Rediscovering a culture of health

It has been described as an epidemic of modern times and perhaps felt more acutely in Canada's First Nations communities than anywhere else. Over the past several decades diabetes has become a prevalent health concern among Aboriginal Canadians, but it wasn't always so.

"We know that prior to the 1950s, diabetes was essentially unheard of in Aboriginal populations in Canada," says Richard Oster, a senior research coordinator for the Believing we can Reduce Aboriginal Incidence of Diabetes (BRAID) Research group at the University of Alberta's Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry. "It's since exploded to rates that are at least two to five times higher than what's found in the general population."

While Canada's health-care community struggles to address the physical needs of Aboriginal patients with diabetes, Oster believes part of the solution lies in reconnecting them to their cultural roots. Oster is the lead author of a study published in the October issue of the International Journal for Equity in Health that examined the link between culture and diabetes in Alberta First Nations communities.

"What we found is that those communities that have more people speaking and knowing their language, and who are presumably more connected to their culture, have significantly less diabetes," says Oster. "In fact, some of those communities had diabetes rates that were lower than the general public rate."

As part of the study, the research team first interviewed 10 First Nations leaders from across the province to understand their perspective on how cultural continuity relates to health, and specifically diabetes. They then examined the rate of diabetes on 31 First Nations communities in Alberta and compared them to traditional Indigenous language knowledge rates, an indicator of cultural continuity, in those same communities.

The average crude rate of diabetes in the communities was 9.5 per cent, with a low of 1.2 per cent in one community and a high of 18.3 per cent in another. Indigenous language knowledge varied from a low of 10.5 per cent to a high of 92.8 per cent. When the diabetes rate in the communities was compared to a variety of factors, including median household income, unemployment rate, high school completion rate and Indigenous language knowledge, only language knowledge was a significant predictor of diabetes.

Rick Lightning, a resident of Maskwacis and one of the First Nations leaders interviewed for the study, says the research findings are a wake-up call. "We need to let outsiders as well as people in the reserves know that we need to start doing some things; we need to start looking at things."

Lightning was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 55. He says the disease is no longer just among the old but is increasingly found among children on reserves as well. He believes diabetes first gained a foothold among Aboriginal people with the implementation of residential schools and the loss of culture that came with them. Without many traditional skills, foods and activities, Lightning says health among First Nations peoples has suffered over the years.

"You've heard of intergenerational trauma. Well, a lot of the sicknesses we have in our communities are based on that as well," says Lightning, who is also a co-author on the study.

Oster agrees, noting how culture loss along with other social factors has impacted many Aboriginal Canadians. "Try picturing yourself in those shoes. You live in poverty, you are discriminated against every day and your life is in chaos. Then think about residential schools and the impact they have had and continue to have on families. Eating healthy is just not really up there on the list of priorities. It's difficult to do."

The findings of the study are of special interest to the Canadian Diabetes Association, which helped fund the research.

"We have known for many years that Aboriginal communities are at a higher risk for diabetes than the general population in Canada, based on genetic factors," says Jan Hux, chief science officer for the Canadian Diabetes Association. "The disturbingly rapid growth of diabetes prevalence in these communities has been attributed in part to the adoption of a western lifestyle. The study supports this interpretation and sheds light on an important structural factor--cultural continuity--that might moderate the risk of diabetes for Aboriginal communities. Further studies will be needed to examine which components of cultural continuity are most important in helping prevent diabetes and how they can be fostered and preserved."

Oster believes Canada's Aboriginal communities need to be allowed to revitalize their culture. As part of that he says their distinct languages also need to be urgently protected. It's a message connecting better health to a stronger cultural connection that he hopes government leaders and all Canadians take to heart.

"We know that stress leads to diabetes. That's been proven," says Oster. "If you allow culture to be a part of your life it provides social support for people, it provides spiritual tranquility, and it provides stability in turbulent times. In part, that's how I think it can help reduce diabetes.

"Our study provides proof of something (First Nations people) have known for thousands of years--that health and culture are inseparable."
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Reference:

EurekAlert. 2015. “Rediscovering a culture of health”. EurekAlert. Posted: January 22, 2015. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-01/uoaf-rac012215.php

Urban Aboriginal people face unique health challenges

For the first time, researchers have access to detailed information about how an urban Aboriginal population in Canada uses health care. A new study, called Our Health Counts, uses this health database to clearly demonstrate the unique challenges faced by urban Aboriginal people in Canada – according to researchers at St. Michael's Hospital.

The findings, published today in BMJ Open, illustrate striking disparities between urban First Nations individuals and the general population.

Researchers interviewed 554 First Nations adults in Hamilton, Ont. – chosen for its large Aboriginal population and strong infrastructure of Aboriginal community health and social services. Researchers collected data for factors that influence a person's health such as poverty, illness and income for Hamilton's First Nations population.

"Compared to Hamilton's general adult population, we found elevated emergency room use, multiple barriers to health care access and significant rates of chronic disease among urban Aboriginal adults," said Dr. Michelle Firestone, an associate scientist with St. Michael's Hospital's Centre for Research on Inner City Health.

More than 10 per cent of First Nations adults visited the emergency room six times or more in the previous two years – only 1.6 per cent of Hamilton's general adult population could say the same.

"Hamilton has extensive health and social services but 40 per cent of respondents felt their access to health care was either fair or poor," said Dr. Firestone, who holds a PhD in public health. "This shows geography is not the only health care barrier for First Nations people."

Almost half of respondents reported that long waiting lists to see a specialist were a barrier. Other common barriers included not being able to arrange transportation; not being able to afford direct costs or transportation; services not covered by non-insured health benefits and lack of trust in health care providers.

More than 60 per cent of Aboriginal people living in Ontario live in urban areas. An increasing number of First Nations individuals are moving to urban centers to seek better housing, employment and education opportunities and for the services and amenities available.

The most common chronic conditions of Hamilton's First Nations adults included arthritis (30.7 per cent), high blood pressure (25.8 per cent), asthma (19 per cent) and diabetes (15.6 per cent).

Among First Nations adults living in Hamilton:

• 73 per cent of respondents reported an upper respiratory tract infection in the past 12 months
• 25 per cent reported having been injured over the past 12 months
• 78 per cent earn less than $20,000 per year
• 70 per cent live in the city's lowest-income neighbourhoods

Aboriginal people are often excluded, unidentified, or under-represented in most Canadian health information databases. Our Health Counts fills this health information void by using respondent-driven sampling – a research method used to recruit hidden or stigmatized populations by relying on participants to identify the next wave of study recruits. Our Health Counts is the first respondent-driven sampling of urban First Nations people in Canada.

