Two

The First People

While we cannot know when it happened, exactly, we can be certain that the first people to venture into the Ukkusiksalik area did so in pursuit of the animals they depended upon for food and clothing, and the raw materials needed for the other necessities of life. On land, that meant caribou and muskoxen; in the ocean, primarily seals; and at the river mouths, Arctic char.

This could have occurred as long as four thousand years ago, when some early peoples ventured into parts of Canada’s Arctic, but at Ukkusiksalik it is likely to have been no earlier — and quite possibly later — than the so-called Dorset* cultural period, 500 B.C.E. to 1200 C.E. High in the hills between Masivak and Iriptaqtuuq, on the south shore of Ukkusiksalik, there is an ancient cobble beach that was once at the edge of the sea, at some point after deglaciation when the sea level was much much higher than it is today. The site is covered in dead black lichen, which suggests that whatever human activity took place here happened a long time ago, as does the inaccessibility afforded by the inconvenient height, some ninety metres above today’s sea level. On the gentle bedrock slope, there are stone structures used as meat caches and rings of rocks used to hold down the bottom of a skin tent. One of the tent rings was described by archaeologist Karlis Karklins as a “strong” construction, meaning that the walls were formed by a circle of heavy, contiguous boulders standing as much as a metre high. Such construction, he suggested, is probably from an earlier period, though exactly how early remains a question that cannot be answered without excavation to find buried clues in the form of old tools or animal residue that could be dated. One large oval tent ring at this site is divided internally, he says, in a manner which specifically relates to the cultural methods of the Dorset people who preceded today’s Inuit across northern Canada.

Karklins wrote: “At least twenty tent rings and six cache cairns are present. One of the former is of the strong variety, but most consist of low circular or oval configurations composed of cobbles and small boulders.… Arctic archaeologist Robert McGhee (personal communication, 1992) believes that this site may date to Dorset or Pre-Dorset times.”[1]

Inuit call these people “Tuniit”; they have mythical status among Inuit still today. We know that the Tuniit lived somewhat differently from the direct ancestors of Inuit, who arrived in our Arctic from the west about eight hundred to a thousand years ago. Inuit believe the Tuniit were very strong people, able to move heavy rocks into the ancient formations still evident in the landscape today.

Francis Kaput, who was born in 1930 in the Qamanaaluk area at the inland head of Ukkusiksalik, claimed that “Inuit always lived in Ukkusiksalik — long, long before our time.” It is unseemly to argue with him. In considering his statement, it is important to respect the traditional Inuit perspective, that even the people who preceded them in the Arctic were in some measure “their own people” or their cultural ancestors, if not blood relatives. Inuit generally do not differentiate in the manner of anthropologists between themselves and their Dorset or Pre-Dorset predecessors. While they recognize that the Tuniit were different — smaller but stronger than Inuit, it is often said — there is also a sense of brotherhood or connection to these previous Arctic dwellers that permits modern-day Inuit to say, “Our people have been living here for millenia.”

From historical records dating to the mid-nineteenth century, we know that the Aivilingmiut (the Inuit group occupying the northwest corner of Hudson Bay, including the coastal area both north and south of Ukkusiksalik) followed a semi-nomadic lifestyle, with their movements largely dictated by the availability of different animals for food. As Mary Nuvak in Chesterfield Inlet said: “People used to travel to survive. They had to travel.” Caribou and muskox hunting during the summer, inland from the coast, provided not only a time of plenty but also the opportunity — particularly in late summer as the temperatures cooled — to establish meat caches of winter provisions. Similarly, seal and walrus hunted in summer provided blubber that could be stored in sealskin bags and saved for winter use in the soapstone qulliq that every family owned, the principal source of heat and light during the dark, cold months. Seal hunting for these people was largely conducted at the floe edge, in open water, or in the spring months when the seals climbed up onto the sea ice to bask in the sun.** There were specifically timed events that mobilized people greatly: the char runs in the rivers, the fall migration of caribou. Both of these offered not only an abundance of food but equally a relative ease for the catch. So it was essential to take maximum advantage of the opportunity. The winter months ahead were survived largely by having put up sufficient food in advance, as hunting in that season was both more difficult and less productive.

Peter Katokra, whose family lived and hunted around Ukkusiksalik when he was a teenager in the 1940s, described the cycle this way: “Inuit, before the white men or the trading post, lived where there was game. They didn’t necessarily stay in one area. They just moved according to where they could survive.” Katokra, like the others, reflects the wisdom of his elders and those who came before.

One can imagine, then, that the Ukkusiksalik region has long been an important hunting ground, long thought of as a land of plenty. The extensive body of water, today called Wager Bay, stretches well inland, affording relatively easy access to the inland herds of caribou and muskoxen. The saltwaters of Ukkusiksalik’s principal fjord itself are full of ringed seals, and the river mouths thick with Arctic char at certain times. Just as there was a natural ebb and flow to the presence of particular prey animals, Inuit experienced a similar and related cycle in their food supply. Felix Kopak, who was born about 1918 and in later years lived in Repulse Bay, recalled how this phenomenon was described to him many years ago by his grandparents. “There would be times when game would be plentiful, and other times there would be nothing. It fluctuated. At that time, before the qablunaat came, animals were our only source of livelihood, so what we did was hunt all the time. Our elders used to tell us when the game got scarce, it was not that they were going extinct, it was just that they had gathered in another land, seal or caribou or what have you. They were not here because they were there, in another place. The ones before us used to say that even if the animals are not in the immediate area, that does not mean that this land is not good for anything. They used to say that the animals will come back to this place again, sometime in the future.”

Archaeological findings, which include more than 440 sites around Ukkusiksalik, suggest that the region was well used by early Inuit arrivals in this corner of Hudson Bay, going back several hundred years. Archaeologist Margaret Bertulli wrote: “Wager Bay was used by both Thule*** and historic Inuit over the last several hundred years.”[2] Several of the known archaeological sites are well encrusted with lichen and overgrown with moss, suggesting occupation a very long time ago. There are Thule-style summer tent rings, with stone platforms across the rear and sunken stone-lined passageways at the entrance. There are also semi-subterranean houses, with rock walls built into the ground, which would have been topped with whale ribs to support a roof made of sod and skins — the sort of dwelling often used by Thule from autumn through to spring. Excavation of one or more of these winter houses may someday provide confirmed dates for the early Thule occupation of Ukkusiksalik. Without that, the first arrivals remain a mystery, but one which the oral history suggests lies a very long time in the past.