Beluga sausages from Sanikiluaq are hard to beat

Eileena Arragutainaq

To celebrate Nunavut Day, Nunatsiaq News invited readers to share what makes their corner of the territory special to them.

What’s special about Nunavut? Let me tell you, I am from Sanikiluaq, Nunavut, where our hunters go out to the land and sea to hunt.

The thing about our men and women is they always come together during spring and summer to hunt belugas.

If we are lucky, we get to witness them if the belugas come down to our harbour. And what’s even better, if they catch some, they come to the shore and our youngsters get to watch how to butcher a beluga.

A lot of the kids who witnessed and learned from the hunters grow up and carry on the knowledge from fellow hunters. I absolutely love that.

And if anyone catches their first beluga, they will share it with the elders in the community as their first priority.

Sanikiluaq is also known for beluga sausages and beluga jerky… so good!

Beluga sausages, inaluks, are made from beluga intestines where you first clean the intestines, cut the mattak in strips and insert them into the intestines, tie the ends with twine and boil for up to an hour, and when that’s done you start a camp fire and smoke the inaluks.

It’s very good with beluga nikkuk.

We know when hunters had a successful hunt when they come into our harbour with a flag on their boats or on their qamutik and shoot in the air to notify the whole community to share their catch.

That’s what I love about our land, my community.

Sanikiluaq is part of Nunavut where people come together to share their knowledge, wisdom and experience and the traditions of preparing the delicacy of inaluks and nikkuk.

Eileena Arragutainaq lives in Sanikiluaq.