Tales from Kali Camp, II of III

Courtesy of Jennifer Stone, Associate Professor of English

These stories describe my trip to Kali (aka Pt. Lay), Alaska in July 2013 through the Educator Cross-Cultural Immersion program from the Alaska Humanities Forum. The camp I attended focused on Iñupiaq land use values and language. My participating partner was Barbara Petukh of the Mat-Su School District. All of our interactions included a mix of English, including local expressions, and Iñupiaq-these stories attempt to capture the mixing of languages that I experienced at camp (I'm still a beginner, so please excuse any errors I've made in my spelling or grammar). The stories also illustrate many of the Iñupiaq cultural values that I learned about and participated in at camp, including knowledge of language, sharing, cooperation, hard work and respect for nature. Quyanaqpak!

Dinner!

Today I woke up and one of the guides called me over excitedly, pointing to a nanuq he had shot during the night. It had floated onto the qikiqtaq on a puktaaq. Its fur was brown, so I mistook it for an akjaq at first. Apparently, nanuq will float onto the land and roll in the dirt to make their fur blend into the landscape while they hunt. This particular nanuq was hunting our camp, but the lookout got him before he got us.

We spent several hours butchering the nanuq. I held the skin back with a hook as someone used a saviq to carefully remove the skin and limbs. We were careful to avoid the tifuk, which can be deadly if it gets into your bloodstream through your mouth or an open cut. After we got the niqi off, we cut it into chunks with an uluuraq. One of the guides took most of the meat back to the village to be divided into shares and distributed among the community.

We then took the corpse to the water and watched it float off into the distance. A flock of nauyak flew around it, pecking at the meat. As the guides told us, they always share some of their kills with the animals around them.

That night we cooked the nanuq and ate it for dinner with Sailor Boy.  It was delicious!

Akjaq (brown bear) Nanuq (polar bear) Nauyak (seagull) Niqi (meat) Puktaaq (iceberg) Sailor Boy (pilot bread) Saviq (hunting knife) Tifuk (liver) Uluuraq (women's cutting tool)