ICC Nuuk, Greenland, part 4: Stories, both ancient and new, are carried in the songs of the people

Hivshu Robert Peary began his life in Siorapaluk, Greenland, the northernmost community in the world and when he speaks of his people's history he makes clear the ties that bind one people spread across so vast a distance as the Arctic of Russia, Alaska, Canada and Greenland. He tells of a time when his ancestors were living near where the village of Kaktovik, Alaska, sits today when they divided up to fish for arctic char and salmon. A group that he refers to as "The Elders" began to move east until they reached Greenland.

white They brought their songs and dances, some of which are still performed today in each nation.

"I was raised up among hunters, telling me the stories, and then the white man took me away from my parents when I was 9 years old," Hivshu says. He was first sent to a boarding school not too far from the village, but at the age of 12 was sent to Denmark.  "They were trying to teach me the life of the man." Hivshu questioned what he was being taught should replace his own life. "I was trying to tell teachers, 'you were teaching us from one man's way of understanding. My knowlege and wisdom is 50,000 years old from my ancestors.'

"'I am trying to tell you that but you don't believe me, you want to stick with the book and tell what it is about. When it is not right, I cannot take it as something I want to keep, so you keep it, I go home, be among the people, my people, learn more about the wisdom of life, because I was supposed to tell the stories and sing the songs.'"

When he first learned to dance as a young man, Hivshu, who is now 54, kept it secret, but then decided he needed to go before the very people who had sought to take his culture from him.

"I began to understand that the white man never understood our dance. It is very important for me to tell the white man why we are doing that. We are not cultural clowns. When they want festivites, to have entertainment, 'you entertain us and we'll eat.' I don't do that. You can get some other people who are entertaining.'

"'I am telling about life. I'm telling and dancing and singing about life. It's too important for me. When you are eating, just talking to each other. It will be like I am talking to no one at all. If you are not listening, I go. Try another to entertain you while you are eating.'"

In 1999, Hivshu met "some scientists" from the University of Copenhagen who wanted to rewrite a book about his people that was done in the 1930's. He told them the book was not accurate. They asked him to spend a year-and-half working with them, but he told them a year-and-half would not belong enough.

In 2002, he began to work with the scholars on the book. He is living in Sweden to complete the book, because, he says, if he goes home he will be out hunting and fishing and will never get it written.

Hivshu gets his name from his great-grandfather, the polar explorer Admiral Robert E. Peary, who had two son's with Hivshu's great-grandmother.

After he danced, Hivshu spotted a young man named Shane from Canada's Northwest Territories who he had seen perform the night before with the Inuvialuit Drummers Dancers. He walked over to him and draped his arm over his shoulder. "I'm proud of you," he said. "He's young, look at him. He's young,  keeping our traditions and songs and dances. He's a perfect example of young people trying their best to keep our ancestors way of life. Eighteen years old and he wants to dance his way of life, to understand life is dancing and singing. and telling the people, the beautiful dances of our people, our ancestors, life and universe.:

"That's my culture," Shane beamed. "It was my grandfather's that made me start dancing. I love it."

Shane, performing with the Inuvialuit Drummers and Dancers.

Inuivialuit drummer, Phillip Elanik.

The Kuugmiut Dancers from Wainwright, Alaska - Betty Ann Bodfish, Ardyce Nayakik, Iqaluk Nayakik and her very popular daughter, Raquel.

McRidge Nayakik and Iqaluk Nayakik, Kuugmiut Dancers, Wainwright. 

Jimmy Kagak drums for Kuugmiut Dancers. 

After their performances, Wainwright and Inuvialuit gathered together in the middle of floor to do an invitational dance. All present were invited to join them.

In this picture there are faces from Russia, Alaska, Canada and Greenland, all dancing together.

Three Russian Inuit girls, dancing in front of the Wainwright Drums.

