Young Iqaluit resident heads for the Himalayas

GREG YOUNGER-LEWIS

Jesse Tungilik, an irrepressible world traveller from Nunavut, is heading up to the Himalayas to better understand where he comes from.

This spring, Tungilik plans to hike up to the base camp of Mt. Everest, the highest mountain in the world.

Tungilik, a 20-year-old resident of Iqaluit, admits he has little evidence to prove that Nunavut has a connection with Nepali culture, but he’s got a hunch that he’ll find a lot of Inuit values alive and well among local mountain climbers.

“They’re a people similar to us,” Tungilik said in an interview last week. “They live in a similar environment, facing similar challenges and drastic changes.”

Tungilik even coined his own Inuktitut phrase for the adventure: the search for Sherpa Qaujimajatuqangit (sherpa traditional culture), a reference to Nunavut’s oft-cited Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (Inuit traditional culture).

Sherpas are the tough, nature-savvy guides who lead hikers up and down the treacherous passes and steep slopes of Nepal’s mountain range.

If his plan works, Tungilik will accompany one of Nepal’s most famous sherpas as part of an expedition set up by the Quebec adventure tour group, Students on Ice.

The group has booked Jamling Norgay to guide Tungilik and about 20 other young travellers around the region. Norgay’s father, Tenzing, reached the top of Mt. Everest on Edmond Hillary’s famous expedition to the summit in 1953.

“I think there’s a lot to learn from how sherpas live their lives,” Tungilik said. “They are the stewards of the land there, as Inuit are the stewards of the land here.”

According to Tungilik, sherpas and Inuit are partially tied together by their parallel history.

He notes that many sherpas come from a Tibetan background, a country invaded by China in the 1950s. Since then, the communist government has oppressed the Tibetans, a minority culture, by outlawing their local strand of Buddhism, imprisoning independence activists, and using various means of assimilating the Tibetans into the majority ethnic Chinese culture.

Inuit have fought similar battles to keep their culture and autonomy, although the federal government in Canada has used less coercive means than China, Tungilik said.

“In a way, it’s the extreme side of what’s happened and is happening here,” Tungilik said.

Inuit and sherpas also face similar threats from global warming. In the Arctic, recent reports suggest that rising temperatures will destroy the ice floes and other habitat needed to preserve the traditional hunting culture.

In Asia, scientists blame climate change for increased erosion in the Himalayas, caused by melting mountain glaciers.

As a result, sherpas will have to change the way they’ve worked and lived in the mountains for centuries.

Tungilik will bring attention to the impact of global warming by tree-planting during the trip, to bring back forests battered by erosion.

Tungilik expects the Mt. Everest trip will be more meaningful than his previous travels to Antarctica, Scandinavia and Central America.

He hopes it will bridge a gap in his own life. Tungilik, the son of an Inuk father and non-Inuk mother, sees travelling increasingly as a way to deal with the identity crisis that comes with mixed heritage.

“When I travel, I get to understand somewhere else,” he said. “It helps me understand a little more what it means to live here.”

With that in mind, Tungilik hopes other Inuit will follow in his footsteps.

Tungilik points to programs like the Nunavut Youth Abroad Program, as an example of how other young Inuit can get out and see the world.

For now, Tungilik has to pay a hefty $6,500 to go to Nepal in March. Anyone with fundraising ideas can reach him at jesse_tungilik@hotmail.com.