Traditional seal skinning caught on tape

“What is the name and location of the little bone in the body of the seal that guarantees that your children will be born beautiful if you swallow it straight down without chewing on it? What are the differences between the eye of the seal and the human eye?”

These are just a few of the questions raised during an unusual get-together on the ringed seal.

And the story of this get-together is just one of the stories contained in this year’s Anngutivik annual review of activities and events at the Kativik School Board.

Last November, a group of elders participated in a series of workshops in Kuujjuaq to produce culturally-relevant teaching material for KSB teachers.

These workshops are now on film, part of the school board’s “multi-media project on the seal,” which the KSB will post soon on its web site at www.kativik.qc.ca.

The project, funded by a federal scheme called the New Pathways Program, is intended to provide Nunavik students and teachers access to audio, visual and text material on the seal that the board prepared in the past, and to produce new material for culture and science teachers in Nunavik.

With help from the Kativik Regional Government, Nunavik’s Avataq Cultural Institute brought many of the regular participants from its annual Inuttitut Terminology Workshops to Kuujjuaq for the seal workshop – Johnny George Annanack, George and Joanna Koneak, Louisa Kulula, Josie Pamiurtuq, Jacob Weetaluktuk and Davidee Niviaxie.

Anguvigaq, Nunavik’s Hunters Fishers and Trappers Association, supplied four specimens for the workshop – three ringed seals and a harp seal – from different communities.

The group’s first session was in Makivik Corporation boardroom, where the group revised and supplemented a lexicon of the seal’s anatomy produced by the late Taamusi Qumaq in 1985, with Georges Filotas, who speaks Inuttitut, English and French fluently, acting as recording secretary during these discussions.

The group then moved on to Jaanimmarik School’s Inuit Culture Training Centre for a hands-on demonstration of the different butchering techniques used in Nunavik: the Ungava technique of skinning close to the skin so that the blubber stays on the carcass, and the Hudson Bay technique of skinning close to the meat so that the blubber comes off with the skin.

As the carcasses were cut up, care was taken not only to name all the parts in Inuktitut, but also to discuss customary usage and the rules governing the distribution of the different parts of the seal.

This was followed by an exhibition of skin scraping and cleaning techniques by Louisa Kulula of Quaqtaq.

The last session took place in the laboratory located in Makivik’s Nunavik Research Center where staff biologist Manon Simard demonstrated how an autopsy can reveal information about the state of health of a marine mammal such as the ringed seal.

For more information, or a copy of Anngutivik, which will be shortly to every Nunavik household, email debbie_astroff@kativik.qc.ca.

With files from the KSB and Georges Filotas.