Afterward, Hanne Qvist and Leif Immanuelson of Nuuk performed on the fiddle and according. Leif is originally from Kangersuatsiaq in north Greenland and only recently moved to Nuuk. He learned to play the accordion as child and notes that there are several accordion and fiddle players from his village.

The instruments were introduced to them by commercial whale hunters. "They wanted to teach us how to polka," he explains. Even as the whale hunters introduced the new instruments, a zealous priest went through the village, gathered up all the Inuit drums and burned them.

Leif is proud that, at this ICC, he beat his traditional drum in the opening ceremonies. When he first learned to drum, he would perform only with a mask on his face. "Now I am more confident. I drum in the open," he says.

Soon, many in the crowd spun about the floor in a vigorous square dance.

Jack Hopstad, fiddler - Alaska's Kuskowkwim Fiddle Band. Here, he plays the lonesome "Eagle Island Blues," an Athabascan love song written by a trapper wintering on the Yukon River's Eagle Island. He is missing the woman he loves.

As I listened to the longing that came out of Jack's fiddle, I found myself missing her, too.

Three little girls, loving the Kuskokwim Fiddle Band.

Anthony Shields, base guitarist for the Kuskokwim Fiddle Band.

Kuskokwim Fiddle Band lead guitarist Bobby Gregory puts his whole soul into the classic, "Take the Ribbon From Your Hair." Each time he repeated the verse,

I don't care what's right or wrong, 
I don't try to understand.
Let the devil take tomorrow. 
Lord, tonight I need a friend...

he brought the crowd to a cheering scream.

When he sang it, everyone could understand.

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ICC Nuuk, Greenland, part 3: Streets of Nuuk; the floor of the General Assembly; Inuit Opera singers Heinrich and Josefsen; Pamyua and Canadian throat singers together

The streets of Nuuk:

I think it is time to give readers some idea of what Nuuk looks like. I have had little time to wander around and explore as I would like, but I have managed to take a few pictures of the community as I have walked back to my hotel late at night from the cultural entertainment.

I am trying a little experiment here. While I have only posted two pictures from my walk here in the main blog body, if you click the Nuuk walk link below it will take you to a nine image slideshow. The same is true for the other three segments of this post: the ICC General Assembly floor, the Greenlandic Inuit opera singer and Pamyua, performing with Canadian throat singers. 

Each has a link that opens up to a slide show with several more images.

A young girl manipulates her cell phone while skateboarding through the streets of Nuuk.

See more of my walk through Nuuk in this slideshow.

From the floor of the General Assembly

A very serious agenda is unfolding on the floor of the 2010 General Assembly of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, under the overall theme of "Inoqatigiinneq-Sharing Life." Today, Edward Itta, Mayor of Alaska's North Slope Borough and the President of the Alaska delegation is conducting the meeting. Here, as delegates from Alaska, Russia, Canada and Greenland listen, he calls today's General Assembly to order.

Before I came to Greenland, I had it in my mind that each day I would sum up all that was said on this floor, but I find that the only way I could intelligently do that is to give that task my full attention and take few if any photos - alone edit and post them. As it is, I am already spending more than half my time doing work other than taking photos and I don't even have the time to give the photos that I do take a good close look and edit.

So I think I will hold off and at the end, after the General Assembly adopts the Nuuk Declaration of 2010, I will try to communicate the essence of it. For now, I will focus my efforts on getting pictures and posting a few, which is proving to be an enormous task in itself.

National leaders have come from all the modern nations whose boundaries encompass the ancient homeland of the Inuit and many issues are being discussed - from the impacts of global warming (and here, in the Far North, where a declining ice pack is already drastically changing the way people live, it is seen as real and present danger), to economic development and resource extraction, improving the health of the people and many more issues.

At 81, Paul John, Yup'ik of Southwest Alaska, is the oldest delegate on the floor. 