"Our Health Counts is a significant contribution to public health," said Dr. Firestone. "This data will have important implications for health service delivery, programming and policy development. It should directly inform strategic directions and improve health of urban Aboriginal people in Ontario."
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References:

EurekAlert. 2014. “Urban Aboriginal people face unique health challenges”. EurekAlert. Posted: July 10, 2014. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-07/smh-uap070914.php

The trials of Nunavut: Lament for an Arctic nation - Part Nine

Part IX

The morning after the church service, the man with the broken back borrowed a snowmobile and sledged home to a ramshackle assemblage of landfill scraps about six kilometres from town. He has been on a waiting list for a real home 18 months and counting. He creaked upstairs to his bedroom filled with Montreal Canadiens memorabilia, cookie tins, Cuban cigar boxes, pulp paperbacks and video cassettes. An old brass thermometer read minus 15. It felt colder. He lit two Coleman stoves for heat and lay on his bed beneath a huge ceiling mirror.

“I can't stand to look at myself,” he muttered, and sat back up.

Leo Nangmalik's life story is a kind of microcosm of the modern history of Canada's Eastern Arctic. As a boy, he attended Sir Joseph Bernier School in Chesterfield Inlet. He remembers the Catholic nuns stripping him down and washing him, focusing a special vigour on his genitals. There was a priest who did worse, he says. When he tried to tell his mother, she would hit him and call him a liar.

He would go on to spend years in prison. He has held a rifle to his head. “I could never pull the trigger,” he said, adding that he didn't want his 13 kids growing up without a father, even though he hasn't been much of a father.

The hiss of the Coleman stoves masked Mr. Nangmalik's sobs. “Until now, until the Coral Harbour group arrived, whenever I told these things, I was called a liar,” he wheezed. “I am here. This was done to me. I am not lying.”

And then, as if the thought had just occurred to him: “I want to live,” he said. “I want all of us to get past the hardships.”

He said he had gone to the healing service because it was run by men like him, not qallunaat or even government workers. If Nunavut is to overcome its culture of low expectations, part of the answer must come that way, up from the bottom, as the church leader, Mr. Kaludjuak, had said that night.

“I can see now that the federal government was trying to help,” Mr. Kaludjuak said. “They tried to get us in houses, to feed us, to have us live like them. … There were consequences they could not see. And now the men here sit around like children. It is up to us to change that, not government.”

This is one of Nunavut's biggest problems: The region's history has left its people so distrustful of change from above that they may not accept interventions even from their own territorial government.

“In the past,” Mr. Bell said, “change has been painful. So they've become reactionary in the literal sense of the word. It's rooted in the trauma of the past and a sentimentalized view of the past.”

But things must change in Nunavut, and its leaders must tell the truth of how the system is failing – just as Mr. Nangmalik must tell his truth.

Outside his shack, darkness had won the battle of contrasts. A blue halo encircled the moon, just as it did on that hopeful night a dozen years ago. A clear night sky promised a bright day tomorrow.

“What I have told you,” Mr. Nangmalik said, looking across the bay, “I have never been able to tell. I feel a peace right now. Maybe this is what we need, this talking.”
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References:

White, Patrick. 2011. "The trials of Nunavut: Lament for an Arctic nation". The Globe and Mail. Posted: April 1, 2011. Available online: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/nunavut/the-trials-of-nunavut-lament-for-an-arctic-nation/article1963420/singlepage/#articlecontent

The trials of Nunavut: Lament for an Arctic nation - Part Eight

Part VIII

There was another kind of hope to be found in Repulse Bay, in the form of a little green logo stitched to tuques and gloves all over town.

A few days earlier, staff from the French nuclear-power giant Areva had held a community meeting to tell the locals about the benefits of a uranium development the company is pitching 500 kilometres southwest, in Baker Lake. The town was buzzing with talk of potential job opportunities.

The Areva bid is one of several developments that have raised hopes throughout the Eastern Arctic that a prosperous age is coming.

In Baker Lake and two nearby towns tucked along the eastern shore of Hudson Bay, Rankin Inlet and Arviat, optimism around mining is accompanied by anticipation of a highway development that would extend upward from Northern Manitoba, creating the first land link between Nunavut and the provinces.

Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger signed an agreement with Nunavut Premier Eva Aariak to study the highway's construction late last year, a project expected to cost about $1.2-billion.

“We get that road in here, and you'll see this part of Nunavut change in a hurry for the better,” said John Hickes, the mayor of Rankin Inlet, who has been so single-minded in his pursuit of the highway that some refer to him as John Road.

“There's a lot of stories in Nunavut, but this is the good news story here in the region around Rankin. You keep your eyes on us. We're not standing still.”

Optimism comes in other forms as well. Premier Aariak has declared it her personal mission to overhaul the education system.

She also wants to strike a devolution deal with the federal government: Under its current territorial jurisdiction, Nunavut has little control over resources sitting under Crown land. Ms. Aariak wants to change that and have Nunavut collect resource revenues that might otherwise go to Ottawa.

But there's a catch: Her pitch relies on convincing federal negotiators that her government is on a strong organizational footing. For Nunavut, that's a tough sell.

Her education plan is more promising, a new act that would stress bilingualism, Inuit culture, community control and improved academic standards. But such vague ambitions still fall far short of those, for example, in Greenland.

That largely Inuit nation has a long head start on Nunavut in grappling with the social and economic ravages that come with a polar climate and isolated population.

In Greenland, the government maintains a hard goal of ensuring that two-thirds of its population has a trade or academic education by 2020.

The island nation offers other lessons as well. Greenland was granted home rule from Denmark in 1979 and increased local powers in 2009. Today, with a 6.8-per-cent unemployment rate, it hauls in 60 per cent of its revenues from domestic sources, relying on Denmark for the remaining 40 per cent – the equivalent of $11,000 per Greenlander.

Nunavut, by contrast, posts a 20-per-cent unemployment rate and generates 7 per cent of its revenue internally. The rest – $1.1-billion or roughly $33,000 per capita – comes from Ottawa.

Mr. Peterson's alcohol task force is looking to the steps Greenland took in the mid-1990s to address rampant alcoholism there. It liberalized liquor sales, took addiction care more seriously and, in a symbolic gesture, banned drinking in government offices.

While the island still has its share of alcohol problems, per-capita liquor consumption has dropped significantly.

“I don't know a single sane Greenlander who would go back to the policies of the past where you drive people to obsess about alcohol,” said Jack Hicks, a social researcher who has worked closely with governments in both Nunavut and Greenland.

Mr. Hicks is one of the Arctic's foremost experts on suicide. “We have to get young people off of drinking cupfuls of vodka with no mix. If you acknowledge that people are going to drink instead of pretending you can stop them, you can do some good.”

Finally, it must be acknowledged that for all its woes, Nunavut remains livable, at least for those lucky enough to be members of the territory's small but growing middle class.

“I sometimes ask myself if this is something of a failed state,” said Mr. Bell, the journalist. “And I have to say no. When I go home and flick a switch, the power comes on. The garbage gets picked up. The hospital functions. The RCMP protects us.

