter and the whole spring, we were using harpoons to catch seal. We couldn’t get too many bullets for our rifles. One person could catch so many seals at one breathing hole in just a short time, with harpoon. Each breathing hole is different. If you happen to see a lot of seal together in one breathing hole and if you are close to it, you could catch ten seals in half a day. It depends on the seals, too. In a group of hunters, one person could catch ten seals from one breathing hole and the person next to him could catch nothing, or maybe one, in the whole day. So, it all depends where the favourite spot is for the seal. One person says he is catching a lot of seals and the next person is catching nothing, and he wishes that the seals would come his way instead and still, nothing. I have said that before. One time I took a lot of seal and the other people were not catching anything at all, or hardly catching anything, and I was feeling good about myself that I caught all these seals. It does not apply only to seals. It also applies to fish and to foxes. There are certain people who can catch a lot of seals and catch a lot of foxes and a lot of fish, and there are people who just can’t catch anything at all.
Just when I was born, that’s when they started using rifles. Before that, they were using bow and arrows only. I was growing up with rifles and boats, the whaler boats, when we were just changing. I just missed by a few years the people who were hunting with qajaq and bow and arrow. It happened pretty quickly. I was taught by my parents how to hunt this way, too, in case I ever ran out of bullets. There is another way of surviving, instead of just depending on rifles. Like what I was talking about seal hunting, at the breathing holes — we are still doing it up to now.
I didn’t catch those people who were hunting for caribou using only bow and arrows from a qajaq. But I heard about them. This was a different generation. I never really saw this happening when I was still living in Ukkusiksalik. I heard about people trying to catch caribou from their qajaq but I never really saw it. The lake called Nadluarjuq is where they kept their qajaq, so that when the caribou are crossing that lake, that’s when they mostly hunted the caribou in summer.
When I was growing up, we had guns. When we went caribou hunting, we were just using guns and we would go as a group. We divided the caribou amongst ourselves. We would have a leader, to decide where he was going to take us for caribou hunting. There were times when people went straight to a herd of caribou, and other times when a person would go and see nothing the whole day. We didn’t actually choose a leader, but we would make the oldest person a leader, whether he was going with us or not.
When you look at modern life right now, it was just the same with qablunaat and Inuit. There are people with a lot of money and there are people with a little bit of money and there are people with no money at all. People with a good job, in-between jobs, and no job. At that time, it was pretty much the same because there were people with lots of food, a little bit of food, and no food at all. So, there were different types of groups.
The leader planned before we went, saying that this person will get so much meat, and this person will get so much, and this one will get so much. We had to listen to the oldest person when he said something like that. We respected our elders a lot more than we do now. Before a caribou hunt, one person would be told by the elder to get just so many caribou and then he would have to get only that much caribou. The next person will get so many, and the next person will get so many.
For example, if there were three people who went on a polar bear hunt, each person could be told to get only one bear. The first person who caught one will get one. I could catch two, but I can’t keep the second polar bear to myself. I would have to give it to the third person. That is what we were told. The oldest person, even if he is not on the hunt, will tell us to listen. Out of respect, we listened to our elders.
Suppose we were trying to stay at Piqsimaniq during the whole summer, including the fall, just to catch fish. If the elder people knew, or had a gut feeling, that there was not going to be enough fish in that area, in Piqsimaniq, we would move to another river and stay there the whole summer.
In summer, if we didn’t have a boat, we would walk across the land. Our dogs would help to carry things. We would spend nights on the way, but we would try to get there. If the game is very scarce around one area, and we could not go across Ukkusiksalik without a boat, we had no choice but to stay in that area and try to survive.
The boats we were using at that time were those whalers’ boats, the ones with the sail and oars only.