The Greenlandic and Canadian Executive Council members. Left to right is Aqqaluk Lynge, Carl Chr. Olsen of Greenland and Violet Ford and Duane Smith of Canada.

The Russian and American Executive Council Members: Valentina Leonova and Tatiyana Achirgina of Russia; Willie Goodwin, Jim Stotts and Mayor Edward Itta of Alaska.

Maliina Abelsen of Greenland speaks about health issues, including healing from alcohol and drug abuse.

The highest ranking official to show up from the federal government of the United States has been Dr. Kerri-Ann Jones, the Assistant Secretary of State for Ocean and International Environment and Scientific Affairs. Dr. Jones works just below Interior Secretary Hilary Clinton.

After she addressed the General Assembly, she met with the Alaska delegates in their caucus. She received both praise and hard questions - the praise being that relations between the indigenous people of the Arctic and the federal government seem to be improving with the new administration of Barack Obama.

Even so, the Iñupiat and Yup'ik of Alaska stated that they must be more fully included in the establishment of US Arctic policy.

ICC Assembly chair Jim Stotts of Alaska addresses Assistant Secretary Jones.

See more from the GA floor in this 12-image slide show

Inuit opera singers

Two Greenlandic Inuit opera singers, Ida Heinrich and Josef L. Josefson, wait to perform at a reception hosted by the Greenlandic delegation. They sang two Greenlandic songs, Pigaaara Illunni Asslt an Illaanni Unnulermatt and it was exquisitely beautiful.

Ida Heinrich, back up by members of the men's chorus Qissiat, which means "driftwood."

See more of the Opera singers in this nine-image slide show

Pamyua with Canadian throat singers

Karina Moeller and Pamyua put on an energetic performance before an equally charged audience, as you can see in the slide show.

Pamyua was joined onstage by Akinisie Sivuarapik and Sylvia Cloutier of Canadian Throatsingers Aqsarniit.

I have many more performances, by artists of all four nations and will post them as I find the time. I need an assistant!

See more of Pamyua and the throat singers in this 17-image slide show

ICC Nuuk, Greenland, part 2: Launch of the Inuit Film Festival

To my great frustration, there is an Inuit Film Festival taking place in conjunction with the General Assembly of the Inuit Circumpolar Council here in Nuuk, Greenland. It's frustrating, because there are many film being shown throughout the week and I want to see them all, but there are too many conflicts time wise and I won't be able to. I did get to attend the opener, which also happened to be the world premier of the feature film, Inuk.

The festival is taking place not in a threatre but in a community center with a screen hung on the wall, to create the flavor of days gone by when movies were a fairly rare thing here. They were shown in community halls, and would draw pretty much everyone in the community. They would come for the fun, and to get a peek at the world outside of the Arctic, a world which few had seen.

Over time, movies became more commonplace, television came, along with videos. Stories from the outside world became more common, but what was not seen so much of was Inuit stories of the Inuit world.

Now, many Inuit actors and filmmakers are working to change that, often in collaboration with non-Inuit filmmakers.

Inuk is one example.

And on opening night, the community center was filled to capacity. People even stood outside the doors, peeking in to get a glimpse.

Sitting in the front row is Pipaluk Kreutzmann Joergensen, a TV producer of program for young people called Oqarit (Say It). Next to her is the program's onscreen host, Mudi Kramer Berthelsen, Aqqaluk Lynge, President of ICC Greenland, Dr. Karla Jessen Williamson, board member of the University of Greenland.

The film focuses primarily upon the stories of two individuals. Inuk, played by Gaaba Petersen, is a sixteen year old boy who began life as the son of a successful hunter in Northern Greenland, but after a tragic turn wound up living in Nuuk with his mother. He then grew up in the midst of alcohol abuse, often without enough food to eat.

