in dog sleds and snowmobiles. One was driven by her son-in-law, Qajaaq Ellsworth, who was taking her only grandson hunting. Sheila beamed with pride, but was apprehensive about the
future of Inuit culture, as technology and industry o=er their
alluring enticements. She is opposed to neither, but is concerned about the speed of their approach, as her people experience the jarring transition, shared by so many natives around
the world, from a traditional, land-based culture to a modern,
wage-based economy.
“As someone who was raised in a dog-team culture who now
?ies to Africa in jumbo jets, I know >rsthand the e=ects of technological culture—something which your folk had four hundred years to adapt to—on people being asked to absorb the
same experience in less than a generation. It’s very disrupting—
shocking in fact. Add to that a ruined economy in a society
plagued by substance abuse and suicide, and even uranium
mining begins to seem appealing.”
She is reluctant, at >rst, to speak out against uranium, even
though the Inuit Circumpolar Conference advocates a nuclear-free Arctic. It is the younger generation, she tells me, along
with the elders, who are most concerned about the impact of
uranium mining on Inuit society. “My generation, which was
educated in government schools, is more assimilated than the
generations before and after us, and in some respects too open
to outside in?uence.”
Eventually she agrees to discuss, ever so cautiously, what is
clearly a sensitive topic in Nunavut. “Mining is the easy way
out,” she says. “And we’re moving too quickly to embrace it. It
could run counter to everything we are trying to recover in our
culture. We need to step back and ask ourselves what kind of
society we are hoping to create here. Will we lose awareness of
how sacred the land is, and our connection to it? And what will
become of our hunters? Hunting is how Inuit men build character. How is character built in a mine? How do we train skilled
hunters to adjust to menial work?” She pauses for a moment
and watches the hunters headed down to Frobisher Bay, then
turns back for one last question: “Do we want to lose the wise
culture we have relied on for generations?”
The answers to these questions are of vital consequence to
not just the Inuit but the whole world. Even if the expansion of
the U.S. nuclear industry is delayed by economic troubles here
at home, that won’t likely stop China, India, and other developing nations from expanding their nuclear programs. No matter
what form it takes, one thing seems clear: if the nuclear renaissance is going to happen, indigenous people will bear a considerable proportion of its ill e=ects. a
Support for this article was provided by the Lintilhac Foundation.
Before Fort Clatsop
There are shadows a flag casts, and places
that shadow does not reach. This stretch of beach
kept sacred by winds and winter
and the hands that reach down to it,
discovers the waves by their crashing, the ice
by its cracking, the human voice by its wail
and song. This is a land of edges,
worn away stone. Here, we long
for that other shore that pulls like thread
through broken skin and sore muscle.
If we follow the river it takes us back
to a world of salmon and root.
If we stay we will be beaten by weather,
but there will be salt. What is it that leads us
always to the mouth?
It is so quiet I hear shells shake beneath my feet.
I wake from sleep and there is fur growing over my bones.
Lay your head on my shoulder.
Tomorrow we will all decide. For now,
we restless paw at each other, imagine dust
and sunlight and a land that echoes us back.
— Michelle Bonczek
