Torngat's Lair: Winter Brothers in Exile

Winter Brothers in exile. There was only a dark narrow band of cold open water on the Sudbury River in February 1974 when I saw a broken-wing goose laying on the ice. Paddling really hard I propelled Tom’s kayak up on to the shore-fast ice and skidded across to where the goose, too weak to move, lay. I placed him on my lap and brought him home, nursed him back to health, and eventually relocated him with a flock of one-winged and one-footed geese at the Audubon sanctuary at Drumlin Farms. A goose has a wondrous heart.

And a lovely poem from W.S.Merwin in a recent New Yorker (8 March 2010):

A Message to Po Chu-I

In that tenth winter of your exile

the cold never letting go of you

and your hunger aching inside of you

day and night while you heard the voices

out of the starving mouths around you

old ones and infants and animals

those curtains of bones swaying on stilts

and you heard the faint cries of the birds

searching in the frozen mud for something

to swallow and you watched the migrants

trapped in the cold the great geese growing

weaker by the day until their wings

could barely lift them above the ground

so that a gang of boys could catch one

in a net and drag him to market

to be cooked and then it was then that you

saw him in his own exile and you

paid for him and kept him until he

could fly again and you let him go

but then where could he go in the world

of your time with its wars everywhere

and the soldiers hungry the fires lit

the knives out twelve hundred years ago

I have been wanting to let you know

the goose is well he is here with me

you would recognize the old migrant

he has been with me for a long time

and is in no hurry to leave here

the wars are bigger now than ever

greed has reached numbers that you would not

believe and I will not tell you what

is done to geese before they kill them

now we are melting the very poles

of the earth but I have never known

where he would go after he leaves me

Grand River Trappers

Here is a passage about the old Grand River trappers in Labrador that I am frequently making reference to. It always struck me as an amazing story (and a good reason why not to get a haircut!!!) But just as amazing as surviving the disaster in the rapids is the nonchalance with which Goudie and Michelin pick-up and walk home whereas the rest of us would have been dead from hypothermia!

If the hunting is good they may stay out till after the thaw or they may strike up their traps in April and sledge out on the last of the ice. In either case it is a dangerous business. The old ice is worn by the current underneath as much as it is melted above by the sun, and often it gives no sign of its fragility until it gives way and deposits the unwary traveller in the swift flowing water beneath. Yet the first wild water after the break-up is more dangerous still. Quite suddenly the dams of snow and ice are broken and the river comes bounding down triumphant, sweeping with it tree trunks and pans of ice in an almost continuous rapid from the plateau to the sea. It is admittedly dangerous to navigate such waters especially with a valuable cargo of furs, but the good hunting is over and the trappers must get home quickly or waste their time in the woods. They know the river so well that, theoretically at least, they can get ashore in time and make a portage around the worst places; but sometimes their impatience overcomes their discretion. On one occasion Sam Goudie and John Michelin were racing home after a very long and successful season in the woods. They were both expert canoe men and could steer their way among the white eddies of the worst rapid, so they chose the river where most men would have gone ashore. They came round a corner and, just in front of them, the river swirled under a ledge of still unbroken ice. Goudie, who was kneeling in the bow, managed to jump on to the ice, but John Michelin had forced his legs under the tarpaulin which was lashed above the load and could not move in time. Goudie caught him by his long hair and jerked him to safety as the canoe disappeared beneath them with all their food and two thousand dollars’ worth of furs. They got home without much hardship, but they were poor men until the next season was over. pp.38-39

J. M. Scott
1933. The Land that God Gave Cain: an Account of H.G. Watkin’s Expedition to Labrador, 1928-1929. Chatto and Windus: London.

The Tshikapisk Foundation and the Arctic Studies Center.

The Tshikapisk Foundation and the Arctic Studies Center: the architecture of a community anthropology partnership.