Finally, after he was found sleeping in a frozen vehicle, he was taken from his mother and placed in a children's home in the north Greenland community of Umanak. Living in that community is Ikuma, a skilled but troubled hunter on a bad run of unsuccessful hunts. He does not want to "babysit" any of the children from the home, but, seeing his recent bad luck, the director bribes him and his regular hunting partners to take Inuk and other youth from the home out hunting in a caravan of dog sleds.

The drama unfolds as Inuk and Ikuma reluctantly work their way into each other's hearts as they head out on a long dogsled hunting trip that takes a tragic turn, forcing them to deal with the personal and cultural loses they have experienced in life.

As they do, they face not only the hardships brought to them by cultural change, but also the challenges and dangers that a warming climate is bringing to a place where the people rely upon ice that is becoming less stable than it once was.

Petersen was unable to attend the premier in Nuuk, but Ole Jorgen Hammeken, left, who plays Ikuma, did. Just before the film started, he appeared with script writer, Jean Michel Huctin, to speak briefly to the audience.

Hammeken actually lives in Umanak. In the movie, Ikuma is a very skilled dog musher and so, as I watched Hammeken play his role and skillfully drive his dogs over the ice, I thought he must have been a dog musher all of his life.

When I talked to him afterward, I was surprised to learn that he had actually grown up in Nuuk. When he first moved to Umanak, where he now works with his wife in the actual children's home depicted in the film, he did not know how to drive dogs.

He learned and just as Ikuma did in the film, Hammeken now takes youth from the home out dog mushing on the ice and teaches them to hunt. Just hunting helped the ficticious teen Inuk come to terms with the troubles life had brought to him, so, too, does it help the troubled youth who Hammeken works with in real life.

"What I want to communicate to the young is that we have this heritiage of the Eskimo, we have to use our heritage and be proud of that. Life has changed in this modern world, but our hertiage is still very important; we need to be proud of it." 

Hammeken as Ikuma, in a scene from Inuk.

While the film was shot in May and October of 2008, the making of it took most of the past decade. American director Mike Magidson and French script writer Hutchin had long been working with Hammeken and the people of Umanak on documentary films. 

"We heard so many stories," Hutchins recalls, including those upon which this film is based. They felt it could only be told in a dramatic film.

"It is an independent film" Hammeken notes. "By that I mean none of us have been paid."

"It is not a question of money, it is a question of dreams," Hutchin adds.

The project did attract the attention of Hollywood filmmakers who had the potential to help fully fund the project. Some even came to Greenland, excited to help make such a film - but, Hammeken notes, they wanted to reshape into something more Hollywood. They did not want to just tell the simple but powerful story of the Inuit hunter and the young boy coming together, but to work a white actor into a lead role. 

This had not happened in real, it was not part of the story, and they would not compromise. Fortunately, Prince Albert of Monaco did come through with the funding necessary for them to complete the film.

"Everything that you see in this film is true," Hutchin says. "It is not one story, it is many stories, brought together as one."

The Inuit actors and hunters were given free reign to improvise, to make their life as real as they knew it. In the movie, Inuk kills his first seal, an event that is followed by a happy and joyous celebration amongst the hunters and the other youth from the children's home.

That seal was not only Inuk's first, but also the first ever shot by Petersen, the actor who played him. Rather than trying to direct everyone and tell them what to do with the seal, the actors were turned loose to react, cook, eat and celebrate just as if no film was being made.

In another scene, a hurt and angry Inuk has stripped off his clothing in a suicide attempt. This was not written into the film, but happened after Petersen grew angry with the filmmakers and stripped off his clothing for real. They worked the scene into the film powerfully. "It turned out better than we could have imagined," Hutchin says. In Greenland, he notes, many suicide victims have been found frozen after they stripped off their clothing.

After the showing, many came to congratulate Hammeken, including Rachel Riley, middle, of Anaktuvuk Pass and Edith Nageak of Barrow, right.

