Old Graves: Part One of Two

By NUNATSIAQ NEWS

RACHEL ATTITUQ QITSUALIK

“Antiscerosin”, or something akin to that, was printed in large white letters on a small tin box I’d found in an old tent ring.

“I wonder what it means,” I whispered to myself.

Perhaps it had held medicine, since it looked to be about the right size for such a purpose. It was about as small as a sardine can, and had a lid that unscrewed, although it was old and rusted — far past its original utility.

I’d found it in a large tent ring near our summer camp. Perhaps it had come from a camp once occupied by passing explorers.

Our family would spend every summer on the mainland, across from King William Island, at a place called Sandy Point. We’d spend the summer camping, fishing, storing dog food for winter. At such times, we were surrounded by myriad tent rings of encircled stones and lichen-bare ground, as well as burial sites and other evidence of recent to ancient Inuit habitations.

The land surrounding these places — which would now be considered “heritage” sites — was typically sheathed in lichens that had accumulated, virtually undisturbed, over untold harsh winters and balmy summers. Our family would often explore these old sites, being careful to follow the timeless rule of non-disturbance. We were allowed to see, but not to take. Such things were ittarnitait — the ancients — those which are not to be touched.

Half the fun of viewing these old sites was the history left behind told in stone and bone remnants. Over here: it was where a family had thrived on seal; you could tell how well their hunting had gone by the number of young seal bones left behind. Over there: a group had only camped for a short summer caribou hunt, as evidenced by smaller tent rings — the kind used for quick overnights. The piled skulls were of course devoid of antlers, which had been carved into tools.

A site that still haunts my memory was of one old grave situated among several, scattered, smaller graves — all the typical cairn-like structures of piled boulders securing the skin or blanket-enshrouded bodies. Compared to its neighbors, this grave had been particularly well kept, as if someone had repeatedly come back to restack the rocks.

This was a clue that it was not an ancient grave, but an old one nonetheless. It was probably not Netsilingmiut, since older Netsilik burial practices involved leaving the body, in its caribou-skin bag, out to the elements, only encircling the deceased’s form with rocks in order to denote that a burial had taken place — long after the body itself had disappeared though the depredations of scavengers.

Yet this body lay under rocks, some of which had given way to expose bleached bones and a partial skull. The armchair anthropologist within me guessed that the deceased was likely to have been a woman, as the skull seemed exceptionally graceful and slender, yet too large for that of a child. About her neckbones lay the remnants of a necklace of semi-precious stones — perhaps jade.

Who had loved this person so much as to bury her wearing her necklace, and to look after her grave so well for so long? My mind latched upon her, upon the mystery of who she had been and how she had died.

But there was no exploring further. Traditional teaching exhorted that the suvulliviniit, “Ones Before”, were not to be disturbed, so I could look no further into that grave than the narrow window which the elements had provided me. And I could not remove the necklace, of course, not even one tiny green stone.

In those times, disturbing a grave was not only distasteful, but abhorrent. Taking items from a grave, especially those items which had belonged to their deceased owner, was exactly what it sounds like: grave robbery. Such a thing was ghoulish, and — to most Peoples — no less than the most severe violation of taboo. Just like most cultures the world over, Inuit were both respectful and fearful of the dead, who of course still existed, but had merely shrugged off their mortality.

And ownership was ownership. Steal from the living, and they will not rest in life. Steal from the dead, and they will not rest in death.

(Continued next week.)

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