I can talk about some of the places around Ukkusiksalik. There is a small island called Ibjuriktuq [the northernmost of the Savage Islands] because of the soil, where the grass grew the most. That’s why it was called Ibjuriktuq. Qikiqtaarjuk [the middle of the Savage Islands] means “biggest island.” Iriptaqtuuq means “clean.” The reason is it called Iriptaqtuuq is because if you climb, you will notice that there is a white spot there. It seems like it is really clean, even from a distance. That’s why they call it the clean area. If you are looking at it from inland outwards, on top of a hill, you will see that it is white, and it looks so clean. Uttuyasuaq [about ten kilometres west of Iriptaqtuuq] is a very deep cliff in a valley; the name means it looks like a vagina. Kingarsuaq has the highest hill of the whole area. Somewhere along that shore there is a small river and it is called Kiirqvik. At Ak&ungirtarvik, two big stones were put together, side by side, so people could put a rope across there to do tricks. Those are some of the major places and hunting grounds that I know.
In winter, we used an iglu only. When my father died and I had a stepfather, we were not living as good as before, so my mother used to make sealskin tents. When we were in Ukkusiksalik we never used a qarmaq [sod house], but when we moved here, to Repulse Bay, that’s when we started using a qarmaq made of rock and sod. Probably the reason why we didn’t use a qarmaq there is because as soon as the ice formed, we started moving around. In winter, we were always on the go, all the time. The people from Repulse and also Igloolik used qarmat [sod houses] because there were more people based there, whereas in Ukkusiksalik, even when we were moving around, I never saw one. After I was an adult is when they actually started building qarmat in Piqsimaniq, not before.
My parents would sometimes go to Tasiujaq to trade. By the time I was an adult, the qablunaat traders had moved out and Iqungajuq had taken over the trading post. He wrote everything down, so all the records were written in Inuktitut when he was a trader. His daughter, Tuinnaq Bruce, used to do the records for him, too, in the later years. Robert Tatty was born in Tasiujaq; he was actually raised around the trading post. By the time he left Ukkusiksalik, he had a wife. He looks like a very, very old person but he is actually younger than me.
I was with my father and my mother twice on trips to the Tasiujaq trading post before he passed away. I can’t really remember these trips. I was around four or five years old when my father passed away. When we went to the trading post, I remember one very big person — I figured he was qablunaaq, but he was an Inuk from the Baker Lake area. I was scared of him. He had a very big nose. My father was sitting at his side. I also remember a person named Angangra, and the other name he used was Ikumaq. There were two people fighting, not really fighting but playing rough. They were trying to take our kamiit [plural of kamik, meaning “boot”] off and tickle our feet. The second trip we made is when I saw that big person from the Baker Lake area.
Iqungajuq had a little house behind the warehouse. That is where we were staying. We went there in summer, just when the supply ship was coming in.
I remember the supply ship coming for the post at Tasiujaq. It was very big, with a lot of smoke coming out. We were all waiting at Tikirajuaq. There was a whole bunch of people there, waiting for the supply ship to come in. People came from all over Ukkusiksalik. I remember seeing the supply ship coming in. The ship anchored a fair good distance from Tikirajuaq. They unloaded everything by Peterhead [boat] first to that small warehouse called Iglujuarnaaq. The little house there is not insulated, as it was not used for living quarters. It was just used during the sealing, and as soon as the sealing was over, they left that place alone. It was like a warehouse. The ships went there to unload. I actually remember just one ship because I was too young. I was there at Iglujuarnaaq when they were unloading the ship into the warehouse. They used those whaling boats — loaded the whaling boats and towed them in by the Peterhead. When they were brought to the shore, they would unload from the whaling boats to the building. As soon as the ship was emptied, it left. There were a lot of people unloading at that time. From there, the supplies were brought by Peterhead to Tasiujaq.
Iqungajuq spent a long time as the post manager. They were sending him supplies at the beginning but they stopped. So he bought a Peterhead [boat] to go down to Chesterfield Inlet to get supplies. Later, since that took too long, he started going to Repulse Bay to get supplies. He did this for a long time. The Peterhead’s motor wasn’t running well later on, so then he stopped altogether. Also, because there were hardly any foxes around. So he just stopped altogether.