“Compared to the other provinces and territories, we're doing very poorly. A failed jurisdiction maybe, but it's not Sierra Leone. It's not Somalia.”

True. But so far, it's also not Greenland. Not even close.
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References:

White, Patrick. 2011. "The trials of Nunavut: Lament for an Arctic nation". The Globe and Mail. Posted: April 1, 2011. Available online: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/nunavut/the-trials-of-nunavut-lament-for-an-arctic-nation/article1963420/singlepage/#articlecontent

The trials of Nunavut: Lament for an Arctic nation - Part Seven

Part VII

Throughout Nunavut, Inuit leaders appeal to tradition as a response to violence and despair. Outsiders are bewildered by the claim that to progress, society must regress. But in smaller, more remote places such as Repulse Bay, you can at least partly see their point.

Repulse Bay is an 800-person hamlet two flights northeast of Iqaluit. Located directly on the Arctic Circle, about 2,000 kilometres due north of Thunder Bay, it ranks near the basement of territorial socio-economic indicators. The median income is below $20,000; unemployment sits around 40 per cent. As of 2006, only five of the 175 young people here between 15 and 24 had a high-school diploma.

But, despite the lack of an economy, schooling and any real government presence, the Repulse Bay crime rate is far closer to the national average. RCMP records show just 156 Criminal Code violations last year and 150 in each of the previous two years, probably giving it the lowest crime rate in Nunavut.

“If you talk to people who visit a lot of remote communities across Nunavut, they'll tell you people in Repulse just seem happier than people elsewhere,” said a visiting physician, dining on dry meat loaf and cherry pie one evening at the local hotel. “It's hard to describe.”

Steve Mapsalak, a former MLA and renowned hunting guide who is now the town's Senior Administrative Officer, said his town may not be perfect, but its relative peace stems from a way of life grounded in fishing and hunting.

“We don't hunt as a hobby here,” Mr. Mapsalak said. “It's our way of life, our currency, our welfare system, our culture. We spread our meat to the old and the poor. A good hunter raises the entire community.”

Still, old ways cannot erase the recent history. The ghosts of residential schools and the harsh transition to settlement life linger here as everywhere else. But Repulse Bay is working its way past them, with a little help from Jesus Christ and Sigmund Freud.

Also in the hotel dining hall was a grey-haired clinical psychologist named Bruce Handley. As the Newfoundland construction workers around the table gobbled down their last crumbs of pie, Dr. Handley tried to recruit bodies for a community-healing service at the town hall later that night.

“I promise it will be a very interesting service,” he said. “They get up front and confess their sins and sing and cry. When they really feel the spirit, I've actually seen them vomit that evil all over the floor.”

Around 7 p.m., he took a seat among 150 chairs filled with stern hunters, acned teens, even babies. This was the culmination of a three-day visit by a men's healing group from nearby Coral Harbour. Dr. Handley, who spent decades working largely in prairie prisons, would mediate. The approach was not exactly clinically orthodox: The Coral Harbour group, complete with four-piece rock band, was running a Pentecostal prayer service.

“Others in my profession might dismiss it,” he said. “But after 40 years doing this, I've found that putting therapy in spiritual terms makes it much easier to understand. They are a very spiritual people, and always have been. We shouldn't be fighting that.”

A man named Willie Eetuk had started the Coral Harbour group nearly four years ago, when he realized he had to speak about his addictions to conquer them but could find nobody, government-

sponsored or otherwise, to help. He put a call out on the bush radio. The first meeting attracted 15 and soon grew to 50.

Noel Kaludjuak was one of the first. “I was an alcoholic,” he said. “I drank because of my past. My parents were born on the land. In the 1960s, the government moved us to communities. But my father stayed out hunting. I grew up fatherless. Many of us did.

“We didn't learn how to lead a household, to be a man, so we abused drugs. When my father returned, he beat my mom. I did the same thing. I disassociated from the world.”

The band launched into a tune. As the kick-drum rattled the blue and yellow walls, a woman in the front row rose, dancing with her hands reaching to the heavens. A dozen more mimicked her. The Coral Harbour men did a laying-on of hands with a family of five who had walked to the front of the room, telling them that Jesus knew their sins and loved them still. A woman gyrated, her legs failed and the Coral Harbour men caught her. A man with a broken back said he felt cured.

When the band finished, a succession of men took the microphone. “I have hurt my family,” John Tinashlu said tearily. “I have raised my voice and my fists. I said this in prayer now I say it to you. I have not been a good father. I drank. I cannot hide it any more. I love you, son. I hurt you. I love you. I used to blame others. No more.”

It was bedlam, rapture, therapy – a homegrown truth-and-reconciliation hearing. After the four-hour service, all 200 people streamed out wiping their red eyes and revved home on snowmobiles. The next day, some sought out Dr. Handley for one-on-one sessions.

While self-help and evangelism are surely no cure-all for Nunavut's shortcomings, they do offer one way to give voice to personal demons – a non-violent means of release.

“We don't pretend that we can fix the pain of all Nunavut,” said Mr. Kaludjuak, the Coral Harbour church leader. “We have many problems here. But you can't make a healthy place without healthy minds.”
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References:

White, Patrick. 2011. "The trials of Nunavut: Lament for an Arctic nation". The Globe and Mail. Posted: April 1, 2011. Available online: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/nunavut/the-trials-of-nunavut-lament-for-an-arctic-nation/article1963420/singlepage/#articlecontent

The trials of Nunavut: Lament for an Arctic nation - Part Six

Part VI

The generation gap, overcrowding, poor education, alcohol and cycles of violence – the casualties of all these faults languish in a squat, metal-sided building that the Deputy Director of Corrections likes to refer to as “the sardine can.”

The Baffin Correctional Centre lies roughly 30 seconds from downtown Iqaluit. On a recent weekend shift, security doors hung crookedly from bent hinges, sinks didn't work and doors had been ripped from toilet stalls.

Inmates sipped fruit punch from melamine mugs, played checkers and stared longingly at bedside magazine cut-outs of Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson and federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq – or “Queen Leona” as one male inmate referred to her.

In the basketball gym, narrow cots crowded the court from baseline to baseline. J.P. Deroy, the deputy director, said there were a few days last year when the gym was free of beds, but usually it's teeming with around 100 inmates, almost 100 per cent above the jail's capacity.

“How are you supposed to run rehab programs in a place like this? Most of the year, it's too cold outside and it's too crowded inside,” Mr. Deroy said, pacing the jail's halls.

One inmate in solitary leaped from his bed and waved through a small window when he saw Mr. Deroy walk by. A guard opened the door. “You need something?”

“Nope,” said the prisoner, a broad-shouldered Inuk in his early 20s with buzzed hair. “Just wondering what you guys was up to.” He and the guards lapsed into neighbourly banter.

