In Kinngait, cruise ship guests explore ‘a different life’

Silaqqi Alariaq was standing on Kinngait’s sand beach at around 8 a.m. on July 19.

She was cold in her thin green coat. It was 3 C and windy.

“Should have taken a warmer one,” she kept saying, looking out at the water.

Alariaq, along with eight local guides and some coastal guards from the community of about 1,400 residents, was waiting for the Silver Endeavour — a 10-deck, 20,500-tonne ultra-luxury mega-yacht with close to 200 guests on board.

The ship is operated by Silversea Cruises, headquartered in Monaco. Fares start at about $40,000.

A bit later than planned, small black inflatable boats each carrying about eight people wearing red Silversea coats, black rubber boots and backpacks began landing on the beach at around 8:50 a.m.

Alariaq has helped organize cruise ship tours in Kinngait since she was 15 years old, about 31 years ago. She said the Silver Endeavour is the biggest ship she’s seen so far.

Nunatsiaq News joined one of the cruise ship groups on its tour in Kinngait.

Silver Endeavour’s Arctic tour takes 17 days, ending Aug. 1 in Kangerlussuaq, a Greenlandic coastal community of 500 people.

It started in Iqaluit on July 15. After stopping for a tour in Kimmirut, the ship’s passengers spent time at Cape Wolstenholme, the northernmost point of Quebec, before arriving the next day in Kinngait.

“We’re just hopscotching, following the best weather and best available opportunities,” said expedition leader Michael Callaghan.

On the ground in Kinngait, the guests were divided into eight groups, each accompanied by a local guide.

The group guided by Mary Mathewsie headed first to the Mallikjuaq Visitor Centre where her husband, Padlaya Qiatsuq, demonstrated the process of polishing Inuit carvings.

Next, they climbed a steep hill to the Kenojuak Cultural Centre and print shop. By then, many were out of breath.

“I wanted to show myself I could do it,” Bob Smolenski, an 81-year-old visitor from Florida, said of the Arctic trip and in particular, climbing the hill.

“Biden couldn’t,” he said, noting he was the same age as the American president.

At the print shop, the guests watched the process of creating a traditional Inuit print and were able to buy some art.

Silver Endeavour was one of three ships that have visited Kinngait this summer, said Kristiina Alariaq, co-owner of Huit Huit Tours Ltd., and the mother of Silaqqi Alariaq.

“That will probably be it for the summer,” she said.

Huit Huit has been organizing the tours since they started coming to the region in the 1990s. The community gets “some economic benefits” from them, she said, mostly in that they hire guides to accompany the tourists.

“I’d say the majority are not into buying too much when they travel,” she said of the visitors’ interest in local goods, adding it depends on “the level of awareness that they have about the Inuit art scene in Cape Dorset.”

Around 10:30 a.m., the visitors returned to the black inflatable boats and headed from Dorset Island, where Kinngait is located, to the uninhabited Mallik Island, about two kilometres away.

The island holds traces of a civilization that lived here more than 3,000 years ago, its tent rings still visible.

Manumikalla Ashoona, carrying a rifle, accompanied the guests on Mallik Island. During the 30-minute walk, he abruptly stopped twice, pointing at something on the ground.

Those were lower jaw bones of two young polar bears.

“There are lots of bears here,” Ashoona said. “Much more than there used be, people say.”

Robyn De Wit, a visitor from Australia, said this kind of local knowledge and guidance is something she was most enjoying about the trip.

“It’s important not to just take an Instagram picture, it’s important to see nature, talk to people who know the land,” she said, adding she was a bit annoyed with some of her fellow “privileged” tourists’ behaviour.

Some of them, she said, didn’t show proper respect for local culture.

“We have to be kind to people. A simple hello or a smile or a thank-you would be nice,” De Wit said.

Around noon, the group headed back to the Silver Endeavour. They took off their coats, backpacks and boots, putting them each in their own heating shells.

After lunch, everyone gathered in the ship’s concert hall.

Silaqqi Alariaq, Kinngait elder Mayuriaq Quvianaqtuliaq and young throat singers Wakta Joanasie and Louisa Parr offered a cultural performance in traditional Inuit clothing. They started the event with the lighting of a qulliq.

Speaking in Inuktitut and translated by Alariaq, Quvianaqtuliaq said a qulliq provided the only source of light in winter when she was growing up.

“They used it to keep their igloos and tents warm,” Alariaq said. “At the time, she thought it was the most important thing in the world. But now they are not used anymore.”

Quvianaqtuliaq grew up outside Kinngait at a time when “mammoths might have still been alive,” Alariaq joked.

The elder showed the guests some of the tools she might have used back then and the sort of toys she played with — very simple wooden dolls her father would have made from leftover wood, if he was lucky enough to find wood.

De Wit said the performance was the best part of the tour.

“It was just amazing,” she said. “I couldn’t even hold my tears. It’s such a different life.”