Toonik Tyme going back to its roots for 2022 festivities
Annual celebration returns April 8 to 17 after 2 years of COVID-19 cancellations
A group of children are seen here participating in a snowmobile race as a part of Toonik Tyme in 2019. This year, Toonik Tyme returns from April 8 to 17, after the festival was cancelled due to COVID-19 restrictions in 2020 and 2021. (File photo courtesy of Bill Williams)
Toonik Tyme is going back to its roots, after two consecutive years of cancellations.
The festival is scheduled to start Friday, after COVID-19 restrictions prevented the 2020 and 2021 events from going ahead.
Pits Alainga, president of 123 Go!, the organization that co-ordinates Toonik Tyme, said this year’s festival will return to its 1965 origins with a focus on outdoor traditional Inuit games and activities.
“Toonik Tyme was started by a few people who wanted to get family members out of their households and start participating in outdoor events,” he said.
“Between 1965 and now, everything was starting to get mixed with indoor games and outdoor, and that’s how it’s been.”
The craft fair will be one of the few indoor events, set for April 9 at the Aqsarniit Hotel and Conference Centre.
Alainga says he’s looking forward to all the events equally. But, he said, the qamutik sled competition and snowmobile races are generating a lot of interest from young participants.
“There’s a lot of young people and a lot of young hunters that want to try the Ski-Doo and qamutik races to Kimmirut and back,” he said.
“When they have an adrenaline rush, they’ll go from point A to point B and right back in probably three or four hours, and that’s lots of fun.”
Other activities scheduled include a hunting competition, various food-related events and lots of games for young people, families and elders.
Overall, Alainga said, he’s looking forward to people coming out to enjoy Toonik Tyme and is happy the festival is finally back.
“We can’t wait … we want it to happen, and it’s going to happen,” he said.
“Toonik Tyme is a time to celebrate Inuit coming back out from their houses and play in the nice, warm weather of springtime, and to keep family together.”
Toonik Tyme is scheduled to run from April 8 to 17.
Its sad to me that this festival is named after a group that the ancestors of the modern Inuit pushed off their land (ethnic cleansing). Many Inuit are unaware of that fact and of that history. It is too bad. When will it be time to face this colonial past?
How is that any different than naming Cape Dorset after the Dorset people, whom the modern Inuit wiped out?
Cape Dorset was named by Luke Foxe (also, Foxe Basin) after the Earl of Dorset on 24 September 1631. At that time there was no name given to the ‘Dorset people’ as they were only known to Inuit who called them Tuniit.
The discovery of a set of artifacts that indicated a unique culture that was neither Inuit or Thule was made in the Cape Dorset area. These were passed on to the anthropologist Diamond Jenness in 1925. He named this new culture after Cape Dorset, not the other way around.
That’s nice to see. Somebody took some time to research before pulling an uninformed comment out of their arse as is the standard for too many Internet trolls.
Imagine if St. John’s had a spring festival called “Beothuk Days” which was just a basic local seasonal festival but they also anointed an “Honourary Beothuk”?
…I suspect there would be complaints
Memorial University of Newfoundland athletics used to be the “Beothuks”. They only changed their name to the Seahawks in 1990.
The Tuniit were not “pushed off”; Inuit absorbed their genes and culture, and incorporated all of their technology for small sea mammal hunting.
Alaskan Inupiat still use technology that is capable of dispatching large sea mammals and their societal structures are of the older forms of semi-permanent communities that Inuit of the East abandoned in favour of Tuniit culture and technology.
Jay, I agree Inuit absorbed Tuniit technologies and learned the best hunting sites from them, some are still used today.
‘Uqalurait: An Oral History of Nunavut’ says “it was the Tuniit who made our country inhabitable, who discovered where the caribou crossed the water and made hunting grounds… found the fish in the rivers and built salmon dams…”
An Aivilingmuit shortly after tells us that “Before there were any Inuit, the first people were called Tuniit. They were strong, but the Inuit killed them and took their land away.”
Would you agree that Thule had more advanced technologically than the Tuniit? They carried Mongolian bows and had dog teams and could catch bowhead whale (unheard of to the Tuniit).
You say Inuit absorbed the Tuniit genetically, but DNA says that’s not true. In 2014 Willerslev & Raghavan published a study in the journal ‘Nature’ that argued “Paleo-Eskimos—lived in isolation from their neighbors for nearly 4,000 years, refraining from any mixture… with the ancestors of the modern Inuit.”
What do you think?
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/8/140828-arctic-migration-genome-genetics-dna-eskimos-inuit-dorset.html
the same type of contention rages on in Neanderthal-human genetics research.
I find it incredible that two peoples would live in close proximity and never intermix and at the same time one of them commit whole-sale genocide upon the other. It is too simplistic to believe in such stark boundaries.
Human nature also is kind of promiscuous – it is required by societal norms and especially in forging political alliances.
If you’re sick stay home. If you’re not sick, then enjoy the festivities!
Where did Toonik time get its name from?
If you go to this page and scroll down a bit: http://www.tooniktyme.ca/about
You’ll see this:
“Toonik Tyme is named after the ‘Toonik’, an individual of the Tuniit people. Known to archaeologists as the Dorsets, the Tuniit were people who lived in Greenland and the eastern Canadian Arctic before the ancestors of today’s Inuit (known as the Thule) arrived from Alaska about 1,000 years ago… By about 600 years ago, the Tuniit disappeared from Greenland and the Canadian Arctic, but they’ll always be remembered through the ancient stories of the Inuit.”
Archeologists / historians don’t necessarily agree on what the fate of the Tuniit was, but it is a widely held view that they were out competed by incoming Thule (Inuit). In fact Inuit oral histories tell of them being pushed off the land and killed by the ancestors of today’s Inuit.
Others argue it may have been disease, some say climate. I would suspect it was a combination of all these. With that in mind remember the Tuniit occupied the Arctic regions of North America for about 4,000 years prior to the arrival of the Thule-Inuit. They would probably still be here today if not for the migration of other groups, but that is speculation.
Regardless, the colonizing Inuit replaced them – he natural cycle of human migration patterns worldwide.
The process of naming is about power and control.
Knowing this I suggest Toonik time be renamed ‘Thule Time.’
Yes!