Asked his name, he turned his back and pointed a thumb at a tattoo stretching between his soldier blades: “INUKSTA.” He then drew attention to several places where he had scratched the moniker on the cell wall.

“I spend a lot of time here,” he said. “Gotta find something to do with my time.”

Inuksta grew up in poverty with his Inuktitut-speaking grandparents. His struggles with English led to fights, first with other students and then with teachers.

He has been in and out of juvenile-detention facilities and the Baffin Correctional Centre ever since, on a string of charges.

“We know you very, very well, don't we?” Mr. Deroy said. “Are you still causing the guards problems?”

Inuksta just smiled, looked bashfully at his prison-issue sandals. “Maybe a little, yeah.”

Criminologists debate endlessly about the root causes of crime waves, but one thing is generally agreed: The larger the proportion of youth in a given population, especially undereducated ones, the worse the crime problem.

“While the rest of the country is getting older, Nunavut is getting younger,” said V Division's Chief Supt. McVarnock. “You mix a young population with alcohol and limited options, you're going to have problems.”

Rising crime has put stress on the courts as well. The average number of prisoners waiting for court dates has increased to 63 in 2010 from 18 in 1999.

In its proposed budget before the federal election call, Ottawa had pledged $4.2-million over two years to hire judges and prosecutors for Nunavut, responding to a terse letter from Nunavut Chief Justice Robert Kilpatrick that cited the territory's youthful demographics.

For the time being, Inuksta seemed resigned to calling prison a permanent second home.

“I get out, and I try, but I always end up here,” he said, smiling at the guards. “Wouldn't be surprised if that keeps happening, I guess.”

As his visitors moved on, he shuffled his sandals back into solitary, and closed his door behind him.
_____________
References:

White, Patrick. 2011. "The trials of Nunavut: Lament for an Arctic nation". The Globe and Mail. Posted: April 1, 2011. Available online: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/nunavut/the-trials-of-nunavut-lament-for-an-arctic-nation/article1963420/singlepage/#articlecontent

The trials of Nunavut: Lament for an Arctic nation - Part Five

Part V

If Nunavut has any shot at beating back its demons, it needs to dry out first. On average, Nunavummiut spend $940 each a year on alcohol, more than almost anywhere else in the country, according to Statistics Canada. That doesn't include black-market purchases, which easily run as high as $100 for a 375-millilitre mickey of vodka. Such sums cripple household budgets as much as the booze cripples household health – a whole society in a state of cirrhosis.

“I'd say nine out of 10 – heck, even 10 out of 10 – things we deal with stem directly from alcohol,” Constable Pottie said. “We cut down the booze, we cut down the crime.”

And this is despite the country's most draconian alcohol regulations. Since 1976, Nunavut's hamlets have had a choice of three types of booze control: open, restricted or dry – with respective efficacy rates of limited, not much and nil.

Just as American Prohibition was a paradise for the likes of Al Capone, Nunavut's scattershot liquor laws have been a windfall for smugglers and bootleggers whose influence has continuously undermined the territory's efforts at social stability.

Iqaluit is among five “open” communities. Even there, residents can't legally buy liquor in stores. They must order it, for personal use, or drink inside select establishments. Seven Nunavut hamlets are currently “dry” and the remaining 13 are “restricted.”

One of those 13 is Cape Dorset, where one Tuesday evening, a skinny young woman, 19, sat fidgeting in a chair, waiting to appear before the town's Alcohol Education Committee to apply for her first alcohol permit.

“I want to start off slow, ask for a 60-ouncer at first,” she said. “Then I'll work my way up.”

This panel of prominent locals scrutinizes individual alcohol orders, deciding to reject, accept or reduce each request based on its assessment of a person's ability to hold his or her liquor. In light of the Incidents, the five-person committee was considering new monthly alcohol limits: 72 cans of beer, five 750-millilitre bottles of hard liquor, 30 bottles of wine. They did not seem to discuss what a doctor might think of someone chugging 30 bottles of wine a month.

“We want to be helpful without restricting people,” said Chris Pudlat, one of the committee members.

Yet the biggest problem with alcohol in Nunavut is not how much people drink, but how much they drink all at once. Darryl Wood, an assistant professor at Washington State University and the only criminologist who has studied alcohol policies in Nunavut, characterizes it as “low frequency, high quantity” – consumption habits that stretch binge drinking to dizzying new levels. It is common for people to guzzle a mickey of vodka straight, barely stopping to breathe. Inebriation sets in immediately and forcefully.

“I once saw a little girl slugging back a bottle,” said Constable Alex Benoit, one of the Cape Dorset policemen involved in the Incidents. “When we stopped her and asked her what she was doing, she said she was trying to pass out. That was the goal. Not to have fun or enjoy herself. It was to black out. Alcohol is used differently here.”

Last April, Mr. Peterson struck a task force dedicated to solving Nunavut's alcohol problem, which is entertaining the counterintuitive idea of opening beer-and-wine stores to combat liquor consumption.

Many people argue that the open sale of lower-proof alcohol would break the vodka-bootlegging trade and reduce the extremes of intoxication.

But few issues in Nunavut are as politically combustible as liquor legislation.

Thirty-five years ago, residents of Iqaluit (then called Frobisher Bay) could buy booze at a regular liquor store. But when a drunk driver struck and killed a child, a full-fledged temperance movement developed, soon amassing such fervent support that the territorial commissioner ceded to popular demand and shuttered the Iqaluit liquor store.

“Since then, few local politicians have dared propose that the Iqaluit liquor store be reopened for retail sales,” Mr. Bell wrote in a recent Nunatsiaq News story on the issue. “It's still a radioactive issue, capable of incinerating all who go near it.”

After a little while, the Cape Dorset Committee called in the young woman.

“So you want a 60-ouncer?” Mr. Pudlat asked.

“Yes.”

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

“What will you do with it?”

“Just mix a few drinks. No parties.”

The committee conferred for all of 10 seconds.

“Yes, one 60-ouncer is fine,” Mr. Pudlat ruled.

The teen smiled. But if she had been turned down, she would have had other options.

“Black market,” she said. “That's where I get it now.”
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References:

White, Patrick. 2011. "The trials of Nunavut: Lament for an Arctic nation". The Globe and Mail. Posted: April 1, 2011. Available online: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/nunavut/the-trials-of-nunavut-lament-for-an-arctic-nation/article1963420/singlepage/#articlecontent

The trials of Nunavut: Lament for an Arctic nation - Part Four

Part IV

By day, Iqaluit can seem downright sleepy. Locals sit for hours in warm hotel lobbies to pass the time. The half-dozen restaurants here keep such irregular hours that it's a gamble to try to find breakfast on a weekend morning.

“From the statistics, one would get the sense that you walk around our communities and you get shot at,” said RCMP Chief Superintendent Steve McVarnock, head of Nunavut V Division in Iqaluit. “It's not like that. We don't have the big-city crime issues. Our stuff is self-destruction.”