In 2001, Hammeken and two others climbed into a sixteen foot motorboat in Greenland and journeyed all the way through the Inside Passage to Alaska. Kaktovik, Nageak's ancestral home, was the first village in Alaska that they reached. At first, the Iñupiat they mer there could not believe that they had come all the way from Greenland, traveling in the same manner that the village people use to go out hunting and fishing every summer.

Next, the adventurers reached the hotel in Deadhorse, in the midst of the Prudhoe Bay oil fields, just after a grizzly bear had gone inside and had left everyone all excited.

They stopped at Cross Island to hunt bowheads with the people of Nuiqsut, but no whale was landed while they were there.

They arrived in Barrow the day after the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and found the atmosphere both somber and riled up.

They traveled on to Waiwright, Point Lay and Point Hope, and in subsequent summers continued on down the coast and across the Bering Straits into Russia.

It was a jouney that took Hammeken across the entire home of the people who make up the Inuit Circumpolar Council.

"Thank you for showing our life style, how we feel, to the world," Ann Marie Ottosen, left, of Nuuk said to Hutchin and Hammeken just before she and another presented them with flowers. "Thank you  to help us remember who we are."

Hutchin and Hammeken, with flowers.

Getting there - two flights from Copenhagen to Nuuk

After falling so far behind on sleep, I hung up my Skype call with Margie, and went to bed in my Copenhagen hotel at midnight, but I was so afraid that I might somehow oversleep that I hardly got a wink. I finally just gave up at 4:30 and got up.

Later, as I waited to board the first flight of the two that would take me to Nuuk, Greenland, I saw a man wearing a red cap with the word, "Russia," on it. This is he, Sasha Eynetegin Alexandar, standing with Tatyiana Achirigina. Sasha is an artist known for his walrus ivory carvings and he lives in Lavrentia, Chukotka.

Tatyiana is the Vice President of ICC Russia and the leader of this year's Russian delegation. She is a journalist from Providenyia, who I had met before when she had come to Barrow to observe a convention of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission. She reminded me that I had taken some picture back then of her and the other Russians who had come and told me she wants them. So I have another task to perform sometime after I get home.

The first leg of our Air Greenland flight took us over Norway, enroute to Kangerlussuaq, one of only two civilian airports in Greenland with a runway long enough to accommodate large commercial air carriers.

As it was a four-and-a-half hour flight, I eventually had to undo my seat belt and head for the restroom. As I waited in line, a little girl fell off her chair, bumped her head and began to cry. Her father picked her up and comforted her. 

And then we were over Greenland, headed for Kangerlussuaq.

In September of 1996, I accompanied a delegation from the North Slope Borough that traveled to Chukotka, Russia, by helicopter. In the village of Lavrentia, I came upon a Russian photographer, Vasily Dobriev. Although we could not speak the same language, we communicated by taking each others pictures simultaneously, each of us using film single-lens reflect cameras.

At the airport in Kangerlussuaq, I happened upon the very same Vasily again. Again, there was a language barrier, but we communicated as we had before - this time, with small, digital, pocket cameras.

At Kangerlussuaq, we switched to smaller turbo-prop Dash 7. The stewardess gave us the safety briefing.

Then we were in the air, headed for Nuuk, one hour to south.

Although she looked like she could be Inuit, the lady next to me said she was from China, but we did not share a common language, so I learned no more about her or the purpose of her trip. She took pictures all the way. 

When we stepped into the Nuuk terminal, the group, Pamyua, of Anchorage sang a quick song of greeting. Pictured above is Ossie Kairaiuak, Karina Moeller (now of Anchorage but originally of Greenland) and Phillip Blanchett.

You will see more of Pamyua in here this week.

Following registration, there was an "ice breaker" at the convention center. Three Greenlandic choirs, including Aavat sang songs of greeting. At the same time, a display of Inuit art opened in the same building. During the course of the week, I will attempt to track down some of the artists.

An Inuit film festival was also about to begin.

Out on the streets of Nuuk, I saw some young people skating and riding skateboards.

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