When I was a young adult I used to trade with Iqungajuq. Only when it was a hard time, later, we changed to Repulse Bay. Probably because he was inexperienced, Iqungajuq at that time had the same prices for all the foxes. Whether it was a bad fox or a good fox, they were all the same price. In wintertime he couldn’t tell whether the prices had gone up or down. The only time he actually knew the prices was when he went to get the supplies in summer from Repulse Bay or Chesterfield Inlet. Then he was told, “This is the price of a fox skin.” He would use the same price throughout the whole winter. I also remember that one winter the manager from Repulse Bay went down to Tasiujaq to notify Iqungajuq about the prices of foxes or the prices of the goods, whether up or down. He travelled with a man named Kagutaq from Repulse Bay down to Tasiujaq.
People from Ukkusiksalik area did their trading mostly at Tasiujaq. They used to go up to Repulse at very odd times if they needed something that was not at Tasiujaq, but we did our trading with Iqungajuq most of the time. They used to bring mail by dog team from Chesterfield Inlet to Repulse Bay, so all the mail would go to Repulse from Chesterfield, instead of stopping at Tasiujaq.
When my father passed away, we moved down to Chesterfield Inlet, but I don’t remember how long it was. It seems like it was a very long time that I was in Chesterfield Inlet. We went down there using a dog team and came back to Ukkusiksalik using the same dog team. So I figure it must have been a year or two, but I am not sure. It seems to me a very long time. I think I was there a long time but I realize that it was not all that long. After I moved down to Chesterfield Inlet, then we moved back to Ukkusiksalik. We spent two years there and then finally moved to Repulse Bay.
I went back to Ukkusiksalik before I got married, as a young adult. I was there for about three years in Ukkusiksalik, just before I got married. The trading post was gone at that time when I moved back, so we had to do our trading in Repulse Bay. Later on, when I got married, my wife and I went down to Ukkusiksalik but it was just for one winter and one summer, and then we moved back to Repulse Bay for good.
I know two people who lived in Ukkusiksalik much of their lives, Tatty and his sister, Tuinnaq. Those are the only two older people who have really lived there.
While I was there nobody even mentioned the white whales and I never saw any whales. But before that, at an earlier time, I heard stories that there were some bowhead whales in Ukkusiksalik. The only whalers that I heard of were down at Qatiktalik [Cape Fullerton]. They used to have a trading post there, and that is where the major whaling station was. Before there was a trading post at Repulse Bay, there were a couple of whalers who wintered in the Harbour Islands; that is where people got boats and rifles. That is where they were trading their goods before the trading post came.
We traded only with foxes, no polar bear, and no sealskins. I never traded with those. If a person caught a polar bear, that person kept the skin. The sealskin trade started just recently. As a matter of fact, it was about 1954 when they actually started trading with sealskins. When I was in Ukkusiksalik, we never traded with sealskins at all. It was only foxes and wolves. So it’s just recently, maybe even later than 1954, that they actually start trading sealskin.
People would make two trips to the trading post each year by dog team. People from the other Utkuhiksalik used to trade at Tasiujaq also, probably because there was nobody stationed in Spence Bay or Gjoa Haven. Those people used to trade there. That’s the only people that I am aware of. We didn’t go to trade too much, because most of us spent the winter around Nuvuk&it. It is so far from there. It all depends on foxes, too. If they could catch a lot of fox then they would trade quite a bit, but if they don’t get a lot of fox, then they hardly go trading.
There was no priest stationed in Ukkusiksalik at all. The priest came from Repulse Bay to go to Ukkusiksalik, instead of being stationed there. The house in Nuvuk&it was the warehouse in Tikirajuaq previously. I was part of that operation when we took it apart there and put it up at Nuvuk&it. It was smaller when we put it up! The RCMP told us to go ahead and take the house, but the priest said you are not going to be using it, so the priest told me to move it down there for him.