And on a weekend night, those implosions are on full display.

That's what makes the detachment a perfect place to break in fresh-faced Mounties such as Constable Shane Pottie, a 23-year-old Nova Scotian nearly two years out of training, who patrolled the capital city on a recent Friday night.

“It's a great experience,” he said of northern policing, navigating his GMC pickup down a hill overlooking the small bowl where most of Iqaluit's inhabitants live. “I'll kick in more doors in a year than a lot of guys do in a career.”

His shift began at 9 p.m. For an hour, he crisscrossed town waiting for a call, slowing down on each five-minute pass to idle around a knot of kids playing road hockey late into the night.

“That's just the way it is up here for kids,” he said. “Safer to be on the street than at home.”

But after that, the whole city seemed to erupt. Over the next few hours, Constable Pottie would kick in two doors, wrestle several drunkards to the ground, track footprints at a break-in scene outside a school, help process 15 prisoners, continually dodge the widening river of urine forming on the floor of the detachment's lock-up and save an infant from falling out of her mother's amauti (a Inuit parka with an extra-large hood designed to carry a baby).

At 2 a.m. came an innocuous-sounding call. “Detox male standing in the road punching cars,” a dispatcher monotoned over the truck radio.

“Alpha-7, 17,” Constable Pottie responded. He was on his way, deking around the hockey boys again, their little bodies now steaming in the minus-10-degree night. Then the dispatcher crackled again: “Detox male now has a knife and is threatening people.” The policeman gunned the truck. City scenery blurred past: unsteady drunks milling around the four main bars, the dim orange lights of an entire grid run on diesel generators, dinged-up cabs delivering intoxicated people or their intoxicants.

Constable Pottie fishtailed around a corner and headed down an alley until his brake lights burst red against the snow. Thirty metres ahead, barely visible at the edge of his high beams, someone in socked feet leaned unsteadily against a house. Constable Pottie drove close, jumped out and drew the nine-millimetre gun from his holster.

Another squad truck charged in from the opposite direction. Two Mounties jumped out, nine-millimetres up. The young man was cornered.

“Get down on the ground!” one of the other officers yelled. “Drop the knife and get down now.”

The guy's eyes darted about until three blurry gun barrels came into focus. He couldn't have been more than 15.

He glanced down at his two-inch blade and then at his socks. For a moment, he seemed to think he would test his knife-at-a-gunfight odds, and lunged forward.

The three Mounties raised their guns. In the midst of his lunge, the kid lost his footing, stumbled and, finally, fell, belly against snow. One young Mountie leaned his knee against the man's back. There were convulsions, then vomit – the rage all gone.

The officers took turns comforting him, patting the back of a teenager who had threatened them with a knife moments earlier.

Ambulance lights reflected off the dark white hills surrounding Iqaluit. Constable Pottie's shift had several hours to go.
_____________
References:

White, Patrick. 2011. "The trials of Nunavut: Lament for an Arctic nation". The Globe and Mail. Posted: April 1, 2011. Available online: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/nunavut/the-trials-of-nunavut-lament-for-an-arctic-nation/article1963420/singlepage/#articlecontent

The trials of Nunavut: Lament for an Arctic nation - Part Three

Part III

Iqaluit is Nunavut's boom town, its big smoke, its metropolis. The airport hums all night. Big banks, absent from most other hamlets, line the main drag. In a new and welcome development, Iqalummiut can even buy double-doubles.

And yet, here in Nunavut's bridge to modern Canada, one in five houses is overcrowded and one in 10 families use their living room as a bedroom. Hundreds of homes need major repairs.

The government of Nunavut is working on it: The town is filled with welding sparks, hard hats and the growing steel skeletons of sturdy apartment blocks. But Iqaluit's residential boom is outpacing the construction boom – its population has nearly doubled, to 7,250, since it officially became the capital in 1999 and professionals from all over the country started coming to seek high-paying government jobs.

That invasion ramped up the already-existing tension between Inuit and newcomers. Despite a mandate to fill 85 per cent of government jobs by 2020 with Inuit, the rate has languished around 50 per cent for a decade, because Nunavut's education system cannot produce enough qualified candidates.

Ms. Redfern, the new mayor, is perhaps the most prominent critic of this broken system. “We live in a chilly banana republic,” she said last year, a few weeks before she would become mayor.

At the time, she was bemoaning her chances of ever holding public office in her home territory. Born in the North to an Inuit mother and a father who had immigrated from England, she went through grade school in Ottawa before going on to law school and becoming the first Inuk to clerk for the Supreme Court of Canada. She doesn't speak Inuktitut fluently, and her southern education is treated suspiciously up here.

“I think it's the same in a lot of small places,” she said. “It's an insular culture here and when you go away, you're not always trusted immediately upon your return.”

This discourages some youth from seeking education away, even as dropout rates at home sit at 75 per cent. Those who do graduate receive an education that falls well short of standards in the South. Thanks to an unofficial policy of “social promotion” that grants students passing grades regardless of academic performance, graduates can possess both a high-school diploma and functional illiteracy. Last autumn, one non-Inuit family in Cape Dorset was planning a move to Ontario because the hamlet's high school didn't offer a single university-recognized course.

And yet education is what Nunavut arguably needs the most. Half of the territory's population is under 25, with a birth rate that leads the nation – a demographic crush of ignorance and incompetence that could hamstring the territory for decades.

Nunavut's political culture is overtly populist but deeply conservative. There is a strong resistance to change, and reverence for all things traditional. Encouraging young men to hunt is a popular remedy to virtually every social problem, though one might question the encouragement of gun use in such a violent climate. The majority's views on women's roles, abortion and gay marriage hark back to an era before the suffrage movement. Elders are the ultimate authority, their wisdom unquestionable as an oracle's.

Such a culture can become incapable of identifying its core problems, let alone addressing them. For example, the territory introduced a suicide-prevention plan only last year, even though the crisis was well documented at the very outset of Nunavut. Two people involved with the process said it was impossible to convince Inuit leadership that Southern solutions such as increased mental-health services and providing training in suicide intervention were viable solutions to a uniquely northern problem.

Even Nunavut Health Minister Tagak Curley, one of the original Inuit activists, told The Globe and Mail, “Suicide isn't such a big problem any more” – a statement in plain contradiction of the facts.

One of Mr. Curley's colleagues, Justice Minister Keith Peterson, is far more forthcoming. He sees all the suicide death notices (more than 320 since 1999), speaks with the shattered families and talks openly about the plight of Nunavut's youth.

“I'm not going to sit here and tell you why they're doing it, or how to solve it,” Mr. Peterson said. “We don't know.”