Stephen Loring and Anthony Jenkinson (Tshikapisk Foundation)

Since 1999 Stephen Loring has worked closely with Tshikapisk staff in making archaeology and training in cultural heritage management an important component of the Tshikapisk agenda. Tshikapisk, an Innu experiential education program is named after a legendary culture-hero/trickster/shaman; Tshikapisk is dedicated to preserving and celebrating Innu culture, knowledge and language by providing opportunities for Innu youth and families to pursue traditional country-based life-ways, subsistence activities and language. Founded in response to the crisis in Innu society brought about by resettlement in coastal communities where problems of poor health, subsistence abuse, violence and village poverty have reached epidemic proportions (see Canada’s Tibet: the killing of the Innu, published by Survival International www.survival.org.uk) Tshikapisk strives to create opportunities for Innu youth to gain country-based experiences in the company of Innu educators and families. Tshikapisk is all about celebrating traditional Innu values and about respect: respect for the land, for the animals, and ultimately, respect for Innu accomplishments and heritage.

The Tshikapisk initiative evolved from a highly successful country-based training program developed by Anthony Jenkinson and Jean-Piere Ashini (Napes) which was called Nutshimiu Atusseun. Sponsored by Innu Nation the program, held in the country west of the Mealy Mountains, created opportunities for Innu young people to gain skills ---as well as emotional and physical strength--- by drawing from a reservoir of Innu traditions. The success of this program was the inspiration that led to the creation of the not-for-profit Tshikapisk Foundation in 1997.

Since 1997 Tshikapisk has developed a series of programs and projects centred at Kamestastin (Lake Mistastin on most maps, in the barrenlands west of Voisey’s Bay, near the border with Quebec) --a flooded meteorite impact crater-- where it is constructing a cultural resource centre and experiential education facility. Over the last six years an extraordinary consortium of interests including government agencies, the private sector, NGO’s, European and American researchers, the Mennonite Church and the German Air Force (which flew in tonnes of building materials and equipment which they deployed on the ice without landing as part low-level flying training exercises) have allied themselves with Innu community agencies and the Innu Nation to build the Kamestastin facility. The dream of an Innu Cultural Center situated in the heart of Nitassinan (the Innu word for their homeland) centers on construction of Shakutum Utshistun (the Gyrfalcon’s Nest). While the main lodge is still in need of funds to finish the interior, a suite of four out-buildings have been constructed and the plans and equipment for a solar-powered facility are well underway. Tshikapisk plans to use the Kamestastin facility to provide a country setting for educational, health and language programs for the Innu. It is hoped that these programs would generate revenues that would augment funds from eco-tourism and experiential education initiatives that are under development with schools and universities in Canada, the United States and England.

Stephen was drawn to work with Tshikapisk by the opportunity to travel with and learn from older Innu men and women who were born in the country and were knowledgeable about country matters, subsistence strategies, and stories: a unique and priceless corpus of knowledge and inspiration that represent one of the last intact libraries of direct experiences relating to humanities common hunting and gathering subsistence heritage. The Innu are forever linked, in their own minds, as well as in the minds of visitors and anthropologists, with caribou. Caribou and reindeer figure significantly in the story of human evolution from the origins of art and language in the Ice Age caves of Europe, to the subsistence strategy of choice for the colonizing paleoindian populations entering the New World, and as the means of survival for circumpolar peoples from the Pleistocene to the present. Working with Tshikapisk provides an extraordinary opportunity to learn from a remarkable group of Innu seniors about the practical aspects of caribou hunting and the spiritual realms and social responsibilities that hunting entails.

The practice of archaeology as incorporated into a Tshikapisk agenda has proved a remarkably close fit: as a bridge between the world of science and the interests of Innu leaders and educators and as a bridge for the Innu themselves, providing a common ground for discussion between country-born elders, Innu educators, and Innu youth, and visiting archaeologists

This past September (2006) was Stephen Loring’s sixth trip to Kamestastin. Stephen and the Tshikapisk team were able to spend a couple of weeks conducting archaeological excavation and survey prior to the arrival of a portion of the George River caribou herd, more than 10,000 animals, who effectively curbed our enthusiasm for revealing past caribou hunting and feasting camps for contemporary ones. The short archaeological field-season had three important epiphanies which are detailed elsewhere in this newsletter. The ASC involvement with Tshikapisk has been a tremendously rewarding experience for both the Innu educators and students and for the anthropologist they have befriended. We expect that the cooperative foundation that has been built thus far will continue to flourish in the years to come, that the future of the past, as it pertains to the Innu, will be as exciting and inspirational as the heritage it seeks to celebrate.

Torngat's Lair

Rainbow at Reddick Bight, August 2006

Winter Brothers in Exile

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Grand River Trappers

The Tshikapisk Foundation and the Arctic Studies Center.