When I was in my late twenties, I was working for the RCMP, stationed out of Chesterfield Inlet. Then I was told that my wages were too small and they didn’t have enough money to give me at that time. So what they did was they asked the headquarters in Winnipeg, or some place, if they had heard about this building that had belonged to the Hudson’s Bay Company. They asked the Hudson’s Bay Company if I could have that building, and they said yes. So I was told to get that building.
When I was going to get it, Father Didier found out and he told me that I was not to use that building, that he was going to take it himself. I gave this building to the priest. We took it apart and even helped him bring it down to Nuvuk&it. A man named Anawak helped. He used a bigger boat [but not as big as a Peterhead] and I was using a freighter canoe when we moved the building. My canoe was towed by the bigger boat when we were going down. Father Didier used it only in winter, for a short time. Before that, priests used to go to Ukkusiksalik but they didn’t go to Tasiujaq. They stayed amongst the Inuit around the main area.
People didn’t mind the building being there because they liked the priest to come in there once in a while, so they didn’t mind it at all. The priest would just use it once in a while, in winter, but they were just happy that the building was there. It wasn’t used by Inuit at all. It was just there for the priest and as an emergency base, such as if a family had nothing to eat at all. There was always something that he left behind, tea or biscuits or whatever. In case of a really bad emergency or if there was no food at all, a family could go there.
Father Didier was not the only priest who went there. It wasn’t very long that the priests were going there. There were other priests that went there, too, so it was used now and then by priests. I don’t remember how long it was being used but only in winter. It was not used at all in summer because there was nobody living in the Nuvuk&it area the whole summer. They all moved around to other places, be it Tasiujaq or around the main part of Ukkusiksalik. So, nobody was there in summer. But in winter they all moved to the floe edge for seal hunting. And the priest would be there for about two weeks, three at the most, each time when there was a priest.
There was Father Didier and another one whose nickname was Iksirajualaq, but I don’t know what his real name was, and then Father Laveille. Those were the priests that would go there. When they stopped using this building, it was given back to the Inuit. Father Didier just gave it back to the Inuit.
The RCMP patrols used to stop at Nuvuk&it when they were passing through. I never noticed the RCMP going to Tasiujaq but I saw them at Nuvuk&it on their way to Repulse Bay from Chesterfield Inlet. This was the passing point. They just spent the night there and then they would continue on to Repulse Bay. I never knew of any post for the RCMP there. Even in summertime, the RCMP never went to Tasiujaq by Peterhead boat.
There is a story of an old ship in the whirlpool. As the story goes, there were whaling ships around the Cape Fullerton area, and the captain of one ship was told about the whirlpool, so he went to investigate. They made sure the ship was watertight. They checked the hull in all places. Then the captain got all the crew inside the ship, all of them, all watertight, and he himself was just at the mast. When they went to the whirlpool, the ship was pulled down, right down to the bed of the sea. It wasn’t very deep, so it went down to a certain point where it just stopped, and the ship was inside the water at the whirlpool and the captain was on top of the mast. They were there until the whirlpool started turning the other way, and the ship went out. They went back afloat and then the captain knocked on the mast and the crew was happy to get out of there.
The name Ukkusiksalik means there must be some soapstone around the area somewhere. I know of one place where someone found some soapstone, just north of Piqsimaniq. I noticed that the soapstone was taken out of there in two or three different places, beside some big boulders. Those are the only places that I know of that Inuit have found soapstone.
I like Ukkusiksalik so much because the game was always within easy reach: belugas, caribou, wolves, fish, seal, and polar bears. You’ve got everything there. Before the government stepped in, that’s where I would have preferred to stay. It is a good spot for hunting.
* As often happens in the Arctic, there are two (or more) places with the same name, simply because places are often named after a characteristic. The two different spellings here reflect the local dialects. See the map on page 17.