Nor does he have the money to find out. Roughly 90 per cent of the territorial budget comes directly from Ottawa, which works out to about $32,000 for every Nunavummiuq. Earlier this year, Mr. Peterson, who is also Nunavut's Finance Minister, was scrambling to fill a $110-million shortfall in the Housing Department caused by the inability to keep pace with population growth – a shortfall that worked out to roughly 10 per cent of the territory's total budget.

To make matters worse, the Nunavut Act bars its government from holding debt greater than $200-million. Already owing $140-million, the territory has little room to borrow or sell bonds to erase the shortfall, especially with an ever-growing list of badly needed infrastructure projects it can't afford.

That means cuts. Big ones. “We're stretched. … It's taken some real stick-handling on my part to straighten this thing out.” Mr. Peterson said. “Good thing I'm a hockey player.”

But the rink is tilted against him. In a series of investigations, federal Auditor-General Sheila Fraser has revealed the extent of Nunavut's bureaucratic dysfunction: In one recent audit, her office found that its public service limps along with 23 per cent of its positions unfilled, and a hiring process so sluggish it undermines the most basic functions of government.

“It's clear we have a crisis in leadership here,” Ms. Redfern said, bumping along Iqaluit's icy roads in her Ford pickup one afternoon. “People here have to realize Nunavut is a tool. It will give us a leg up only if we use it properly – if we decide to embrace self-improvement, education, good governance. So far, we haven't.”
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References:

White, Patrick. 2011. "The trials of Nunavut: Lament for an Arctic nation". The Globe and Mail. Posted: April 1, 2011. Available online: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/nunavut/the-trials-of-nunavut-lament-for-an-arctic-nation/article1963420/singlepage/#articlecontent

The trials of Nunavut: Lament for an Arctic nation

I intend to post each of the nine parts of this article over the next nine days. Is it the ghost of Davis Inlet rising again? Has Canada, as a nation, not learned its lessons?

Part I

Inside the dead man's house, Elisapee Qaumagiaq fell silent. She let the walls speak for her.

Someone had plunged his knuckles through the hallway drywall again and again and again, from the kitchen all the way down to the bedrooms. The blood had been washed away, but the tale of murder, outlined in felt-pen evidence markings, swirled beneath Ms. Qaumagiaq's snow boots.

She looked around for a few moments before saying the place was giving her “the creeps” and heading outside for a smoke in the minus-10-degree gale strafing the shores of Tellik Inlet. Ms. Qaumagiaq was with Cape Dorset's housing agency. She was responsible for getting the place back in shape, to help answer the never-ending shortage of shelter in the area. But, with so many scenes of death in recent months, the task was weighing on her.

“He was a good kid,” she said of the young man who lived there until he was shot last September. “Just a little angry.”

His death began a run of gun violence that terrorized Cape Dorset, the 1,300-person hamlet and famed sculpture and printmaking centre nuzzled against the Precambrian cliffs of tiny Dorset Island, just off the southwestern coast of Baffin Island. Around here, the events are simply referred to as “the Incidents,” if they're mentioned at all.

On the night of Sept. 19, a Sunday, a Grade 11 student named Peter Kingwatsiak allegedly crept into his uncle's bedroom and tried to stab the older man in the head while he slept, then fled after his uncle awoke. According to police, the teen then grabbed a gun, walked into his stepbrother's home and opened fire on the slumbering young man. Mappaluk Adla, or Mupp as he was known among friends at the youth centre, crawled for help, but never made it past the front door. He was eight days short of his 23rd birthday. The next day, schools were locked down until police picked up his accused killer around lunchtime.

Three weeks later, on Oct. 10, a 19-year-old man named Elee Geetah allegedly shot dead his brother, Jamesie Simigak, in a dispute over an iPod. He then barricaded himself inside a house and came out only after the RCMP flew in an emergency-response team from Iqaluit.

Finally, three days later, two Grade 9 boys sprayed the town with gunfire and traded shots with the police. One bullet flew through a constable's front window and embedded in his bathtub. His wife and two daughters were away at the time, but afterward the entire family left Cape Dorset, never to return.

The police and local media talked of a town unravelling, of a place where social norms had collapsed. What no one said aloud was that the unhinged town was symptomatic of an unhinged territory. While Canadians were aware there were social problems in the North, the outbreak of mayhem in Cape Dorset last fall drew broad attention for the first time to their violent extremes – the toll Nunavut pays in cold blood.

The rate of violent crime per capita here is seven times what it is in the rest of Canada. The homicide rate is around 1,000 per cent of the Canadian average. And the number of crimes reported to the police have more than doubled in the dozen years since the territory was formed. If it were an independent country, Nunavut's crime statistics would place it in the realm of South Africa or Mexico.

Even more than Nunavummiut harming each other, they are hurting themselves: Inuit males aged 15 to 24 have a suicide rate 40 times that of their peers in the rest of Canada, and children are abused at a rate 10 times the national average, even as 50 per cent of social-worker positions stand vacant.

Beyond physical violence, on the 12th anniversary of its founding, Nunavut is struggling on all levels just to meet the basic needs of its 33,000 inhabitants. Seven in 10 preschoolers grow up in houses without adequate food. Within Confederation, Nunavut ranks last in virtually every measure – education, general health, substance abuse, employment, income and housing.

With this kind of havoc and hardship, it's hard not to conclude that Nunavut is a failing state – that the bold experiment in domestic nation-building Canada launched in 1999 has gone deeply wrong. Is it at risk of becoming our own Haiti of the Arctic Circle, or can something be done to reverse the damage?

When they are asked, however, many Nunavut politicians refuse to talk about the violence and dysfunction. This includes the most powerful local bureaucrat in Cape Dorset, its Senior Administrative Officer, Olayuk Akesuk. “Us Inuit have a different way of trying to forget,” he said. “We keep it to ourselves. You don't want to remind people, or it comes back. We don't want to remind anyone of what happened in the past.”

There are many explanations for this reticence – from a desire to deflect attention from the societal ills so often reported in the southern media, to a deep and historically understandable mistrust of qallunaat (white people), to a belief that the spirits of the dead walk among us and must be respected. Perhaps most important, Nunavut is an ethnic state, formed of Inuit, by Inuit, for Inuit. Any slight against the territory can be perceived as a slight against the people.

Unfortunately, the result is a culture of silence in which problems are denied, or reflexively answered with an appeal to the traditions of the elders. In a territory with a burgeoning youth population and staggering social problems, this tight lid can serve to heighten the pressure, and there is danger that it will explode. If Cape Dorset, a bustling artists' enclave that should be one of the North's great success stories, can't hold it together, what hope do the other 24 Nunavut towns have?

One of the few people who would speak openly was the new mayor of the territory's capital, Madeleine Redfern, and she put it bluntly: “What's increasingly clear is that we were not ready for Nunavut.”

________________
References:

White, Patrick. 2011. "The trials of Nunavut: Lament for an Arctic nation". The Globe and Mail. Posted: April 1, 2011. Available online: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/nunavut/the-trials-of-nunavut-lament-for-an-arctic-nation/article1963420/singlepage/#articlecontent

150-Year-Old Lost Ship Found in Arctic

In 1850, the vessel embarked on a search mission to follow the trail of a doomed expedition to find the Northwest Passage.

Canadian archeologists have found a ship abandoned more than 150 years ago in the quest for the fabled Northwest Passage and which was lost in the search for the doomed expedition of Sir John Franklin, the head of the team said Wednesday.

Marc-Andre Bernier, Parks Canada's head of underwater archaeology, said the HMS Investigator, abandoned in the ice in 1853, was found in shallow water in Mercy Bay along the northern coast of Banks Island in Canada's western Arctic.

"The ship is standing upright in very good condition. It's standing in about 11 meters (36 feet) of water," he said. "This is definitely of the utmost importance. This is the ship that sailed the last leg of the Northwest Passage."

The Investigator was one of many American and British ships sent out to search for the HMS Erebus and the Terror, vessels commanded by Franklin in his ill-fated search for the Northwest Passage in 1845.

Environment Minister Jim Prentice said the British government has been notified that one of their naval shipwrecks has been discovered, as well as the bodies of three sailors.

Captained by Robert McClure, the Investigator sailed in 1850. That year, McClure sailed the Investigator into the strait that now bears his name and realized that he was in the final leg of the Northwest Passage, the sea route across North America.
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References:

Discovery News. 2010. "150-Year-Old Lost Ship Found in Arctic". Discovery News. Posted: July 29, 2010. Available online: http://news.discovery.com/history/abandoned-ship-arctic.html

4600-year-old Skeleton Discovered in Northern Ontario

Happy Canada Day!
Here's a great Canadian story. A reminder that we're all immigrants here.

A team of archaeologists, working with the Kitchenuhmaykoosik Inninuwug First Nation, has discovered a 4,600-year-old burial at the mouth of the Bug River, on the south side of Big Trout Lake in Canada.

Big Trout Lake is located in the far northwest of the province of Ontario. Even today it’s difficult to access. The province’s road system stops nearly 400 kilometres south of the area, making planes the most practical way to get in and out.

The lake is located on the same latitude as Manchester, but the climate is far colder. In the winter the temperature can go down below -30 degrees Celsius. The area around the lake is heavily forested with evergreen trees. The population encompassed by the Kitchenuhmaykoosik Inninuwug First Nation community is estimated to be around 1,200.

Kitchenuhmaykoosik Inninuwug chief Donny Morris told me in an interview that a group of fishermen were the first to come across the bones. Water levels were high on the lake last fall causing the shoreline to erode, exposing the burial.

Chief Morris called in local police to investigate. He also contacted Lakehead University archaeology Professor Scott Hamilton. The police determined that the bones were ancient and Professor Hamilton took over the task of determining who this fellow was.

The burial

Hamilton said that it’s very unusual for aboriginal burials to be studied in Canada as laws and ethics generally prohibit excavation. “In Canada, certainly in Ontario, human burial excavations simply don’t happen except in salvage circumstances,” he said.

“This is one of those circumstances.”

So what did they find?

The skeleton is of a fully grown adult male, likely in his late 30’s or early 40’s. “It’s pretty much intact from the knees and forearms upward,” said Hamilton. He was roughly five and a half feet tall with a “very, very robust muscular build.” Investigators could determine this because parts of the bone, which attach to the muscles, were well developed.

It is not known why he died, however he appears to have been given a formal burial. “There’s a flat slab of granite that’s associated directly with the bones,” said Hamilton. “It looks very much like a purposeful grave.”

The team is not certain why this slab was buried with him, “we’ll be taking a closer look at the stone as part of our analysis to see if we can see any evidence of function,” said Hamilton. He added that the team also found red ochre covering the bones. “(It’s) a very faint red ochre staining in the sediments and on the bones.” It would have been applied to the man’s body before he was buried.

The use of red ochre is seen in burials all over the world, including prehistoric North America. The color may have held religious significance to the people who buried the man.

Radiocarbon dates indicate that he lived around 4,600 years ago – although that number may change slightly as the date is calibrated. To put this in context, the man would have lived in Big Trout Lake at roughly the same time that the Great Pyramids were being built in Egypt.

What did he eat?

The team is performing oxygen and nitrogen isotope tests on the skeleton to determine what kind of diet he consumed. So far tests indicate that – in addition to hunting land animals – the man loved fish!

“Fish is clearly an important part of the diet, we can see that in the nitrogen numbers,” said Professor Hamilton. The team also examined the calculus around the teeth and found starch. “Clearly plant food was also an important part of his diet,” said Hamilton adding, “we haven’t been able to figure out what plants contributed that starch.”

How did he live?

This man's lifestyle would have been very different to those of people living in Ancient Egypt or the Near East at that time. The -30 degree temperature calls for an approach that doesn’t involve building pyramids.

“These folks are very much adapted to the kinds of resources that one finds in the boreal forest,” said Hamilton. “These resources are highly seasonal in their availability – and the season of comparative plenty is often spring, summer and perhaps early fall.”

These seasonal resources include fish spawns, migratory water fowl, caribou migration and even wild rice.

“This results in very, very low population density (and) very high population mobility as people are moving over very large territories over the course of the year.” This means that the man would have been part of a “family-based band.” That is a small number of related people who travel together.

The hardest part of the year was, of course, winter. “The winter seasons are generally a time of some scarcity and hardship as spatially concentrated food disappears,” said Hamilton.

“That means that sub-arctic people, in order to survive year in, year out through generations, have to have a seasonal cycle that’s highly mobile,” he said. “They can place themselves on the landscape where they can predict resources will be available and follow the seasonal cycles of availability.”

Hamilton’s research indicates that this lifestyle continued for an exceptionally long period of time. “The past is very recent in the far north,” he said.

When Europeans appeared in the 17th century the people continued to live this lifestyle. “These northern hunters, trappers and fishers (continued) to supply themselves with food predominately from the land – from the product of their hunt – from the product of their gathering of wild produce,” said Hamilton.

“They may be gathering and harvesting those resources with European technology but they’re (still using a) fairly significant amount of traditional technology – canoes, snowshoes, footwear, clothing,” he said. “What we see is this really interesting mix, an admixture, of traditional technology and the incorporation of new technology to practice a traditional life.”

This continues into the 20th century. In fact a fascinating story, described on the Kitchenuhmaykoosik Inninuwug First Nation website, talks about encountering a hairy being out in the forest:

“Back in the 20’s and before, people at that time were nomadic living in the bush and not staying in one place. During rainy and snowy weathers, they said there is a being covered with some hair and was mostly constructed with skeleton. (It) used to fly and made (an) awful horrible scream/sound. If you saw it, you would go insane.”

“Canada didn’t really have much of a presence in far northern Ontario until very recently,” said Hamilton. In fact many communities, including Kitchenuhmaykoosik Inninuwug, did not sign a treaty with Canada until 1929.

In this rather technical treaty they were forced to cede land to the crown:

“NOW THEREFORE we, the said Ojibeway, Cree and other Indian inhabitants, in consideration of the provisions of the said foregoing Treaty being extended to us, do hereby cede, release, surrender and yield up to the Government of the Dominion of Canada for His Majesty the King and His Successors forever, all our rights, titles and privileges whatsoever in all that tract of land, and land covered by water in the Province of Ontario, comprising part of the District of Kenora (Patricia Portion) containing one hundred and twenty-eight thousand three hundred and twenty square miles, more or less, being bounded on the South by the Northerly limit of Treaty Number Nine; on the West by Easterly limits of Treaties Numbers Three and Five, and the boundary between the Provinces of Ontario and Manitoba; on the North by the waters of Hudson Bay, and on the East by the waters of James Bay and including all islands, islets and rocks, waters and land covered by water within the said limits, and also all the said Indian rights, titles and privileges whatsoever to all other lands and lands covered by water, wherever situated in the Dominion of Canada.”

The crown did, however, promise that a reserve would be set aside for them:

“AND HIS MAJESTY through His said Commissioners agrees and undertakes to set side reserves for each band as provided by the said aforementioned Treaty, at such places or locations as may be arranged between the said Commissioners and the Chiefs and headmen of each Band.”

Change comes to an ancient lifestyle

Major changes started to occur in Ontario’s Far North at around the time the treaty was signed. The ancient practice of people living in small bands declined and communities became larger and less mobile.

“The really big changes come about surprisingly recently perhaps as late as the end of the Second World War in many cases,” said Professor Hamilton. Despite these changes important elements of this ancient lifestyle live on, including the language. “If you go to many of the communities of the far north now, the elders still predominately speak Cree or Ojibway.”

Today the Kitchenuhmaykoosik Inninuwug First Nation has a nursing station, restaurant, band office, airport and ice skating rink. They even have a website. But despite all the modern conveniences, the people still practice hunting, fishing and trapping.

Old legends also live on, here’s another interesting one, available on the Kitchenuhmaykoosik Inninuwug website:

“A weird, odd looking foot-long animal (a cross breed of an otter & beaver or muskrat) with a rat tail with white almost a human face was discovered floating on the mainland shore of Kitchenuhmaykoosib drowned. No one knows what it is but our ancestors used to call it the Ugly One. It is rarely seen but when seen especially if it is dead, it's bad omen and something bad will happen according to our elders and ancestors.”

Chief Morris said that soon, after all the archaeological analysis is complete, the 4,600-year-old man will be laid to rest again. Although the world has changed this fellow will, once again, receive the dignity of a proper burial – in the land of his descendents.

I asked the chief to describe the ceremony – how do you honor a 4,600-year-old man who was buried very simply, with red ochre and a granite slab? Do you buck history and have an elaborate gathering? The chief replied simply, “it will probably just be a memorial service.”

To learn more about this story and see the pictures, visit the site.
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References:

Jarus, Owen. 2010. "4600-year-old Skeleton Discovered in Northern Ontario". . Posted: June 22, 2010. Available online: http://heritage-key.com/blogs/owenjarus/4600-year-old-skeleton-discovered-northern-ontario

Ancient artifacts revealed as northern ice patches melt

Scientists hope to save artifacts as ice recedes.

High in the Mackenzie Mountains, scientists are finding a treasure trove of ancient hunting tools being revealed as warming temperatures melt patches of ice that have been in place for thousands of years.

Tom Andrews, an archaeologist with the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife and lead researcher on the International Polar Year Ice Patch Study, is amazed at the implements being discovered by researchers.

"We're just like children opening Christmas presents. I kind of pinch myself," says Andrews.

Ice patches are accumulations of annual snow that, until recently, remained frozen all year. For millennia, caribou seeking relief from summer heat and insects have made their way to ice patches where they bed down until cooler temperatures prevail. Hunters noticed caribou were, in effect, marooned on these ice islands and took advantage.

"I'm never surprised at the brilliance of ancient hunters anymore. I feel stupid that we didn't find this sooner," says Andrews.

Ice patch archeology is a recent phenomenon that began in Yukon. In 1997, sheep hunters discovered a 4,300-year-old dart shaft in caribou dung that had become exposed as the ice receded. Scientists who investigated the site found layers of caribou dung buried between annual deposits of ice. They also discovered a repository of well-preserved artifacts.

Andrews first became aware of the importance of ice patches when word about the Yukon find started leaking out. "We began wondering if we had the same phenomenon here."

In 2000, he cobbled together funds to buy satellite imagery of specific areas in the Mackenzie Mountains and began to examine ice patches in the region. Five years later, he had raised enough to support a four-hour helicopter ride to investigate two ice patches. The trip proved fruitful.

"Low and behold, we found a willow bow." That discovery led to a successful application for federal International Polar Year funds which have allowed an interdisciplinary team of researchers to explore eight ice patches for four years.

The results have been extraordinary. Andrews and his team have found 2400-year-old spear throwing tools, a 1000-year-old ground squirrel snare, and bows and arrows dating back 850 years. Biologists involved in the project are examining dung for plant remains, insect parts, pollen and caribou parasites. Others are studying DNA evidence to track the lineage and migration patterns of caribou. Andrews also works closely with the Shutaot'ine or Mountain Dene, drawing on their guiding experience and traditional knowledge.

"The implements are truly amazing. There are wooden arrows and dart shafts so fine you can't believe someone sat down with a stone and made them."

Andrews is currently in a race against time. His IPY funds have run out and he is keenly aware that each summer, the patches continue to melt. In fact, two of the eight original patches have already disappeared.

"We realize that the ice patches are continuing to melt and we have an ethical obligation to collect these artifacts as they are exposed," says Andrews. If left on the ground, exposed artifacts would be trampled by caribou or dissolved by the acidic soils. "In a year or two the artifacts would be gone."
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References:

EurekAlert. 2010. "Ancient artifacts revealed as northern ice patches melt". EurekAlert. Posted: April 26, 2010. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-04/aion-aar042610.php

Notes:

For media interviews with Tom Andrews:
Tel: 867 873-7688, Email: tom_andrews@gov.nt.ca

For information on Arctic Science Promotion program:
Ruth Klinkhammer, Director of Communications
Arctic Institute of North America
Tel: 403 220-7294, Email: r.klinkhammer@ucalgary.ca

This media release is part of the Promotion of Arctic Science, an Arctic Institute of North America project made possible with the generous support of the Government of Canada Program for International Polar Year.

The mission of the Arctic Institute of North America at the University of Calgary is to advance the study of the North American and circumpolar Arctic and to acquire, preserve and disseminate information on physical, environmental and social conditions in the North. More information can be found at www.arctic.ucalgary.ca